Meet Me at the Morgue (23 page)

There was a fire-engine-red convertible standing in front of it. The door of the shop was ajar. In the high sun, the hand-tinted photographs on display in the window wore a hectic flush, like the products of an overenthusiastic undertaker’s art.

I left Sam on guard outside and entered the shop as quietly as I could. There were voices in the studio behind the thin-paneled door. I heard a man’s voice first, speaking in quick, clipped accents that I didn’t recognize immediately:

“Fifty-fifty is the best I could do. I’d be running a very big risk.”

And then Molly’s voice: “Who isn’t running a big risk? My offer is ten thousand, take it or leave it.”

“It isn’t enough. I’m expected to do all the work.”

“What work? I’m putting the finger on her for you. All you got to do is grab the loot. It’s like picking a plum off a tree.”

“Grand larceny,” he said. “A grand larceny tree. I’m sorry, doll. For a measly ten grand, you’re going to have to buy yourself another boy.”

“Where does the larceny come in? She stole the money.
You take it away from her, she can’t even raise a squawk.”

“How do I know she won’t?”

“Because I’m telling you. Because she’s as hot as the hinges, hotter than we’ll ever be.”

“You’ve told me a lot of tales at one time and another. They averaged out about a fact to a carload.”

“This is the straight dope, unless I’m right off the beam.” Molly’s voice was thinning out under pressure. “She’s got the money, she must have. All we do is find out where it is and take it off her.”

“All I do, you mean. I should go into the holdup business for ten grand. Even if your dope is straight, which I seriously doubt—”

“Fifteen then. You’re the sharpest. I can’t handle it myself and I can’t take time to argue.”

“Twenty-five,” he said. “For anything less I can’t afford to touch it, believe me, kid. I’m a respectable businessman, remember, I have a lot to lose.”

“You’re respectable, sure, so what are you worried about. She’d never go near the law. If she did, you’re a detective, aren’t you? You’re only doing your job.”

The man’s voice came into context. He was Lemp’s ex-employer, Molly’s ex-admirer, Bourke.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “I don’t like it. You can’t sell it to me for anything less than an even split. For twenty-five, I’ll go against my grain and take my chances. Bear in mind that I’m the one with everything to lose.”

“What about me? I got my career. If I didn’t need a wardrobe for the sake of my career, you don’t think I’d be going into this?”

“Twenty-five grand will buy you a lot of draperies.”

“Fifteen will buy you Carol back,” she said with a flash of spite.

“Twenty-five,” he said. “Is it twenty-five?”

“I guess it’ll have to be. You always were a dirty gouging chiseler.”

“Sticks and stones will break my bones. If I don’t look out for myself, nobody else will. R.K.O., kid, let’s get down to cases. Where is the
femme
?”

“She’s down in Pacific Point. I saw her this morning.”

“You’re sure it’s the same one?”

“I couldn’t be wrong. She let her hair grow out, and she’s older, but I’d know her anywhere.”

“Have you seen her before?”

“I didn’t have to. Kerry had this picture of her that he took. He had it with him all through his time in the pen. I found it in the cupboard with his things, after he left. I was going to tear it up.”

“What for?”

“She was the one that fingered him way back in ’46.”

“Is that why you’re so eager?”

“Maybe it is, at that. Why should she get away with everything and make money into the bargain?”

“Why should we?” Bourke asked her cheerfully.

“I need the money. I don’t know about you, but if anybody ever needed money, I need money.”

“Get me the picture,” he said. “I’ll take it with me. And hurry it up. We don’t want to be here when your friends arrive from down south.”

I leaned back against the counter, very carefully.

Molly’s footsteps receded. A door creaked open. She came back across the room, her feet dragging thoughtfully.

“Hurry it up.”

“I am hurrying. Can you imagine Kerry ever falling for her? She hasn’t got half my looks.”

“You’re the best,” he said sardonically. “Let me see.”

“Don’t grab. Even Kerry, with all that talent he had, he couldn’t make her look good.”

“This is talent?”

“Kerry was very talented and artistic. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Snap out of it,” he said roughly. “Kerry was a bum and you’re another.”

“Then you’re another.”

“You may be right at that. Now listen to me. I’m stashing you in a place I know in Venice, a garage apartment off the speedway. Are you set?”

