Black money (9 page)

"On me," he said as he rapped it down, and poured himself a Cola to take with me. "I couldn't help hearing, you said you were a detective. And some of the things you said about Miss Fablon."

"You know her?"

"Seem her around. She don't drink. I've been here for over twelve years, I knew her father. He drank, and he could carry it. Mr. Fablon was a man. He had machismo."

Marco's red lips protruded, savoring the word.

"I heard he committed suicide," I said without emphasis.

"Maybe. I never believed it." He shook his bushy blackhead.

"You think he drowned accidentally?"

"I didn't say that."

"The other alternative is murder."

"I didn't say that, either."

Without moving from his position behind the bar, he seemed to back away from me. Then he crossed himself. "Murder is a big ugly word."

"It's an uglier fact. Was Mr. Fablon murdered?"

"Some people thought so."

"Who?"

"His wife, for instance. After he disappeared she was yelling bloody murder around the club here. Then suddenly she quit, and all you could hear from her was a loud silence."

"Did she accuse anyone?"

"Not that I heard. She didn't name any names."

"Why would she change her story?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, mister. Probably better."

The subject seemed to make him nervous. He changed it: "But it wasn't that I wanted to talk about. This other guy - calls himself Martel - the big-shot Frenchman?"

"What about him?"

"I got a funny feeling I've seen him before someplace."

He spread his fingers. "Anyway I'm sure he ain't no Frenchie."

"What is he?"

"Same like me, maybe." He made a stupid face, deliberately humbling himself in order to make what he said more insulting to Martel. "Just another paisano. He never came in here only the once, and then he took one look at me and never came back."

The orchestra had started up. Some people drifted in from the dining room and ordered brandy. Dodging a few dancing couples, I went back to Peter's table. The dessert plate in front of him was empty except for a few faint smears of chocolate. He looked smug and guilty.

"I thought you'd left," he said.

"I was in the bar talking to some friends of the Fablons."

"Dr Sylvester."

"He was one of them," I said.

"I had a word with him, too. He puts on that hard front of his, but he's worried about Ginny, I can tell."

"We all are."

"Do you think we better go back to Martel's house?" Peter made a move to get up.

"Not until we have something substantial to hit him with."

"Like what?"

"Some actual proof that he isn't what he claims to be. I'm trying to develop something now."

"And what am I supposed to do?"

Go and take another run on the beach, I almost said. I said: "You have to wait. And I think you better get used to the idea that this may not turn out the way you want it to."

"You've found out something?"

"Nothing definite, but I have a feeling. This one didn't start out happily and it may not end happily. I think it goes back at least as far as Roy Fablon's alleged suicide."

"Alleged?"

"At least one man who knew him doesn't believe he killed himself. Which implies that somebody else did."

"Whoever told you that is making it up."

"Perhaps. He's a Roman Catholic, and he admired Roy Fablon, and he wouldn't want to think that he was a suicide. Your father told me an interesting thing though."

"I didn't know you ever talked to my father."

Peter's tone was formal and suspicious, as if I had gone over to the enemy.

"I went to your house to find you this afternoon. Your father told me among other things that Roy Fablon's body was so chewed up by sharks it could hardly be identified. Just what was the condition of his face?"

"I didn't see it myself. My father did. All they showed me was his overcoat."

"He went into the water wearing an overcoat?"

"It was more of a waterproof."

He heard the word, and grimaced at the irony.

It caught in my own mind like a fishhook. It was hard to imagine a sportsman and athlete walking into the ocean in a waterproof coat, from a beach estate which his ways with money had forced his wife to sell, unless he meant to leave her and her daughter a legacy of malice.

"How do you know exactly where he went into the water?"

"He left his wallet and wristwatch on the beach. There wasn't anything in the wallet, except identification, but his watch was a very good one that Mrs. Fablon had given him. It had their initials on the back, and something engraved in Latin on the case."

"No suicide note?"

"If there was one, I never heard of it. That doesn't necessarily prove anything. The local police don't always release notes."

