The Wycherly Woman (21 page)

“There should be, when the girl is found. I think I can guarantee it.”

Girston’s manner changed. With protestations of good will, he ushered me down the hallway to his office under the stairs. It contained an old safe, a roll-top desk, a broken-backed swivel chair. He switched on a green-shaded desk lamp, and urged me to sit down in the chair. I preferred to lean in the
doorway where I could watch the entrance to the building.

“Getting back to the day she left here,” I said, “how did she leave? By taxi?”

“Car.”

“Green Volkswagen?”

“Naw, an old Buick, I think it was. She drove away with—with a guy.”

“Guy you know?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He pawed among some papers on his desk, found a paperclip, straightened it out carefully. His face was green in the lamplight, like ancient bronze. I felt like an archaeologist digging among the ruins of the recent past.

“How much reward money, would you say?”

“I can’t say, Mr. Girston. It ought to be substantial, if you give substantial help.”

“Okay,” he said. “I know him. We do—we did a little business from time to time. He was in the real-estate business—guy by the name of Merriman. I saw on TV where he got himself killed.”

“The girl drove away with Ben Merriman in November?”

“That’s correct.”

“Were they friends?”

“I guess you’d say so. He was the one that brought her here in the first place.”

“When was that?”

“Some time around the early part of November. He said she was Mrs. Smith’s daughter, said it was okay with her mother to let her use the apartment. It sounded all right to me.” Which meant that it hadn’t. “He was the one rented it to Mrs. Smith in the first place, and her lease wasn’t due to run out till the end of the year.”

“How long did the girl stay in the apartment?”

“A week, maybe a little longer. She was as still as a mouse up there. I don’t think she ever went out.”

“Did Merriman see her in the course of the week?”

“Just about every day he was in and out.”

“Were they having an affair?”

“I couldn’t answer that, mister.” His mouth moved like a chewing camel’s. He said out of the side of it, with sour primness: “We’re not responsible for what the tenants do in the privacy of their own dwellings.”

“Do you think they were having an affair? That information may be valuable.”

“Maybe they were. He spent some awful late nights up there with her. He used to bring in groceries, too. And then they went off together, that signifies.”

“Went off to see her mother in Sacramento, you said.”

“That’s what
they
said.”

“Which of them said it—the girl or Merriman?”

“Merriman, I think it was. Yeah, it was him said it.”

“Did either of them say what she was going to do after that?”

“Not to me, they didn’t.”

“Did she seem to be looking forward to seeing her mother?”

“I doubt she was looking forward to anything much. She acted like a pretty sad little girl.”

“What about her mother? You knew her mother, of course?”

“Sure. She was a tenant here for six or eight months, off and on. Mrs. Smith is a different kettle of fish from her daughter.”

“In what way?”

“She’s a lively customer. These artists and people like that can be pretty wild sometimes.”

“She’s an artist?”

“So she said. She rented the apartment to have a quiet place where she could paint. I never saw her doing any painting, though. In fact I never saw much of her at all. Ben Merriman handled the whole deal. Sometimes a month would go by and I wouldn’t see her. She only stayed here off and on, and she came and went very quietly.”

“All by herself?”

“She came and went by herself.”

“No visitors?”

“I guess she had visitors. I don’t keep watch on their goings and comings, but I know what you’re getting at. You want to know if she was using the apartment to be with a man.” His prim mouth dirtied the phrase.

“Was she?”

“I wouldn’t say yes. I wouldn’t say no.”

“Did you ever see a man with her?”

“Not so’s I could swear to it. There’s people in and out of here at all hours of the day and night. It isn’t part of my job to spy on the tenants.”

“Could the man have been Ben Merriman?”

“Could have been at that.” He looked into a shadowed corner. His gaze swung around to me. “What happened to Ben, mister? It said on TV that he was clubbed to death.”

Before I could answer him, the front door opened. It wasn’t Stanley. It was a young woman in a dark hat and business suit. She closed the door, leaning wearily on the doorknob for a moment, then saw me and went upstairs. Her quick steps climbed the slanting ceiling of Girston’s office.

“Who did it to Ben Merriman?” he said.

