Sleeping Beauty (22 page)

“The young woman was not kidnapped. I saw her.”

“Tonight?”

He waved his left hand loosely. “Yes, tonight.”

“Where did you see her?”

“In a motel.”

“With Harold?”

He nodded his shaggy head. “She was obviously there of her own free will.”

“Describe her, Doctor.”

“She’s a nice-looking brunette, rather tall, about five foot six, age about thirty.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Not really. She stayed very much in the background.”

“Then how do you know she was there of her own free will?”

“By the way she acted—the relationship between them. It was a warm relationship. She wasn’t concerned about herself; she was very much concerned about Harold.”

“Is Harold badly wounded?”

His head sank like a buffalo’s between his shoulders. “You’re putting me in an untenable position, Mr. Archer. You won’t be satisfied until I tell you all about Harold and lead you to where he is. But that I refuse to do. My primary duty is to my patients.”

“If Harold is badly hurt, you’re doing him no favor.”

His eyes grew smaller and darker. “I’m a professional man. You have no right to talk to me in this way.”

“Then you do the talking, Doctor.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

We sat in stalemated silence. I looked at the framed diplomas on the wall behind him. He had been trained in good schools and hospitals, not so very many years ago. Judging by the dates on the diplomas, Brokaw wasn’t out of his thirties.

He pushed back his chair. “If you’ll excuse me, I haven’t had anything to eat all day.”

“Go ahead and eat,” I said without moving. “Don’t let the dead man spoil your dinner.”

“What dead man? There is no dead man. Harold’s wound is not serious.”

But Brokaw was upset. What I could see of his face had lost its color and turned sallow. I said:

“You have to report treatment of gunshot wounds to the police.”

“But not to you.”

“You think the police will give Harold a better break than I will? He could be shot on sight, and you know it.”

He shook his head. “That would be a tragedy, a real tragedy. I don’t believe he’s responsible for what happened.”

“Psychologically not responsible, or morally not responsible?”

“Either or both. I’d be willing to bet a good deal that Harold committed no serious crime.”

“You already are betting a good deal, Doctor. Whether or not the girl went with him willingly, there’s no question that he shot her father, and no question that he took the ransom money.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was there. I virtually saw it happen. You picked the wrong patient to bet your professional life on.”

“I don’t pick my patients; they pick me.”

His voice was defensive. He was losing his fine free self-assurance, and I was a little ashamed of what I was doing to him. But I had to get to Harold.

“You mentioned a dead man,” Brokaw said. “The girl’s father didn’t die, did he?”

“No, and he’s not expected to. But I pulled a body out of the sea this morning.” I told him about the man in the tweed suit.

Brokaw’s face went through another change. He looked badly shaken. “Are you telling me that the little man is dead?”

“You know him, Doctor?”

“Harold brought him here to my office yesterday. He wanted me to treat him.”

“What for?”

“The man was in pretty poor shape, both physically and mentally. He had burn scars on his body and face, and he looked as though he’d been through a major disaster at some time in his life. Emotionally, too, he showed indications of severe trauma. He was a dilapidated man, almost too frightened to talk. He seemed very dependent on Harold. He had the dependency and the lack of affect of a man who has spent much of his life in institutions.”

“What kind of institutions?”

Brokaw considered his answer. “Hospitals, possibly mental hospitals. I asked Harold if the man had been a patient, but Harold claimed not to know. He said that he had picked him up on the waterfront and brought him to me because he was in
poor shape. But their relationship, when I think of it, wasn’t a casual thing. I got the idea that Harold had a use for the man, and he wanted me to give him something to hold him together. I did give him some tranquilizers. But when I suggested that he should be hospitalized, the two of them walked out on me.” He spread his hands on the desk in front of him and looked at them with distaste. “I’m afraid I didn’t handle it too well.”

“The little man died of drowning. You couldn’t have warded that off.”

“He belonged in a hospital. I should have insisted on getting him into one then and there.”