"Do you have a lot of suicides in Montevista?"

"We have our share. You know, when you have money to live on, and a nice house, and good weather most of the time, and still your life goes wrong - well, who can you blame?" Peter seemed to be taking about himself.

"Is that how it was with Roy Fablon?"

"Not exactly. He had his troubles. I was a guest in their house, and I shouldn't talk about them, but I suppose it doesn't matter now."

He breathed in. "I heard him tell Mrs. Fablon he would kill himself."

"That same night?"

"A night or two before. I was there for dinner, and they were arguing about money. She said she couldn't give him any more money because there wasn't any more money."

"What did he want the money for?"

"Gambling losses. He called it a debt of honor. He said if he couldn't pay it he'd have to kill himself."

"Was Ginny there?"

"Yes. She heard everything. We both did. Mr. and Mrs. Fablon had reached the point where they weren't trying to hide anything. Each of them was trying to win us over."

"Who won?"

"Nobody won," he said. "Everybody lost."

The orchestra was playing again, and through the archway I could see people dancing in the adjoining room. Most of the tunes, and most of the dancers, had been new in the twenties and thirties. Together they gave the impression of a party that had been going on too long, till the music- and the dancers were worn as thin as the husks of insects after spiders had eaten them.

11

ELLA STROME crossed the corner of the dance floor and came to our table. "I've got hold of the photographer for you, Mr. Archer. He's waiting in the office."

He was a thin man in a rumpled dark business suit. He had a lot of brown hair, a lumpy Slavic jaw, and sensitive-looking eyes protected by horn-rimmed glasses. Ella introduced him as Eric Malkovsky.

"I'm glad to meet you," he said, but he wasn't. He glanced restlessly past me towards the door of the office. "I promised my wife to take her to the Film Society tonight. We have season tickets."

"I'll reimburse you."

"That's not the point. I hate to disappoint her."

"This may be more important."

"Not to me it isn't." He was speaking to me, but his real complaint was directed towards Ella. I gathered she had used pressure to get him here. "Anyway, as I told Mrs. Strome, I have no pictures of Mr. Martel. I offered to take some, the way I do with any other guest, but he said no. He was pretty emphatic about it."

"Unpleasant?"

"I wouldn't say that. But he certainly didn't want his picture taken. What is he, a celebrity or something?"

"Something."

My reticence irritated him, and he colored slightly. "The only reason I asked, another person was after me for a picture of him."

Ella said: "You didn't tell me that."

"I didn't have a chance to. The woman came to my studio in the Village just before I went home for dinner. When I told her I didn't have a picture of him, she offered me money to go to his house and take one. I told her I couldn't do that without Mr. Martel's permission. At which she got mad and stomped out."

"I don't suppose she gave you her name?"

"No, but I can describe her. She's a redhead, tall, with a gorgeous figure. Aged about thirty. As a matter of fact, I had a feeling that I've seen her before."

'Where?"

"Right here in the club."

"I don't remember any such woman," Ella said.

"It was before your time, at least five years ago."

Malkovsky screwed up one side of his face as he was squinting through a view finder. "I think I took a picture or two of the woman. In fact I'm pretty sure I did."

"Would you still have those pictures?" I said.

"Maybe, but it would be a terrible job to find them. I don't keep files except for the current year and the year before."

He looked at his wristwatch, dramatically. "I really have to go now. The wife would kill me if she misses the Bunuel. And the club doesn't pay me overtime for this kind of a deal."

He tossed a sour look in the direction of Ella, who had gone back to the reception desk.

"I'll pay you double time for as long as it takes."

"That would be seven dollars an hour. It could take all night."

"I know."

"And there's no guarantee that I'll come up with anything. It may be an entirely different woman. If it's the same woman, she's changed the color of her hair. The woman I remember was a blonde."

"Blondes turn into redheads all the time. Tell me about the woman you remember."

"She was younger then, of course, with the dew still on her. A lovely thing. I remember now. I did take some pictures of her. Her husband wasn't too crazy about the idea but she wanted it done."

