5

I yawned out of bed when the second alarm exploded clangorously, planted my feet on the bedroom’s black carpet, and swore dully.

One reason I like to stay up all night is because awakening is such a severe shock to my nervous system, and probably to my spleen, kidneys, and bladder. And one reason it’s such a shock is because I so often stay up all night.

I pressed my hands against my head and sort of molded it back into shape, put the coffee pot on to perk and prepared to face the new day, slowly gathering my strength. For breakfast I had three bites of gummy mush with four cups of coffee. And began feeling almost alive.

This morning, after ablutions and shaving and such, I dressed in a lightweight, pale blue-green suit which, I knew, shimmered in the sunlight like clabbered electricity—which is more gorgeous than it may sound—added an appropriately lichenous tie, combed my hair with three fingers, and then checked my gun.

Ordinarily I carry an empty chamber under the .38’s hammer since I would hate accidentally to shoot off a chunk of my latissimus dorsi or something even more desirable; but this morning I dug a box of cartridges from the dresser drawer and slid a sixth fat pill into the cylinder.

It wasn’t that I had a premonition.

There was no creepy “feeling” that I might need to use even one, much less six, slugs during the hours ahead. At least there was no conscious awareness of any below-the-mind’s-surface whispering.

Oddly, though, I felt more comfortable, a little more at ease, when I pressed the fully-loaded Colt Special back into its holster.

Then I phoned the L.A.P.D., got Homicide, and talked to Captain Samson for a minute. He knew about the Halstead murder, of course, but said there wasn’t much on it yet. I told him I’d be down within the hour, and hung up.

On the way out I checked the two aquariums again. All was well in the small guppy tank, but my inch-long catfish in the big tank was clearly unwell. It was the Ick, all right: I could see the little white specks on his fins.

Trouble, trouble. I was going to have to give a treatment to the whole damned tank. If I wasn’t careful, the little beggars could wind up with Saprolegnia. Then I would be in a pickle.

I netted the brown and pinkish-gray scavenger and put him in a separate temperature-controlled bowl, added a teaspoonful of two-percent Mercurochrome to the water in the community tank and a couple drops to the sick bay, then turned the thermostat up a couple of degrees and headed for downtown L.A.

Phil Samson, Central Division Homicide Captain, is more than just a good cop—though he is that, he for sure is that. He is also one of the most rigorously principled and finest men I’ve know in my thirty years. He’s hard-boiled, yes, tough, at times unrelenting; and he takes no guff from anybody. And he will give a hood not an inch or even a quarter of an inch if the hood deserves no extra measure. Thus he would not by today’s standards be judged compassionate, and today’s counterfeit Solomons would—and have—reviled him as “unfeeling” and brutal.

There is not, however, a brutal or calloused cell in his big, hard body. He is simply efficient, dedicated, and abysmally honest, a man who believes justice is a virtue.

Probably he’d had his usual five or six hours of sleep, but Sam nonetheless looked wide awake. And—as usual—as if he’d just finished shaving, his pink face healthily glowing, brown eyes sharp and alert.

“And there he is,” Sam said, looking up from stacks of papers on his desk as I came in. “There he is, the only private detective-nudist in the Western States.”

“My, you’re giddy this morning,” I said. “What happened? Some crook actually get sent to the slammer?” I pulled a wooden chair over, sat down straddling it and leaned on the back. “Besides, I was not one of the nudists, Captain.”

“Got the reports right here—”

“I was not—”

“Sheldon Scott, once again caught with his pants down—”

“No, that was the other citizens. Me, I was the one who broke it up. Where were you while I was acting as the city’s conscience—”

“You’re working for the Halstead woman?”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m up so early. Lieutenant France told me last night a team was checking the Smiths—the couple who left the party early. They get anything?”

Sam rubbed his iron-gray hair vigorously. “Doesn’t look like it. Rawlins was out to see them already this morning, just called in. He agrees with Lieutenant France they look clean.”

Rawlins was a sharp, good-looking lieutenant who worked out of Central Homicide, one of Sam’s top investigators. I not only liked him, but had a high opinion of his ability and judgment.

“What was the Smiths’ story?” I asked Sam.

“Simple enough. Wife saw Halstead’s legs sticking out from under some bushes, and thought he was snoozing, or maybe just resting up, so she tickled his feet.”

Sam scratched his hair, then stuck out his chin—which closely resembles the back end of a dump truck—and scratched under it. “Tickled his feet. What kind of people are these?”

“Darlings,” I said. “So, she tickled his feet. And?”

