Find a Victim (3 page)

I looked around for Church. He was in a public telephone booth at the end of the row of cottages. The receiver was at his ear, but he didn’t seem to be talking.

“Take it up with the sheriff,” I said. “I’m with him.”

“Just who are you, fellow? If I thought you sicked the sheriff onto me—”

“What would happen, sweetheart?” He was my favorite man now. I kept my hands down and my chin out, hoping that he would swing and give me a chance to counter.

“You’d be flat on your back with a throatful of teeth.”

“I thought you only pushed women around.”

“You want a demonstration?”

But he was bluffing. From the sharp bright corners of his eyes he was watching the sheriff approach. The sheriff’s face was solemn and composed:

“I owe you an apology, Don. I don’t often lose my head like that.”

“Don’t you? You’ll try it on one too many taxpayers. Then you won’t be able to get yourself elected dogcatcher.”

“All right. Let’s bury it. I didn’t hurt you.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

“I said bury it,” Church repeated quietly. His facial muscles were anatomized by the effort he was exerting to hold himself under control. “Tell me more about Anne. Nobody seems to know where she is. She didn’t tell Hilda she was quitting her job or going anywhere.”

“She didn’t quit the job. She just went away for the weekend and didn’t show up for work Monday morning. Apparently she didn’t come back from the weekend. I haven’t had any word from her.”

“Where did she go?”

“You tell me. She doesn’t report to me.”

They faced each other for a long still moment. There was something worse than potential violence between them, a hatred that went beyond violence and absorbed them completely, like a grand passion.

“You’re a liar,” Church said finally.

“Maybe I am a liar. Maybe it’s just as well I am. If I am.”

Church saw me watching them and jerked his head in peremptory command. I left them bound in their quiet vicious quarrel and went into the dark lobby.

Its darkness was barely penetrated by the green and yellow light that filtered in through the venetian blinds. Mrs. Kerrigan was curled on a lounge in the farthest corner. All I could see of her was silver-pointed hair and the wet gleam of eyes.

“Who is it?”

“Archer. The one who brought you the trouble.”

“You didn’t bring the trouble. I’ve had it all along.”
She rose and came into the center of the room. “You’re not on the local police force, Mr. Archer.”

“No, I’m a private detective. The southern counties are my normal beat. I stumbled into this one.”

“Didn’t we all.” Her odor was faint and fragrant, like nostalgia for half-forgotten summers. Her troubled whisper might have been the voice of the breathing darkness: “What does it all mean?”

“Your guess is better than mine. You know the people involved.”

“Do I? Not really. I don’t really know my own husband, even.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Seven years. Seven lean years.” She hesitated. “Mr. Archer, are you the sort of detective people hire, to find out things about other people?”

I told her that I was.

“Could I—can I trust you?”

“It’s up to you. Other people have been able to, but I don’t carry references.”

“Would it cost a great deal? I have
some
money left.”

“I don’t know what you have in mind.”

“Of course you don’t. I’m sorry. I’m awfully scatterbrained tonight.”

“Or else you don’t want to tell me.”

“That may be it.” I could sense her invisible smile. “Or it may be that I don’t know exactly what I want done. I certainly don’t want to make trouble for anyone.”

“Such as your husband?”

“Yes. My husband.” Her voice dropped, almost out of hearing. “I found Don packing last night, both of his big suitcases. I believe he intends to leave me.”

“Why not ask him?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” she said with a desolate kind of wit. “He might give me an answer.”

“You’re in love with him?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said a little wildly. “I was at one time, quite a long time ago.”

“Another woman?”

“Other women, yes.”

“Would Anne Meyer be one of them?”

“I know she used to be. There was a—a thing between them last year. He told me it was off, but it may still be on. If you could find her, find out whom she’s seeing—” Her voice trailed off.

“Exactly how long has she been missing?”

“Since she took off for the weekend, last Friday.”

“Where did she spend the weekend?”

“I don’t really know.”

“With your husband?”

“No. At least he says not. I was going to say—”

Kerrigan spoke behind me: “What were you going to say?”

