Chapter 3

Tuesday, June 24th, 1947, 11:30 p.m.

It was too late to call Widmark or Robinson and there wasn’t anything else I could do till morning, so I left Gloria a note to let her know I’d be in early—at nine—and why. Then I made one little security adjustment to Lizabeth Duryea’s package and turned out the lights. I was beat, and I had the feeling tomorrow was going to be quite a day.

I walked the mile and a half home. It was still hot and the air was heavy, but it felt good after ten hours sitting at my desk. I took the direct route; it’s not particularly scenic but it’s pleasant enough—noisy and a little flashy, like an amateur burlesque show. Unless you’re in Hollywood, Los Angeles at night, downtown at least, is like New York with a lot less glitter: a throng of office buildings and small honky-tonks, neighborhood gin joints and a few apartment buildings where the night owls play their radios too loud and dance and smoke things that aren’t tobacco, but the neighbors don’t mind because they’re doing it, too. I’d stopped noticing most of it a long time ago. Usually, I just looked at whatever was straight ahead of me and thought about a glass of bourbon and my bed.

This time, I kept looking up, trying to find the Evening Star, but I didn’t know what to look for. There were clouds everywhere, anyway. The moon kept slipping in and out between them, like Noyes’s ghostly galleon. Wherever it was, I didn’t find it.

My apartment was on the fifth floor of an old seven-story building. Almost half of its twenty-eight units were vacant, including the other three on my floor, and the number was increasing as leases expired. I was probably going to have to move fairly soon. Half-vacant buildings had a way of catching fire unexpectedly, according to Johnny Dollar, an insurance investigator I’d worked with on a few cases. I wanted to be out of there before the landlord started thinking seriously about the merits of making an insurance claim.

Even though the rent was cheap, with the housing boom nobody seemed interested in living in an ancient building in downtown L.A. Especially one whose wiring didn’t get along with air conditioners. And whose elevator screeched like a tortured dinosaur, only louder. The handful of us who still lived there were used to its loud-enough-to-wake-the-dead shriek. First-time visitors frequently opened the folding grille on their floor looking like they’d been trapped in a tiny room with King Kong.

The elevator was as slow as it was loud, and it took its usual sweet, noisy time as it wheezed its way to five. I unlocked the door to 503 and flicked on the light. Greenstreet—orange, fat, furry, flatulent, and spoiled—casually got up from his half-shredded pillow, stretched, and greeted me with a yawn and a yowl. The radio was on; for once it was playing Something Else. I turned it off anyway and tossed my hat on the coffee table en route to the kitchen. Greenstreet followed, yowling for his dinner. His bowl, as usual, was empty: Greenstreet ate like FDR had presidented: It was his career.

I opened a can, spooned the contents into both sides of the bowl, and set it on the floor. The cat attacked; for the next few minutes, the only sounds from his direction were the machinations of his tongue and jaws.

I watched him eat. Cats are like women that way: Give ’em what they want, you don’t hear anything from them. Don’t, and you’ll hear plenty.

I made myself a sandwich and took a cold bottle of Kingsbury out of the fridge, then turned the radio back on and listened to the news while I ate. There was nothing “new” on it, just a rehash of Bugsy Siegel. For “dessert,” I reheated a cup of leftover coffee—for some reason, caffeine helped me fall asleep, something I’d been having trouble doing for the last year—got ready for bed and turned the radio off. Usually, I left it on when I was gone: Greenstreet’s companion. The cat is like me that way: He gets antsy when it’s too quiet.

I got in my pajamas, and Greenstreet and I sat on the couch for a while and listened to a couple of Schubert impromptus on the record player. He curled up on my lap and purred in time to the music. I scratched him behind the ears and read the Times. I liked my apartment, and especially the lack of surrounding neighbors, which is why I still lived in it in spite of the wiring and the elevator. It was small and comfortable and quiet. When I wanted to relax, the radio next door wasn’t going to interfere.

The living room faced east; there were two windows in it. One led to the fire escape. The furniture was nothing special but I liked it, too, especially the sofa. It was a big green chenille I could sprawl my six-foot-long body out on completely, with two matching chairs. There was a small bar where I kept the radio and the record player and a few record albums, mostly classical, plus a few of the new “jazz” records, and a couple versions of The Song I hadn’t played since—well, for a long time.

And there was an old maple rocking chair that used to be my father’s, from when we had the house in Indiana. Now he lived in an apartment building filled with other, mostly older, single folks and sent me a letter once a month. I didn’t use the chair much. She liked it, which is probably why I didn’t, but sometimes when I couldn’t sleep I’d sit in it and read. I particularly like poetry, and Charles Dickens. There was a guy who knew what the dark side was all about.

I’d finished the paper and I was just about to climb into bed when the phone rang. I grumbled, “Nuts.” I didn’t like getting late-night phone calls at home. I’d learned the later the hour, the worse the reason somebody was calling. I got plenty of bad news on the office phone. I didn’t need more when I was trying to relax. I went back into the living room anyway and picked it up. “This is Grahame,” I said.

The voice on the other end was a rumbly whisper. “Stay out of the Scott case,” it said, “if you want to stay healthy. They got him, and they’ll get you, too.”

It was almost one o’clock. I’d had four hours’ sleep the night before, and I’d been awake since eight that morning. I was in no mood. “Thanks for the advice,” I snarled. “Who is this?”

“It’s a matter of space, Mr. Grahame,” the caller said.

Huh? “Space?”

“You want to stay out of it.” There was a click, then a dial tone.

I looked at the receiver a moment, then hung up the phone, went back to the bedroom, and set the alarm for seven. I did like sleeping in, but I wanted to get an early start on earning my five hundred bucks.

In the kitchen, Greenstreet yowled. He was still hungry.

I decided he could wait until morning. I went to bed.