“Naturally he didn’t let out a giggle or anything. So she gave him a yank.”

“No.”

“Yes. Grabbed one of his legs and yanked it.”

“Yeah, they’re a playful bunch. About then she must have begun getting the impression something was amiss, I’ll bet.”

“It looks like she figured out all of a sudden he was deader than a mackerel. Well, she didn’t quite faint, found her husband and told him they had to leave right away, convinced him; they hightailed it out, and it wasn’t till they were maybe halfway home—with him chewing the hell out of her, I gathered—that she told him what happened.”

“Sounds straight enough. About the way it would’ve happened, I’d guess, if one of those gals stumbled over the dead host. Either that or lots of screaming. So they just forgot about it?”

“Something like that. Afraid to get involved. After awhile they figured out somebody would find the body before long, and realized they shouldn’t have taken off in such a rush. Might look suspicious; they were involved just by having been there.”

“Must have been about then the Hollywood police drove up to their house.”

“Right. The woman had a small attack of hysterics, almost went up the walls. But Mr. Smith filled the officers in. Same story they got from the wife. Once she came down from the ceiling.”

Sam scratched under his chin again.

“You got the Ick?” I asked him.

“Ick? What the hell’s Ick?”

“It’s what you and my catfish have got, I think. If you start breaking out in little white spots, be sure to take some Mercurochrome and raise your temperature ten or fifteen degrees—”

“I am impressed,” he said, “with the sudden deterioration of your brain. I shaved too close this morning.”

“No, it’s the Ick—”

He scowled fiercely—which was something, since often when he smiled it was a fierce thing—and pulled a long black cigar from his middle desk drawer. That was ominous.

Those cigars were dandy cigars just as long as he didn’t light them. But once lit, the odor of decaying mold and flaming skunk gas replaced all oxygen in the near atmosphere, whereupon I inevitably left.

“I was kidding,” I said. “Sam, I’ll be gone in a minute.”

“You bet you’ll be gone in a minute.”

“Anything else from Hollywood—or Rawlins?”

“Odds and ends. Victim didn’t seem to have any real enemies, nobody that stands out, anyway. Pretty well liked. Successful investor, owned a lot of blue chips and several thousand shares of speculative aerospace stocks, good marriage, lots of friends.” He shrugged. “Something’ll turn up.”

“Yeah. How about the party? Had they been sneaking up on the deviltry for a year and a half, or was it just—”

“Spur of the moment. The Halsteads had a couple named Bersudian over for bridge, got to drinking and called the Smiths. A little later they phoned Mr. and Mrs. Pryer, and it happened two other couples were with the Pryers. So they all went over.”

“No friction anywhere in the bunch, huh?” I paused. “Of course, I didn’t get the impression they despised each other.”

Sam shook his head, stuck the cigar in his wide mouth and growled around it, “Haven’t turned up a thing yet. Maybe he threw the rock ’way up in the air, and when it came down—”

“Uh-huh. Well, I see no advantage in having a police department at all—”

Sam lit a match.

“Don’t, Sam. Ah, have a heart, old buddy—Sam.”

Holding the match poised, he said, “You have been milking my brains, yet have not even once told me how to solve the case. Or that you have already overcome its perplexities. This isn’t like you, Shell.”

“I know. Well, there are two or three little tidbits you might want to check on.” I paused. “I might have stumbled on something that wasn’t repeated after the police arrived.” He’d blown the match out, so I continued, “I told the officers about the dandy nudist camp, didn’t I? I’ll admit they probably would have, ah, uncovered that intelligence themselves, but I saved them a little time, didn’t I? Maybe a week? Besides, I left out how it must have happened. The way I figure it, they were all sitting around in the house watching TV commercials, some of those real good ones, and they all got so charged up—Sam. Sam—don’t. There were some other couples who maybe were at the party earlier last night. Before I got there. Maybe. Also there’s an intriguing item concerning people named Whist.”

“Well, hurry up,” he said.

I told him all I knew. It didn’t take long.

At that point Sam lit his cigar. But by then I was ready to leave anyway. And Sam, of course, was aware of that.

Mrs. Riley came to the door when I rang.

I still hadn’t found any trace of Mr. and Mrs. Whist, though I’d tried. I’d put some lines out among individuals who’d proved efficient at digging up odd bits of info for me in the past, but without luck so far. I had, however, already talked to Mrs. Bersudian, and to Mr. Warren in the plush offices of his law firm. I had also called at the Sporks’ residence, but found nobody at home; Sybil hadn’t even been in the back yard.

