"Must take a lot out of you," I said as we stopped in front of 342.
"I'm still young," she said. "Nineteen in April. I figure if I can keep a positive attitude till I'm twenty-one, it'll be natural and I won't have to work so hard at it."
"Must make your parents proud," I said, waiting for Connie to open the door.
"Dad died last year. Rabaul."
"Sorry," I said.
"Thank you," she said, opening the door. "How much did you pay Sandy?"
I stepped in. Her voice had been bright, alive.
"I…"
"Doesn't matter," she said, holding up a hand and looking around the room. "It was more than you had to pay. Sandy is a talker. Can't stop talking. You want bun to tell you something, just wait. If you outlast him, you don't have to pay him."
"Fifteen dollars," I said, looking at the tired furniture.
"I don't make that in a week," she said, moving to the door.
I fished out another five and held it out.
"Nope," she said. "Make it two if you have change. If you don't, I do. I'm not out to cheat you, just make an honest living and enough to go to U.S.C. next year." '
I found two singles and gave them to her.
"You know Spelling? The guy in this room."
"Can't get a smile out of him," Connie said, tucking the singles into her pocket. "Not bad looking. If he made a pass, I wouldn't fumble, but I'd have to get a smile out of him first."
"Maybe I can make him smile when he gets back," I said, moving to the armchair near the window and turning it so it faced the door.
"I don't think I like the way you just said that," she said. "You're a bill collector?"
"Something like that," I said. "He owes a dentist for some work."
"You have a son?" she asked, standing in the doorway.
"No," I said sitting. "Why?"
"Don't know," she said with a shrug. "You're kinda cute for an older guy. I wondered if there was one at home like you, only younger."
"Home is a single room in a boardinghouse on Heliotrope," I said, closing my eyes. "There's a cat there named Dash, a Swiss translator three feet tall, and a deaf landlady."
"You want to meet my mother? She's a widow."
"I know," I said. "I'll let you know."
"She's a fine-looking lady," Connie said. "Younger than you, I think. She has spunk like me."
"I don't know how much spunk I can take, Connie," I said.
"Am I too much?" she said with a grin full of white teeth.
"Not in small doses."
"He usually gets home about three or four," she said. "Then he goes out again, maybe at six-thirty, in the soup and fish till late, long after I've gone home. My mother's a great cook. Greek."
"Thanks, Connie," I said.
"Think about my mother," she said on her way out.
"How do you know I'm not a bluebeard who'll love your mother, take her money, and chop her head off?"
"You're a pussycat," she said, closing the door.
I sat for about two minutes in depression, an old guy with no sense of humor, no son, no wife, and too weary to meet a woman with spunk. Depression. Then I started to think about Tools Nathanson. How had he found Victor Spelling before I did? Tools didn't strike me as graduate-school material. Yet he had tracked down his boss's or partner's killer without the help of Mame Stoltz at M-G-M or Sheldon Minck's patient file.
I took my.38 from my shoulder holster, opened it, and checked to be sure the bullets weren't rusty. I almost never use it and I never remove the bullets. I could lie and say I kept them in at all times because I never knew when I might need some protection. The truth was I was too lazy to remove the bullets when I wasn't using the gun.
I searched Victor Spelling's room. It didn't take long. He kept little there-clothes in the closet, toothbrush and green Teel, a razor, some magazines. No notes, no diary, no letters.
There was a crumpled LA. Times on the night table next to the bed. I picked it up as I sat again. If Spelling kept the schedule Connie reported, I had a few hours.
In the next twenty minutes, I learned from Hedda Hopper that Cole Porter's Let's Face It! might be coming to Los Angeles with Jose Ferrer and Vivian Vance, that there was a one-dollar dinner special with charcoal broil at the Pixie on LaBrea, that Mohandas K. Gandhi was in the eighteenth day of a planned twenty-one-day fast to obtain his unconditional release from internment at Poona, that Nazi puppet authorities hi the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were threatening the Czechs with ever-harsher punishments if they didn't cooperate more fully with the anti-Allied war effort, that Congressman Will Rogers, Jr., would match wits tonight on "Information Please" with Clifton Fadiman, Oscar Levant, John Kiernan, and Franklin P. Adams.
Footsteps were coming down the corridor outside of room 342.1 dropped the newspaper when the steps stopped in front of the door across from me. I took out my.38 and held it in my lap. Someone fiddled with the door and it popped open.
"I was just thinking about you," I said, holding up the.38 where Tools Nathanson could see it.
He stood surprised in the open doorway, his jacket open, 'a thin screwdriver in his hand. He looked at me for an instant and thought. I figured he was wondering about simply closing the door and getting the hell out of there, but there was something else on his mind. He stepped in, closed the door, and put his little screwdriver back in his tool belt.
"You set Karl up," Tools said, taking a step toward me. He was wearing a pair of brown trousers, a black sweater, and a sport jacket that almost matched the sweater but was no match for the trousers.
"Have a seat. We'll talk about it while we wait for Spelling."
Tools clanked two steps toward me and pointed his pudgy finger toward my face.
"You set Karl up. Came in with that bull-shit story while your pal Spelling waited for Karl to step out."
"That's stupid, Tools," I said with an intolerant sigh.
"Stupid? I follow you and find you in his room a couple of hours after Karl was blown to pieces, sitting there, waiting for him."
He took another step toward me. I leveled the pistol at his face. He waved it off.
"You're not shooting me," he said. "Not if you're tellin' the truth about this Spelling. And if you ain't, you'll shoot anyway."
He was right. I put the pistol back in my holster and folded my arms.
Tools sat next to me.
"I want him to come through the door. I want to nail the son of a bitch to the wall, file his fingers to the bone, screw his kneecaps together, and staple his eyes shut," Tools said, taking a large pliers from his tool belt. "Start, now. Tell me what's going on."
I started. I went over everything, told him about my contact at M-G-M, how I got where I was standing. Then I sat back and watched his face as he tried to understand what he had just been told.
"Because of Karl's initials?" he finally said. "You think Spelling killed him because his initials fit? His life didn't mean anything but the name his old man gave him?"
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe Karl just happened to be in the wrong movie at the wrong time."
Tools shifted on the sofa, looked at me as if he might see something that would make more sense than he was hearing.
"What're you, nuts?" he said, leaning over to poke me with a stubby finger. "I'll tell you how I found Spelling."
The door came open. I hadn't heard footsteps, a key in the lock. Spelling was standing there, black trousers, a white shirt with short sleeves, a look on his face like a startled animal.
I went for my gun. Tools got to his feet. Spelling fumbled in his pocket. Before Spelling could get his hand out of his pocket, Tools was lumbering toward him. Spelling took a step back into the hall. I was out of my chair by now, but it didn't do me much good. Spelling kicked the attacking Tools right in the face with his dark oxfords. Tools staggered back into my arms. Tools had something in his hand, a screwdriver. I tried to hold him. I couldn't. Spelling's eyes met mine and he grinned as Tools charged again. Now Spelling had a gun in his hand. The hell with it. I aimed my.38 in Spelling's general direction. Spelling fired once. The bullet cracked the ceiling. I took a shot at Spelling's head as Tools tackled him. I missed. Spelling fired again as Tools, sitting on his chest, brought the screwdriver up. The shot hit Tools's chest and came out on the other side, moving toward me. I was diving behind the sofa.