The other cop straightened up too and shook his head and went towards the house, with the janitor trotting beside him.
The cop with the notebook jerked a thumb at me and said harshly: “You was here first after these two guys. Anything from you?”
I looked at the milkman. Larry Batzel wouldn’t care, and a man has a living to earn. It wasn’t a story for a prowl car anyway.
“I just heard the shots and came running,” I said.
The cop took that for an answer. The milk driver looked up at the lowering gray sky and said nothing.
After a while I got back into my apartment and finished my dressing. When I picked my hat up off the window table by the Scotch bottle there was a small rosebud lying on a piece of scrawled paper.
The note said: “You’re a good guy, but I think I’ll go it alone. Give the rose to Mona, if you ever should get a chance. Larry.”
I put those things in my wallet, and braced myself with a drink.
3
About three o’clock that afternoon I stood in the main hallway of the Winslow place and waited for the butler to come back. I had spent most of the day not going near my office or apartment, and not meeting any homicide men. It was only a question of time until I had to come through, but I wanted to see General Dade Winslow first. He was hard to see.
Oil paintings hung all around me, mostly portraits. There were a couple of statues and several suits of time-darkened armor on pedestals of dark wood. High over the huge marble fireplace hung two bullet-torn—or moth-eaten—cavalry pennants crossed in a glass case, and below them the painted likeness of a thin, spry-looking man with a black beard and mustachios and full regimentals of about the time of the Mexican War. This might be General Dade Winslow’s father. The general himself, though pretty ancient, couldn’t be quite that old.
Then the butler came back and said General Winslow was in the orchid house and would I follow him, please.
We went out of the french doors at the back and across the lawns to a big glass pavilion well beyond the garages. The butler opened the door into a sort of vestibule and shut it when I was inside, and it was already hot. Then he opened the inner door and it was really hot.
The air steamed. The walls and ceiling of the greenhouse dripped. In the half light enormous tropical plants spread their blooms and branches all over the place, and the smell of them was almost as overpowering as the smell of boiling alcohol.
The butler, who was old and thin and very straight and white-haired, held branches of the plants back for me to pass, and we came to an opening in the middle of the place. A large reddish Turkish rug was spread down on the hexagonal flagstones. In the middle of the rug, in a wheel chair, a very old man sat with a traveling rug around his body and watched us come.
Nothing lived in his face but the eyes. Black eyes, deep-set, shining, untouchable. The rest of his face was the leaden mask of death, sunken temples, a sharp nose, outward-turning ear lobes, a mouth that was a thin white slit. He was wrapped partly in a reddish and very shabby bathrobe and partly in the rug. His hands had purple fingernails and were clasped loosely, motionless on the rug. He had a few scattered wisps of white hair on his skull.
The butler said: “This is Mr. Carmady, General.”
The old man stared at me. After a while a sharp, shrewish voice said: “Place a chair for Mr. Carmady.”
The butler dragged a wicker chair out and I sat down. I put my hat on the floor. The butler picked it up.
“Brandy,” the general said. “How do you like your brandy, sir?”
“Any way at all,” I said.
He snorted. The butler went away. The general stared at me with his unblinking eyes. He snorted again.
“I always take champagne with mine,” he said. “A third of a glass of brandy under the champagne, and the champagne as cold as Valley Forge. Colder, if you can get it colder.”
A noise that might have been a chuckle came out of him.
“Not that I was at Valley Forge,” he said. “Not quite that bad. You may smoke, sir.”
I thanked him and said I was tired of smoking for a while. I got a handkerchief out and mopped my face.
“Take your coat off, sir. Dud always did. Orchids require heat, Mr. Carmady—like sick old men.”
I took my coat off, a raincoat I had brought along. It looked like rain. Larry Batzel had said it was going to rain.
“Dud is my son-in-law. Dudley O’Mara. I believe you had something to tell me about him.”
“Just hearsay,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to go into it, unless I had your O.K., General Winslow.”