I’d come up with nothing concrete, that is, nothing I hadn’t learned last night or from Samson this morning; but one of the case’s intangibles had taken on a little more importance in my mind.

It was so intangible that I didn’t even know what the hell it was. But it had become increasingly evident that nearly all of the people I’d talked to were twitchier than bats in the moonlight. It was difficult to get anything out of them except an impression that they weighed every word at least twice before reluctantly using it.

That’s not uncommon when people talk to an investigator, but this was something more; and I had the feeling that nobody had yet told me all that could be told. Mrs. Riley wasn’t much different from the rest of them. But, at least, before the interview was over I’d learned one item of exceeding interest.

I hadn’t phoned before dropping out—I rarely do when on a case since an individual unprepared for interrogation has less time to prepare a possibly phoney story—so at the door I identified myself and told Mrs. Riley why I was there.

She was pleasant enough about it. Sometimes you find a door slammed in your face, or get hit with a mop. But Mrs. Riley smiled and asked me inside.

She was a handsome gal about thirty, or perhaps two or three years over the mark, slim and curvy and with a lazy, languid way of moving. She was wearing a simple but bright print dress and had a pink bandanna over her hair, which appeared to be put up on those big plastic curlers, judging by the lumps in the bandanna. Either that, or she had a very funny head.

“Well, come along inside, Mr. Scott,” she said. She sounded like a Southern gal. It wasn’t accent so much as the easy, drawly way she talked.

I went along inside, and we got seated in the living room, she on an emerald-green couch and me on a big greenish-blue ottoman near it.

I asked her if she knew about Mr. Halstead, and she said, “Yes, isn’t it a terrible thing? He was the sweetest man.” She shook her head. “I just can’t conceive of anybody wanting to kill him like that.”

“I was hoping maybe you could, Mrs. Riley. I mean, that you might know of someone he’d had trouble with, friction, business problems. Anything that might help explain why he was killed.”

She shook her head some more.

I went on, “That’s the trouble. So far, I get the picture of a man everybody liked, a man with no real enemies.”

“That’s the way he was.”

“Yeah. Only somebody, obviously, failed to share the general opinion of Mr. Halstead.”

“Are you working for the police, Mr. Scott?”

I’d showed her my wallet card at the door, but I said, “I’m a private investigator. Mrs. Halstead hired me last night while I was at her home. By the way, what time were you and Mr. Riley out there last night?”

“Last night?” Her eyes widened. “Why, we weren’t there at all. We haven’t even seen George and Ann for—oh, for weeks now.”

“That’s funny.”

“What’s so funny about it?” she asked, just a little snappish.

“I heard you’d dropped out there, that’s all. You and another couple, the Whists.”

“Well, you certainly heard wrong … The Whists?”

“Yeah.”

She gave me a very funny look. “What did you mean by that?” she asked finally.

“Nothing stupendous. A guy simply told me you’d been at the Halsteads’, that’s all. I think. Granted, he was about eleven sheets to the wind and changed his mind very speedily. In fact, he said he must have been thinking of some other time.”

“Who was it? Who said that?”

“One of the guests.”

“Who?”

“One of the guests,” I repeated.

“I’ll bet it was Gregor.”

Gregor was Mr. Bersudian. I didn’t tell her it hadn’t been Gregor. Instead I asked, “Why him?”

“He drinks like a fish. Like a whale. It was him, wasn’t it?”

“What difference does it make? Apparently the guy was full of beans as well as booze. Look, I’m not accusing you of anything, Mrs. Riley. I’m simply trying to determine the facts. If you and Mr. Riley were at the Halsteads’ place last night, fine. If not, also fine. Just tell me—”

“We were not there.”

“That’s all I wanted to know.”

“Maybe the Whists were, but we weren’t. I wouldn’t know about them.” There was something a bit snappish in her tone again.

“O.K.,” I said. “That settles that. I’d also like to ask the Whists, however. Can you tell me where I might find them?”

“They live at the Norvue.”

“Not any more, they don’t.”

There she went again, giving me that glittery eye. “They don’t? They’ve moved?”

“Yes.”

“Where to?”

“Beats me. They didn’t leave a forwarding address. I’m not even certain they’ve moved. All I know is they’re not at the Norvue now.”

“It doesn’t surprise me.” Her lips curled a bit. “No, it doesn’t surprise me.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Never mind. It’s not important.”

Here we go, I thought. She seemed to withdraw, sort of retreat inside herself. It was that bats-in-the-moonlight bit again. And it was beginning to sour on me.

