The Barbarous Coast Page 5

  “Did one come along for Hester?”

  “Possibly. She seemed remarkably prosperous at my Christmas party. She had a new mink stole. I complimented her on it, and she informed me that she was under personal contract to a movie producer.”

  “Which one?”

  “She did not say, and it does not matter. She was lying. It was a little fantasy for my benefit.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know women.”

  I was ready to believe him. The wall behind his desk was papered with inscribed photographs of young women.

  “Besides,” he said, “no producer in his right mind would give that girl a contract. There is something lacking in her—essential talent, feeling. She became cynical so young, and she makes no attempt to hide it.”

  “How did she act the other night?”

  “I did not observe her for very long. I had over a hundred guests.”

  “She made a telephone call from here. Did you know?”

  “Not until yesterday. The husband told me she was frightened of something. Perhaps she drank too much. There was nothing at my party to frighten anyone—a lot of nice young people amusing themselves.”

  “Who was she with?”

  “A boy, a good-looking boy.” He snapped his fingers. “She introduced him to me, but I forget his name.”

  “Lance Torres?”

  His eyelids crinkled. “Possibly. He was quite dark, Spanish-looking. A very well-built boy—one of those new young types with the apache air. Perhaps Miss Seeley can identify him for you. I saw them talking together.” He pushed his right cuff back and looked at his wristwatch. “Miss Seeley is out for coffee, but she should be back very soon.”

  “While we’re waiting, you could give me Hester’s address. Her real address.”

  “Why should I make things easy for you?” Anton said with his edged smile. “I don’t like the fellow you are working for. He is too aggressive. Also, I am old and he is young. Also, my father was a streetcar conductor in Montreal. Why should I help an Anglo from Toronto?”

  “So you won’t let him find his wife?”

  “Oh, you can have the address. I simply wished to express my emotions on the subject. She lives at the Windsor Hotel in Santa Monica.”

  “You know it by heart, eh?”

  “I happen to remember. I had a request for her address from another detective last week.”

  “Police detective?”

  “Private. He claimed to be a lawyer with money for her, a bequest, but his story was very clumsy and I am not stupid.” He glanced at his wristwatch again. “If you’ll excuse me, now, I have to dress for a class. You can wait here for Miss Seeley if you wish.”

  Before I could ask him any more questions, he went out through an inner door and closed it behind him. I sat down at his desk and looked up the Windsor Hotel in the telephone directory. The desk clerk told me that Miss Hester Campbell didn’t stay there any more. She’d moved out two weeks ago, leaving no forwarding address.

  I was masticating this fact when Miss Seeley came in. I remembered her from the period when Anton divorced his third wife, with my assistance. She was a little older, a little thinner. Her tailored pinstriped suit emphasized the boniness of her figure. But she still wore hopeful white ruffles at her wrists and throat.

  “Why, Mr. Archer.” The implications of my presence struck her. “We’re not having wife trouble again?”

  “Wife trouble, yes, but nothing to do with the boss. He says you may be able to give me some information.”

  “My telephone number, by any chance?” Her smile was warm and easygoing behind her lipstick mask.

  “That I could do with, too.”

  “You flatter me. Go right ahead. I can stand a smattering of flattering for a change. You don’t meet many eligible males in this business.”

  We exchanged some further pleasantries, and I asked her if she remembered seeing Hester at the party. She remembered.

  “And her escort?”

  She nodded. “Dreamy. A real cute thing. That is, if you like the Latin type. I don’t go for the Latin type myself, but we got along just fine. Until he showed his true colors.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “For a while. He was kind of shy with all the people, so I took him under my wing. He told me about his career and all. He’s an actor. Helio-Graff Studios have him under long-term contract.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Lance Leonard. It’s kind of a cute name, don’t you think? He told me he chose it himself.”

  “He didn’t tell you his real name?”

  “No.”

  “And he’s under contract to Helio-Graff?”

  “That’s what he said. He’s certainly got the looks for it. And the artistic temperament.”

  “You mean he made a pass at you?”

  “Oh, no. Not that I’d permit it. He’s stuck on Hester anyway, I could see that. They were at the bar after, drinking out of the same glass, just as close as close.” Her voice was wistful. She added by way of consolation to herself: “But then he showed his true colors.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “It was awful,” she said with relish. “Hester came in here to put in a telephone call. I let her have the key. It must have been to another man, because he followed her in and made a scene. These Latins are so emotional.”

  “You were here?”

  “I heard him yelling at her. I had things to do in my own office, and I couldn’t help overhearing. He called her some awful names: b-i-t-c-h and other words I won’t repeat.” She tried to blush, and failed.

  “Did he threaten her in any way?”

  “You bet he did. He said she wouldn’t last a week unless she played along with the operation. She was in it deeper than anybody, and she wasn’t going to ruin his big chance.” Miss Seeley was a fairly decent woman, but she couldn’t quite restrain the glee fluttering at the corners of her mouth.

  “Did he say what the operation was?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “Or threaten to kill her?”

