Dead, She Was Beautiful Page 14

  No one noticed Hagen. He had arrived a conquering hero. He departed an ordinary mortal, a little seedier than most, needing a shave. The caffeine had worn off and so had his feeling of success. The trouble was, he admitted privately, that Troge was right. So was Dagne. He had lost sight of the principal objective, nailing Hilda’s murderer, and instead had played it to the grandstand. He had thought only of Mort Hagen. That was what came of working the angles—pretty soon you couldn’t recognize a straight line. And following enough wrong angles, you end up back where you started.

  He stood in glaring sunlight on the marble steps of the civic centre and lit up a cigarette. The pigeons and seagulls strutted around his feet hopefully.

  “Nothing today,” he told them. “Unless you’ve got the inside dope on who really killed Cock Robin. I never did go for that Sparrow confession, did you?”

  A couple of passers-by gave him quizzical looks. The birds muttered about this and that, and wandered away. Hagen watched them scavenge the stairs and pavement in short mincing steps.

  Well, that’s one sure way, he thought. They’ve been over that ground before but there’s always a chance. He decided to start at the beginning again, move in a straight line, and as fast as he could with his head down. If he ran into something big, he was liable to crack his skull. But on the way, there was always the chance of finding a titbit that he had overlooked the first time.

  17

  HAGEN visited his office with a pressing hope that something might have turned up in his absence, which now amounted to nearly twenty-four hours. The mail that waited for him was exclusively bills and circulars. A check with the telephone service that monitored his calls revealed nothing he couldn’t have guessed. A man had called several times the previous afternoon without leaving a message. Undoubtedly it had been Jack.

  Reminded, Hagen phoned his contact at the taxicab company. Again he drew a blank. There had been no summons from the Wishart house for emergency transport. Hagen realized that this was not proof positive, of course. The automobiles he had immobilized might have been repaired. Jack might have gone there instead.

  He shaved with an electric razor he kept in his desk for such emergencies and tried to think. The buzzing of the razor interfered, so he finally quitted his office, having got no further than when he had arrived. He began to wander through the business district aimlessly, waiting for lightning to strike. It didn’t. He spent a few minutes lingering in front of the army recruiting office and reading the attractive posters wistfully. Then he tried phoning Dagne, first at her home and then at the figure control salon. Neither number answered.

  The call, though abortive, gave him an idea. Fruitless as it seemed, it appealed to him simply because it offered activity and a destination of a sort, both of which he needed at the moment. Hagen began to retrace the steps he had taken pursuing Hilda two days before. He didn’t expect to find anything. But that afternoon had been the beginning of this weird affair, or close enough to the beginning, and perhaps by repeating his actions his mind might open to something previously overlooked.

  Since his memory was retentive in such matters, Hagen was able to duplicate the previous odyssey exactly, although this time he enacted Hilda’s part rather than his own. He began at the parking lot where she had left her crimson MG, visited the same heterogeneous collection of stores, even entered the same phone booth she had used to call her sister. Hagen read the scribblings on the booth wall and the doodlings on the directory, thinking one of them might have been made by the dead woman. He found nothing.

  He came at last to Hilda’s final stop on her shopping tour. As she had done, he stood outside the sporting goods house and examined the window displays. They were the same as they had been two days ago. Hagen paid particular attention to the archery sets, wondering if they had been what had engaged her interest. It was possible, but he couldn’t manufacture anything significant out of it. If, as he still believed, Hilda had killed Bruce Shanner with a bow-and-arrow, the display might have had some morbid attraction for her. But she could hardly have foreseen that her own life would be ended by a similar weapon a few hours later.

  Hagen shrugged and advised himself to forget it. Troge was right; alone and unaided, the odds against his making any worthwhile progress were staggering. What he should do was go home and get some sleep so he would at least be fresh for dinner with Dagne. And since that was obviously the proper course to follow, he did just the opposite. He entered the sporting goods store and looked around for a clerk.