He had quietly opened the door of the lobby. His bulky shadow moved forward out of its panel of light. He pushed past me and leaned tensely toward his wife:

“I told you not to shoot off your mouth.”

“I didn’t—”

“But I heard you.
You
wouldn’t call me a liar now, would you, Kate?”

His back swung sideways. I heard the crack of the blow, and the woman’s hissing gasp. I took him by the shoulder.

“Lay off her, bully boy.”

The heavy wad of padding came loose in my hand, and something ripped. He let out a canine yelp and turned on me. One of his flailing fists numbed the side of my neck.

I backed into the light from the doorway and let him come to me. He charged like a ram, directly into my left. It straightened him up, and I followed through with a short right cross to the jaw. His knees buckled. He swayed for
ward. I hit him again with my left before his face struck the carpet.

His wife kneeled beside him. “You men. You’re like horrible little boys.” She cradled his head in her hands, and wiped his cut chin with a lace-edged handkerchief. “Is he badly hurt, do you think?”

“I doubt it. I didn’t hit him often.”

“You shouldn’t have hit him at all.”

“He asked for it.”

“Yes. I suppose he did.” Kerrigan stirred and moaned. She looked up at me fearfully. “You’d better get out of here now. Don has a gun and he knows how to use it.”

“Did he use it on Aquista?”

“Certainly not. That’s ridiculous.” Her voice was high and defensive. “My husband had nothing to do with it. He was here with me all afternoon.”

Kerrigan struggled groggily in her arms, trying to sit up.

“Please go now,” she said without looking at me.

“What about the job we were discussing?”

“We’ll simply have to forget it. I can’t stand any more trouble.”

“Whatever you say. It’s your marriage.”

CHAPTER
4
:
The sheriff’s Mercury was gone, and
the floodlit gravel was like a deserted arena. I wheeled my own car out onto the highway and joined the citybound traffic, not for long. An indefinable feeling of relationship pulled at me like a long elastic tying me to the Kerrigans and their trouble. Call it curiosity; but Mrs. Kerrigan’s oblique blond beauty had a lot to do with it. I wanted to see her out of trouble, and her husband in deeper trouble.

The elastic reached the limit of its stretch and pulled my car to a stop on the shoulder. A break in the traffic let me
make a U-turn. I drove back past the motor court, U-turned again a hundred yards beyond it, and parked in the deep shade of a roadside oak.

I smoked two cigarettes. Then the floodlights around the motor court were extinguished. The green and yellow sign was plunged into darkness. I turned on my ignition and pressed the starter.

The lobby windows went dark, and Kerrigan emerged. Taking noticeably short steps, he crossed the gravel to an alley that ran behind the row of cottages. A minute later his fire-engine-red convertible appeared at the mouth of the alley. He honked impatiently. Mrs. Kerrigan came out, holding her silver fox around her shoulders, and ran to the convertible.

It was an easy car to tail. I followed it into Las Cruces and across the city to a hillside residential section. There Kerrigan dropped his wife in front of a big two-story house set on a terraced slope. I noted its location.

Kerrigan turned back toward the center of town, driving as if his car was an engine of destruction. He parked it eventually on a side street near Main. I found a space for my own car and went after him on foot.

We were in the lower reaches of the downtown section, an urban wasteland of cheap hotels, rummage and secondhand-furniture shops, Mexican and Chinese restaurants. Kerrigan paused under a café sign:
SAMMY’S ORIENTAL GARDENS
, and started to look up and down the street. I stepped into the doorway of a hockshop. Its feebly lit interior lay behind barred windows like an insane memory of civilization.

When I stepped out onto the sidewalk, Kerrigan was gone. I double-timed to the front of the café and looked in through the fly-specked plate glass. He was walking toward the rear of the place, escorted by a Chinese waiter who beckoned him smilingly through a curtained arch
way. I waited until he was out of sight, and went in.

It was a big old-fashioned restaurant with a crowded bar along one side and wooden booths on the other, painted black and orange. Unlit paper lanterns hung dismally from the smoky pressed-iron ceiling. A languid ceiling fan stirred an atmosphere compounded of rancid grease and soy sauce, whisky-laden breath and human sweat. The people were from the lower echelons of valley life: oilfield roughnecks and their women, cowpokes in high-heeled riding boots, an old rumdum sitting in a booth in alcoholic isolation, waiting for dreams to begin.