The basilisk eyes stared at me. “You are a private detective. You want to be paid, I suppose.”
“I’m in that line of business,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I have to be paid for every breath I draw. It’s just something I heard. You might like to pass it on yourself to the Missing Persons Bureau.”
“I see,” he said quietly. “A scandal of some sort.”
The butler came back before I could answer. He wheeled a tea wagon in through the jungle, set it at my elbow and mixed me a brandy and soda. He went away.
I sipped the drink. “It seems there was a girl,” I said. “He knew her before he knew your daughter. She’s married to a racketeer now. It seems—”
“I’ve heard all that,” he said. “I don’t give a damn. What I want to know is where he is and if he’s all right. If he’s happy.”
I stared at him popeyed. After a moment I said weakly: “Maybe I could find the girl, or the boys downtown could, with what I could tell them.”
He plucked at the edge of his rug and moved his head about an inch. I think he was nodding. Then he said very slowly: “Probably I’m talking too much for my health, but I want to make something clear. I’m a cripple. I have two ruined legs and half my lower belly. I don’t eat much or sleep much. I’m a bore to myself and a damn nuisance to everybody else. So I miss Dud. He used to spend a lot of time with me. Why, God only knows.”
“Well—” I began.
“Shut up. You’re a young man to me, so I can be rude to you. Dud left without saying goodbye to me. That wasn’t like him. He drove his car away one evening and nobody has heard from him since. If he got tired of my fool daughter and her brat, if he wanted some other woman, that’s all right. He got a brainstorm and left without saying goodbye to me, and now he’s sorry. That’s why I don’t hear from him. Find him and tell him I understand. That’s all—unless he needs money. If he does, he can have all he wants.”
His leaden cheeks almost had a pink tinge now. His black eyes were brighter, if possible. He leaned back very slowly and closed his eyes.
I drank a lot of my drink in one long swallow, I said: “Suppose he’s in a jam. Say, on account of the girl’s husband. This Joe Mesarvey.”
He opened his eyes and winked. “Not an O’Mara,” he said. “It’s the other fellow would be in a jam.”
“Okay. Shall I just pass on to the Bureau where I heard this girl was?”
“Certainly not. They’ve done nothing. Let them go on doing it. Find him yourself. I’ll pay you a thousand dollars—even if you only have to walk across the street. Tell him everything is all right here. The old man’s doing fine and sends his love. That’s all.”
I couldn’t tell him. Suddenly I couldn’t tell him anything Larry Batzel had told me, or what had happened to Larry, or anything about it. I finished my drink and stood up and put my coat back on. I said: “That’s too much money for the job, General Winslow. We can talk about that later. Have I your authority to represent you in my own way?”
He pressed a bell on his wheel chair. “Just tell him,” he said. “I want to know he’s all right and I want him to know I’m all right. That’s all—unless he needs money. Now you’ll have to excuse me. I’m tired.”
He closed his eyes. I went back through the jungle and the butler met me at the door with my hat.
I breathed in some cool air and said: “The genera
l wants me to see Mrs. O’Mara.”
4
This room had a white carpet from wall to wall. Ivory drapes of immense height lay tumbled casually on the white carpet inside the many windows. The windows stared towards the dark foothills, and the air beyond the glass was dark too. It hadn’t started to rain yet, but there was a feeling of pressure in the atmosphere.
Mrs. O’Mara was stretched out on a white chaise longue with both her slippers off and her feet in the net stockings they don’t wear any more. She was tall and dark, with a sulky mouth. Handsome, but this side of beautiful.
She said: “What in the world can I do for you? It’s all known. Too damn known. Except that I don’t know you, do I?”
“Well, hardly,” I said. “I’m just a private copper in a small way of business.”
She reached for a glass I hadn’t noticed but would have looked for in a moment, on account of her way of talking and the fact she had her slippers off. She drank languidly, flashing a ring.