  After the brightness of the street, the store was dim and seemingly crowded. However, most of the figures Hagen took at first to be customers turned out to be handsome dummies, sportily dressed and demonstrating various items of outdoor equipment. Live customers were at a premium and a clerk descended upon him eagerly. “Yes, sir? May I help you?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe you can. Were you working here the day before yesterday?”

  “Guess so. My day off is Saturday.” The clerk, a husky young fellow in a sports shirt, regarded him dubiously. “What is it? You want to exchange something?”

  “Not exactly.” Hagen hesitated, unsure what tack to take, then plunged ahead. “I was wondering if you’d know who might have waited on my wife then. She came in about closing time, I believe. A pretty blonde in a mink coat.”

  The clerk furrowed his brow, then nodded. “I remember her. The mink coat, you know—Tuesday was such a scorcher. I waited on her myself. What’s the trouble? She lose something?”

  “In a way.”

  “Well, we can check with the office—”

  “That won’t be necessary. If you could just tell me what she bought …”

  “She didn’t buy anything,” the young man said positively. “Not a thing. Reason I know is that we’re having a contest here, you know, among the employees. The one who sells the most gets a couple of tickets to the U.S.C.-Notre Dame game next month. I thought sure I’d sell her something—women don’t come in here as a rule unless they’re going to buy. But she fooled me. Said she was just looking around.”

  “Archery sets, maybe?”

  “No. Let’s see—she didn’t go much farther than this counter right here.” He rapped his knuckles on the glass case. It contained hunting equipment. “She said something about maybe getting a baseball mitt for her son. I got some out for her but she couldn’t seem to make up her mind. Didn’t even know what kind she wanted. What’s this all about, anyway?”

  Hagen didn’t have the least idea. But he was reluctant to leave. What had possessed Hilda to enter the store and then lie about her motives? Casting about for a means to keep the conversation alive, he saw the rack of hunting knives at one end of the counter, gleaming blades and handsome bone handles. His memory stirred. “Sure she didn’t buy a hunting knife?”

  “She didn’t buy anything,” the clerk repeated impatiently. He scented that Hagen also was not a prospective purchaser.

  “Maybe from one of the other clerks?” Hagen pressed.

  “Not a chance. We’ve got a rule, particularly when the contest is on—you don’t cut in on somebody else’s sale.” Hagen nodded his thanks and started to turn away. “Funny you should mention hunting knives, though.”

  Hagen swung back quickly. “What’s funny about it?”

  “One of them was stolen a couple of days ago. You know, taken right out of the rack there. Queer thing to steal, huh? They only cost a buck fifty and they’re not worth half that. The blade’s no good. Must have been some kid who liked the looks of it.” He gazed past Hagen and his eyes brightened; another man had entered the store. “Would you excuse me a minute?”

  Hagen would. Left alone, he lingered by the counter, staring at the rack of shining knives. What did this mean, anyway? There was no doubt that the hunting knife Hilda had carried in the pocket of her mink coat matched the ones in the rack. It was fantastic enough to believe that she had bought the thing. It was impossible that she had stolen it. Yet the clerk had said … an
d Hagen himself had seen the weapon … so where did that …

  And suddenly, as he prayed it would, his mind cleared. What if Hilda, despite her marriage to wealth, had stolen the knife?

  He nearly shouted as this new idea seized him in an overpowering grip. It was as if he had been standing in a dark room and all at once the light had been turned on, illuminating every shadowy corner. No, he thought, not every corner, but now that he could see he could proceed with confidence, sure of his bearings.

  “Have to go somewhere,” he muttered. “Got to think.” Eyes fixed on the clearing picture inside his brain, he blundered out of the store. On the way, he bumped into one of the lifesize dummies and murmured, “Excuse me.” The dummy didn’t reply but Hagen didn’t notice.

  He was jostled by the passers-by on the pavement. Like a leaf carried by a stream, he was eased to the kerb into the shelter of a lamppost and stranded there. There he remained, staring fixedly at the façade of the small hotel across the street for at least five minutes. At the end of that time Hagen couldn’t have told, had his life depended upon it, whether the building was white or black or even what the name of the hotel was.