  “He didn’t say that he was going to do anything to her. What he said—” She looked up at the ceiling and tapped her chin. “He said if she didn’t stay in line, he’d get this friend of his after her. Somebody called Carl.”

  “Carl Stern?”

  “Maybe. He didn’t mention the last name. He just kept saying that Carl would fix her wagon.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “Nothing. They came out and left together. She looked pretty subdued, I mean it.”

  chapter 8

  THERE was an outdoor telephone booth in the court, and I immured myself with the local directories. Lance Leonard wasn’t in them. Neither was Lance Torres, or Hester Campbell, or Carl Stern. I made a telephone call to Peter Colton, who had recently retired as senior investigator in the D.A.’s office.

  Carl Stern, he told me, had also retired recently. That is, he’d moved to Vegas and gone legit, if you could call Vegas legit. Stern had invested his money in a big new hotel-and-casino which was under construction. Personally Colton hoped he’d lose his dirty gold-plated shirt.

  “Where did the gold come from, Peter?”

  “Various sources. He was a Syndicate boy. When Siegel broke with the Syndicate and died of it, Stern was one of the heirs. He made his heavy money out of the wire service. When the Crime Commission broke that up, he financed a narcotics ring for a while.”

  “So you put him away, no doubt.”

  “You know the situation as well as I do, Lew.” Colton sounded angry and apologetic at the same time. “Our operation is essentially a prosecuting agency. We work with what the cops bring in to us. Carl Stern was using cops for bodyguards. The politicians that hire and fire the cops went on fishing trips with him to Acapulco.”

  “Is that how he wangled himself a gambling license in Nevada?”

  “He didn’t get a license in Nevada. With his reputation,
they couldn’t give him one. He had to get himself a front.”

  “Do you know who his front man would be?”

  “Simon Graff,” Colton said. “You must have heard of him. They’re going to call their place Simon Graff’s Casbah.”

  That stopped me for a minute. “I thought Helio-Graff was making money.”

  “Maybe Graff saw his chance to make some more money. I’d tell you what I think of that, but it wouldn’t be good for my blood pressure.” He went ahead and told me anyway, in a voice that was choked with passion: “They’ve got no decency, they’ve got no sense of public responsibility—these goddam lousy big Hollywood names that go to Vegas and decoy for thieves and pander for mobsters and front for murderers.”

  “Is Stern a murderer?”

  “Ten times over,” Colton said. “You want his record in detail?”

  “Not just now. Thanks, Peter. Take it easy.”

  I knew a man at Helio-Graff, a writer named Sammy Swift. The studio switchboard put me on to his secretary, and she called Sammy to the phone.

  “Lew? How’s the Sherlock kick?”

  “It keeps me in beer and skittles. By the way, what are skittles? You’re a writer, you’re supposed to know these things.”

  “I let the research department know them for me. Division of labor. Will you cut it short now, boy? Any other time. I’m fighting script, and the mimeographers are hounding me.” His voice was hurried, in time with a rapid metronome clicking inside his head.

  “What’s the big project?”

  “I’m flying to Italy with a production unit next week. Graff’s doing a personal on the Carthage story.”

  “The Carthage story?”

  “Salambô, the Flaubert historical. Where you been?”

  “In geography class. Carthage is in Africa.”

  “It was, not any more. The Man is building it in Italy.”

  “I hear he’s doing some building in Vegas, too.”

  “The Casbah, you mean? Yeah.”

  “Isn’t it kind of unusual for a big independent producer to put his money in a slot-machine shop?”

  “Everything the Man does is unusual. And moderate your language, Lew.”

  “You bugged?”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said uncertainly. “Now, what’s your problem? If you think you’re broke, I’m broker, ask my broker.”

  “No problem. I want to get in touch with a new actor you have. Lance Leonard?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him around. Why?”

  I improvised. “A friend of mine, newspaperman from the east, wants an interview.”

  “About the Carthage story?”

  “Why, is Leonard in it?”

  “Minor role, his first. Don’t you read the columns?”

  “Not when I can help it. I’m illiterate.”

  “So are the columns. So’s Leonard, but don’t let your friend print that. The kid should do all right as a North African barbarian. He’s got prettier muscles than Brando, used to be a fighter.”

  “How did he get into pictures?”

  “The Man discovered him personally.”

  “And where does he board his pretty muscles?”

  “Coldwater Canyon, I think. My secretary can get you the address. Don’t let on you got it from me, though. The kid is afraid of the press. But he can use the publicity.” Sammy caught his breath. He liked to talk. He liked anything that interrupted his work. “I hope this isn’t one of your fast ones, Lew.”

  “You know better than that. I lost my fast one years ago. I’m down to my slider.”

  “So are we all, boy. With bursitis yet. See you.”

  I got the address in Coldwater Canyon, and went out to the street. The sun shimmered on the car roof. George Wall was slumped in the front seat with his head thrown back. His face was flushed and wet. His eyes were closed. The interior was oven-hot.

  The starting engine woke him. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Where are we going?”

  “Not we. I’ll drop you off at your hotel. Which one?”

  “But I don’t want to be dropped off.” He took hold of my right arm. “You found out where she is, haven’t you? You don’t want me to see her.”

