In a Lonely Place (17 page)

He restrained himself from looking out to see if the evening paper had come; he knew it was too early. The paper didn’t arrive until past five o’clock. He peeled off his clothes, added them to the bundle on the closet floor and he took a long and hot shower. He shaved without hearing the electricity. He was beginning to feel great. While he dressed, dressed well in a dark tweed, a white sweater under his jacket, he wondered if she would return tonight. Surely she would. She’d been away two nights now. He hoped she would come tonight; he wasn’t angry with her. She had a good reason for her absence. He would accept her reason without recriminations. He’d accept anything if she’d just show up, join him for a big feed, come home with him after it.

He decided he might as well wait an hour to see if she’d come. Postponing food had taken the edge off his appetite. He poured a shot of rye, drank it straight. Not that he had need of it, he felt swell. It was a fillip to top his good spirits.

He switched on the radio, earlier in the day he hadn’t thought of that news source. He rolled the stations but there was nothing but music and kids’ adventure yarns: he was between news reports. He turned off the nervous sounds, he preferred the quietness of the apartment.

It was possible the paper had come early. He needed to know what had happened, not have it sprung on him. He opened the door, stepped out and looked on the porch and walk. No paper. But the Virginibus Arms had suddenly gone in for gardening in a big way. There was another peasant out here in front, doing something to the flower beds. This one was younger, a tall, skinny character, but his face was just as droopy as the little fellow in back. He didn’t say hello: he looked at Dix and returned his attention to his spadework.

Dix went back into the living room. If she hadn’t shown up by six, he’d go on to dinner. He wouldn’t wait around tonight. She definitely must have gone out of town on a job. Probably afraid he’d raise a fuss if she mentioned it in advance. He was pretty sure she’d show up tonight and he wasn’t surprised at all when the doorbell rang. It didn’t occur to him to wonder why she’d ring instead of walking in until he was opening the door. And in that split second he was amused by it; she was returning humbly, not on her high horse.

Thus he opened the door and faced Brub Nicolai across the threshold.

Brub said, “Hello, Dix.” He wasn’t smiling; he was standing there, a stocky, foreboding figure.

The cold breath of danger whistled into the inmost crannies of Dix’s spirit. He answered mechanically. “Hello.”

There was then a moment when neither man spoke, when they remained unmoving. looking each into the other’s face. A moment when each knew the other for what he was,  the hunter and the hunted.

It was broken when they spoke together. Brub asking. “Aren’t you going to ask me in?” and Dix crying. “For Pete’s sake, what are you standing out there for? Come on in.”

They could feign ignorance of each other’s identity after that. They could pretend they were two old pals getting together for a drink. Brub rolled in on his stocky legs, dropped down on the couch and sailed his hat towards a chair. “I could use a drink.”

“Good idea. What’ll it be?”

“Scotch. Soda if it’s handy.”

“There ought to be some around.” He stood the scotch and rye bottles on the small bar, found a soda and opened it. “I’ll get some ice.”

Brub’s voice followed him to the kitchen. “You aren’t the two-fisted grogger you used to be, are you? Imagine having two kinds of liquor at your place.”

Dix pulled out the ice tray, pressed up the cubes. “You’re not such a souse yourself since you grew up, are you. chum?”

But it was hollow interchange. It died before he had the drinks mixed. He tried again, lifting his own highball. “To our youth,” he toasted. “Those careless rapture days seem kind of far away, don’t they?”

“Like they were of another world,” Brub said gravely.

Again silence moved in on them. In the void, he heard the faint plop of the evening paper flung at his door. He couldn’t go for it now. Not until he knew why Brub had come. He could even hear far away, or thought he could, the clip-clip of the gardener’s shears.

He couldn’t take the emptiness which should be filled with man talk. He asked, “What’s the trouble, Brub? You look beat.”

“You should ask. I am beat.”

