Росс Макдональд - Meet Me at the Morgue

“You’re sure?”

“Look for yourself. This is all there is.” He showed me a record of payment: Abel Johnson, Pacific Point, $125.00, for services rendered. “Forest is going to like this, very much.”

He collapsed in the swivel chair and lifted a blue revolver from the middle drawer of the desk. Absently, he twirled the loaded chamber with his forefinger:

“Russian roulette, anyone?”

“Put it away,” I said.

“R.K.O.” He replaced the gun in the drawer. “Don’t mind me, Howard. I was just kidding. I’m a great kidder.”

“This is no time for comedy. If you know something more than you’ve told me, you’d better let me have it”

“Such as?”

“Where Molly Fawn lived. I think you knew her pretty well at one time. It’s possible you still do.”

“You’re wrong, you couldn’t be wronger.” His face was expressionless, but below the edge of the desk his hands were wrestling quietly with each other. “I haven’t seen that little twist since December.”

“Where did you see her?”

He countered with a question: “Is she involved in this snatch?”

“She’s involved with Lemp, and he’s the key man in it. I shouldn’t have to tell you this: your only chance of keeping yourself clear is to talk and talk some more.”

His right hand bent his left hand backward onto his knee and vanquished it. “I visited her a couple of times in her apartment. She probably isn’t there any more, but maybe she left a forwarding address. Anyway, you can try it. It’s in West Hollywood.” He gave me the address, and instructions for finding it.

“Thanks, Bourke. But why the long delay in spilling it?”

“I think she’s San Quentin quail.” He slapped himself across the eyes with his open left palm. “I must be nuts, I know what I ought to do every time, and half the time I can’t do it. Maybe I’m just another bum.”

I left him.

The apartment was over an attached garage on a quiet rundown residential street. Its windows were dark, but there were lights and sounds in the adjoining house. It was a white frame bungalow whose lines aspired, rather feebly, to Colonial. The sounds inside were radio voices. When I rang the front-door bell, the voices were cut off suddenly, and soft slow footsteps approached the door.

The door was opened about four inches, on a chain. Spectacled eyes looked down a long female nose at me. A disapproving mouth said: “You’ve interrupted my favorite program. You’d think I had the right to some peace. What is it you want?”

“I’m sorry. The matter is urgent. I’m trying to find a girl who calls herself Molly Fawn.”

Her disapproval hardened, descending over her long face like an icecap. “I know nothing whatever about her. If you’re another one of her worthless friends–”

“I’m a probation officer,” I said, before she could close the door. “I’m investigating a very serious case.”

The icecap thawed perceptibly. Something that might have been pleasure glinted behind the spectacles. “Is she in trouble? I told that girl that she was heading for trouble, with her carryings-on. Why, when I was her age, I wasn’t allowed to speak to a man. Father was strict with we girls–”

“May I come in?”

She unhooked the chain and opened the door another foot, just wide enough for me to squeeze through. “Promise you won’t notice the condition of the house.”

The house was very clean, and preternaturally neat, like a barracks awaiting inspection. But everything in it was old: the carpeting, the furniture, even the outdated calendar in the hallway. The air in the living-room was stale and heavy, laden with an odor like musty spice. A faded motto on the wall above a closed upright piano stated: “The smoke ascends as lightly from the cottage hearth as from the haughty palace.”

She said, when she saw me reading it: “A great truth, isn’t it? Would you like to sit down, Mr.–?”

“Cross, Howard Cross.”

“I am Miss Hilda Trenton. Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cross.”

We sat in facing platform-rockers in front of the old cabinet radio. It was still lighted and humming like a repressed desire. Miss Trenton leaned towards me, sharp elbows on sharp knees: “What has she done?”

“I’m trying to find out. I take it she doesn’t live here any more.”

“She was only here for a month or so, and I can tell you I wouldn’t rent her the apartment again if she came to me on bended knee.” She smiled grimly. “Of course she won’t. She left owing a week’s rent – decamped one day while I was at work without a by-your-leave. I was glad to see her go, to tell you the truth. I have a very nice young couple in the apartment now.”

“When did she leave?”

“It was early in January, I don’t remember the exact date.”

“And naturally she didn’t give you a forwarding address.”

“I should say not. She still owes me eighteen dollars. I was foolish to trust her, even for a single week. Molly was full of stories, how her ship was due to come in any day. She was going to get a movie job and be a star and pay me double for waiting. Or else she was going to get married to a wonderful young man.” She sniffed. “No decent young man would marry her. ”

“Why not?”

“She was morally loose, that’s why. I saw her company, masculine company, at all hours of the day and night. It’s a good thing she left when she did. I was thinking about evicting her.” She patted the thin gray hair on top of her head. “But I let my charitable impulses get the better of me. I’m always doing that, Mr. Cross. People take advantage of it. It’s my great vice.”

“You say she took off in a hurry. Did she leave anything behind?”

She thought about it. “Not a thing, not a single, solitary thing.” Miss Trenton was not a good liar. The shortsighted eyes behind the spectacles became suffused with moisture, and she coughed. “The apartment is completely furnished, you see. All she brought in was her clothes.”

I said with all the impressiveness I could muster: “I know you’re an upright citizen, Miss Trenton. I can rely on you to keep this to yourself. Molly Fawn is involved in a kidnapping case. If you know of any clue to her whereabouts, her personal life, her connections, it’s your duty to let us know.”

“Kidnapping! How dreadful!” She hugged her shoulders, and looked at the doors and windows of the room. “I haven’t the faintest notion, haven’t seen or heard of her since January. Now her personal life, that’s another matter. She carried on something fierce with her men friends. There was dancing and parties in the apartment all hours of the night. And the things they said to each other!”

“You could hear them?”

“Well, I keep my car in the garage underneath. Some nights when I’d get home from work I’d be sitting in my car, trying to gather up enough energy to come into the house – I couldn’t help but hear them. Other times when I was up in the attic, looking for something – well, the partition is thin, just one thickness of wallboard. I heard their nasty stories and talk. It grieved me to the bone to hear a young girl go on like that.” She broke off and stared at her feet, which were shod in sensible black oxfords. If she felt grief, it was probably for herself.

“Did you see the men?”

“The stairs are on the other side of the garage. She generally smuggled them in and out when I wasn’t looking.”

“You must have seen their cars.”

“I don’t know a thing about cars. I’m still driving Father’s old Ford.”

“Perhaps you heard – overheard some of their names?”