Росс Макдональд - Meet Me at the Morgue

“Ale,” her husband said. “Bass Ale, imported from the old country.”

“At fabulous cost,” she said with a laugh. “Don’t mind Jason, Mr. Cross. He’s not really avaricious. He just expresses his feelings in money terms. How much am I worth, Jason?”

“To me, you mean?”

“To you.”

“One million dollars.”

“Piker,” she said, and pinched his cheek. “Does anybody bid a million one?”

He flushed. “Don’t say that. It isn’t ladylike.”

“I’m not a lady.” She turned to me, her smile fading. “I’m ready to see your pictures, Mr. Cross.”

I showed them to her, looking from them to her face. She had become very grave.

“Poor man. What happened to him?”

“He was run over. Do you recognize him?”

“I think it’s the chap, all right. I couldn’t swear to it.”

“You’re reasonably sure?”

“I think so. When was he killed?”

“Last February.”

She handed the pictures back and looked up at her husband. “You see. I told you the man in Pacific Palisades wasn’t the one. He is older and darker and heavier, an entirely different type.”

“I’d still like to talk to him,” I said. “Where is his shop, exactly?”

“I don’t recall the address. Let me see if I can describe it to you. You know the stoplight where Sunset Boulevard runs into the coast highway? It’s half a mile or so north of there, one of those slummy little buildings crowded between the highway and the beach.”

“On the left-hand side as you go north?”

“Yes. I don’t think you can miss it. It’s the only photography studio anywhere along there, and there’s some kind of a sign, and photographs in the window. Old dirty photographs, colored by hand.” She shrugged her bare shoulders as if to shake off an atmosphere. “It was one of the most depressing places I’ve ever been in.”

“Why?”

“It was so obviously a failure – everything was in a mess. The man didn’t even know his business.”

“Mabel can’t stand failure,” Richards said. “It reminds her of her early life. My wife had a very rough time as a young girl, before I discovered her.”

“Before I discovered you , Jason.”

“Your husband told me you talked to the man.”

“I did. The insurance investigator suggested I go in and pose as a customer, in order to have a good look at him, and hear his voice. I made a few inquiries about sizes and prices. He couldn’t even answer them without asking the girl.”

“What girl?”

“He had a little blonde assisting him, probably his wife. Heaven knows he couldn’t be making enough in that shop to pay her a salary. The girl was rather nice, at least my vanity thought so. You see, she recognized me. Apparently she’d been catching some of my old pictures on television–”

“Don’t mention that awful word!” her husband cried.

“Sorry. She asked me for my autograph, can you imagine? Nobody’s asked for my autograph for ages.”

“Can you describe her?”

“She was a rather pretty little thing, with a turned-in page-boy bob. I noticed her eyes. She had lovely dark blue eyes, but the general effect was spoiled by her paint job. She wore too much of everything – too much lipstick and powder, even eye-shadow. Now that I think about it, I’m certain she was his wife. I remember she called him Art.” Art Lemp and Molly Fawn. The inside of my mouth went dry. “And the man, Mrs. Richards? What did he look like?”

She sensed my excitement, and answered with great care: “The best word I can find for him is amorphous. He had one of these loose, rubbery mouths – how can I describe it? The sort of mouth that can turn into anything. I pay attention to mouths, they’re so important in expressing character–”

“Age?”

“It’s hard to tell. About fifty-five or sixty.”

“Did he have a bald head?”

“No. I do recall wondering if he was wearing a hairpiece. His hair was too sleek and neat, you know? It didn’t go with the rest of him.”

I moved towards the hall. “Thank you very much, both of you. You’ve been extremely helpful.”

“I hope so,” she said.

Richards followed me to the front door. “What is this all about, Cross? Is he a receiver of stolen goods?”

“The story’s a little too long to tell you now. I’m pressed for time.”

“Whatever you say.” He stepped out onto the porch and filled his lungs with air. “Wonderful night, great view. I like to have the university down there. That cultural atmosphere, it makes me feel good. I’m a bear for culture.”

“Physical culture,” his wife said from the doorway. “Good night, Mr. Cross. Good luck.”

I made a left turn on to Sunset and joined the westward flight of automobiles. I passed a few cars, came up behind a fast Cadillac and let it pace me on the unbanked curves. The depression that had blanketed me all day, ever since I learned the boy was stolen, was lifting at the corners. The boy was as lost as ever, but at least I was doing something about it, moving in a long, descending curve towards the heart of the evil.

A straight length of road coincided with a gap in the eastbound traffic. I passed the Cadillac, and held the accelerated speed. Approaching headlights rushed up out of the night like terrible eyes and passed with a grunt and a sigh. I slid down the final slope to the coast highway and turned right when the light changed.

Tall eroded cutbanks rose on the inland side. I drove slowly in the left-hand lane, watching the other side. A miscellaneous line of buildings, multicolored and many-shaped, clung to the rim of the road above the beach. Most of them were beach houses on twelve- or fifteen-foot lots, or one-story rental apartments. There were a few shops selling redwood souvenirs, genuine oil-paintings, handwoven textiles, ceramics: Bohemia on its last legs, driven back to the ultimate seacoast. The heavy gray ocean yawned below.

I saw what I was looking for, a storefront wearing a “Photographer” sign, and slowed to a crawl. A truck horn blasted the rear of my car. I made a hasty left-turn signal and skidded through a break in the southbound traffic. There was no place to park except the shoulder of the highway, close up against the narrow display window.

The window and the shop behind it were dark. In the light from passing cars, I could see the sample pictures through the smeared plate-glass. They were signed, in a large and flowing hand: “Kerry.” The names, the lives, the deaths were drawing together towards an intersection.

At the rear of the shop, which wasn’t ten feet deep, a hollow rectangle of light outlined a door. I knocked on the glass front-door. The hollow rectangle filled with sudden light. A young woman entered it, pausing with one hand on the knob. She called across the width of the shop, in a voice that sounded tinny through the glass:

“Art? Is that you, Art?”

I shouted back: “I have a message from him.”

She stepped forward through the doorway, her giant shadow plunging ahead of her, her tiny heel-taps following. Her face came close up to the glass, a white blur with black holes for eyes and a black mouth, framed in an aureole of lighted yellow hair. I was aware of the skull behind the flesh.

The black mouth trembled: “If he wants to come back, tell him it’s no use.”

“I came to tell you that.”

“I wouldn’t touch Art Lemp with a ten-foot pole, not after what he did.” She caught her breath: “You came to tell me what?”

“Let me in, Molly. We have things to talk about.”

“I don’t know you. Who are you, anyway?”

“I saw Art today. He wasn’t feeling so well.”