The Ace of Spades - Dell Shannon (14 page)

"Still in the hotel?"

"Was when I left. I kind of wandered in after
the place woke up a little, you know, and around on that floor. About
nine o'clock, just when I was expecting Reade, the door opened and
out came the maid. It's the damndest thing," said Dwyer,
yawning, "I don't figure they teach you right— I don't know—
I took two years of French in high school, but they might as well
have been talking Chinese, for all I could get of it. Except
'c
abriolet
'— maybe
she was telling the maid to take a taxi, I don't know. Seemed to be
sending her on some errand, anyway, by all the gestures— and you
shoulda seen the bathrobe, Sergeant, or I guess that wouldn't hardly
be the name for it— "

"Negligee," suggested Hackett.

"Or even something fancier. Pink, and a lot of
lace. I guess the maid didn't like the idea of going, nervous about a
strange town and all, they seemed to be having quite a little
argument and the dame said an address over three-four times, finally
wrote it down for her."

"All this was with the door open, or were you
hiding in the bathroom?"

"Around the corner in the hall, sure, the door
was open— like I say I didn't get any of the talk but it looked to
me maybe the maid got cold feet at the last minute, you know, tried
to back out. Anyway, finally she went off, and by that time Reade was
there, he heard some of it too."

Dwyer yawned again and produced a slip of paper. "I
wrote down the address the dame said."

"O.K.," said Hackett, and Dwyer went off.
The address didn't say anything to Hackett: just an address, in
Hollywood somewhere, he thought. But as long as Mendoza wasso set on
looking at every little whipstitch . . . He called Driscoll's hotel
again; Driscoll was still out. Probably wandering around the County
Museum again, thought Hackett: or no, it wasn't open in the morning;
he was probably at a bar. Oh, well.

He looked at a map, went downstairs and got his car,
and drove up to Hollywood. It wasn't a classy street, and it wasn't
by any means a slum street: just an ordinary run-of-the-mill
district, and mostly lined— along this block— with middle-aged
apartment buildings. The name of the one he wanted, as near as Dwyer
had been able to transcribe it, was the Blon-shair Arms. There wasn't
one by that name, but there was, in the middle of the block, a
Blanchard Arms, and he deduced that was it. Apartment 406. He went
around the block hunting a parking space, finally found one, walked
back, went into the lobby and examined the rows of locked mailboxes
with their little hand-written name slots. And then he said aloud, "I
will be damned! I will be damned? What the hell was this?

The name on the box marked 406 was Miss Alison Weir.
Hackett straightened and stared at the blank wall opposite, feeling
as confused as he'd ever felt in his life. Alison Weir?— what did
she have to do with the elegant, expensive visiting Parisian at the
Bever1y-Hilton? Who also knew Mr. Andreas Skyros, employer of Stevan
Domokous? It didn't make any sense. But there it was: Madame
Bouvardier had known her address. Why?

Hackett debated looking up the address of her school
and going to ask her; but on second thought reflected that it might
really be said to be Mendoza's job.

He drove back downtown, and fidgeted around the
office waiting for Mendoza to come in. No, Sergeant Lake said, he
hadn't said where he was going. Nor when he might be expected back.
He wou1dn't be in the building because he'd taken his hat.

Where the hell had he gone? Hackett had a feeling he
ought to know about this right away: and yet, what could it mean? He
couldn't settle to any routine work; every time the phone rang he
jumped at it. But it was nearly noon before Mendoza called in.
Hackett, belatedly wondering how he'd take it, relayed the
extraordinary news. There was a moment's silence at the other end of
the wire, and then Mendoza said, "
¡Qué
demonio!— ¡aguarda un momento!
— I
wonder! By God, I wonder! Listen, Art— you there?"

"I'm still here."

"
Por Dios
,
it'd be an incredible coincidence— or would it?— coincidences do
happen, after all, and surprisingly often too. Listen, call down to
Traffic and get hold of a Sergeant Rhodes. I want to ask him some
questions. What time is it? . . . Look, bring him to lunch with us. I
haven't got the car, come and pick me up, will you?— I'm at the
corner of Daggett and San Pedro, the drugstore. O.K.?"