“How do I know you’ll ever come back?”

“I’m not that much of a bum. Besides, I got a business I can’t leave. How do I know this red-head has the money?”

“Nobody else could have. Only she isn’t a red-head any more. She let her hair grow out, I told you. It’s gray.”

“Where do I look for her?”

“I’ll lay it out for you on the way. We better go round by Sepulveda. They’re probably watching the highway for me by now.”

“If we get stopped, I’m taking you into custody. Understand?”

“Yeah, I understand. They can’t do nothing to me. I wasn’t under arrest or anything. I’m clean.”

“Sure, you have that chlorophyll sweetness. I’ve always loved it in you.”

“Go button it where it flaps.”

The doorknob rotated, and the door opened inward. Bourke saw me. His hand slid up like a white lizard under his left lapel. I drove my left hand under it, into his body. He swung his left at me, but he was off balance. I brought my right around over his arm, and found his jaw. He looked away to his right in dazed surprise. My left hand met him there.

Bourke went to his knees in the doorway. His head bowed forward in a profound salaam, and bumped the floor. Sam
came around from behind me and took the blue revolver out of his hand.

At the back of the cluttered studio, Molly was trying to open the door. The reflection of the sea shone through the curtained windows like a dim blue hope, lighting one side of her face. It was drawn, like carved white bone, and hungry-looking.

The bolt stuck fast in the socket. She never did get the door open.

I left her struggling and chattering in Sam’s old arms, and went back to Bourke. He was prone on the floor under the hollow counter. I pulled him up to a sitting position and found the photograph in the breast pocket of his natty checkered jacket. When I released him, he fell back under the counter. He lay gasping for air, his head rolling back and forth like a restless infant’s, in months’ accumulation of dirt.

It was a wallet-sized photograph, tinted amateurishly with oils. The colors were faded, as if long nights of looking had worn them thin. Still I could see the traces of red on the mouth and the high cheekbones, the brownish tinge in the eyes, the coarse henna lights in the hair. Amy Miner.

CHAPTER
28
:
      
When we reached the Pacific
Point courthouse, Amy had finished proclaiming her innocence to the Grand Jury, and had been released from custody. The D.A. came out of the jury session to talk to me. He felt, and the jurors agreed, that Fred Miner was definitely guilty, but Amy wasn’t. I didn’t argue. Instead I gave him Molly and the photograph.

According to the bailiff, Amy had walked out of the sheriff’s
office a free woman shortly before two o’clock. Helen Johnson had called for her in the Lincoln. Presumably Helen had driven Amy home with her.

It was ten minutes after three.

I phoned from Sam Dressen’s office. Jamie answered, breathily: “Hi. Is that you, Mummy?”

“This is Howard Cross.”

“Hi, Howard. I thought you were my Mummy.”

“Where is your Mummy?”

“Oh, she went for a ride, I guess.”

“Where to?”

“San Francisco, I guess. My Grandma’s here.”

The telephone was taken away from him. A woman’s voice said sharply, over his protests:

“Who is speaking, please?”

“Howard Cross.”

“Oh, yes. Helen has mentioned you. I’m her mother.”

“Has she really gone to San Francisco?”

“Of course not. Jamie must have got it mixed up. She’s on her way to San Diego with Mrs. Miner. I expect her home early this evening, if you’d like to leave a message.”

“Where are they going in San Diego?”

“To Mrs. Miner’s family home. Helen insisted on driving her down. I thought myself that it was a case of leaning over backwards—”

“Do you know the address?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. They wouldn’t be there yet, in any case. They only left a very short time ago.” Her voice, which was pleasantly harsh, took on a roguish lilt. “I think Helen expected you to call, Mr. Cross. In case you did, she left a little message for you. She said there were no hard feelings. And may I say for myself, as Jamie’s grandmother, I’m looking forward—”

“Thank you.” I hung up on her.

Sam, who had his moments, was ready with a San Diego directory. “Do you know her maiden name, Howie?”

“Wolfe. Amy Wolfe.” I spelled it out.

There were a number of Wolfes in the directory. We left their names and numbers in the communications room and took a radio car. The dispatcher reached us by short wave before we passed La Jolla. The one we wanted was Daniel Wolfe, who ran a grocery store in the east end.