"Who was her husband?"

"An older guy," he said. "They stayed in one of the cottages for a couple of weeks."

"What year were they here?"

"I couldn't nail it down - maybe six or seven years ago. But if I find those pictures I can tell you. I generally make a note of the date on the back."

By this time Malkovsky was eager to get to work. Before leaving for the Village, he gave me the address and telephone number of his studio. I said I would check with him there in an hour or so.

I thanked Ella, and went to the parking lot to get my car. An unsteady wind carrying a gritty taste of desert was blowing down from the direction of the mountains. The eucalyptus trees swayed and bowed and waved in the gusts like long-haired madwoman racked by impulse. The night which loomed above the trees and dwarfed them seemed threatening.

I had been concerned about Harry Hendricks ever since I found his car at the roadside near Martel's house. Harry had no more earned my concern than the alleged rat, which Martel said he had killed. Still I had a foolish yen to see Harry alive.

The road to the harbor cut across the base of the headland where Fablon had taken his final swim, and back to the ocean. As I drove along the windswept boulevard, my mind was so fixed on Harry that when I saw the Cadillac parked at the curb I thought I was dreaming. I braked and backed and parked directly behind it, and got out. It was Harry's old Caddie, all right, standing there with a cold engine, empty and innocent, as if it had driven itself down from the foothills. The key was in the ignition. It hadn't been before.

I looked around me. It was a lonely place, especially at this time, with a wind blowing. There was no other car in sight, and nothing across the street but rattling palms and the sighing sea.

On the inland side a tall cypress hedge shielded the boulevard from a view of the railroad tracks and the hobo jungles. Through a hole in the hedge I could see the dark shapes of men crouched around a bonfire which flared and veered.

I went through the hole and approached them. There were three of them drinking dark red wine out of a half-gallon jug, which was nearly empty. Their faces all turned toward me in the firelight: the seamed and gap-toothed face of an aging white man; the flat stubborn planes of a young Negro's head; a boy with Indian features and an Indian's stolid apathetic eyes. He wore nothing above the waist but an open black vest.

The Negro got up with five or six feet of two-by-four in his hands. He staggered toward me on the uneven ground.

"Amscray, 'bo. This is a private party."

"You can answer a civil question. I'm looking for a friend of mine."

"I don't know nothin' about no friends of yours."

Big and drunk, he leaned on his two-by-four like a warrior on his spear. His tripod shadow wavered on the hedge.

"That's his car there," I said quickly. "The Cadillac. He's a medium-sized man in a checkered jacket. Have you seen him?"

"Naw."

"Just a minute."

The white man rose unsteadily. "Maybe I seen him, maybe not. What's it worth to you?"

He came up close to me so that I could smell his fiery breath and look deep into the glaring hollows of his eyes. They had a feverish brainwashed wino emptiness. He was so far gone that he would never come back.

"It isn't worth anything to me, old-timer. You're trying to promote the price of another jug."

"I seen him, honest I seen him. Little man in a checkered jacket. He gave me four bits, I thanked him very kindly. You don't forget a citizen like that."

The breath whistled through the gaps in his teeth.

"Let's see the four bits."

He searched elaborately through his jeans. "I must have lost it.

I turned away. He followed me all the way to the car. His gnarled fists drummed on the window.

"Have a heart, for Christ's sake. Gimme four bits. I told you about your friend."

"No money for wine," I said.

"It's for food. I'm starving. I came down here to pick oranges and they fired me, and I couldn't do the work."

"They'll feed you at the Salvation Army."

He puckered up his mouth and spat on the window. His saliva ran down the glass between him and me. I started the motor.

"Get away, you might get hurt."

"I'm hurt already," he said with his life in his voice.

He staggered back to the hedge, disappearing suddenly through the hole like a man swallowed up by darkness.

12

The BREAKWATER HOTEL was only a few blocks from the place where Harry's Cadillac was parked. It was possible, though hardly likely, that he'd left it there, for reasons of his own, and gone the rest of the way on foot.