“I met him in a speakeasy,” she said with a sharp laugh. “A very handsome bootlegger, with thick curly hair and an Irish grin. So I married him. Out of boredom. As for him, the bootlegging business was even then uncertain—if there were no other attractions.”
She waited for me to say there were, but not as if she cared a lot whether I came through. I just said: “You didn’t see him leave on the day he disappeared?”
“No. I seldom saw him leave, or come back. It was like that.” She drank some more of her drink.
“Huh,” I grunted. “But, of course, you didn’t quarrel.” They never do.
“There are so many ways of quarreling, Mr. Carmady.”
“Yeah. I like your saying that. Of course you knew about the girl.”
“I’m glad I’m being properly frank to an old family detective. Yes, I knew about the girl.” She curled a tendril of inky hair behind her ear.
“Did you know about her before he disappeared?” I asked politely.
“Certainly.”
“How?”
“You’re pretty direct, aren’t you? Connections, as they say. I’m an old speak fancier. Or didn’t you know that?”
“Did you know the bunch at the Dardanella?”
“I’ve been there.” She didn’t look startled, or even surprised. “In fact I practically lived there for a week. That’s where I met Dudley O’Mara.”
“Yeah. Your father married pretty late in life, didn’t he?”
I watched color fade in her cheeks. I wanted her mad, but there was nothing doing. She smiled and the color came back and she rang a push bell on a cord down in the swan’s-down cushions of the chaise longue.
“Very late,” she said, “if it’s any of your business.”
“It’s not,” I said.
A coy-looking maid came in and mixed a couple of drinks at a side table. She gave one to Mrs. O’Mara, put one down beside me. She went away again, showing a nice pair of legs under a short skirt.
Mrs. O’Mara watched the door shut and then said: “The whole thing has got Father into a mood. I wish Dud would wire or write or something.”
I said slowly: “He’s an old, old man, crippled, half buried already. One thin thread of interest held him to life. The thread snapped and nobody gives a damn. He tries to act as if he didn’t give a damn himself. I don’t call that a mood. I call that a pretty swell display of intestinal fortitude.”
“Gallant,” she said, and her eyes were daggers. “But you haven’t touched your drink.”
“I have to go,” I said. “Thanks all the same.”
She held a slim, tinted hand out and I went over and touched it. The thunder burst suddenly behind the hills and she jumped. A gust of air shook the windows.
I went down a tiled staircase to the hallway and the butler appeared out of a shadow and opened the door for me.
I looked down a succession of terraces decorated with flower beds and imported trees. At the bottom a high metal railing with gilded spearheads and a six-foot hedge inside. A sunken driveway crawled down to the main gates and a lodge inside them.
Beyond the estate the hill sloped down to the city and the old oil wells of La Brea, now partly a park, partly a deserted stretch of fenced-in wild land. Some of the wooden derricks still stood. These had made the wealth of the Winslow family and then the family had run away from them up the hill, far enough to get away from the smell of the sumps, not too far for them to look out of the front windows and see what made them rich.
I walked down brick steps between the terraced lawns. On one of them a dark-haired, pale-faced kid of ten or eleven was throwing darts at a target hung on a tree. I went along near him.
“You young O’Mara?” I asked.
He leaned against a stone bench with four darts in his hand and looked at me with cold, slaty eyes, old eyes.
“I’m Dade Winslow Trevillyan,” he said grimly.
“Oh, then Dudley O’Mara’s not your dad.”
“Of course not.” His voice was full of scorn. “Who are you?”
“I’m a detective. I’m going to find your—I mean, Mr. O’Mara.”
That didn’t bring us any closer. Detectives were nothing to him. The thunder was tumbling about in the hills like a bunch of elephants playing tag. I had another idea.
“Bet you can’t put four out of five into the gold at thirty feet.”
He livened up sharply. “With these?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How much you bet?” he snapped.
“Oh, a dollar.”
He ran to the target and cleaned darts off it, came back and took a stance by the bench.
“That’s not thirty feet,” I said.