  He watched a woman push open the glass door and come out on to the sidewalk opposite. His gaze followed her automatically as she walked quickly down the block, rounded the corner and disappeared. She had been gone a full fifteen seconds when he suddenly realized that it had been Avis Gill.

  That snapped him out of his self-imposed trance. Wake up, boy, he admonished himself; you’ve been handed the biggest break you’re likely to get but you can’t stand around admiring it. You’re not out of the woods yet.

  Hopefully, he ran to the corner and scanned the street down which Avis had vanished. He was too late. There was no trace of Wishart’s secretary amid the throng of bustling shoppers. Hagen was only moderately disappointed. There would be ample time to question Avis later. And, for that matter, he thought that he knew the answer already. He crossed the street and entered the building she had left. Its name, he noted now, was the Kent Hotel.

  The lobby was small, as befitted the size of the rest of the establishment, with room enough only for the registration desk, a couple of battered leather chairs and an elevator shaft which gave access to the rooms above. The Kent Hotel was the type that the tourist folders never mention, barely clinging to middle-class respectability and no different in anyway except name from a hundred others. In his capacity of divorce detective, Hagen was quite familiar with the genre. It was the kind of place where a man might bring his secretary. But, although Avis was Wayne Wishart’s secretary all right, it was not Wishart that Hagen expected to meet there.

  The lobby was empty but a repeated banging of the bell ultimately brought the desk clerk forth from some private cubbyhole. He too was a type that Hagen knew well—a middle-aged employee, blasé and indifferent—and he understood how to deal with him.

  In an authoritative voice, Hagen announced, “Police business. Did you see a young woman just leave your hotel? “He didn’t show any credentials.

  The desk clerk didn’t demand any either. He nearly yawned. “Afraid not, officer. I’ve been working in the back room. She a guest here?”

  “No. She was visiting somebody.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know then. Only way I’d have seen her is if she’d asked for the room number.” He jerked his head at the elevator. “Self-service, you know.”

  “You got anybody here from L.A.?”

  “Could be. What’s the beef, anyway? Somebody get rolled?”

  “Let’s have a look at the register,” said Hagen, ignoring the other man’s questions. The clerk shrugged and dug out a large ledger from beneath the counter. His attitude indicated that he had been through this sort of thing before. Hagen opened the book and ran rapidly down the list of entries.

  There were two Los Angeles registrations on the current list. One didn’t interest him since it bore yesterday’s date and was a woman. But the other caused him to smile grimly. Jack Ferreira was the name. He had registered three days before. The room number was 319.

  Hagen pointed at this entry. “Know this guy? Big, heavy-set fellow, built like a wrestler?”

  “If you say so. Personally, I don’t pay much attention. In this business they come and they go. As long as they don’t try skipping their bill, they can have two heads as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Okay.” Hagen returned the register and turned to go. “Thanks for the help.”

  For the first time, the clerk seemed a trifle surprised. “Aren’t you going up? I could give 319 a ring if you want.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Hagen said and left the hotel. He didn’t go far. He lit a cigarette, smoked half of it and then sauntered back. As he had expected, the clerk had disappeared again. Quietly, Hagen re-entered the lobby and crossed to the tiny elevator. Unobserved, he pressed the button marked 3. The car began to ascend.

  He stepped off on the third floor and looked for the proper door. The corridor was deserted and quiet and smelled of dust and disinfectant. 319 was midway to the fire escape. Hagen halted before the door and flexed his fingers in anticipation. He knew just what was going to happen next. He would knock and Jack would answer. There would be a split second of surprise—on Jack’s part, not his own. That would be enough. He had downed the big fellow once; he was confident he could do it again. But this time the aftermath would be different he vowed grimly.

  Hagen knocked. There was no answer from within. He knocked again with the same result. He began to frown. He was sure that Jack was home. Avis Gill would hardly have risked the visit without a definite appointment. Had he been spotted? Was this a trap?

