Darker Than Amber (10 page)

A small sign advised me to inquire at Howard Realty, three blocks east, for rental information. There were little hooks on the sign, on which HR hung a gray and white sign saying Apartment for Rent.
At Howard Realty, a sallow, spidery young woman with very thick glasses, a bright yellow blouse and bright pink shorts was minding the store.
"Eight Thousand," she said, "is as nice as anything you can find up or down this whole beach. It shows what a real smart architect can do. But before we waste any time, or..."
"McGee."
"The minimum lease period is three months. We've got five empties right now, which you can believe me when I say that's unusual. And the summer rates right now on the cheapest are ninety-five a month without utilities, and that goes up to a hundred and thirty-five on the cheapest from November first to May first. Still curious?"
"So far."
"No kids and no pets. There'd be two of you?"
"Just me."
She took me over to an attractive wall panel, about eight feet long and three feet wide, in effect a map of Eight Thousand Cove Lane, with the road, drives, fenced patios shown. Pieces of plywood had been cut to the shapes of the ten structures and affixed to the panel and painted white. Keys hung from hooks in the plywood, under the number for each apartment. Five red tags were hung with five of the forty keys.
"In each unit, is a studio apartment with Bahama beds. C is the small one-bedroom, like this one. B is the larger one-bedroom. A is the two-bedroom job. Heat pumps, wall ovens, tubs and showers, wall-to-wall carpeting, fiberglass draperies, private patios with redwood lawn furniture, completely furnished. We have, let me see, one A, two B's and two D's. So I'm wasting my time if I quote a C rate. The D's are ninety-five until November first, and the B's are a hundred and sixty two fifty. Two twenty during the season. Being alone you wouldn't want that A, I guess. Two months in advance."
"How about maid service?"
"That's something you'd have to arrange yourself. We'd help you as much as we can, of course."
"I'd like to go take a look at one of the B units."
"If... you could come back about four o'clock. I'll be all alone here until"
"I'm not planning to steal the lamps or the silver or the TV set," I said, taking my wallet out.
"I know that, Mr. McGee. It's just that"
I gave her four fifty-dollar bills. "Why don't you just hang onto this for a little while, and if it's as good as it sounds, I'll be back and give you the rest of the two months in advance. Okay?"
Eyes distorted to hugeness by the heavy lenses inspected me, and she nodded and said, "Here. Hang onto the money yourself. I think the B's in the odd-numbered units are more attractive somehow than in the even ones. Two B and Five B. Here's the key to Five, Mr. McGee." She lifted it off the hook and handed it to me. "Hurry back," she said, smiling.
I bent over the model again and said, "Is this the same layout?"
"Yes. Just like this." I stared, trying to think of something to ask, demanding that the fates send me a phone call. After a few moments, just when I would have had to turn and go, they relented and sent me a mailman. He trudged in and said, "Registered letter, Bitsy."
As she went over to sign for it, I straightened up, plucked the Seven B key off the board and hung the Five B key in its place and, as I passed them on my way to the door I said, "Thanks. Be back in a little while."
I turned into the shell drive. I parked by the fence gate to Seven B. I knew that any slightest furtiveness could be dangerous, and so I walked to the front door, put the key in the lock, opened the door, and decided it would be more natural to leave it a few inches ajar. I knew from the intensity of the heat in the small foyer that it was empty. It was indeed a most attractive place. And hot. Within minutes sweat was trickling into my eyes. It took not more than three or four minutes to make certain it had been picked clean. No furs, no jewelry except costume jewelry. Plenty of underthings and resort wear and some cocktail dresses. Dressing table and bathroom countertop and medicine cabinet stocked with enough stuff to start a drugstore with a cosmetics department. No luggage at all on the high shelf in the closet. But about forty pairs of shoes. No sign of any personal papers or records or photographs. Big high-fidelity combination with a stereo record player and a bin stuffed full of Vangie's kind of music. It was very neat and clean, the bed made fresh, turned down, clean towels on the towel bars. But there was the beginning of a little film of dust on the wooden surfaces.
From the kitchen window I could see that the carport was empty. I found specific evidence in the living room. I tilted an upholstered chair over and looked at the underside of it. The material covering the springs and webbing had been removed and stapled back on. The staples were shiny. And they rust quickly in the summer humidity.