Brokaw shook his head from side to side, and a loose lock of hair fell in his eyes. He was close to crying. It seemed to me that he allowed himself to feel too much, and that it interfered with his power to act. He spoke haltingly:

“Harold lied to me. He told me that he’d put the man in a hospital.”

“When did Harold tell you that, Doctor?”

He gave me a startled look which melted into guilty sorrow. “When I saw him tonight. He claimed that he had taken him back to the government hospital.”

“Which government hospital?”

“He didn’t say. He was lying, in any case, if what you tell me is true.”

“I’m not lying. I saw the two of them together last night. They had dinner on the Pacific Point wharf, near where the man was drowned. Early this morning, I pulled his body out of the water. Don’t you think Harold should be questioned about this?”

A further change occurred in the face behind the beard, a painful grimacing followed by a hardening. “Yes. I do.”

“Where did you see him tonight?”

He answered reluctantly. He had made a heavy emotional investment in Harold—the kind a man sometimes makes just before the market breaks—and it couldn’t be easily withdrawn. “He’s staying in a motel with the young woman.”

“I know that. Where is the motel?”

“Redondo Beach.”

“And what’s the name of it, Doctor?”

“The Myrtle Motel.”

“Will you come there with me?”

“What good could that possibly do?”

“The last man who walked in on Harold got shot in the head. I don’t want it to happen to me. But Harold would never shoot you.”

“What could I say to him? Tell him that I’d betrayed him?” His voice broke.

“You’re fond of Harold, aren’t you?”

He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Yes. I thought he had promise, in spite of everything. I was hoping to straighten him out, open a better life to him. But I didn’t have the skill or the time.”

“You can do something for him now. Help me take him peacefully.”

He was silent for a while, struggling with his feelings, then resolved the conflict in anger. “I will not. I’m a doctor, not a detective.”

I got up to leave. He followed me to the door of the waiting room.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Archer, I simply can’t face Harold under these circumstances. If there’s anything else I can do …” His voice trailed off.

“There is something. Will you see if you can trace the other man to one of the veterans’ hospitals? I believe his name is Nelson.”

He thought about it. “Yes, I will. I’ll be glad to.”

The Myrtle Motel was on old U.S. 101. Hillside apartment buildings clung to the slopes above it. The area below was garish with the lights of liquor stores and restaurants and gas stations.

The buildings of the motel were made of indestructible concrete block, as if in preparation for an obscure war. The green Falcon wasn’t among the cars in the parking spaces.

I parked under the neon “Vacancy” sign and went inside. A man who had been defeated in an obscure war of his own came out of the back and gave me a questioning look across the desk. His hair was thin, but massive sideburns hung like stirrups on either side of his face.

“Can I help you?”

“We may be able to help each other,” I said. “You wouldn’t have any way of knowing this, but you’ve got a wanted man in one of your rooms.”

He shied away in what seemed a practiced movement. His eyes never left my face. “I certainly didn’t know it. Are you a policeman?”

“A private detective.” I gave him my name and showed him my photostat. “His name is Harold Sherry.”

After a moment’s thought, he said, “We’ve got nobody of that name registered.”

“He’s probably using another name. He’s a man in his early thirties, dark-haired, dark-eyed, height about six feet, heavily built with very broad shoulders, probably walks with a limp.”

The key man shook his head. “I’ve never seen him, and I’ve been on the desk since noon. We’ve only got three or four people
in
the place. Business will probably pick up later,” he added hopefully.

The thought that Brokaw had lied to me rose like a touch of nausea behind my throat. I swallowed it down, and tried again:

“The woman may have registered. She’s a good-looking woman, aged about thirty, dark hair, dark eyes, height about five feet six, very good figure.”

A dim light appeared behind his eyes. “It may be the woman in Number 8. Mrs. Sebastian? She did say her husband was under the weather.”

“What kind of a car are they driving?”

“A little old green Falcon about five or six years old. I noticed it because she forgot to put down the license number. So I went out and filled it in on the card myself.”

“May I see it?”

