Umney's Last Case (4 page)

something to say.

``Call the boss,'' the other painter said. Appearances could be deceiving; he was

apparently the brighter of the two, after

all. He reached inside his grimy, paint-smeared coverall and brought out a little

card.

I waved it away, suddenly tired. ``Who in the name of Christ would want to paint this

place, anyway?''

It wasn't them I was asking, but the painter who'd offered me the business card

answered just the same. ``Well, it

brightens the place up,'' he said cautiously. ``You gotta admit that.''

``Son,'' I asked, taking a step toward him, ``did your mother ever have any kids that

lived, or did she just produce the

occasional afterbirth like you?''

``Hey, whatever, whatever,'' he said, taking a step backward. I followed his worried

gaze down to my own balled-up

fists and forced them open again. He didn't look very relieved, and I actually didn't

blame him very much. ``You don't

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like it--you're coming through loud and clear on that score. But I gotta do what the

boss tells me, don't I? I mean, hell,

that's the American way.''

He glanced at his partner, then back to me. It was a quick glance, really no more than

a flick, but in my line of work I'd

seen it more than once, and it's the kind of look you file away. Don't bother this

guy, it said. Don't bump him, don't

rattle him. He's nitro.

`Ì mean, I've got a wife and a little kid to take care of,'' he went on. ``There's a

Depression going on out there, you

know.''

Confusion came over me then, drowning my anger the way a downpour drowns a brushfire.

Was there a Depression

going on out there? Was there?

`Ì know,'' I said, not knowing anything. ``Let's just forget it, what do you say?''

``Sure,'' the painters agreed, so eager they sounded like half of a barbershop

quartet. The one I'd mistakenly tabbed as

half-bright had his left hand buried deep in his right armpit, trying to get that

nerve to go back to sleep. I could have

told him he had an hour's work ahead of him, maybe more, but I didn't want to talk to

them anymore. I didn't want to

talk to anyone or see anyone--not even the delectable Candy Kane, whose humid glances

and smooth, subtropical

curves have been known to send seasoned street-brawlers reeling to their knees. The

only thing I wanted to do was to

get across the outer office and into my inner sanctum. There was a bottle of Robb's

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Rye in the bottom lefthand drawer,

and right now I needed a shot in the worst way.

I walked down toward the frosted-glass door marked CLYDE UMNEY PRIVATE

INVESTIGATOR,

restraining a

renewed urge to see if I could drop-kick a can of Dutch Boy Oyster White through the

window at the end of the hall

and out onto the fire-escape. I was actually reaching for my doorknob when a thought

struck me and I turned back to

the painters . . . but slowly, so they wouldn't believe I was being gripped by some

new seizure. Also, I had an idea that

if I turned too fast, I'd see them grinning at each other and twirling their fingers

around their ears--the looney-gesture

we all learned in the schoolyard.

They weren't twirling their fingers, but they hadn't taken their eyes off me, either.

The half-smart one seemed to be

gauging the distance to the door marked STAIRWELL. Suddenly I wanted to tell them that

I wasn't such a bad guy

when you got to know me; that there were, in fact, a few clients and at least one exwife

who thought me something of

a hero. But that wasn't a thing you could say about yourself, especially not to a

couple of bozos like these.

``Take it easy,'' I said. `Ì'm not going to jump you. I just wanted to ask another

question.''

They relaxed a little. A very little, actually.

`Àsk it,'' Painter Number Two said.

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`Èither of you ever played the numbers down in Tijuana?''

``La lotería?'' Number One asked.

``Your knowledge of Spanish stuns me. Yeah. La lotería.''

Number One shook his head. ``Mex numbers and Mex call houses are strictly for

suckers.''

Why do you think I asked you? I thought but didn't say.

``Besides,'' he went on, ``you win ten or twenty thousand pesos, big deal. What's that

in real money? Fifty bucks?

Eighty?''

My mom hit the lottery down in Tijuana, Peoria had said, and I had known something

about it wasn't right even then.

Forty thousand bucks . . . My Uncle Fred went down and picked up the cash yest'y

afternoon. He brought it back in the

saddlebag of his Vinnie!

``Yeah,'' I said, ``something like that, I guess. And they always pay off that way,

don't they? In pesos?''

He gave me that look again, as if I was crazy, then remembered I really was and

readjusted his face. ``Well, yeah. It is

the Mexican lottery, you know. They couldn't very well pay off in dollars.''

``How true,'' I said, and in my mind I saw Peoria's thin, eager face, heard him

saying, It was spread all over my mom's

bed! Forty-froggin-thousand smackers!

Except how could a blind kid be sure of the exact amount. . . or even that it really

was money he was rolling around in?

The answer was simple: he couldn't. But even a blind newsboy would know that la

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lotería paid off in pesos rather than

in dollars, and even a blind newsboy had to know you couldn't carry forty thousand

dollars' worth of Mexican lettuce

in the saddlebag of a Vincent motorcycle. His uncle would have needed a City of Los

Angeles dump truck to transport

that much dough.

Confusion, confusion--nothing but dark clouds of confusion.

``Thanks,'' I said, and headed for my office.

I'm sure that was a relief for all three of us.

