Росс Макдональд - The Ivory Grin

“Where are you going?”

“Down to the station to amplify my statement. The longer I wait, the more trouble it’s going to make for me.”

“No, you can’t do that.” She scrambled to her feet and ran jerkily to the door, spreading her arms across it like a crucified marionette. “You’re working for me. You can’t turn me in.”

I took the hundred from my wallet and tossed it at her feet. She stooped for it, watching me anxiously to see that I didn’t escape: “No. Please take it back. I’ll give you more.”

“You haven’t got enough. Murder comes very high on my price-list.”

“I didn’t kill her, you – Mr. Archer. I told you my alibi.”

“Telephone alibis are easy to fix.”

“I didn’t fix it. There’s no way I could have fixed it. I was here in this room. Ask the switchboard. I haven’t been out of here since early this afternoon.”

“And that’s why you’re taking it so calmly, eh?” I reached for the doorknob.

“What are you going to do?”

Her cold hand closed over mine. The bill fell like a crumpled green leaf to the floor. Braced against the door, breathing with terrier quickness, she didn’t notice it.

“I’ll see the switchboard girl, if the same one’s still on duty.”

“It was the desk-clerk who handled the call. I recognized his voice.”

“All right, I’ll talk to the desk-clerk. Then you and I are going into this thing in detail.”

“Not with cops?”

“It’s up to you. We’ll see how your story checks.”

“No. Stay here. You can’t do this to me.” The words were punctuated by gasping breaths.

I turned the knob and pulled on it. She sat down against the door and began to scream wordlessly. The opening door pushed her sideways. Legs spraddled, mouth wide open, she looked up at me in the reddish murderous light and I looked down at her. She was making a steady unbearable sound like the screech of tearing metal. I closed the heavy door, cutting off the sound.

The desk-clerk beamed with pleasure at the sight of me. I was the fortunate traveler whose lady-friend in the expensive suite wore genuine leopardskin and probable diamonds.

“I’m looking after things for Mrs. Larkin,” I said. “May I see her room account?”

“Certainly, sir.” Plucking a large card from a filing drawer beside him, he leaned confidentially across the polished counter top. “I do hope Mrs. Larkin isn’t checking out. She tips quite beautifully. It’s good for general morale among the help.” His voice sank to a bashful murmur: “She isn’t a Hollywood personality, by any chance?”

“I’m surprised she told you.”

“Oh, she didn’t tell me. I deduced it. I recognize real class. Of course I did have a clue.”

His polished oval fingernail pointed to the top of the card. Una had given the Hollywood-Roosevelt Hotel as her home address. Below it, only three items were listed on the account: twelve dollars for the suite, which had been paid in advance; a telephone charge of $3.35; and $2.25 for room service.

“She’s been here less than one full day,” I said in a penny-pinching way. “Three thirty-five seems like a lot of money for phone calls.”

His small mustache rose towards his nostrils as if it was about to be inhaled. “Oh no, it’s perfectly legitimate. It was all one call, long distance and person-to-person. I took care of it myself.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“I wish it were. The daytime operator goes off at five, and the night operator was a little late. I was at the switchboard myself when Mrs. Larkin called down.”

“At five?”

“Maybe one or two minutes after. I’d just sat down in front of the board that minute. Switchboards have always fascinated me.”

“You’re sure it was Mrs. Larkin?”

“Oh, absolutely. Her voice is quite unique. Is she an actress of some kind, a character actress?”

“You’re quite acute,” I said. “She is also a character in her own right. It’s hard to believe she’d spend that much money on a single phone call.”

“Just ask her!” He was cut to the quick, which was very near the surface. “Go and ask her.”

“Mrs. Larkin doesn’t like to be bothered with these trivial details. She employs me to protect her from them, in fact. Now, if it was a call to Detroit, I could understand it.”

“Ypsilanti,” he said eagerly. “It was to the Tecumseh Tavern in Ypsilanti. That’s right outside Detroit, isn’t it?”

I assumed a thoughtful expression. “Let’s see now, who does Mrs. Larkin know in Ypsilanti?”

“His name was Garbold. She asked for a man called Garbold, person-to-person.” But his eagerness was beginning to fade at the edges. He looked down at his vase of cornflowers as if he suspected that noxious insects might be concealed among them.

“Of course. Garbold. Why didn’t you say so? There’s no trouble there. Mrs. Larkin will take care of it.” I scrawled my initials at the bottom of the card and left him quickly.

Una had been quicker. I knocked once on her door and got no answer. What I got was the feeling you get when you go to a great deal of trouble to hit yourself a sharp blow at the base of the skull with a rubber hammer.

The door wasn’t locked. The leopard coat was gone from the back of the chair. Bedroom and bathroom were as clean as a whistle. I left as Una had, by the fire escape.

In the alley behind the hotel, a woman in a shawl and a dragging black skirt was hunched over an open garbage-can. She looked up at me from an infinite network of wrinkles.

“Did a lady come down here? In a spotted coat?”

The ancient woman removed something from her mouth’s eroded crater. I saw it was a red steak-bone she had been gnawing. “Si,” she said.

“Which way did she go?”

She raised the bone without speaking, and pointed up the alley. I dropped the change from my pocket into her mummified hand.

“ Muchas gracias, señor.” Her black Indian gaze came from the other side of history, like light from a star a thousand years away.

The alley led to the hotel garage. Mrs. Larkin had taken her car out within the last five minutes. It was a new Plymouth station-wagon. No, they didn’t keep track of license numbers. Probably she’d left a forwarding address at the desk. Try there.

I climbed the oil-stained concrete ramp to the sidewalk and stood at its edge, undecided what to do. I had no client, no good leads, not much money. Regret for Una’s hundred-dollar bill was gnawing at me already, like a small hungry stomach ulcer. The crowd went by like a kaleidoscope continually stirred, in which I only just failed to discern a pattern.

It was an early Saturday-night crowd. Farmhands in jeans and plaid shirts, soldiers in uniforms, boys in high-school windbreakers, roved singly and in pairs and packs among women of all ages and all shades. Hard-faced women in hats towed men in business suits. Ranchers hobbling in high-heeled boots leaned on their sun-faded wives. Under the winking yellow lights at the intersection, long shiny cars competed for space and time with pickup trucks, hot-rods, migrant jalopies. My car was still in the court of the Mountview Motel. I stepped out into the crowd and let it push me south, towards the highway.

Above the highway corner there was a cigar store with a pay-telephone sign. Under the sign a quartet of Mexican boys were watching the world go by. They leaned in a row, one-legged like storks, their lifted heels supported by the windowsill of the shop, displaying mismatched fluorescent socks under rolled jeans. Keep Your Feet on the Sidewalk Please was lettered on the wall beside them in vain.

I detached myself from the crowd and went in through the shop to the telephone booth at the rear. Three taxi-drivers were shooting craps on the back counter. I looked up Dr. Samuel Benning’s number in the local directory, and dialed it. At the other end of the line the phone rang twenty times. My nickel jangled in the coin return with the fanfare of a silver-dollar jackpot.