"Well, O.K.," said Hackett, and started to
ask what he was doing down there, but Mendoza had rung off.

So he called down to Traffic and got hold of Rhodes.
It had been some time since he'd had anything to do with Traffic, and
for a few minutes he thought they must be scraping the bottom of the
barrel all right these days, because Rhodes couldn't seem to take in
what he was saying. "L-lunch? L-Lieutenant Mendoza?" he
kept stuttering, and then apparently pulled himself together and
said, "Oh, yes, sir, yes, sir, of course, I'll meet you at the
front door in five minutes, sir— " And was off the phone
before Hackett could remind him he was just talking to another
sergeant.
 

ELEVEN

Mendoza had rather enjoyed himself that morning. In
all the places he'd be going, the Facel-Vega would earn him too much
attention, and he'd walked from headquarters down Main, out of the
Civic Center. It wasn't often he had occasion to be on foot down
here. Wasting time with a vengeance in a way, he thought as he turned
into Daggett Street; but he didn't feel guilty at all.

Daggett Street hadn't changed much in twenty-three
years, he'd noticed recently driving down it. Walking, he thought the
cracks in the sidewalk might be the same. Different faces, that was
all. He enjoyed the walk. Along here, you turned to look at anyone
speaking English; these couple of blocks were all business, and the
store-front signs said
Comestibles abarrotes,
Ropas de Mujeres, Zapatos, Vina y licares, and also, ¡Gangas! Venga
Ud. y mire!— ¡Venta por quiebra!
Always
bargains, always bankrupt sales .... And the old and the new cheek by
jowl: the old ones in rusty black, sometimes ankle-length: the young
ones in the same bright this-year's fashions in the shops uptown. In
the middle of the third block he looked across at the sagging old
frame apartment, wondered if Mrs. Gonzales still owned it; such very
good
torrijas
she had
made, and always one to spare for a hungry boy: she'd had a son in
medical college .... "
Los arios, se pasan
rapidamente
," he muttered ruefully to
himself.

Then it changed, the street: signs in English, and
presently an even frowsier look, something about the houses, the
business blocks, not only shabby, but furtive and stagnant. Rooming
houses, cheap hotels, bars, pool halls. And here was 341. Once a
single-family house, with the third storey for servants: now bearing
a sign, Rooms Cheap, but the fancy fretwork round every inch of eaves
and porch was good as new. He didn't think this place would be too
particular, either about strange males calling on the female
residents or about names; he smiled persuasively at the
dispirited-looking woman who opened the door and asked simply, "Which
room'll I find Amy?"

He was right; she never asked a question, but said,
"Second floor, left front," and went clumping away down the
hall without a back look. So he climbed up to the second floor,
knocked, and was rewarded with the sight of Amy in negligee— an
affair of pink chiffon, not too clean, showing glimpses of a dancer's
blue-mottled legs. The remains of last night's make-up were also
visible as well as a dark parting in the silver-flax hair, and the
burgundy-colored nail polish was chipped and ragged. She leaned on
the doorpost and said coldly, "Yeah?"

Mendoza gave her a hopeful leer and said, "I'm
looking for a couple of guys, and I been told they're friends of
yours. Angie and Denny. You know where I could find either of 'em?"

Her expression didn't change. "Sorry, mister,
never heard of 'em."

"Oh, yes, you did," said Mendoza. "Look,
I got a favor to do this Angie, see. You do him a good turn, tell me
where I can contact him."

"Is that so?" said Amy. "Well, that's
just too bad, because I still don't know. And I don't like your looks
much, mister." She stepped back inside the room and slammed the
door.

Mendoza sighed and went back downstairs to the
street. Nothing there, except the implied fact that the woman knew
what kind of business those two were in— whatever it was and
whoever they were— and that it was on the wrong side of the fence,
whether she was personally mixed up in it or not. And, now he came to
think, he should have it stopped at that Anselmo's bar first; it was
on the way here and now he'd have to go back.