“I’m asking.” He didn’t know a thing. He hadn’t seen the paper, hadn’t heard a radio. He threw a curve, “Is it Sylvia?”

Brub’s eyebrows slanted quickly. “What about Sylvia?”

Dix said apologetically, “I thought the last time I was at your place that maybe you were having a little trouble. There was sort of a strained feeling—”

Brub had started to laugh as Dix spoke. It was a real laugh, a laugh at something funny. When Dix broke off. Brub said. “You couldn’t be further off the beam. Sylvia is—she’s Sylvia.” He didn’t have to say any more. The whole was in Brub’s face and on his tongue and in his heart.

Dix murmured. “That’s good.” He took another drink from his glass. “What is it then? What’s the trouble?”

“You mean you don’t know what’s happened?”

Dix said with mock exasperation, “I mean I don’t know from nothing. I’ve been out at the beach all day—”

He had only to say “beach” and Brub tightened. He had said it deliberately. He went right on, “I just got in about an hour ago, cleaned up. had a quick one and settled down to wait for Laurel.” He glanced at his watch. “I hope she won’t be too long tonight. I’m starved.”

“You were at the beach all day.” Brub said it with wonder, almost with awe.

It was what Dix wanted. He relaxed in his chair, comfortable in his well-being, enjoying his drink. “Yes, I’d worked all night, finished my book.” he threw in with modest pride. “I was worn to a pulp but I was too high to sleep so I decided to go out to the beach. Looked as if it might clear—what’s happened to the California sunshine? I’m sick of this gray stuff—but it didn’t.” He took another drink, he wasn’t talking too fast or too emphatically. He was rambling like a man enjoying the cocktail hour. No alibi, just discussion of the day. “It did relax me though, enough that I took a nap out there. Wonderful what the briny will do for a man, even on a day like today. I feel like a million dollars tonight.” It was exciting to sit there behind the pleasant mask and watch the suspicion simmer out of the hunter.

Brub exclaimed, “Finished the book! That’s great. Going to let Sylvia and me have a look at it?” He was trying to re-orient his thinking while he made expected talk.

Dix shook a rueful head. “I’ve already shipped it East. This morning. I’ll send you an autographed copy when and if it’s published. I promised you one for your help, didn’t I?”

“Help?” Brub tried to remember.

“Sure. About tire tracks, and that day you let me go up the canyon with you. I appreciated that.”

Brub remembered. Remembered more. Depression settled heavily on him again.

“Now, what’s your trouble?” Dix demanded. “Here, let me fix you another.” He took Brub’s glass. His own wasn’t half empty. He was watching it. With no food and his already high spirits, he didn’t need alcohol. He talked while he poured a fairly stiff one. “Tell me what’s weighting your strong shoulders.” He carried the drink to Brub. “Try this.”

“Thanks.” Brub looked up at him. “You haven’t seen the papers?”

He went back over to the easy chair. “I had a quick look at the
Times
this morning—” He broke off, getting it out of Brub’s eyes. “Brub—you don’t mean—”

Brub nodded heavily. There wasn’t an atom of suspicion left in him. If there ever had been. “Yes. Another one.”

Dix let out his breath. He exclaimed softly, in shocked disbelief, “God!”

Brub kept on nodding his head.

“When—where— Was it . . . ?” Dix stammered.

“It was,” Brub said grimly. “The same thing.”

“The strangler,” Dix murmured. He waited for Brub to go on with the story. It wasn’t a time for questions, only for shocked silence. Brub would talk; he was too tightly crammed with it to keep from talking. He had to have the release of words.

“It was last night.” Brub began. He was having a hard time getting started. He wasn’t a cop at all, he was a man all choked up. swallowing the tears in his throat. “Last night or sometime early this morning.” His voice broke. “It was Betsy Banning . . .”

Dix let the horror mount in his face. “Bets . . . the little . . . the girl who looked . . . like Brucie . . .” He didn’t have to control his voice.

