The Wycherly Woman (19 page)

“Do you have to use equipment?”

“I tap them, manually. May I come in?”

“I guess it’s all right, since we’re going to be neighbors. At least I hope we are.”

The room was sparsely furnished with cheap black-iron pieces. Uncabineted stereo components and other sound equipment, including a tape recorder, were scattered around it. Against the wall I was interested in, a card table with a portable typewriter and a lighted desk-lamp on it stood in a drift of yellow paper.

I made a show of tapping the wall. There was no sign of the hole on this side. That didn’t mean much. A bullet could have expended itself between the layers of plaster, or caught in the lathing.

“How does it sound?” she said.

“All right, I guess.”

“You shouldn’t have any trouble sleeping in the daytime. I sleep a lot in the daytime myself. This place is real dead in the daytime. Everybody in it works but me.” One of her hips swung out as if in comment. She pressed it back into place with her hand. “Stanley keeps me up late at night.”

I didn’t dare ask her how. She answered the unasked question: “With his equipment. You’d think he’d get enough of it in the daytime, but he blasts my ears off half the night sometimes. He used to be a D-J.”

“Delinquent juvenile?”

“Disc jockey. Now he sells the stuff.”

Something in the baseboard had caught my eye. I got down on my knees. It was a hole in the wood the size and shape of a bullet-hole, but no bullet had made it. It had obviously been drilled, then refilled with wood paste which had dried a different color from the wood.

“What is it?” she said. “Termites?”

Call them termites. The hole behind the picture, the hole in the baseboard, the tape recorder, which belonged to a
sound expert, combined to suggest one thing. The bedroom next door had been wired for sound from this room.

“Could be. How long have you been living here, Miss Drake?”

“Just since the beginning of the year. I was working up until Christmas, but they raided the place. What do termites do?”

“They infest the foundations and penetrate the walls.”

“You mean the whole place might fall down?” With a downward shrug of her shoulders, flutter of hands, bending at the knee, she enacted the whole place falling down.

“It could happen. It isn’t likely, but I’d better talk it over with your friend.” Your friend the termite. “Where does he work?”

“He doesn’t work, exactly. I mean, Stanley has his own record shop. It’s in the new shopping center this side of San Carlos.”

“I think maybe I know Stanley. What’s his last name?”

“Quillan.”

“Heavy-set blond boy?”

“That’s my boy,” she said, without pride of ownership. “If you talk to him, do me a favor, will you? Don’t tell him I let you into the flat. He’s awfully jealous.” Her hip popped out, repeating its silent comment.

“Known him long?”

“Just since the first of the year. That’s why he’s so jealous. I picked—I mean I met him at a New Year’s party at his sister’s house. It was a kind of a rough party, and I lost my date in the crush. Bad scene. But Stanley took over.” She smiled in bright dismay. “That’s the kind of thing that’s always happening to me. But I always land on my feet like a cat.” She jumped a few inches in the air and landed on her feet like a cat. “Speaking of cats, his sister didn’t like it me taking up with Stanley. She thinks she’s very hot stuff since she got married. But I’ve known Sally Quillan when she was prowling the Tenderloin for free drinks. And I happen to
know that Stanley got canned last year for taking payola. Oops, I’m talking too much. I always talk too much when I meet somebody I like.”

She covered her mouth with both hands and looked at me between her heavy eye-shadow. “If you see Stanley, you won’t tell him what I said, will you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“He might hit me where it shows,” she said smiling. “Don’t even
mention
this conversation. We’ll keep it between ourselves, huh?”

That suited me. Before I left, I showed her Phoebe’s picture. She had never seen the girl, or heard of a Miss Smith or a Mrs. Smith in the next apartment.

“See you later, neighbor,” she said at the door.

I went downstairs and paused outside the door of the manager’s apartment to adjust my face. It felt from the inside as if I had it on a little crooked. The manager’s wife called out when I knocked:

“The door’s unlatched.”

She was lying among the pillows on her studio bed:

“Forgive me if I don’t get up. All that talking before there tired me out. You took long enough.” She peered up through the dimness into my face. “Is there something the matter with the apartment?”