_______________________________________________________________________

IV. Umney's Last Client.

``Candy, honey, I don't want to see anybody or take any ca--''

I broke off. The outer office was empty. Candy's desk in the corner was unnaturally

bare, and after a moment I saw

why: the IN/OUT tray had been dumped into the trash basket and her pictures of Errol

Flynn and William Powell were

both gone. So was her Philco. The little blue stenographer's stool, from which Candy

had been wont to flash her

gorgeous gams, was unoccupied.

My eyes returned to the IN/OUT tray sticking out of the trash can like the prow of a

sinking ship, and for a moment my

heart leaped. Perhaps someone had been in here, tossed the place, kidnapped Candy.

Perhaps it was a case, in other

words. At that moment I would have welcomed a case, even if it meant some mug was

tying Candy up at this very

moment . . . and adjusting the rope over the firm swell of her breasts with particular

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care. Any way out of the cobwebs

that seemed to be falling around me sounded just peachy to me.

The trouble with the idea was simple: the room hadn't been tossed. The IN/OUT was in

the trash, true enough, but that

didn't indicate a struggle; in fact, it was more as if . . .

There was just one thing left on the desk, placed squarely in the center of the

blotter. A white envelope. Just looking at

it gave me a bad feeling. My feet carried me across the room just the same, however,

and I picked it up. Seeing my

name written across the front of the envelope in Candy's wide loops and swirls was no

surprise; it was just another

unpleasant part of this long, unpleasant morning.

I ripped it open and a single slip of note-paper fell out into my hand.

Dear Clyde, I have had all of the groping and sneering I'm going to take from you, and

I am tired of your ridiculous and

childish jokes about my name. Life is too short to be pawed by a middle-aged divorce

detective with bad breath. You

did have your good points Clyde but they are getting drownded out by the bad ones,

especially since you started drinking

all the time. Do yourself a favor and grow up. Yours truely, Arlene Cain P.S.: I'm

going back to my mother's in Idaho.

Do not try to get in touch with me.

I held the note a moment or two longer, looking at it unbelievingly, then dropped it.

One phrase from it recurred as I

watched it seesaw lazily down toward the already occupied trash basket: I am tired of

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your ridiculous and childish jokes

about my name. But had I ever known her name was anything other than Candy Kane? I

searched my mind as the note

continued its lazy--and seemingly endless--swoops back and forth, and the answer was

an honest and resounding no.

Her name had always been Candy Kane, we'd joked about it many a time, and if we'd had

a few rounds of office

slap-and-tickle, what of that? She'd always enjoyed it. We both had.

Did she enjoy it? a voice spoke up from somewhere deep inside me. Did she really, or

is that just another little fairytale

you've been telling yourself all these years?

I tried to shut that voice out, and after a moment or two I succeeded, but the one

that replaced it was even worse. That

voice belonged to none other than Peoria Smith. I can quit actin like I died and went

to heaven every time some

blowhard leaves me a nickel tip, he said. Ain't you picking up on this newsflash, Mr.

Umney?

``Shut up, kid,'' I said to the empty room. ``Gabriel Heatter you ain't.'' I turned

away from Candy's desk, and as I did,

faces passed in front of my mind's eye like the faces of some lunatic marching band

from hell: George and Gloria

Demmick, Peoria Smith, Bill Tuggle, Vernon Klein, a million-dollar blonde who went

under the two-bit name of

Arlene Cain . . . even the two painters were there.

Confusion, confusion, nothing but confusion.

Head down, I trudged into my office, closed the door behind me, and sat at the desk.

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Dimly, through the closed window,

I could hear the traffic out on Sunset. I had an idea that, for the right person, it

was still a spring morning so

L.A.-perfect you expected to see that little trademark symbol stamped on it somewhere,

but for me all the light had

gone from the day . . . inside as well as out. I thought about the bottle of hooch in

the bottom drawer, but all of a sudden

even bending down to get it seemed like too much work. It seemed, in fact, a job akin

to climbing Mount Everest in

tennis shoes.

The smell of fresh paint had penetrated all the way into my inner sanctum. It was a

smell I ordinarily liked, but not

then. At that moment it was the smell of everything that had gone wrong since the

Demmicks hadn't come into their

Hollywood bungalow bouncing wisecracks off each other like rubber balls and playing

their records at top volume and

throwing their Corgi into conniptions with their endless billing and cooing. It

occurred to me with perfect clarity and

simplicity--the way I'd always imagined great truths must occur to the people they

occur to--that if some doctor

could cut out the cancer that was killing the Fulwider Building's elevator operator,

it would be white. Oyster white.

And it would smell just like fresh Dutch Boy paint.

This thought was so tiring that I had to put my head down with the heels of my palms

pressed against my temples,

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holding it in place . . . or maybe just keeping what was inside from exploding out and

making a mess on the walls. And

when the door opened softly and footsteps entered the room, I didn't look up. It

seemed like more of an effort than I

was able to make at that particular moment.

Besides, I had the strange idea that I already knew who it was. I couldn't put a name

to my knowledge, but the step was

somehow familiar. So was the cologne, although I knew I wouldn't be able to name it

even if someone had put a gun to

my head, and for a very simple reason: I'd never smelled it before in my life. How

could I recognize a scent I'd never

smelled before, you ask? I can't answer that one, bud, but I did.

Nor was that the worst of it. The worst of it was this: I was scared nearly out of my

mind. I've faced blazing guns in the

hands of angry men, which is bad, and daggers in the hands of angry women, which is a

thousand times worse; I was

once tied to the wheel of a Packard automobile that had been parked on the tracks of a

busy freight line; I have even