Anger, the hard iron of anger, clanged in Brub. “I’d kill him with my bare hands if I could lay them on him.”

Had Brub come to kill? On ungrounded, fathomless suspicion?

Dix waited for him to go on. Brub was steady now. steadied by the iron anger that was holding him rigid. “Wiletta Bohnen and Paul Chaney found her.”

Wiletta Bohnen and Paul Chaney were top picture stars. Bohnen was Mrs. Chaney. The publicity on this one would be a feast to the peasants who got their thrills through the newspapers.

“They walk their poodles on the beach every morning at eight o’clock. Walk from their house, it’s the old Fairbanks place, up to the pier and back.” Brub took a swallow from his glass. “They didn’t see her on the way up. They had their dogs on leash and they cut across slantwise several houses to the water. But the dogs were running free on the way back . . . the dogs found her. Almost in front of the Fairbanks house, just a little above the high-tide mark.”

It was hard for Brub to talk. He had to stop and swallow his throat more than once.

Dix made his own voice husky. “That’s—that’s all you know?”

“We know she went out a little after eleven,” Brub said angrily. “She had friends there earlier, college friends of hers . . . the boy she was going to marry. She always took her dog out for a run at night, no matter what time it was. Usually it was earlier. She wasn’t afraid—she was like Sylvia, the ocean was always something safe, something good. Her father—” Brub swallowed again. “Her father sometimes worried—especially these last few months—but she wasn’t afraid.” There were angry tears in Brub’s eyes. “And she had her dog.”

“The dog—”

Brub said jerkily, without intonation, “We found him. Buried in the sand. Dead . . . strangled.”

“Poor fellow.” Dix said from his heart.

“One thing.” Brub spurted with hard anger, “nothing had happened to her.” Then he laughed, a short, grating laugh. “Nothing but death.” He said with irony, using that weapon to combat tears. “It’s some comfort to her father and the boy—nothing happened to her.”

‘Was it the same man?” Dix asked dubiously.

‘Who else?” Brub demanded belligerently. “It’s been just about a month. Every month. Every damn stinking month—” He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes without shame. Then he picked up his glass and drank a third of its contents.

Dix looked at him with sorrow. “God!” he repeated. It was terrific, the most terrific show of all. With Brub here weeping and flailing impotent anger at an unknown, a killer who killed and went quietly away into the night. And Brub would never know.

Dix asked, “No clues?” as if he were certain this defeat too followed the pattern.

“On the sand?” Brub snorted. “No, no clues. No buttons, no fingerprints, no cigarette stubs, no match folders, not even a calling card.”

Dix rubbed his cheek. It was apology for a foolish question.

“Mind if I use your phone?” Brub asked abruptly.

“Go right ahead. In the bedroom. Can I fix you another—”

“No, I’ve got to get on downtown to headquarters.” Brub left the couch and went into the bedroom. He didn’t close the door. He wasn’t going in to snoop; a lot of good it would do him to snoop.

Dix was quiet, deliberately listening to the call.

“Sylvia?”

Dix relaxed but he listened.

“I’m calling from Dix Steele’s . . . No, Sylvia! No. I can’t come home yet, I have to go down to headquarters . . . I dropped in on Dix for a drink and a few minutes rest from . . . Nothing . . . No . . . Absolutely nothing . . . You’ll stay there until I come for you? . . . Be sure to wait for me .  . . Goodbye, darling. Goodbye.”

Dix didn’t pretend he hadn’t heard the call. Brub knew that every word was audible in a small apartment. Brub didn’t care; he’d left the door open. Dix asked, “Sylvia frightened’.’

“I am.” Brub said. He walked over and picked up his hat. “She’s not staying alone at night until we catch the murderer.”

“I don’t blame you,” Dix agreed. “Can’t I give you a quick one before you leave?”

“No. I’d better not.” He seemed reluctant to go, to face the blank wall again. There would be ants scurrying around the wall, with plaster casts and fingerprint powder and chemical test tubes, but it wouldn’t change the blankness of the wall.