He gave me a sour look and went a few feet behind the bench. I grinned, then I stopped grinning.
His small hand darted so swiftly I could hardly follow it. Five darts hung in the gold center of the target in less than that made seconds. He stared at me triumphantly.
“Gosh, you’re pretty good, Master Trevillyan,” I grunted, and got my dollar out.
His small hand snapped at it like a trout taking the fly. He had it out of sight like a flash.
“That’s nothing,” he chuckled. “You ought to see me on our target range back of the garages. Want to go over there and bet some more?”
I looked back up the hill and saw part of a low white building backed up to a bank.
“Well, not today,” I said. “Next time I visit here maybe. So Dud O’Mara is not your dad. If I find him anyway, will it be all right with you?”
He shrugged his thin, sharp shoulders in a maroon sweater. “Sure. But what can you do the police can’t do?”
“It’s a thought,” I said, and left him.
I went on down the brick walk to the bottom of the lawns and along inside the hedge towards the gatehouse. I could see glimpses of the street through the hedge. When I was halfway to the lodge I saw the blue sedan outside. It was a small neat car, low-slung, very clean, lighter than a police car, but about the same size. Over beyond it I could see my roadster waiting under the pepper tree.
I stood looking at the sedan through the hedge. I could see the drift of somebody’s cigarette smoke against the windshield inside the car. I turned my back to the lodge and looked up the hill. The Trevillyan kid had gone somewhere out of sight, to salt his dollar down maybe, though a dollar shouldn’t have meant much to him.
I bent over and unsheathed the 7.65 Luger I was wearing that day and stuck it nose-down inside my left sock, inside my shoe. I could walk that way, if I didn’t walk too fast. I went on to the gates.
They kept them locked and nobody got in without identification from the house. The lodge keeper, a big husky with a gun under his arm, came out and let me through a small postern at the side of the gates. I stood talking to him through the bars for a minute, watching the sedan.
It looked all right. There seemed to be two men in it. It was about a hundred feet along in the shadow of the high wall on the other side. It was
a very narrow street, without sidewalks. I didn’t have far to go to my roadster.
I walked a little stiffly across the dark pavement and got in, grabbed quickly down into a small compartment in the front part of the seat where I kept a spare gun. It was a police Colt. I slid it inside my under-arm holster and started the car.
I eased the brake off and pulled away. Suddenly the rain let go in big splashing drops and the sky was as black as Carrie Nation’s bonnet. Not so black but that I saw the sedan wheel away from the curb behind me.
I started the windshield wiper and built up to forty miles an hour in a hurry. I had gone about eight blocks when they gave me the siren. That fooled me. It was a quiet street, deadly quiet. I slowed down and pulled over to the curb. The sedan slid up beside me and I was looking at the black snout of a submachine gun over the sill of the rear door.
Behind it a narrow face with reddened eyes, a fixed mouth. A voice above the sound of the rain and the windshield wiper and the noise of the two motors said: “Get in here with us. Be nice, if you know what I mean.”
They were not cops. It didn’t matter now. I shut off the ignition, dropped my car keys on the floor and got out on the running board. The man behind the wheel of the sedan didn’t look at me. The one behind kicked a door open and slid away along the seat, holding the tommy gun nicely.
I got into the sedan.
“Okay, Louie. The frisk.”
The driver came out from under his wheel and got behind me. He got the Colt from under my arm, tapped my hips and pockets, my belt line.
“Clean,” he said, and got back into the front of the car.
The man with the tommy reached forward with his left hand and took my Colt from the driver, then lowered the tommy to the floor of the car and draped a brown rug over it. He leaned back in the corner again, smooth and relaxed, holding the Colt on his knee.
“Okay, Louie. Now let’s ride.”
5
We rode—idly, gently, the rain drumming on the roof and streaming down the windows on one side. We wound along curving hill streets, among estates that covered acres, whose houses were distant clusters of wet gables beyond blurred trees.