Росс Макдональд - The Barbarous Coast

“Lance Torres?”

His eyelids crinkled. “Possibly. He was quite dark, Spanish-looking. A very well-built boy – one of those new young types with the apache air. Perhaps Miss Seeley can identify him for you. I saw them talking together.” He pushed his right cuff back and looked at his wristwatch. “Miss Seeley is out for coffee, but she should be back very soon.”

“While we’re waiting, you could give me Hester’s address. Her real address.”

“Why should I make things easy for you?” Anton said with his edged smile. “I don’t like the fellow you are working for. He is too aggressive. Also, I am old and he is young. Also my father was a streetcar conductor in Montreal. Why should I help an Anglo from Toronto?”

“So you won’t let him find his wife?”

“Oh, you can have the address. I simply wished to express my emotions on the subject. She lives at the Windsor Hotel in Santa Monica.”

“You know it by heart, eh?”

“I happen to remember. I had a request for her address from another detective last week.”

“Police detective?”

“Private. He claimed to be a lawyer with money for her, a bequest, but his story was very clumsy and I am not stupid.” He glanced at his wristwatch again. “If you’ll excuse me, now, I have to dress for a class. You can wait here for Miss Seeley if you wish.”

Before I could ask him any more questions, he went out through an inner door and closed it behind him. I sat down at his desk and looked up the Windsor Hotel in the telephone directory. The desk clerk told me that Miss Hester Campbell didn’t stay there any more. She’d moved out two weeks ago, leaving no forwarding address.

I was masticating this fact when Miss Seeley came in. I remembered her from the period when Anton divorced his third wife, with my assistance. She was a little older, a little thinner. Her tailored pinstriped suit emphasized the boniness of her figure. But she still wore hopeful white ruffles at her wrists and throat.

“Why, Mr. Archer.” The implications of my presence struck her. “We’re not having wife trouble again?”

“Wife trouble, yes, but nothing to do with the boss. He says you may be able to give me some information.”

“My telephone number, by any chance?” Her smile was warm and easygoing behind her lipstick mask.

“That I could do with, too.”

“You flatter me. Go right ahead. I can stand a smattering of flattering for a change. You don’t meet many eligible males in this business.”

We exchanged some further pleasantries, and I asked her if she remembered seeing Hester at the party. She remembered.

“And her escort?”

She nodded. “Dreamy. A real cute thing. That is, if you like the Latin type. I don’t go for the Latin type myself, but we got along just fine. Until he showed his true colors.”

“You talked to him?”

“For a while. He was kind of shy with all the people, so I took him under my wing. He told me about his career and all. He’s an actor. Hello-Graff Studios have him under longterm contract.”

“What’s his name?”

“Lance Leonard. It’s kind of a cute name, don’t you think? He told me he chose it himself.”

“He didn’t tell you his real name?”

“No.”

“And he’s under contract to Helio-Graff?”

“That’s what he said. He’s certainly got the looks for it. And the artistic temperament.”

“You mean he made a pass at you?”

“Oh, no. Not that I’d permit it. He’s stuck on Hester anyway, I could see that. They were at the bar after, drinking out of the same glass, just as close as close.” Her voice was wistful. She added by way of consolation to herself: “But then he showed his true colors.”

“How did he do that?”

“It was awful,” she said with relish. “Hester came in here to put in a telephone call. I let her have the key. It must have been to another man, because he followed her in and made a scene. These Latins are so emotional.”

“You were here?”

“I heard him yelling at her. I had things to do in my own office, and I couldn’t help overhearing. He called her some awful names: b-i-t-c-h and other words I won’t repeat.” She tried to blush, and failed.

“Did he threaten her in any way?”

“You bet he did. He said she wouldn’t last a week unless she played along with the operation. She was in it deeper than anybody, and she wasn’t going to ruin his big chance.” Miss Seeley was a fairly decent woman, but she couldn’t quite restrain the glee fluttering at the corners of her mouth.

“Did he say what the operation was?”

“Not that I heard.”

“Or threaten to kill her?”

“He didn’t say that he was going to do anything to her. What he said–” She looked up at the ceiling and tapped her chin. “He said if she didn’t stay in line, he’d get this friend of his after her. Somebody called Carl.”

“Carl Stern?”

“Maybe. He didn’t mention the last name. He just kept saying that Carl would fix her wagon.”

“What happened after that?”

“Nothing. They came out and left together. She looked pretty subdued, I mean it.”

THERE WAS AN OUTDOOR TELEPHONE BOOTH in the court, and I immured myself with the local directories. Lance Leonard wasn’t in them. Neither was Lance Torres, or Hester Campbell, or Carl Stern. I made a telephone call to Peter Colton, who had recently retired as senior investigator in the D.A.’s office.

Carl Stern, he told me, had also retired recently. That is, he’d moved to Vegas and gone legit, if you could Vegas legit. Stern had invested his money in a big new hotel-and-casino which was under construction. Personally Colton hoped he’d lose his dirty gold-plated shirt.

“Where did the gold come from, Peter?”

“Various sources. He was a Syndicate boy. When Siegel broke with the Syndicate and died of it, Stern was one of the heirs. He made his heavy money out of the wire service. When the Crime Commission broke that up, he financed a narcotics ring for a while.”

“So you put him away, no doubt.”

“You know the situation as well as I do, Lew.” Colton sounded angry and apologetic at the same time. “Our operation is essentially a prosecuting agency. We work with what the cops bring into us. Carl Stern was using cops for bodyguards. The politicians that hire and fire the cops went on fishing trips with him to Acapulco.”

“Is that how he wangled himself a gambling license in Nevada?”

“He didn’t get a license in Nevada. With his reputation, they couldn’t give him one. He had to get himself a front.”

“Do you know who his front man would be?”

“Simon Graff,” Colton said. “You must have heard of him. They’re going to call their place Simon Graff’s Casbah.”

That stopped me for a minute. “I thought Helio-Graff was making money.”

“Maybe Graff saw his chance to make some more money. I’d tell you what I think of that, but it wouldn’t be good for my blood pressure.” He went ahead and told me anyway, in a voice that was choked with passion: “They’ve got no decency, they’ve got no sense of public responsibility – these goddam lousy big Hollywood names that go to Vegas and decoy for thieves and pander for mobsters and front for murderers.”

“Is Stern a murderer?”

“Ten times over,” Colton said. “You want his record in detail?”

“Not just now. Thanks, Peter. Take it easy.”

I knew a man at Helio-Graff, a writer named Sammy Swift. The studio switchboard put me on to his secretary, and she called Sammy to the phone.

“Lew? How’s the Sherlock kick?”

“It keeps me in beer and skittles. By the way, what are skittles? You’re a writer, you’re supposed to know these things.”