I gave my face another internal yank. When you sense your face as a talking mask stuck to the front of your skull, it’s time to go for a long walk on the beach. I didn’t have time. I produced a grin:

“I like the apartment very much.”

She stirred and brightened. “You won’t do better than one-seven-five for a separate-bedroom flat in a good neighborhood like this one. With furnishings like that. How did you like the furnishings?”

“Fine. But I don’t quite understand about them. You say they belonged to the previous tenant, Mrs. Smith?”

She nodded. “That’s why it’s such good stuff. Mrs. Smith has money, I imagine you know that. When she moved in, she threw out everything that belonged to the building and put in all new stuff. It’s still in practically new condition, as you can see. She hardly ever used the place. I don’t think she was in it one night a week.”

“What did she use it for?”

“She said she did some painting as a hobby, and she wanted a place where she could get away and paint.” She squinted at me. “Seems to me you’re very much interested in Mrs. Smith. Just how well do you know her?”

“She’s only a passing acquaintance. But I don’t want to get in dutch with her. Won’t she be wanting her furniture back?”

“No, she just left it sitting. I think she told Alec she couldn’t be bothered moving it. Take it up with Alec, he’ll explain.”

“Do you and your husband own the Conquistador?”

“Not us. I wish we did. The owner lives in Sausalito. We hardly ever see him.”

“How long ago did Mrs. Smith move out?”

“Months ago. I haven’t seen her for months. Then that girl of hers used the flat a little while. It’s been empty since November. If Mrs. Smith wanted her furniture, she had plenty of chance to claim it. But take it up with Alec, he’s the one that had the dealings with her.”

“When will your husband be back?”

“He always gets home by suppertime. If you want to set a time for this evening, I’ll tell him that you’re coming.” She hunched herself up to a sitting position. “I don’t believe you mentioned your name?”

I mentioned my name, and said that I would be back around suppertime.

G
ALLORINI CLIMBED OUT OF
his cab when he saw me. “Is she there?”

“She hasn’t been since early in November—around the time you saw her.”

“You still think I pulled something on her?”

“No. I found out who the blond boy is. Will you help me pin it down?”

He lifted his hands as if to feel for rain. “I dunno. How?”

“Drive down to San Carlos and let me show you a subject.”

“I can’t do it, mister. I lost an hour already—hour-and-a-half.”

“I’m paying for your time.”

“That’s different.”

I went ahead and Gallorini followed me down the highway. Vitamins, the signs said, Foreign Cars, Pediatrics and Psychiatry, Fuchsias, Storage and Moving, Remedial Reading Clinic, Bury Your Loved Ones at Woodland, Rejuvenation, Real Estate. Stanley’s Stereo Shop was a plastic-fronted hole-in-the-wall with records and record-players in the window. It was one of twenty stores in a cheap new commercial development.

We parked in the off-street area. At my suggestion, Gallorini changed jackets with me and took off his peaked cap. I gave him money to buy a record.

He came out in five or six minutes, carrying a thin square parcel in his hand. He had a hot-eyed look, like a musician:

“The sonabitch reckanized me.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. But he reckanized me. I could tell, the way he looked me over.”

“And you recognized him?”

“He reckanized me, I had to reckanize him, didn’t I? He’s the one all right. I bet he’s got her stashed someplace.”

“I hope so, Nick.” It wasn’t too likely, though. Jezebel Drake would be all most men could handle at any one time.

I paid him off and waited for a while. I put in the time making notes on my expenses: Transportation and witnesses, $45.00; Music, $5.00. Nick had bought
Cavalleria Rusticana
, and I let him keep it.

When I went into the shop, a traffic-noises record was thundering and grinding through the glass wall of a listening-room at the back. Stanley turned the noises off and came out looking excited. He was the blond, goateed young man I had seen the night before in Merriman’s office. He didn’t seem to remember me.

“Yessir, can I help you?” It was a different voice from the snarl he had used on Mrs. Merriman.

“I’m looking for a girl.”

“Afraid I can’t help you with that. We don’t keep girls in stock, ha ha.”

“Ha ha. She called herself Smith, spent some time last fall in the Conquistador. Apartment Fourteen, next door to where you live.”

“How do you know where I live?”

“I’ve been asking around.”