The Chinese waiter came forward from the rear and showed me his teeth and gums.

“You wish a booth, sir?” he said precisely.

“I’d prefer a private room.”

“Sorry, sir, it’s been taken. If you had come one minute earlier.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I sat down in one of the front booths so that I could watch the archway in the mirror behind the bar. The waiter called for a double rye on the rocks and carried it out through the archway. When he brought me my menu I said:

“Those paper lanterns are a fire hazard, aren’t they? I’m a little nervous about fires. Does this building have a rear exit?”

“No, sir, but it’s perfectly safe. We’ve never had a fire. Do you wish to order now, sir?”

I remembered that I hadn’t eaten since noon, and ordered a bottle of beer and a New York cut. Fit for a King, the menu said, So Bring Your Queen. It lied.

I was washing down the last leathery shreds of the steak with beer when a girl sauntered in from the street. Her head was small and beautifully molded, capped with short black hair like glistening satin. She had flat black eyes,
a mouth as sullen as sin. Her mink-dyed rabbit coat hung open, and her hips swayed as she walked to an obvious rhythm.

Every man at the bar, including the Filipino bartender, was simultaneously aware of her. She loitered near the entrance, soaking up their awareness as if it was a fuel or a food. Her soft tiny-waisted body seemed to swell and luxuriate, and her breasts rose against the pressure of eyes.

My eyes met hers. I couldn’t help smiling at her. She gave me a scornful look, and turned to the waiter:

“Is he here?”

“He just came in, miss. He’s waiting for you in the back room.”

I watched her sway out after him, wondering if she could be Anne Meyer. She didn’t look like any motel manager I had ever seen. More likely an actress who hadn’t quite made the grade down south, or a very successful amateur tart on the verge of turning pro. Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn’t begun to sour.

I waited until the waiter had disappeared through the swinging door to the kitchen. Then I got up and moved to the curtained archway. The corridor beyond it was narrow and ill-lit, with doors marked
MEN
and
LADIES
at the far end. A nearer doorway was hung with a thick green curtain, through which I could hear a muffled conversation. I leaned on the wall beside it.

The girl’s voice said: “Was that your wife on the phone? I never talked to her before. She’s got a very educated diction.”

“She’s educated, all right. Too damn educated.” Kerrigan let out a mirthless snort. “You shouldn’t have telephoned me at the court. She caught me packing my bags last night, I’m afraid she’s catching on.”

“To us, you mean?”

“To everything.”

“Does it matter? There’s nothing she can do to stop us.”

“You don’t know her,” he said. “She’s still stuck on me, in a way. And every little thing matters right now. I shouldn’t be here.”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Of course I’m glad to see you. I just think we should have waited.”

“I waited all day, Donny. I didn’t hear from you, I didn’t have any weed, and my nerves were screaming. I had to see you. I had to know what happened.”

“Nothing happened. It worked. It’s all over.”

“Then we can go? Now?” She sounded young and eager.

“Not yet. I have things to do. I have to contact Bozey—”

“Isn’t he gone?”

“He better not be. He still owes me money.”

“He’ll pay you. You can trust him, Bozey’s no con man. When do you see him?”

“Later. He isn’t the only one I’ve got to see.”

“When you see him, will you do something for me, Donny?” Her voice was a kittenish mew. “Ask him for a couple of reefers for me? I can get plenty in Mexico, only I need them now, tonight. I can’t stand this waiting.”

“You think I’m enjoying the strain?” Self-pity whined in his tone. “It’s tearing me apart. I can hardly sit still. If I wasn’t crazy I wouldn’t be here at all.”

“Don’t worry, honey. Nothing can happen here. Sammy knows about us.”

“Yeah. How many other people know about us? And how much do they know? There was a private detective snooping around the motor court—”

“Forget about it, Donny.” The kitten in her throat was purring now. “Come over here and tell me about the place. You know? How we’ll lie in the sun all day without
any clothes and have fun and watch the birds and the clouds and have servants to wait on us. Tell me about that.”