Two choices: Griff had located the bundle she had squirreled away, or he had satisfied himself it wasn't in the apartment. Or, a third choice, somebody had made her very very anxious to explain exactly where she had hidden it. A woman named Bellemer had died, quite badly. Another woman named Tami Western had gone on a trip. Car and luggage gone. When the rent ran out, the management would pack the rest of her stuff and store it, and when the storage charges were up to the estimated value, it would be sold off for the storage. No new problem when a girl's money stops. They pack the good stuff and leave.
Another few minutes and I would look as if I'd been standing in a shower with my clothes on. Just as I reached the foyer the door was pushed open. He was a broad one. Thirty, maybe. Orange swim trunks the size of a jock strap. Legs like a fullback. Flyboy sun glasses. White towel hanging around his neck. Black curly hair on top of a broad hard-looking head, and no evident hair anywhere else except some pale fuzz against deep tan from the knees down. "There was too much belly, but it was such a deep brown he was managing a precarious hold on the beach-boy image. He had a shovel jaw and a curiously prim little mouth.
"What the hell is going on?"
"That's a good question, friend. You'd think the way this operation looks they'd be smart enough to try to rent one of these until they got the last tenant's crud out of it. Let me out of this sweat box, please."
He backed away and I pulled the door shut, tried it to be certain it had locked.
"You lost me someplace on this rental play, buds. There is a chick has it and she's on a trip."
I frowned at the key, showed it to him. "Seven B. The girl in the Howard office gave it to me. First, I tried to open Five B with it. I thought that was what she said. Then I looked at the tag and tried this one."
"So it's just the key that's wrong. I saw the car. The door is open. So somebody could be cleaning it to the walls. They get some action like that around here."
A sun-drowsy girl-voice drifted over the wall from the adjoining court. "Who you talkin' to, Griff? Whozat, baby?"
"Just a guy looking, buds. They screwed up and give him the key to Tami's place, I told him she's away only. Mack showed yet?"
"No, and he din even call. How about that?"
"Well," I said, "thanks for straightening me out. Would you... recommend it as a place to live?"
When he shrugged those shoulders he was hoisting considerable poundage of meat. "Depends on what the play is. You got it private. Nobody bothers anybody. No kids mousing around. You got the big beach a quarter mile south, and even slow like now there's action if you want to check it out. For a guy single, you can't whip it."
"You work around here?"
"See you here and there, buds," he said and trudged toward the gate to the next patio where the girl-voice had come from. He wiped his face on the towel and went in and pulled the gate shut without a backward glance. I drove back to the office.
"They're really nice, aren't they?" said Bitsy. "Furnished just a little more completely than I expected," I said and held the key up so she could read the tag.
"But... but... oli, my God, did you walk in on somebody? Who's in that one?: She ran a thumbnail down a cardex list. "Miss Western. But I told you Five B!"
"That's where I went. The key wouldn't open the door. I looked at the tag and saw it was for Seven B, so I thought you made a mistake about which place was empty. Don't worry. She wasn't there. A fellow named Griff, who seems to live in Seven C, saw my car and the open door and he straightened me out."
"She does go away quite often on trips." She spoke over her shoulder as she headed to the wall panel. She took the key from the Seven B hook and said, "This is the one I meant to give you. Darn it! It must be that maybe when Fred was sweeping up he knocked them off with the broom handle or something and put them back wrong." She stood there checking the other tags. "I guess the rest are okay. Do you want to look at Five B now?"
"I guess not. It's the same layout as Miss Western's?"
"The color scheme will be different, of course. "Has she lived there long?"
She looked at the card again. "Almost two years."
"Well, she certainly keeps it clean and tidy."
"You were asking about maid service. I see here that she has a maid who comes in. We have to keep a record, so we'll know who's been given permission to go into the units. Are you interested, Mr. McGee?"
"Very much. There's just one other place I wanted to check, mostly because I promised I would, but I think I'll settle for Five B."
"Then you ought to grab it now. This time of year they don't stay empty long."
"How long would fifty hold it, not returnable?"
"Let's say... since this is Thursday, until Saturday noon? Then if you take it, it applies to the rent. You would owe... an additional two eighty-four seventy five, with the tax, and forty dollars deposit for the utilities. We handle getting them hooked up in your name. But you take care of the phone yourself."
"Can you give me the maid's name?"
"Of course. Here. I'll write the name and address on the back of your receipt."