He fumbled in a drawer and came up with the card for Number 8:

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Sebastian

408 Vistosa Street

Los Angeles, California

The address given was Tom Russo’s, but the handwriting didn’t look like Laurel’s to me. It was rather childish, round and large.

“The woman filled in this card?” I said to the key man.

“All except the license number.”

I made a note of the license number. “Describe the woman, will you?”

“Your description was pretty close, except that I wouldn’t call her very good-looking. And she’s just a little plumpish for my taste.” His hands shaped a lopsided hourglass in the air.

“Show me her room, will you?”

We went out together. There was no car in front of Number
8. But there was light in the room, leaking out around the edges of the closed blinds. I went back to the office, out of sight of the window, and the key man followed me.

“It looks to me as if they might of left,” he said.

“Do you want to check?”

“Not if there’s going to be any shooting.”

“Tell them you have to inspect the heater or something.”

He shook his head. “I’m not being paid for this.”

But he left me and moved reluctantly in the direction of Number 8. A minute later he came back.

“I don’t think there’s anybody in there.”

“Did you look?”

“No, but the key is on the outside of the door.”

We let ourselves into the room and found it empty. The double bed was unmade. There was some blood on the sheets, neither fresh nor old. Smoke still hung in the air. The place had the quality of a discarded life from which Harold and the woman had barely escaped.

I made a search of the room, with its closet and bathroom, and found nothing significant except for more blood on the bathroom tiles. I went back to the office with the key man and used the pay phone there to make a series of calls.

The first was to Captain Dolan in Pacific Point. I told him where I had found and lost Harold Sherry, and gave him the license number of the green car and a description of the young woman with Sherry.

“Who is she, Archer? Laurel Lennox—Laurel Russo?”

“No. It’s a different woman.”

“Then where is Laurel?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who is this other woman, anyway?”

“I don’t know, Captain,” I said, though I thought I did know.

I called Tom’s house in Westwood, hoping that Cousin Gloria would answer. But it was a man who came to the phone. He said that Tom wasn’t there, and hung up abruptly.

I called the drugstore. A male voice I didn’t recognize told me that Tom was taking the evening off, for a change. No, he had no idea where Tom was now, but he had seen him earlier. Tom had come by the drugstore to pick up some bandages.

“Bandages?” I said.

“That’s right. Tom said a friend of his needed them.”

“Did he mention the friend’s name?”

“I don’t think he did, no.”

I called Dr. Brokaw’s number, expecting to have to talk my way past his answering service. But he answered the phone himself, on the first ring. I told him what had happened.

“So they got clean away.” He didn’t try to conceal the relief in his voice.

“They got away, but not cleanly. We have the license number of their car now. They’ll be picked up.”

“The woman went with him, did she?”

“Evidently.”

“Then it’s pretty clear she isn’t his prisoner.”

“This isn’t the same woman,” I said. “I don’t know what he did with Laurel Russo.”

“Who is the woman with him?”

“I think her name is Gloria. You wouldn’t be likely to know her. Have you had any luck with the hospitals, Doctor?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. I’m not sure that luck is the word, though. The big hospital in West Los Angeles reports a patient missing—a Navy veteran named Nelson Bagley. He was taken out for dinner the night before last, and never came back.”

“Who took him out for dinner?”

“That isn’t clear. Do you want to follow up on this?”

“I intend to. It would help a good deal to have a doctor along, especially at night. These government hospitals can be pretty stuffy about giving out information.”

Brokaw didn’t answer immediately. “All right, I’ll meet you there.”

I parked in front of the hospital and went in rather reluctantly. I had been there before, and knew how dim and depressing the lobby was—a warning of what could happen to any man. Some men to whom it had happened were sitting around the big room. A few of them had friends or relatives with them.

Dr. Brokaw was at the desk talking to a woman who looked rather like a veteran herself, but more like an old sergeant than a private. She had that glazed look of limited command. “This is Miss Shell,” Brokaw said. “Miss Shell remembers checking out Nelson Bagley the night before last.”