I stood up. “Look, Mrs. Riley. Maybe it’s not important. I’m not here bothering you just for fun, but because George Halstead got slammed in the head and died suddenly of scrambled brains. We’re talking about a murder.”

She winced slightly when I said “scrambled brains,” and then looked at me as she bit on her lower lip.

I went on, “If you truly don’t know a thing I might be interested in hearing, O.K. I’ll get out of here. But if you do, if you even think maybe you do—”

She interrupted me. “It’s just that … well, I don’t think their name is Whist. That’s all.”

“It might be plenty. What makes you think that?”

“Well, I’m not really sure. And if I’m wrong, I’d hate to—”

And so on. I told her not to worry, that I’d check everything out, but it took another minute of coaxing and even getting a little red in the face before she finally gave voice to her suspicions.

They had met the Whists—“if that’s their real name”—four or five months ago. They went out together several times, then one afternoon the Rileys had picked them up at the Norvue to take them to lunch.

“We went to the Beverly Hills Hotel,” she said. “For some reason, they didn’t want to go there. But we’d reserved a table and had a special lunch prepared and all. So we went anyway.”

“How do you know they didn’t want to go there?”

“They said so. Said they’d rather go somewhere else.”

I nodded.

“While we were having lunch, a Mr. Edward Walles was paged. That’s Walles—W-a-l-l-e-s—Edward Walles,” she said.

“Hold it a minute. This was over the p.a. system?”

“One of those cute bellboys walked around saying there was a phone call for him.”

“Well, either way, how could you tell the spelling of the name—particularly an odd one like that—just from hearing it pronounced?”

“Oh. I must have left something out.”

“I’ll bet you did.”

“Two or three weeks before then, my husband and I were over at their place for dinner. At the Norvue, I mean. We, well, we were playing bridge. I was dummy and went to the bathroom. And I happened to see a stack of mail, two or three letters on the dresser. They were addressed to Mr. Edward Whist—only one of them wasn’t. It was addressed to Mr. Edward Walles.”

“Uh-huh. So maybe it was delivered by mistake. It happens. I’ve got mail meant for people named Wangler and even Barshfergenweis. Occasionally the post office—”

“But the letter had been opened. He wouldn’t open it if it wasn’t for him, would he?”

“Not if he’s a nice fellow. But if it revealed some dark secret, I wouldn’t think he’d leave the thing lying out in plain sight.”

“But it wasn’t. The letters were in the bedroom.”

She stopped.

I waited.

Finally I said, “In the bedroom, huh?”

She gazed at something depressing in the corner of the room. I looked, but couldn’t see it myself.

In a moment she went on, “Did I say bedroom? Well, that’s because … because the letters were there. On the dresser. You see, the prettiest bathroom is just off the master bedroom. You have to go through it to get to the bathroom. Does it matter?”

“Not to me, it doesn’t.”

“There’s more than one bedroom. And I just happened to see the letters. My eyes just happened to fall on them.” She paused. “I wouldn’t want you to think I was an old snoop.”

“Perish the thought. What else about the letters?”

“That’s all. I’m explaining how I knew the spelling of the name when I heard Mr. Walles paged.”

“Got it. O.K., go on.”

“After they paged Mr. Edward Walles—we’re back at the Beverly Hills Hotel now, all right?”

“Swell. Incidentally, when was this?”

“Oh, about two months. Yes, almost exactly two months now.”

“O.K. You’re ready for lunch.”

“Yes. Well, when they paged this Walles, Ed and Marcelle looked at each other. You know.”

“I’m not certain I do. You mean, that … told you something?”

“It was the way they looked. Like they weren’t really looking at each other.”

“What does that mean?”

She was disappointed in me, I think.

She eyed me for a second or two, then said, “It was—oh, goodness. A woman would know. The important thing is right after that Ed excused himself and left the dining room.”

“Maybe he had to go to the, ah, the master bath?”

“No, he didn’t. I had to go myself, and on the way I saw Ed picking up one of the house phones. So he was taking that call for Edward Walles.”

“It’s certainly a possibility. One of approximately three-point-two thousand possibilities.”

“It’s what he was doing, you can bet. After all, there was that letter to him at the Norvue.”

“Yes, you’ve got a point there.”

She did at that.

I mulled it over, then looked at Mrs. Riley. “O.K. You make a pretty fair case. So why, if their name is Whist, would they claim to be named Walles?”

She shrugged.

I said, “Or it could be the other way around. Why, if their real name is Walles, would they tell you it was Whist?”

She shrugged again. “For all I know, their real name may be Bargenshwaffer … or whatever you said.”

