Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 (19 page)

We were at the door, now.

“I’ll have to think about that. We have a son, after all, and I do love my husband very much. Bob has his flaws, his problems, but I never thought he was . . . stepping out on me. I never imagined—”

I said, “You don’t have to go on.”

Harriet Manley swallowed, her big blue eyes hooded. “Terrible . . . terrible.”

“Yes.”

“What happened to that poor girl, I mean.”

“Right.”

“She was . . . very pretty, wasn’t she?”

“Elizabeth Short? Yes. But if you don’t mind my saying so, not compared to you. Not nearly as beautiful.”

She managed a slight smile. “You’re kind, Mr. Heller.”

“Hardly. It’s the truth. Your husband’s a damn fool.”

“I know . . . I know. But I still love him, anyway.”

On the way down the cobblestone walk, “Detective” Fowley said, “Jesus Christ, she’s gonna forgive the bastard! What a woman. . . . Where do I go to find a dame like that?”

I glanced back—it was after dark now, and the beautiful mother of Robert Manley’s son was watching us go, haloed in the doorway of the precious little bungalow on Mountain View Avenue. Red Manley had everything any man could ever hope for, and—whether a murderer or not—had risked it all for a piece of tail.

Then she disappeared, and I could hear the muffled sound of crying—Robert, Jr.’s. I had a hunch he wouldn’t be crying alone.

With Manley due back in town around ten tonight, we took time to grab burgers at a greasy spoon on Colorado Boulevard.

“Well, even if Red Manley isn’t our murderer,” Fowley said, dragging a french fry through a river of ketchup, “he’s how Elizabeth Short got from San Diego to L.A.”

“
Six days
before her body was found,” I reminded the reporter, across from him in a booth.

“Yeah,” he said, chewing the fry, “but once we know where Bob dropped her off, we’ll know where to pick up her trail. And, anyway, who’s to say his alibis are gonna hold up? Maybe the little woman’s covering for him, and after she has time to stew over hubby straying, she’ll change her story.”

I nibbled at my cheeseburger. “If Red and his boss were in San Francisco when the coroner says Elizabeth Short was killed, then Manley’s biggest problem is going to be holding his marriage together.”

Fowley shook his head. “I can’t wait to see this sap. I’d kill the Pope in the May Company window for a night with that wife of his.”

“Not if I got my hands on the wop, first,” I said.

The Eagle Rock district was high on the foothills between Glendale and Pasadena. Manley’s boss, Mr. Palmer, lived on Mount Royal Drive, another quiet, if more exclusive residential street, in another Spanish-Colonial number, only this was no bungalow. The glow of a streetlamp mingled with the ivory wash of moonlight to illuminate the sprawl of red-tile-roofed, off-white
stucco, a patio to one side, a two-car garage under the main floor, the rest of the house spilling up an elaborately landscaped slope with palm trees, century plants, and cacti. Lights were on in the place, a few anyway.

The night was chilly, almost cold. We left the ’47 Ford at the curb, across the street and down a ways, and Fowley peeked in the garage windows while I climbed the curving cobblestone path to the front door.

A heavyset Mexican maid in a pale green uniform answered my knock. I asked her if Mr. Palmer was home, and she said Mr. Palmer was not, but that Mrs. Palmer was. I said my business was with Mr. Palmer, excused myself, and walked back down the path.

“Only car in the garage is Manley’s,” Fowley reported. “Same license number he gave at the motel—a light tan Studebaker, prewar model.”

“Palmer isn’t home yet. His wife is, but I ducked her.”

“Okay, then—we wait.”

We waited, sitting in the Ford with the windows down while Fowley smoked one Camel after another. After a while, I got the old urge and smoked a couple, myself—I think it was right after Fowley said he was going to advise Richardson to call the
Herald-American
, Hearst’s Chicago paper, and get a crew out there sniffing around after the Short girl.

“Maybe we oughta send you, Heller,” Fowley said.

“What, and interrupt my honeymoon?”

Now and then headlights swept across us, as the occasional car made its way up quiet Mount Royal Drive—little or no through traffic, just neighborhood residents. Just after ten, a pair of powerful highbeams blinded us, as a big automobile swung into the driveway, the headlights flooding the red garage door.