"Fine."
"She's a colored girl. She works for some of our other people too." I started the car and put the air-conditioning on high, both vents aimed at my face, before I drove away, I had the name of the maid. Mrs. Noreen Walker, 7930 Fifth Street, Arlentown. 881-6810. I tucked the slip in my pocket, and from a drugstore in the corner shopping plaza I dialed the number.
Noreen, she be back along six o'clock from the bus, she workin' today."
So I used my afternoon time in sorting out the bars and cocktail lounges. You can make a guess from the way they are on the outside, from the names they put on them, but can't be certain. You have to go in. You don't have to k. Certainly not in the ones you can check off at first glance. You just go look up an imaginary name in their book and walk back out. I had no interest in the ones, the ones with the neighborhood flavor and neighborhood trade, cute signs about credit, bartender bejolly uncle, general conversations including everyone in the bar, and generally a couple of massive women named or Sade or Pearl bulging over the edges of their bar drinking draft beer and honking their social-hour drinks.
five-thirty I had found four probables. They were all two miles of Cove Lane. They all had certain things in common. Carefully muted g, spotless glassware, premium brands in the bottle uniform jackets on the bartenders, carpeting, no television cocktail piano, dim and intimate banquette rooms flavor of profitable professional operation. And they had another factor I was looking for. You feel it in the back neck. A sense of being appraised, added up. Plymouth over ice. At The Ember Room, the shot was slightly stingy, and high. At The Annex the fee was a dollar. The gin was poured free hand into a squat thick-based tumbler, a knock better than two ounces, I estimated. The cheese spread in a brown pot was sharp and good. Couples sat in shadowy corners, heads close together, and they were served by cocktail waitresses in white leotards and high heeled white sandals. Two stools away two florid men in business suits were arguing intensely about one of the provisions of a Swiss corporate setup. A slender girl with a very deep tan and a cap of curls white as snow, and an evening gown with only a double thickness of gray netting over breasts as brown as her arms, noodled a little golden piano on a raised dais, under a small rose-colored spot in a corner beyond the bar, making mouths to match the music. The bartender at my end had the happy face of a young well-fed weasel. I left him a dollar bonus for the single drink to keep my image green.
The bar was attached to one of the glossier motels. I went through into the motel and made some casual conversation with a desk man with a faint smell of authority about him. I got around to my key questions, I learned that the management operated the dining room and the room-service liquor, but 'The Annex ', was on consignment.
Suspicion confirmed. The Annex would have a few sidelines going for it. The casual customer gets a heavy knock, good service in elegant surroundings! The aim would be to make just the costs on that business. The profit would come out of the live ones live, fat and unwary. Must keep careful watch, sort them out, steer them into whatever matches their vulnerability. Broads or beach boys, dice or cards, all staged elsewhere. It was nicely named. This was The Annex. The action was in other rooms, other places.
The shuffle is available everywhere, from Vegas to Chicago, to Cleveland. Sometimes it's a little smoother than in other places. Electronic technology has improved the efficiency.
I had to find out if Noreen Walker could fill in any blanks. Arlentown was the dusky suburb of Broward Beach, west of the city. The Street improved as I neared her block. The little frame rental cottages were more recently painted, the fences in repair, the yards free of old auto parts.
I parked in front of her place in the evening slant of sunshine, aware of eyes watching me from up and down the block. I got out and stood at the white gate, knowing there would be no need to push it open and walk to the porch. A heavy woman, very dark of skin, wearing a cotton print, plodded out onto the porch and said, "You about the phone again?"
"I want to talk to Noreen."
"She lives here. She my middle daughter. What about?"
"About some work out at the beach."
"Sure then," she said. "Just come home. Changing her clothes." She went back in.
I went back to the car and sat behind the wheel, leaned and swung the passenger door open. Through the open door, in a few moments, I saw her come down the porch steps, push the gate open, come to the car, her head tilted in inquiry. She wore blue sandals, bermuda shorts, a pale blue knit sleeveless blouse with a turtleneck collar. She was a tall slender young woman, very long-legged and short-waisted. She was lighter than her mother, her skin the tone of an old penny. She had a slanted saucy Negroid face, the broad nostrils and heavy lips. Her eyes were set very wide, and were a pronounced almond shape, and very pretty. Her breasts poked sharply against the knit fabric.