Росс Макдональд - Meet Me at the Morgue

The telephone directory chained to the wall of the booth listed an alternative number for the Acme agency, to be called in case of emergency. I dialed it and got a man’s voice, rapid and edged:

“Bourke speaking. Is that you, Carol?”

“I’m Howard Cross, probation officer in Pacific Point–”

“Do I know you?”

“It looks as if you’re going to. We’ve had a murder and a kidnapping–”

“Not for me, thanks very much. I leave that stuff to the police. Who did you say you were – a probation officer?”

“You didn’t let me finish. You run the Acme agency, don’t you?”

“It runs me,” he said, “ragged.”

“One of your employees is involved.”

“Simmie? Not Simmie Thatcher?”

“We don’t know the name.”

“Won’t he talk?”

“He can’t. He’s been dead for eight hours.”

He didn’t speak for about five seconds. Somewhere behind the wall of the corridor, perhaps in the Acme offices, I heard a telephone ringing remotely, unanswered.

“What makes you think he works – he worked for me?”

“He was passing out your business cards.”

“Describe him.”

“A big old man, close to six feet, I’d say in his late fifties. Bald-headed, and he wears a brown toupee.”

There was another waiting silence on the line.

“Do you know him, Bourke?”

“I know him,” he said wearily. “What happened to him?”

“He was murdered.”

“I see.”

“Who is he?”

“The name’s Art Lemp. He worked for me last year for a while. I fired him.”

“I need all you have on him. Where can we get together?”

“Now?” he said in some dismay. “I’m expecting a call from my wife, I can’t–”

I overbore him: “Listen. This Lemp snatched a four-year-old boy this morning. Lemp’s dead. The boy’s still missing. You’re the only lead we’ve got.”

“I see. Well. Maybe she isn’t going to call me anyway. Where are you?”

“In the telephone booth outside your office.”

“I’m just three blocks away. Be there in five minutes.”

Before I had finished a cigarette he mounted the stairs, a man of about my age, broad-shouldered and short-legged, with quick suspicious Hollywood eyes set on ball bearings in an anxious face. While we exchanged a perfunctory handshake his eyes were all over me, estimating my height, age, weight, probable income, and Intelligence Quotient. There were Martinis on his breath.

He stabbed his office door with a small brass key. “Did I keep you waiting? Mind if I see your credentials?”

“I don’t carry any. Phone the sheriff at Pacific Point if you like. He’s probably been trying to get in touch with you, anyway.”

He snapped a switch inside the door. The awkward shadows of waiting-room furniture, settee, reed chairs, ash-stand, took on color and substance.

“Why bother?” he said with forced lightness. “You have an honest face. What did you say your name was?”

“Howard Cross.”

“Come on into the sanctum, Howard. I’ll do you for what I can. Joke.”

I followed him into his private office, a small room decently furnished in oak veneer. He sat on the edge of the desk and swung one highly polished toe.

“Frankly, this comes as a blow to me, Howard. Been taking quite a series of them lately. Wife left me, third time. Been trying to talk her into coming back. Big showdown scheduled for tonight. Isn’t that the irony of fate, Howard? Me in the divorce business, knocking myself out to keep a no-good blonde from leaving me. Sure, you say, let her go. Only she has what I need.”

“Pin up the back hair, Bourke. I’m interested in Lemp, not you.”

“Sorry,” he said, not without resentment. “What happened to old Art? Shot? I always told him he was going to get shot.”

“Icepicked. He was murdered in his car about eleven fifteen this morning, apparently hijacked for the ransom money. He’d just picked it up at eleven.”

“How much ransom money?”

“Fifty thousand.”

Bourke narrowed his eyes and pinched his lips between thumb and forefinger. He looked like a hungry barracuda wearing a bowtie. “Old Art tried the big time, eh? He shouldn’t have done that. He had no class. Naturally he got it in the neck.”

“In the neck?”

“Excuse my slang,” he said. “Don’t tell me that’s where he took the icepick.”

“That’s where.”

“Shut my big mouth, eh? But you’re way off the beam if you think I knew about it. I haven’t even seen Art Lemp for six months. I fired him in December. As a matter of fact, I kicked him downstairs.”

“Why?”

“The urge kept growing on me, it finally bust loose. I never should have hired him in the first place. Only did it as a favor to a pal.”

“What pal?”

The barracuda eyes grew wary. “Aren’t we getting kind of far afield, Howard?”

“I don’t think so. Lemp wasn’t alone in this. I’m trying to contact his associates.”

“You have a point. Well, it wasn’t exactly a pal that steered him to me, not my pal anyway. A little blonde chick name of Molly Fawn, at least that’s the name she uses. She’s done me a couple of favors in the past. When she told me about this deserving old goat with all the police experience, I broke down and gave him a job.”

“When was this?”

“October, early October. It took me two months to catch on to him. He wouldn’t have lasted that long if Carol hadn’t been driving me off my rocker. She left me the second time in November. Can I help it if I have contacts with women in my business? I told her I’m like a doctor, she wouldn’t listen. I never gave that–” he snapped his fingers loudly “–for Molly Fawn or any of the rest of them.”

“Where can I get in touch with Molly Fawn?”

His face expressed regretful concern. “I’ll be honest with you, Howard.”

“Don’t strain yourself.” I was always suspicious of people who made a point of proclaiming their honesty.

Leaning forward, Bourke slapped my shoulder heartily and laughed with his teeth. “No strain, I’m leveling with you, don’t get me wrong. I haven’t laid an eye on Molly this year. I broke with her and Lemp at the same time, for the same reason. I’ll even tell you the reason.” He looked sideways in surprise at his own generous candor. “They were using the leads Lemp got working for me, to run a little sideshow of their own.”

“Blackmail?”

“It boiled down to that. I get a lot of jealous wives in here.” He sniffed with distaste, as if female emotions had left traces in the room. “A fair percentage of them have nothing to be jealous about. It’s my job to set their minds at rest as soon as I can. Art Lemp was assigned to two or three of these cases. He played them the opposite way, for maximum trouble – a variation on the badger game. Twice that I know about, he maneuvered the husband into a compromising position with Molly, once in a car, once in a hotel room. Then this photographer pal of his took a picture. One of the suckers bought the picture from Lemp. What would you do if you had a jealous wife? The other one came to me. That was the day I kicked Art Lemp downstairs.” A reminiscent smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “I phoned Molly and gave her a tongue-lashing, and I haven’t seen her since, either. If it wasn’t so bad for business, I’d have marched the two of them down to the station-house.”

“Where was Molly living in December?”

“I don’t know where she lived.”

“Try her phone number.”

“I never knew her phone number.”

“You said you phoned her.”

“Through a friend,” he said, with an explanatory lifting of the hands. “She had an arrangement with this friend of hers to handle her phone calls for her.”