We got out just as the driver—a tall, horse-faced man in a suit but no hat, revealing a balding dome—climbed out of the Lincoln Continental, a dark blue vehicle that blended into the night.

“Freeze!” Fowley called out, flashing the deputy sheriff’s badge.

Fowley gave the driver just enough time to glimpse the badge
before he straight-armed the guy in the back, shoving him against the garage door, barking at him to assume the position.

On the rider’s side, Robert “Red” Manley was getting out onto the cement driveway, or rather was sneaking out, trying to slip away as Fowley was occupied with the man I figured was Palmer, Manley’s boss.

Manley—eyes wide and wild, mouth open—was maybe six foot, wearing a snappy brown sportjacket and tan slacks. He had the build of a defensive end, and was taking off like one, too, dashing across the lawn, tie flapping, weaving around exotic plants.

He hadn’t seen me; but I, of course, had seen him.

I cut around a cactus and threw myself at him, bringing him down in a hard tackle, and we both rolled down the slope of the lawn, dropping off the curb into the street. I hit the cement pretty hard, scraping the skin along my right hand, and yelped in pain, letting loose of him reflexively, which allowed him to scramble up and out of my grasp, and then he was running down the street, arms churning, like a Zulu trying to outrun another Zulu’s spear.

I didn’t have a spear and I didn’t have my nine-millimeter, either.

But I didn’t feel like chasing the fucker, so I just took off my shoe and took aim and hurled it.

The heel of the Florsheim caught the heel of the Manley household in the back of the head; the sound, in the quiet night, was like the popping of a champagne cork. It knocked him off balance, and he yiped like a dog getting its tail stepped on, as he tripped over his own feet, tumbling to a stop against a curb.

I walked over and collected my shoe, put it on, and then I walked over and collected Robert Manley.

“First you trip over your dick, Bob,” I said, “and now you trip over your own feet.”

As I hauled him by the arm to those feet, he blurted, “I know what this is about!”

“Swell,” I said, and patted him down for a weapon. Clean.

He put his hands up without being asked. His hair was a tousle of red curls, his face pale except where it was shadowed from
not having shaved since morning. “Listen, I knew Beth Short.” His voice was youthful, breathy. “I turned sick inside when I read the paper in San Francisco, this morning.”

“You just hadn’t got around to calling the cops about what you knew.”

“Are you kidding? Think of the publicity! I got a beautiful wife and four-month-old son! What would
you
have done?”

“Kept my pecker in my pants,” I said, and yanked him back toward the house.

Manley’s boss professed to know nothing about Red’s connection to the already notorious “Werewolf” slaying, and generously—if nervously—turned over his kitchen for the questioning of his employee. I got a glimpse into the living room of the Spanish-appointed home, through a dining room archway, where Manley’s balding boss was hurriedly explaining the situation to his wife, a pleasant if distressed-looking fortyish brunette in a house robe, then herding her off, away from the “police” who had taken Robert Manley into their custody.

Like the one in Manley’s home, the Palmer kitchen was streamlined and white and modern—but about three times the size, and touched with two tones of green, not blue. We sat at a green-and-white chrome-and-steel dinette, one of us on either side of Manley, who we allowed to smoke. He had taken off his brown sportjacket, slinging it over the back of his chair, and sat in his shirtsleeves, suspenders, and a green-and-brown tie that, oddly, seemed perfectly coordinated with the kitchen around us.

“I’m just sick to my stomach,” he said, and he did look pale enough to puke. “My poor wife. What have I done to her? Jesus, my wife.”

Again, Fowley took notes and I took the lead, where the questioning was concerned.

“Where and when did you meet Elizabeth Short?”

“It was a late afternoon in December—couple weeks before Christmas. She was just this pretty black-haired dish, standing on the corner near the Western Airlines office. Just standing there,
not crossing with the light or anything, kind of . . . distracted. I went around the block, and she was still there, so I pulled over and offered her a lift. She played hard to get awhile, and I told her I was in town on business, could use a little help getting to know my way around San Diego, and . . . finally she let me give her a ride home.”

“Home.”

He nodded, breathing smoke out his nostrils. “To Pacific Beach, those people she was staying with, the Frenches. We went out a couple times—nothing happened. Kissed her a few times.”

“Did she know you were married?”