“I was going to ask you the same question. You knew him better than I did.”

“You couldn’t say we were friends. We never visited in each other’s homes. I never thought much of his habits.”

“Such as?”

“Gambling and drinking and running around with women. I don’t throw my money away on things like that, and I try and keep away from people who do. I knew Ben in line of business, is all.”

“What kind of a businessman was he?”

“Ben was a sharpie—a little too sharp for his own good. He had his little tricks, a lot of them do. Couple-three years ago, when there was an apartment shortage, he had a little habit of
squeezing cash bonuses out of prospective tenants. Then he had another little habit of using apartments as a roosting place for house prospects. He’d lease an apartment to them, then undertake to break the lease if they’d buy a house from him.”

“Did he do that with Mrs. Smith?”

“No. She didn’t break her lease. She just let it run out at the end of the year.”

“I understand she left her furniture.”

“Yep, just left it sitting there. Merriman said she didn’t want it back. It didn’t fit in with his plans for her new house.”

“When did he tell you this?”

“Round about the beginning of December. He called up and told me Mrs. Smith couldn’t be bothered moving her furniture, I could rent the apartment furnished if I wanted. I didn’t know until then that she wasn’t planning to renew her lease.”

“Did you see Mrs. Smith after her daughter left here?”

“I don’t think so. But she might of used the apartment without me knowing. It was here for her to use, all paid up until the end of the year.”

I was puzzled. Apparently Mrs. Wycherly had moved into the Champion Hotel at a time when she had a perfectly good apartment in the San Mateo area, as well as the house being sold in Atherton.

“Why did she leave here? Do you know, Mr. Girston?”

“You mean Mrs. Smith? The mother?”

“Yes. Was there any trouble before she left?”

“Now that you mention it, she did have a little trouble with the fellow next door. But that was way last spring.”

“What month?”

He wrinkled his forehead and smoothed it with his fingers. “March, I think. March or April. It’s one of the few times I ever talked to her, to do more than pass the time of day. She came storming down here, claiming that Mr. Quillan was spying on her. Older women get that idea sometimes, ‘specially when they’re man-crazy. She wanted me to evict him. I told
her I couldn’t do that. Told her Mr. Quillan had no more interest in her than the flies on the wall. Luckily she got over the idea.”

“How do you know?”

“She said so. She said in a day or so that she was mistaken about it. I should forget it. I said I already did. Mr. Quillan wouldn’t be interested in her. He has plenty of girls of his own.”

“What kind of a tenant is he?”

“He doesn’t cause any trouble. He used to play his records loud at night but I gave him a quiet talking-to and he got over that. He’s a fine young man, has a business of his own.”

So had Capone.

“Is Quillan home now?”

“I didn’t see him come in yet.”

I went upstairs to Quillan’s apartment. Jessie Drake answered the door, and smiled when she saw me:

“Did you make up your mind to take it?”

“I haven’t decided. I want to talk to Stanley first.”

“Isn’t he at the shop?”

“No, I just drove past there. May I come in and wait for him?”

“I wouldn’t want him to find you here.” She rubbed her shoulder through her sweater. “He didn’t like it the last time I let a man in.”

“You mean Ben Merriman.”

“Yeah.” She went through an exaggerated double-take, widening her eyes and mouth, then narrowing them suspiciously. “How do you know about it? Did Stanley tell you?”

“Stanley wouldn’t tell me the time of day.”

“Are you a cop?”

“A private one. Don’t get excited, Jessie. I’m not after you. Ben Merriman showed you some money yesterday.”

“I
knew
it was hot,” she whispered. “I didn’t touch it. I didn’t touch him
or
the money.”

“I wouldn’t care if you rolled in it like catnip. I’m interested in where it came from.” And where it went.

“Me, too. Naturally. He came busting in here with a jag on and wanted to take me to Mexico. Just like that. We could live like kings in Mexico, he said. I asked him what on, just to keep the conversation going, you might say. And he unfurled his roll. It was big enough to choke a rhinoceros, so big he had to carry it in a satchel. Hundreds and hundreds of hundred-dollar bills.” Her eyes were like glass.

“What kind of a satchel?”