He walked back to Main and found Anselmo's. A hole in
the wall, dirty, ancient, and cheap. He wondered if the liquor was
safe, but went in and ordered rye. It was raw, but well-diluted—
what pro slang called baptized. The bartender, sole occupant of the
place at this hour, was a hairy young fellow running to paunch
already and with a pair of shifty eyes. Nice if generalizations were
all true, thought Mendoza: most crooks had exceptionally honest
faces, and most bartenders, honest or not, developed the shifty eyes
from continual watching of customers.

"I'm 1ooking," he said, "for a fellow
named Angie. Know him? I got the word he comes in here sometimes."

"That so?" said the bartender. "Couldn't
say. What you want him for?"

Yes; Angie definitely a wrong one, if his friends
and/or acquaintances were so chary of admitting they knew his
whereabouts. But did this fellow know him, or was he just cagy by
nature? "Well, I might have a little job for him," said
Mendoza at random. "Kind of a better deal than he's got now."

"Is that so?" said the bartender without
batting an eye. "Well, you don't know his last name, can't help
you, mister— couple of Angies come in here, now 'n' then. Couldn't
say at all."

Mendoza left the rest of his drink and came out. The
hell with it, he said to himself; anything you got on a wild hunt
like this, you got with infinite patience. A man, several men,
watching and waiting around corners sometimes for weeks before the
one little word was dropped that told you something. It was time to
turn this over to one of Hackett's men and get back to his office
where he belonged. Instead, he walked back up Daggett to San Pedro
and found the Elite, which added to its name the misnomer of Club.

Inside, it was a small square place with a minute
platform at one end for a band, now holding only a battered upright
piano. Someone, a long time ago, had decorated it ambitiously with
black lacquered tables and chairs, a home-carpentered banquette along
one wall, and dime store decals on the wainscoting, an Oriental
motif. Opposite the banquette was the bar: at the bar the bartender,
two men standing; five others sat at one table over a hand of poker,
monosyllabic.

Mendoza went up and leaned on the bar, leaving his
hat on in deference to local custom. "Straight rye." It was
surprisingly good quality; he told the bartender so. This was a bald
middle-aged fat man who nodded shortly at the compliment without a
word. Mendoza looked the other customers over casually.

Next to him at the bar, a big bruiser in a green
nylon shirt and black slacks; just missed being handsome, in a
saturnine rugged way: about forty. A smaller, older man, dark, needed
a shave, lank black hair falling over one eye. At the table, the
dealer was cadaverous, bushy-haired, ji young; the edge, a flashily
dressed, very clean and pleasant-looking twenty-year-old; two of the
others nondescript men in their thirties, who looked disconcertingly
like respectable citizens— one in brown slacks, one in gray. And
the fifth man was a pale brown Negro with the regular, handsome
features of the West Indian, a soft British accent. Mendoza half
turned back to the bartender. "By the way, I'm looking for
Angie. Where's he hanging out these days?"

Green Shirt glanced sideways at him; Bushy Hair
hesitated the fraction of a second in picking up a card. The
bartender might have been carved out of wood for all the expression
he showed. "Sorry, mister, never heard of him." He turned
away to answer the phone.

Mendoza finished his rye and came out. A wasted
morning. But maybe some discreet looking around this place, and
Anselmo's, and at Amy, might turn up something interesting
eventually. Piggott, he decided. It was surprising how like a
small-time pro Piggott could look and act, for a pillar of the Free
Methodist Church and a cop with a spotless record. Let him mix with
the crowd in here, and at Anselmo's, for a few nights.

He was tired and hot, and he'd begun to want his
lunch. He went into the drugstore next to the Elite and called his
office; and what Hackett had to tell him effectively took his mind
off food .... Now what the hell was the connection here? That woman—
Lydia? That Bouvardier female out at the Beverly-Hilton? Could it be,
it must be, the theft of the car: it had to be, the only possible
thing. Find out what there was to find out about the car, obviously.
He told Hackett to get hold of Rhodes.