“Come again. Brub.” Dix said it with true urgency. “Come any time. Anything I can do to help you out—”

“Thanks.” He put out his hand, clasped Dix’s. “Thanks. You’ve helped me over a rough spot, fellow. And I’m not kidding.”

Dix smiled. The inner smile didn’t show, the outer one was a little embarrassed. The way a man is embarrassed at any show of emotion from a friend. “The bottles aren’t empty. Come back.”

“Oke.” At the door. Brub hesitated. “Leaving town soon?”

Dix was surprised at the question. As much as if it had been a police warning. He remembered then and he laughed easily. “Now that the book’s done? Oh, I’ll be around a couple of more weeks at least. Maybe longer. Depends on Laurel’s plans.”

From the doorstep he watched Brub start away. Watched Brub stoop on the walk and a splinter of doubt again chilled him. But Brub turned back to him at once. “Here’s your paper.” he said.

He didn’t want the paper. He didn’t want to look at it. The moment it was opened in his hands, there again in the solitude of his living room, he was sickened. He’d never felt this way before. He hadn’t felt this way when Brub was talking about it. Actually he hadn’t thought then, he’d been too busy playing the required part.

He didn’t want to read about the girl and her dog, he didn’t want to look at the smile on her clean-looking, vital face. Even with the same morbid curiosity of the peasants tickling him, he didn’t want to read about it. He put the paper down with trembling hands.

He hadn’t needed a drink for a long time, not the way he needed it now. He’d had enough. Another might be too much, might be the edge to start him on a binge. He didn’t dare go on a binge. He didn’t dare anything other than complete alertness in all of his senses.

What he needed was dinner, a big, hearty, tasty dinner. Steak and french fries and asparagus and a huge fresh green salad, then a smoke and coffee and something special for dessert, strawberry tart or a fancy pastry and more coffee.

Hunger ached in him. If only Laurel were here. He knew damn well she wasn’t coming; he’d known it all along but he’d been kidding himself. Teasing himself with hope. Wherever she was, whatever guy she’d gone off with, she didn’t think enough of Dix even to let him know. She’d never cared for him; she’d made him a convenience while Lover Boy was tied up with some kind of ropes. Once Mr. Big was loose, she didn’t even say goodbye. The old couplet taunted him
. . . she didn’t even, say she was leavin’ . . .
and he was furious at its popping into his head. The situation wasn’t funny. It hurt. It would hurt if he weren’t angry.

Well, he wasn’t hanging around any longer waiting for Laurel. He was going to eat. He went fast, strode out the back door, down the alley to the garage. It was annoying to have to go through the whole stupid routine again. He shouldn’t have put the car up. Tonight he wouldn’t. If the police wanted to pry into the dust he’d make it easy for them. The car would be at the curb.

There was a young fellow peering into the works of a Chevvie in the alley. He didn’t turn around to look at Dix. Or to say hello. Dix jutted his car out and drove away fast. He didn’t bother to close the garage doors. He hesitated at the Derby but he wanted something better tonight. Something as good as the Savoy. He could afford it. He had two hundred and fifty bucks, damn near, and he was hungry.

This was the kind of a place in which to dine. These were the kind of people a man wanted to be a part of. People who knew the gentleman who seated you, who spoke to him by name. This was the way he was going to live someday. Nothing but the best. No worry about money. Or about nosey cops.

He ordered a rich meal, and he ate it leisurely, appreciating every well-cheffed bite. He lingered as long as he possibly could, he didn’t want to leave this haven. Eventually there was nothing to do but go out again into the thin cold night. The fog had dissipated but there were no stars in the covered sky. And now? Not back to the unutterable loneliness of the apartment. There was always a movie. He drove down Wilshire slowly; he’d seen the Beverly, he parked around the corner from Warner’s. He didn’t care what the picture was; it was a place to pass time.