“I don’t get it.” He was trying to be casual, but his voice had changed from baritone to tenor. His vocabulary changed with it. “Why don’t you bug off, I got work to do.”

“So have I.”

“Are you fuzz—from the police?”

“I’m a private detective.”

His protuberant blue eyes squeezed further out. He moved behind the counter. I leaned across it and flashed Phoebe’s picture under his nose:

“You must have seen this girl. She lived beside you for at least a week in November.”

“What if I saw her? What does that prove? I see a lot of people every day.”

“Who do you see at night?”

He glanced at me like a tomcat trying to feel like a lion. Muscle or fat bulged under his hidden-button Italian jacket.

“Were you ever in her apartment, Stanley?”

“What if I was?” His hairy long chin waggled at me: “You sent that dago in to spy on me.”

“I sent him in to see if he could identify you. He could.”

“Did he tell you what
he
was doing in her bedroom? He had her down on the bed and he was stripping her. I heard these suspicious noises through the wall.”

“You have very acute hearing.”

“Yeah. I heard these suspicious noises, so I rushed in and threw him out on his ear. I was only doing what any fellow would do.”

“How well did you know her?”

“I didn’t know her. I don’t know any of the other tenants in the building. I saw her in the hall a few times, maybe. That’s all.”

“Why were you so interested in what went on in her bedroom?”

“I wasn’t.”

“You planted a mike in it.”

His face tried various colors and compromised on mottled lavender. I took hold of his hide-the-button lapels and dragged him across the counter towards me:

“Why did you bug her room?”

“I didn’t.” His voice had risen another octave.

“What happened to her, Quillan?”

“I don’t know nothing about her. I’m clean. You turn me loose.”

He was dirty. I shook him. His eyes bulged like a bottom
fish’s jerked up from the sea. He had a fishy odor. I flung him away from me. His thick body slammed back against the record shelves. He leaned there blotched and quivering:

“You can’t manhandle me. I’ll call the cops.”

“Do that. We’ll go over to the Hall of Justice and compare backgrounds. Then we’ll all go and take a look at that bedroom wall.”

His face became drained of blood. His eyes were electric blue bubbles in its pallor. Like a sick man reaching for medicine, he groped under the counter. His hand came up with an automatic in it:

“Bug out now. I’ll gun you down like a dog.”

“Can you stand that rap on top of the other?”

“The rap is all yours. You come in my place of business and try to put pressure.” He punched his cash-register open with his left hand and threw some money at me. Dollar bills fell like leaves at my feet. “Out of here now or I shoot. You want to make me a hero?”

I didn’t think he would shoot, but I couldn’t be sure. His personality altered from minute to minute. He was one of the unpredictables who got hot sudden flashes from outer space. A little green man might tell him to squeeze the trigger, and he might squeeze it. I went.

Not very far. I drove around the shopping center and parked in a place at the south end from which I could watch his back door as well as his front. I didn’t have long to wait. It was the back door he left by.

He had on a red beret. He climbed into an Alfa-Romeo the same shade of red and turned south on Camino trailing dark oil smoke. I let him get far ahead of me, till his sports car was only a red corpuscle in the traffic stream. I followed him through Redwood City and Atherton, varying the distance between us and gradually decreasing it. His car had no real speed, and he drove it foolishly, changing lanes, spurting and braking.

He made a left turn on a green light in Menlo Park. I sneaked past the oncoming traffic on the tail end of the yellow. For a mile or more we jogged east, past the Stanford Research Center, then into an area so thickly grown with oaks that it was like thin forest. The red car disappeared around a curve.

When I caught it again it had stopped on the gravel roadside and Quillan was stepping out over the door. It was too late for me to stop or retreat, but he didn’t seem to notice me as I passed. He was trotting up a flagstone walk to a brown frame cottage half-hidden by trees and shrubs. Below its rustic mailbox, a reflector sign spelled out in three-inch letters:
MERRIMAN
.

I parked around the next curve and transferred my contact mike from the dash compartment to my jacket pocket. I walked back towards the brown cottage. The late afternoon light fell green and tempered through the overarching branches of the oaks. It was one of those untouched stretches of land which you find here and there on the Peninsula, enclaves of a centuries-old past, when everything was oak forest.