  I didn’t answer. He tugged at my arm, causing the car to swerve. “That’s the idea, isn’t it?”

  I pushed him away, into the far corner of the seat. “For God’s sake, George, relax. Take a sedative when you get back to the hotel. Now, where is it?”

  “I’m not going back to the hotel. You can’t force me.”

  “All right, all right. If you promise to stay in the car. I have a lead that may pan out and it may not. It won’t for sure, if you come barging in.”

  “I won’t. I promise.” After a while he said: “You don’t understand how I feel. I dreamed of Hester just now when I was asleep. I tried to talk to her. She wouldn’t answer, and then I saw she was dead. I touched her. She was as cold as snow—”

  “Tell it to your head-shrinker,” I said unpleasantly. His self-pity was getting on my nerves.

  He withdrew into hurt silence, which lasted all the way to the Canyon. Lance Leonard lived near the summit, in a raw new redwood house suspended on cantilevers over a steep drop. I parked above the house and looked around. Leonard had no close neighbors, though several other houses dotted the further slopes. The hills fell away from the ridge in folds like heavy drapery trailing in the horizontal sea.

  I nailed George in place with one of my masterful looks, and went down the slanting asphalt drive to the house. The trees in the front yard, lemons and avocados, were recently planted: I could see the yellow burlap around their roots. The open garage contained a dusty gray Jaguar two-door and a light racing motorcycle. I pressed the button beside the front door, and heard chimes in the house softly dividing the silence.

  A young man opened the door. He was combing his hair with a sequined comb. His hair was black, curly on top and straight at the sides. The height of the doorstep brought his head level with mine. His face was darkly handsome, if you overlooked the spoiled mouth and slightly muddy eyes. He had on blue nylon pajamas, and his brown feet were bare. He was the central diver in Bassett’s photograph.

  “Mr. Torres?”

  “Leonard,” he corrected me. Having arranged the curls low on his forehead to his satisfaction, he dropped the comb in his pajama pocket. He smiled with conscious charm. “Got a new name to go with my new career. What’s the mission, cap?”

  “I’d like to see Mrs. Wall.”

  “Never heard of her. You got the wrong address.”

  “Her maiden name was Campbell. Hester Campbell.”

  He stiffened. “Hester? She ain’t married—isn’t married.”

  “She’s married. Didn’t she tell you?”

  He glanced over his shoulder into the house, and back at me. His movements were lizard-quick. He took hold of the knob and started to shut the door. “Never heard of her. Sorry.”

  “Who does the comb belong to? Or do you merely adore bright things?”

  He paused in indecision, long enough for me to get my foot in the door. I could see past him through the house to the sliding glass wall at the rear of the living-space, and through it the outside terrace which overhung the canyon. A girl was lying on a metal chaise in the sun. Her back was brown and long, with a breathtaking narrow waist from which the white hip arched up. Her hair was like ruffled silver feathers.

  Leonard stepped outside, forcing me back onto the flagstone walk, and shut the front door behind him. “Drag ’em back into their sockets, cousin. No free shows today. And get this, I don’t know any Hester what’s-her-name.”

  “You did a minute ago.”

  “Maybe I heard the name once. I hear a lot of names. What’s yours, for instance?”

  “Archer.”

  “What’s your business?”

  “I’m a detective.”

  His mouth went ugly, and his eyes blank. He’d come up fast out of a place where cops were hated and feared: th
e hatred was still in him like a chronic disease. “What you want with me, cop?”

  “Not you. Hester.”

  “Is she in a jam?”

  “She probably is if she’s shacked up with you.”

  “Naw, naw. She gave me the brush-off, frankly.” He brushed his nylon flanks illustratively. “I haven’t seen the chick for a long time.”

  “Have you tried looking on your terrace?”

  His hands paused and tightened on his hips. He leaned forward from the waist, his mouth working like a red bivalve: “You keep calling me a liar. I got a public position to keep up, so I stand here and take it like a little gentleman. But you better get off my property or I’ll clobber you, cop or no cop.”

  “That would go good in the columns. The whole set-up would.”

  “What set-up? What do you mean?”

  “You tell me.”

  He squinted anxiously up toward the road where my car was parked. George’s face hung at the window like an ominous pink moon.

  “Who’s your sidekick?”

  “Her husband.”

  Leonard’s eyes blurred with thought. “What is this, a shakedown? Let’s see your buzzer.”

  “No buzzer. I’m a private detective.”

  “Dig him,” he said to an imaginary confidant on his left.

  At the same time, his right shoulder dropped. The hooked arm swinging from it drove a fist into my middle below the rib-cage. It came too fast to block. I sat down on the flagstones and discovered that I couldn’t get up right away. My head was cool and clear, like an aquarium, but the bright ideas and noble intentions that swam around in it had no useful connection with my legs.

  Leonard stood with his fists ready, waiting for me to get up. His hair had fallen forward over his eyes, blue-black and shining like steel shavings. His bare feet danced a little on the stone. I reached for them and clutched air. Leonard smiled down at me, dancing:

  “Come on, get up. I can use a workout.”