“Yeah. But I told her my wife and me were at a sort of crossroads, that it didn’t look like it was gonna work out. And, anyway, I thought at first Beth was married, too, ’cause she wore what looked like a wedding band. But then later she said her husband, this Matt she talked about all the time, was killed in the war. Officer in the Army Air Corps. I think she liked that I had been in the Air Corps, too.”

“You didn’t tell her you were discharged on a Section Eight.”

He winced, flicked ash into a green Bakelite tray. “You
know
that? How do you know that?. . . . Anyway, it was an honorable discharge. Lot of guys got out on a Section Eight.”

“I know. Me, too.”

That perked him up; I’d made myself a little more likable. “You, too? You’re a vet?”

“Yeah. Marines. I understand you were in the Army Air Corps band.”

“Yeah, yeah, I was. Loved it—I mean, I couldn’t fit in with the Army ways, you know? All that discipline, regimentation.”

“You’re a free spirit.”

“Well, I’m a musician. Sax man.”

“Still?”

“Weekends and such. It’s pretty hard to do as a profession, music—you’ve got to have something special. I’m good, but . . . not special, not really.”

“What were you doin’, Red, running around on that pretty little wife of yours?”

“How do you know she’s pretty? She’s pretty, all right, but . . . how do you know?”

“We spoke with her.”

He hung his head, shook it. “Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus.” Now he looked up. “Is she all right?”

“She didn’t break down on us or anything.”

“No . . . no, she wouldn’t.”

“But, Red—do you figure she’s ‘all right’ with her husband chippying on her?”

He sighed smoke, gestured with the cigarette. “Look . . . I don’t expect you to understand, but . . . I was just trying to give myself a little test.”

“A test?”

“Yeah—see if I could resist a good-looking dame like Beth Short. See if I still loved my wife.”

“How did you do?”

He twitched a grimace. “I said you wouldn’t understand. We just had a baby. You married?”

“Yes.”

“Any kids?”

“One on the way.”

“You’ll see, you’ll see. Nobody talks about it—nobody ever talks about it . . . your wife won’t want to have relations, you know, after she has the baby. Not for a while.”

“It’s called recuperation, Red. Giving birth to a kid is no picnic.”

“I know, I know . . . and then . . . when your wife does want to have . . . relations again . . . you may find you don’t feel the same.”

“The same?”

“She just didn’t seem . . . like the same person. Harriet was a real sexy baby, when we dated. But now she’s a . . . she’s a
mom
. . . . A kid came out of her, down there. And the baby, crying all the time, up all night, baby made me . . . nervous. I got nervous trouble anyway, you know—that’s why I got Sectioned Eight. Don’t think I don’t feel guilty about it. You think I don’t feel like a rat?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, I do. I talked to doctors over at the veterans hospital, a couple times, and they gave me some pills, for my nerves. I told them that putting my . . . you know, putting it into my wife, after a baby came out of her, made me feel queasy, and they—Aw, shit. I sound like a fucking creep, don’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, fuck you, Charley. You’ll see. There’s a readjustment period, for a guy, after his wife gives birth. And Beth Short . . .” He shrugged, drew on the cigarette. “. . . she was just part of my readjustment.”

“She was the test you gave yourself.”

“Yeah. And I didn’t have relations with her, understand? Never! I took her out for dancing and drinks and a few meals, and that was it. Usually this place called the Hacienda Club. This was during about a week when I was in San Diego, seeing my accounts. I’m a hardware salesman—did I tell you that?”

“Palmer’s your boss. You deal in pipe.”

He studied me, trying to find the sarcasm in that; he didn’t look hard enough.

“Anyway,” he said, “I was going back and forth about my marriage—mentally, I mean. Loving my little son, not attracted to my wife anymore. I told the doc at the veterans hospital I thought I was having a nervous breakdown, and he said I was doing fine and gave me some more pills. And also I couldn’t stop thinking about that girl.”

“Beth Short.”

“She was so damn pretty. So different from Harriet . . . Oh, Harriet’s pretty, real pretty, but Beth was sort of . . . I don’t know, exotic, with those spooky clear blue eyes and all that black hair and those black clothes and stockings and white flowers in her hair and all. Did you know she was called ‘the Black Dahlia’?”

“I heard that.”

“And Beth seemed so . . . worldly. So much older than her years. You know, she was in the movies, had all these big friends, like that famous director that was gonna give her a screen test.”