Ross MACDONALD - The Archer Files

“She didn’t die of a fever,” he said.

Mrs. Norris examined the thermometer. “I don’t believe she was running a temperature like that. She wouldn’t have been able to walk around. What did Dr. Benning say about her?”

“That she had nothing serious the matter.”

“Benning?” Santana said. “Was she Benning’s patient?”

“Not exactly. She went to see him once.”

“Most people do,” he said dryly.

“Let’s look at the other things.”

The items from the bathroom cabinet could have been bought in any city or town in the United States. There was no druggists’s prescription, nothing that could be pinned down to a definite place or person. The coat was equally anonymous. It was a plain black cloth coat, bearing the label of a New York maker who turned out thousands of cheap coats every year.

I was a little surprised by the hat. It was a soft turban made of black wool yarn interwoven with threads of gold. It was simple enough, but something about its shape suggested money.

“With your permission,” I said, “I’m going to take this along with me. You’re sure there’s nothing else of hers around, outside of the room?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Who’s the best milliner in town?”

“Helen,” Santana answered, so quickly that he almost blushed about it. “Her shop is on the Plaza.”

Helen’s was one of those shops with a single hat in the window, like a masterpiece of plastic art in a gallery. Helen herself was almost a work of art, a small dark middle-aged woman who tripped towards me like an aging ballet dancer.

“You are looking for a gift, perhaps?” Her painted mask-like face formed a slight waiting smile.

“Not exactly. In fact, not at all.” I took the black-and-gold turban out of my jacket pocket and handed it to her. “You wouldn’t know where this came from?”

Her curved scarlet talons poked and pulled at the hat. “Why?”

“I’m a detective. A woman was killed. This belonged to her.”

“Wealth?” She turned it inside out.

“I hardly think so. It’s a good hat, though, isn’t it?”

“Very good. French workmanship, I do believe.”

“You couldn’t hazard a guess as to the maker?”

“A guess, perhaps. It has Augustin lines. The way it’s folded, you know?” She plucked at the material.

“Where is Augustin?”

“Paris.” She pulled the hat on suddenly, struck a pose in front of a mirror on the wall. “Pretty, but not for me. It was made for a blonde. Was your killed woman a blonde?”

“No.”

“Then she had bad taste.” She removed the hat and gave it back to me. “Augustin has a Los Angeles outlet, you know. Bertha Mackay on Wilshire. Might that help?”

I drove to Los Angeles. Bertha Mackay’s hat shop had the hushed solemnity of a funeral chapel. A few handmaidens lazed about in the theatrical light, and paid no attention to me. Tea was being served from a silver service in the rear of the shop. I couldn’t imagine Lucy coming here to buy a hat.

A stout woman with blonde coroneted braids was pouring for a bevy of spectacularly hatted females. I addressed her: “May I speak to Miss Mackay?”

“You have that privilege and pleasure.” Her smile conveyed the idea that the hat shop and the tea-pouring were charades, good fun but not to be taken seriously.

“Privately, if possible.”

“I’m rather busy just now–”

“It won’t take a minute.”

She removed her hand from the teapot and rose sighing. “Now what?” She led me into a corner.

I had a story ready, which omitted the alarming fact of murder: “I sell cars. A young lady came into the showroom this morning, and asked to try out a new convertible. She went away without leaving her name or address, and left her hat in the car. I’d like to return it to her.”

“And sell her a car?”

“If I can. But the hat is worth money, isn’t it?” I showed it to her.

She looked up sharply. “How did you know I sold it?”

“A woman who knows hats said it was an Augustin, and that you handled them.”

“It is worth money. Two hundred dollars, to be exact. I’m not excessively wild about the notion of giving out a customer’s name, though. You know all you want to do is sell her a car.”

“You sold her a hat.”

She smiled, but she was suspicious of me. “What did she look like?”

I took a chance: “She was blonde, a well-groomed blonde.”

She didn’t deny it. Glancing impatiently towards the tea-party, where the spectacular hats were twittering like birds, she said: “Oh hell, it was Fern Dee bought it. Only don’t tell her I told you, she might object. Say you went to a fortune-teller, um?”

“Fern Dee. Where does she live?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. I only saw her the one time, last spring. She saw this hat in the window and walked in and paid cash for it and walked out. I recognized her from her pictures.”

“Her pictures?”

“In the newspaper. Don’t you read the newspapers? I really must go now.” Brusquely, she turned away.

I took my sense of frustration to Morris Cramm. Bach on a harpsichord rustled and clanged behind the door of his walkup apartment. He came to the door softly in stocking feet, and waved me in without uttering a word. When the side was finished, he switched the Capehart off and said, “Hello there, Lew.”

The Capehart was the only valuable thing in the dingy room, apart from Morris’s filing-cabinet brain. He was the nightspot legman for a Hollywood columnist, a small middle-aging man with thick glasses and the inability to forget a fact.

“I need a small transfusion of information.”

“You know my terms. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, money for information. The Mosaic law won’t let me turn off good music for nothing.”

“I’m on the side of the angels this time. You should take that into account. I’m trying to clear a Negro boy of a pending murder charge. I don’t even know if I’ll be paid.”

“You’ll be paid. Moi aussi .”

I screwed up a five-dollar bill and tossed it to him. “Money-grubber.”

“Scavenger. Go ahead.”

“I want to talk to a woman. Name is Fern Dee. You’ve heard of her, probably. Everyone else has.”

“Except you, eh? She Superchiefed from Chicago last year with Angel Durano. I saw them on the Strip every night for a while. I don’t know where or what she came up out of. Claimed to be a dancer, but he backed her in a revue and she flopped, dismally. Do you still want to talk to her?”

“Very much.”

“You know who Durano is, don’t you? The name for him back east is the Enforcer. When the Syndicate got tired of playing footsie with Mickey, they sent Durano out to finish him. In a business way, you understand. Nothing violent, unless it becomes essential.” He took off his spectacles and wiped them. “Charming place and time we live in. Charming people.”

“Where are these particular charming people?”

“I haven’t seen them lately. Durano has himself a place in the desert, and they could be living there, though it’s hardly the season. They could be back in Chicago, but I doubt it. Durano is running this territory permanently.” He clicked his teeth. “That’s a nice fat five dollar’s worth.”

“It’s pretty hot in the desert this time of year.”

“Heat doesn’t seem to bother Durano. He’s got ice water in his veins. I saw him in the Springs in the middle of August. It was close to 110 in the shade, and he was wearing a topcoat.”

“Is that where his place is – Palm Springs?”

“It’s a few miles beyond Palm Springs, towards Indio. Everybody out there knows him. Better be nice to him, Lew, if you get that far. He was indicted for homicide once, even in Chicago.”