Джеймс Чейз - You’re Lonely When You’re Dead

‘Well, all right, Mr. Malloy,’ Finnegan said. ‘I’ll pass the word round. If he’s in town, I’ll find him. How about a description?’

‘I’ll do better than that. On my way out I’ll leave a photo of him for you. It’s urgent, Pat. He has something to do with Dana’s killing.’

‘Let me have the photo,’ Finnegan said, his voice hard, ‘I’ll find him for you if he’s to be found.’

I thanked him and hung up.

‘That takes care of Thayler,’ I said, and slid off the desk. ‘Now, while I’m waiting, I think I’ll take a look at Mills. Get these notes typed, Paula, and put them in the safe. And another thing, take that diamond necklace over to Cerf and get a receipt for it. We should have done that before. If Brandon heard about it and found it here we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. In Cerf’s hands it doesn’t become evidence anymore.’

Paula said she would do that right away.

‘Well, so long,’ I said, making for the door. ‘If I run into trouble turn the whole works over to Mifflin,’ and before she could fuss, I left the office and went pelting down the stairs.

Beechwood Avenue, a three-mile long, two-way street, separated by a parkway planted with magnolia trees, climbed snakelike up the hill at the back of Fairview and down into the valley to the San Francisco and Los Angeles Highway. It was a quiet, backwater street, lined on either side by stately houses, white columned with balconies and lofty porticos.

No. 235, Caesar Mills’s residence, hid behind white stucco walls. The moonlight was bright enough for me to read the chromium numbers on the seven-foot gate as I drove past. All I could see of the house was its green-tiled roof.

About two hundred yards farther on I saw a cul-de-sac, leading to one of the bigger estates, and I drove into it, pulled up close to the kerb, turned out all but the parking lights and got out.

It was a hot, still night and quiet, and the air was heavy with the scent of flowers growing in the hidden gardens and from the magnolia trees in the parkway: a nice secluded spot for courting couples or burglars.

I walked casually towards No. 235, without hurrying, like a man taking a little exercise before going to bed. It was twenty minutes past ten. I was feeling flatfooted and tired, and the heat bothered me. I had a feeling, too, that I was wasting time; that I had no business to be out here. I should be concentrating on Lee Thayler, or better still in bed, getting some sleep to be ready for whatever happened in the morning.

I paused outside the seven-foot gate to look up and down the street. There was no one around, and I lifted the latch, pushed open the gate and peered at a small, well-kept garden, flood-lit by the moon. Facing me was a one-and-a-half-storey frame house with the chimney at each end, six wooden columns supporting a verandah roof, broken by three dormers that extended across the front of the building. Four casement windows opened on to the verandah, and lights spilled through the windows. It looked as if Caesar Mills was at home.

I decided, now I was here, to take a peep at him, and I crept along the garden path to the verandah and looked in through the nearest window.

One glance showed me that Mills lived in style. The room was designed for comfort, and money had been lavished on it. Chinese rugs lay on the parquet floor. Two big chesterfields, four lounging chairs and a divan were arranged about the room. A walnut table, loaded with bottles and glasses stood against one of the walls. Lamps with parchment shades made pools of subdued light on the polished floor and the rugs. It was a nice room: a room furnished with taste. The kind of room anyone could be happy in.

Caesar Mills sat in one of the armchairs, a cigarette between his lips, a tall, frost-filmed glass of whisky in his hand. He was wearing a navy blue, silk dressing-gown, white silk pyjamas and his bare feet were thrust into heelless slippers He was reading a magazine, and by the bored frown on his face, he didn’t seem to think much of it.

I wondered if it would be worthwhile to wait. I wanted badly to get into the house and look it over, but I didn’t feel like taking risks, nor did I feel like getting into a rough house with Mills. But there was a chance he would go to bed before long so I decided I’d give him half an hour and see what happened.

I picked a spot in the shadows and sat down on the edge of a big stone tub full of petunias and waited. From where I sat I could see into the room and I could see Mills, sure he couldn’t see me.

Twenty minutes dragged by. I knew it was twenty minutes because I kept looking at my watch, and thinking how nice it would be to go home and get some sleep. It wasn’t much fun watching Mills taking it easy in an armchair while I sat on the edge of a stone tub with an ache in my head and a pain in my back. But I was playing a hunch, and I was obstinate, so I waited, and after a while he tossed aside the magazine and stood up.

I was hoping he was going to lock up for the night, but instead he went over to the bottles on the walnut table and freshened his drink. Watching the whisky run out of the bottle made my throat twitch with envy. I was hot and tired, and I could have done with that drink.

Then as he returned to his chair, I saw him pause and cock his head on one side and listen. I listened too.

The sound of a car coming fast disturbed the quiet of the night. Mills put down his glass, went over to the big mirror above the fireplace and took a look at himself, then he stood, waiting.

The car drew up outside the garden gate, a car door slammed and the latch of the gate clicked up.

By now I was on my feet. I stepped back into the darkness made by the shadow of the house. I heard the gate swing to, and footsteps come along the path: quick, light steps of a woman.

I waited, squeezed against the wall, looking from the darkness into the brilliantly lit garden. A woman came round the corner of the house: a woman in fawn linen slacks and an apple-green sports shirt, worn outside the slacks. She was bare headed and carried a handbag made of fawn linen to match her slacks.

She passed close to me, and I caught the fragrance of her perfume. The moonlight was harsh on her white, pinched face. There was an unhappy little sneer on her lips.

She walked briskly across the verandah and into the room. As soon as she was out of sight, I took out my handkerchief and mopped my face and hands. I wasn’t tired anymore. My head no longer ached. I felt pretty pleased with myself. It’s always good to play a hunch and prove yourself right.

The woman in the fawn linen slacks and the apple-green sports shirt was, of course, Natalie Cerf.

It was very quiet out there in the shadows and the heat. Somewhere in the far distance I could hear the sound of the ocean breaking on the reef out at East Beach: a whisper of sound that seemed loud in the silence around me.

And while I stood in the darkness waiting for something to happen, I tried to remember what Paula had said about Natalie Cerf. Two years ago there had been a motor accident. Natalie’s mother had been killed and Natalie crippled. She had been treated, X-rayed and examined by every doctor worth a damn in the country. But none of them had done anything for her. Cerf had paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars: none of them could make her walk.

It looked as if medical science had missed a miracle healer in Caesar Mills. What the brains of the best medical men in the country had failed to do, apparently he had done, for Natalie couldn’t have walked more briskly into the room where he was, not if she’d been a competitor in the Olympic Games.

I heard Mills say in his lizard, grating voice, ‘You didn’t say you were coming out. I wasn’t expecting you. Why didn’t you phone?’