  “Never find out standing here,” he muttered aloud. Drawing a deep breath, he tried the door handle. The door was unlocked. In one swift movement, Hagen kicked the panel open and plunged inside, ducking a little and ready for anything. Then he stopped in his tracks.

  Jack was home all right. He sat in the big easy chair by the window and he didn’t rise at Hagen’s precipitate entrance. He didn’t even look around or raise the bullet head that had fallen forward on his chest. Stomach contracting, Hagen slowly closed the door and walked forward to confirm what he already knew.

  They come and go, the desk clerk had said. In this instance, he was mistaken. Jack was not going anywhere, ever again, Jack was dead.

  18

  AS a matter of routine, Hagen tried to find a pulse. There was none. Jack’s flesh was still warm but so was the room. It was going to be difficult to establish time of death on this one and Hagen was no expert in legal medicine. From the fact that Jack was freshly shaved and the window shade was up, he guessed that death had occurred this morning, rather than during the night.

  Hagen stood for a while looking at the dead man. He felt very little, neither gladness nor grief at Jack’s passing. He had been prepared to kick the other man’s face in a moment before, but all thoughts of vengeance had vanished and now what he experienced was a vague regret. Jack might have been able to tell him something of value.

  Jack was long past the point of confiding in anyone, however, although his mouth hung open as if ready to speak. His false teeth, a full set of uppers and lowers, had dropped out and lay in his lap where they seemed to grin up at Hagen in a grisly manner.

  Hagen had to look closely to ascertain the cause of death, since there was no blood or obvious signs of violence. Jack’s swarthy face was mottled and puffy and Hagen could see that his tongue was swollen. He looked as if he might have suffocated or been smothered in some manner. However, he had been strangled and the garrote still remained, almost buried from sight in the flesh of the thick neck.

  Hagen examined what he could see of the noose and raised his eyebrows. It was a bow cord, thin and tough. The archer hadn’t used an arrow this time but he had stuck to his favourite weapon as far as he was able. Nor had it been a spur of the moment attack. The killer had come prepared. To each end of the bowstring a small wooden han
dle had been tied, to enable him to pull the sharp cord without cutting his hands. It had been a smooth job, well thought-out and executed cleanly.

  The sound of footsteps in the corridor outside made Hagen abandon his morbid admiration. He went to the phone, ready to be interrupted in the act of calling the police should anyone intrude. But the footsteps passed on and faded down the hall and Hagen didn’t touch the telephone after all.

  He prowled around Jack’s dingy room instead. It was the conventional hotel set-up, a bedroom with a small adjoining bath. The bedroom had the usual furniture, a bed and a dresser and a couple of chairs. Hagen looked over, under and around the furniture but learned nothing except that the Kent Hotel had an inefficient cleaning service.

  Inevitably, he returned to the dead man. “Now how in hell,” he inquired softly, “did a smart tough cookie like you just sit still and let somebody garrote you and you not move a finger?”

  On the little night-stand beside Jack’s chair sat a bottle of whisky, nearly empty, and one glass, completely empty. Or was it? Hagen, peering at it without touching it, detected a sediment of some sort on the bottom. He gingerly inserted his hand into the mouth of the glass as far as it would go and managed to scrape up a little of the sediment on the end of his finger. He went to the window to examine it.

  It was a white powdery substance, caked now. Hagen sniffed it. It was odourless. With some trepidation, he touched the tip of his tongue to it and was rewarded. The sediment did have a taste, rather bitter. He puzzled over it, thinking that he had tasted something like it before, until it finally came to him. He had experienced a similar bitterness one night several years ago when he had accidentally bitten into a capsule of nembutal. The stuff was a barbiturate of some sort. Sleeping medicine.

  “Now I lay me down to sleep,” he muttered, looking at Jack sardonically. He wondered if Jack had ever known the old nursery prayer and decided not. If Jack had ever prayed—and it seemed unlikely—his prayers probably had been in Spanish. But it was appropriate here. Jack had died before he waked, all right. If the amount of nembutal or seconal or whatever had precipitated to the bottom of the glass was any indication, the amount remaining in suspension would have been enough to stun a dinosaur.