Danny’s Neighborhood Market was on a corner in a working-class residential district. The store had been built onto the front of an old two-story frame house, so long ago that it was now old itself. On the front window someone had written smearily in soap:
Special—Fresh Ranch Eggs
. There was no sign of Helen’s car. Except for a pair of young women wheeling baby carriages half a block away, and an old dog couchant in the road, the street was deserted. The dusty palms that lined it stirred languidly in the late-afternoon breeze.

I left Sam Dressen parked out of sight around the corner. A bell tinkled over the door when I went in. The store was small and badly lit, its air soured with the odor of spilled milk which had long since dried and been forgotten. Behind a meat counter at the rear, a man in a dirty-fronted white apron was waiting on a customer, a young woman wearing tight blue jeans and large earrings.

She asked him for a quarter of a pound of small bologna. He sliced it carefully, weighed it, and wrapped it. His hands were very large, and heavily furred with black hair. The hair on top of his head was thin and gray. His eyebrows were heavy and black. His face looked almost too thin and old to support the eyebrows.

There was a rack of comic books and confession magazines beside the front counter, and I made a pretense of looking them over. The counter was crowded with things for sale:
bottle openers and recaps, packages of beef jerky, humorous postcards, rubber lizards, bubble gum, artificial flies imbedded in plastic ice-cubes, cloves of garlic. On the wall behind the counter hung a display card studded with icepicks. The icepicks had red plastic handles.

The man in the apron came forward to the cash register to make change. His customer departed with her bologna.

He leaned forward with one hand on the counter, thrusting one sharp shoulder higher than the other. “You want something?”

“One of those icepicks, behind you.”

He turned and plucked one out of the display card. “I better wrap it for you. You wouldn’t want to stick yourself.”

“I’ll take it as it is.”

He handed it to me. So far as I could tell, it was identical with the icepick I had found in Lemp’s neck.

“They haven’t been selling the way the salesman said they were going to sell.” His voice was bitter and monotonous, threaded by a disappointed whine. “You never can trust their say-so. I don’t think I sold four of them in six months. Anything else?”

“No, thanks.”

“That’ll be twenty-five cents and one cent tax. Twenty-six cents.”

I gave him two dimes and six pennies.

“I can always use the change,” he said.

“How’s business?”

“It could be better. It could be worse. I can remember times when it has been worse.” He slammed the drawer of the cash register. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying business is good. I got the food plans and the supermarkets to contend with. People I carried on the books for years, they walk right by my store now that they got a little cash
money in their pockets.” He looked at me with small hot brown eyes. “You on the road?”

“I’m not trying to sell you anything, Mr.—”

“Wolfe. Danny Wolfe.”

“My name is Howard Cross.”

“You live around here?”

“I’m from Pacific Point.”

“You don’t say. I got a married daughter lives in Pacific Point. You know her? Amy Miner? She married a fellow name of Miner.”

“I know her fairly well.”

“You don’t say. You should stick around. Amy’s on her way down here now. So you’re a friend of Amy’s.”

“I know her husband better.”

“Fred?” He leaned forward across the counter, resting his weight on his forearms. “Say, what happened to Fred? I always thought he was a good steady sort of fellow. When he came courting Amy in the first place, I was in favor of him long before she was. She had uppity ideas: an enlisted man in the Navy wasn’t good enough for her. Way back when she was a little girl, she had them big ideas of hers. I used to call her the Duchess.” He pulled his mind back to the present with an effort. “But it looks like I made a mistake about Fred, after all. He got himself into some pretty bad trouble, I heard. Hit-run driving, wasn’t it?”

“He killed a man.”

“So I heard. How did he happen to do that, anyway? When Amy came down to visit here this spring, she wouldn’t say a word about the accident. When I asked her about it, she flew right off the handle.” He scratched the day-old beard on the side of his chin. “I never could get Amy to tell me anything.”

“Fred was drunk when it happened.”

“You don’t say. I haven’t seen much of him these last years, but he never went in for drinking when I knew him. Maybe a couple of times he got himself plastered. Mostly it was the other way around. Amy used to gripe about how quiet he was. Course, it was pretty slow for her when he was all those months flat on his back in the hospital.”