“Little black leather case with his initials. He said he just got back from Sacramento. He made a deal with some woman—nobody I knew. He sold a house for her, he said, and he said she liked him so well she gave him most of the cash. Gave
him
the cash, he said, and kept the commission for herself. Which didn’t make sense to me. People don’t
give
money away, not in my experience which has been varied. They grind it out of you, like coffee. So I knew the money was hot. Anyway, you don’t want to go and live in Mexico the rest of your life unless you’re hot.”

“He intended to stay there for the rest of his life?”

“So he said. He was high, though. I didn’t put too much stock in what he said. I never have.”

“Did he ever ask you to elope before?”

“Not elope, I mean technically not elope. Sure, he’s been after me. He made a heavy pass at the New Year’s party, right in his own house. He suggested we ought to take off our clothes and dance around in our bones. I wasn’t interested, but he’s a hard man to discourage. Was.”

“How long have you known the Merrimans?”

“Sally I’ve known for years. I hardly knew Ben at all, I only met him three or four times in my life. But he was a fast worker, or so he liked to think. I have that effect on certain types. That’s probably why I didn’t see much of Sally after she married him.”

“What did she do before she married him?”

“She was an actress, like me. I met her when we were both trying out for the chorus line at the old Xanadu. I got the job, she didn’t. They told her she was too old. She had it rough for a while, and I helped her out. She paid me back when she got a job with Ben Merriman. Then he married her.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I don’t know exactly. Four-five years. For a long time I was out of touch with Sally. I was over in Nevada for a year. Or was it two years?”

The telephone rang in the room behind her. She jumped as if it had sounded an alarm, and left me standing in the doorway.

“Hello, Stanley,” she said into the receiver.

There was a lengthy silence while she listened and I listened to her listening. Her head turned gradually towards me. Her heavily shadowed eyes reminded me of a grease-monkey.

“Will do,” she whispered into the phone. “I get the message, darling.”

She hung up, carefully, as if the instrument was fragile and she was very clumsy.

“You’ve got to excuse me,” she said. “I have to do some things for Stanley.”

“What things?”

“I don’t have to tell you, and I’m not going to.”

“Where is Stanley?”

“He didn’t say. Honest,” she added in a dishonest voice.

I didn’t try to argue with the girl. I went downstairs. Girston was standing in his doorway. He looked at me like a lost soul whom I was cheating out of his hope of heaven. He lunged for me as I went by, digging his fingers into my arm and breathing into my face:

“What about the reward money?”

“If your information leads to the girl’s recovery, I’ll recommend you for a reward.”

“How much?”

“That will be up to my principal.”

“Couldn’t I get a percentage of it now? Just a small percentage?”

I gave him twenty dollars as you throw a dog a bone, and went outside. The sky above the rooftops was streaked green and yellow like an old bruise. Night was gathering in the corners of the buildings. Most of the cars in the road had their lights on.

I joined the traffic stream. From her second-floor window, Jessie watched me drive away. I turned off Camino at the first corner, U-turned and parked a hundred feet up the side street, ready to go north or south. The street was shadowed by broad-leaved trees whose name I didn’t know, and there were children playing in the twilight.

I walked back to the corner, where I could watch the entrance to the Conquistador. Two cigarettes later, a green cab with a pulsating light on the roof honked at the curb in front of it. Jessie came out wearing a coat. She had a suitcase in either hand, a brown one and a white one. The driver scrambled out to take them from her. He slammed the door on her and drove on north.

His pulsating light was easy to follow, even in the evening rush. He went through Burlingame and turned right on Broadway. When he crossed the overpass at Bayshore, where Phoebe had stood in the rain above the river of traffic, I was close behind him. The lights of International Airport silhouetted Jessie’s head through his rear window.

Circling the parking lot, the taxi deposited her and her suitcases on the sidewalk in front of the main terminal. I found a green curb, and followed her into the building.

She took an elevator up to the main floor and lost me for a while. I picked her up about ten long minutes later, coming out of the ladies’ room. She passed within five feet of me in the crowd. She had fresh lipstick on, a bemused glitter in her eyes. She didn’t see me. She didn’t seem to see anyone.