“That might be it—I just made it up. Well, I’ll check on this, Mrs. Riley. Who knows, it might be very important.” I paused. “You don’t like the Whists much, do you?”

She frowned, and I thought she wasn’t going to answer. But then she said, “Oh, Marcelle’s nice. I liked her. But I never did really like Ed. He’s pleasant and certainly good looking enough. But there was … oh, just something about him. Something I felt.”

“Uh-huh. By the way, do you happen to have a picture of them?”

She sure gave me a lot of twangy looks, this one. “Why did you say that?” she asked me.

“Well, I know roughly what he and his wife look like, but a photo might help me find them. As the Chinese say, one picture worth ten thousand word.”

“Do the Chinese say that?”

“Ah—somebody, who cares? I just want to make things as easy on myself as I possibly can, since there is something very twitchy in the air … Never mind. I thought, perhaps you and the Whists, or Walleses, or Fergenbashers, or whoever they are, while getting snockered in a nightclub might have paid one of those leggy camera girls to preserve for all time the memory—”

“Oh, no. We never did that. I don’t have any pictures of them. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Can you think of anything else about them—or other friends of the Halsteads, for that matter—that perhaps I should know?”

She couldn’t.

On the Pasadena Freeway, heading back toward L.A., I reached under the Cad’s dash and grabbed the mobile phone, checked with information for a phone in the name of Edward Walles. There wasn’t any listed, so I put a call through to my own number in the Hamilton Building.

Hazel, the cute and bouncy little gal on the switchboard down the hall from my office, answered, “Sheldon Scott, Investigations.”

“Oh, it is not,” I said. “It’s Hazel, down at the end of the hall.”

“I’m surprised you remember my name,” she said. “It’s been so long since I saw you here at work, I thought you’d died.”

“You poor kid. How you must have suffered—”

“Actually, it was kind of a relief. What do you want, Shell?”

“You, You, you, you! Don’t I keep telling you? Hazel! I—”

“Shell, it’s time I told you the truth. I’m still a virgin.”

“O.K., I’m trying to find a guy named Walles.” I spelled the name, adding, “Edward Walles, wife’s name Marcelle. Maybe. These might be people who use half a dozen names.”

“Are they in Los Angeles?”

“You’ve got me. I’m hoping they’re still in the L.A. or Hollywood area. Last-known address the Norvue, registered as Mr. and Mrs. Whist. Left there about four weeks ago, present address unknown.”

“All right. Hospitals and morgues?”

“Might check the morgue. Don’t waste time on the hospitals for now.”

“It’s an unusual name. That might help. Where will you be, Shell, if you’re not in the car?”

“I’m not sure at the moment. Keep trying the Cad—I’ll call again if I’m going to be gone for a while.” I paused. “Hazel, you must be kidding.”

She pulled the plug.

It took her half an hour.

During that time I stopped at the Norvue, but didn’t learn anything more. None of the people I talked to had an address for the Whists, and the name Walles didn’t mean a thing to any of them. From there I drove on out Sunset to Beverly Hills and the Beverly Hills Hotel. I didn’t find my quarry, but I did at least pick up the scent.

Mr. and Mrs. Edward Walles had occupied a suite at the hotel for five months, and had checked out two months previously. More precisely, three days less than two months.

Clearly, just about the time of the Rileys’ luncheon there with the “Whists.”

It was becoming interesting.

Especially since—if the Whists were also the Walleses—they’d been paying for a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel even while living, at least part of the time, in the Norvue.

When the attendant brought my car I climbed in and let it roll down the curving drive to its end, stopped and waited to swing into the traffic on Sunset.

I’d noticed the guy standing at the right edge of the drive, lighting a cigarette. But what the hell, he was just a guy lighting a cigarette. At least he was then. But not when, as I gawked to my left eyeing the traffic stream, he opened the Cad’s door and slipped onto the seat.

Then he was a small, thin-faced and thin-lipped guy with a history of youthful chicken pox mapped topographically on his young-old face and a heavy gun in his right fist—the usual gun, the big one, the cliché gun, a Colt .45 automatic. Cliché, maybe, but not comical. They can just about cut a man in two.

And I knew Kestel—that was the creep’s name, Lester Kestel, commonly called Bingo for some reason I never took the trouble to discover—had cut up a few.

He pulled the Cad’s door shut with his free hand, and I felt my breath stop as I waited for the moment to take him—or to try to take him.

He saw my eyes flick from the automatic to his face, and said quietly, “You better look behind you, Scott.”