Росс Макдональд - The Ivory Grin

“You sound very good to me. But you may be letting your imagination run away with you.” I saw that she wasn’t listening, and stopped.

Her mind was moving on a remote curve that she was trying to plot in words: “He felt so guilty about the money he’d never worked for, and doubly guilty because he was disappointing his mother. Charles wanted to suffer. He saw his whole life as an expiation. He would choose a woman who would make him suffer.”

Against the moonlight her face had a virgin bleakness. The softness of her mouth and chin was broken by angular shadows.

“You know what sort of woman she was, then.”

“Not really. All my information is third-hand. A detective interviewed the bartender at the hotel, and told Mrs. Singleton about the woman. She told me.”

“Come down there with me,” I said. “I’ll buy you a drink. I think you could use a drink.”

“Oh no. I’ve never been in a bar.”

“You’re twenty-one.”

“It isn’t that. I have to go in now. I always read her to sleep. Good night.”

When I leaned across to open the door for her, I could see the tears on her face like spring rain.

A pair of Filipino bell-hops in maroon uniforms gave me an interested look as I went in, and lost interest immediately. Under a Moorish arch opposite the hotel entrance, an assistant manager stood behind the reservations desk like a tuxedoed saint in a niche. Over an arch in the far corner, a neon sign spelled out Cantina in red script. I made my way through the potted-palm formality of the lobby and out to a patio planted with banana trees. Couples loitered in their shade. I crossed to the bar in a hurry.

It was a large L-shaped room decorated with bullfight posters, blue with smoke, pounding with monkey house din. White female shoulders, dinner jackets black, blue, and plaid, swayed and gesticulated three deep at the long bar. The men had the unnaturally healthy, self-assured faces of sportsmen who had never really had to take a chance. Except perhaps on their women. The women’s bodies looked more conscious than their heads. Somewhere behind the walls, an orchestra started a samba rhythm. Some of the shoulders and dinner jackets were lured away from the bar.

There were two bartenders working, an agile Latin youth and a thin-haired man who kept a sharp eye on the other. I waited until their business had slacked off, and asked the thin-haired man if he was the regular bartender. He gave me the impervious stare of his trade.

“Sure thing. What are you drinking?”

“Rye. I’d like to ask you a question.”

“Go ahead, if you can think of a new one.” His hands went on working of their own accord, filling a shot-glass for me and setting it out on the bar.

I paid him. “About Charles Singleton, Junior. You saw him the night he disappeared?”

“Oh, no.” He glanced up at the ceiling in mock despair. “I tell it to the sheriff. I tell it to the reporters. I tell it to the private dicks.” His eyes returned to my level, gray and opaque. “You a reporter?”

I showed him my identification.

“Another private dick,” he lamented imperturbably. “Why don’t you go back and tell the old lady she’s wasting your time and her money? Junior blew with as stylish a blondie as you could hope to see. So why would he want to come back?”

“Why did he go away?”

“You didn’t see her. The dame had everything.” His hands illustrated his meaning. “That beast and junior are down in Mexico City or Havana having themselves a time, mark my words. Why would he come back?”

“You had a good look at the woman?”

“Sure. She bought a drink from me while she was waiting for junior. Besides, she was in with him a couple of times before.”

“What was her drink?”

“Tom Collins.”

“How was she dressed?”

“Dark suit, nothing – flashy. Smart. Not the real class, but the next thing to it. She was a natural blonde. I could say this in my sleep.” He closed his eyes. “Maybe I am.”

“What color were her eyes?”

“Green or blue, or something in between.”

“Turquoise?”

He opened his own eyes. “One question covers a lot of ground in your book, friend. Maybe we should collaborate on a poem, only some other day. You like turquoise, I’ll say turquoise. She looked like one of those Polish kids I used to see in Chicago, but she was a long way off of West Madison, I can tell you that.”

“Does anything ever happen that you miss?”

That bought me another thirty seconds of him. “Not around here it doesn’t.”

“And junior definitely wanted to go with her?”

“Sure. You think she held a gun on him? They were stuck on each other. He couldn’t peel his eyes off of her.”

“How did they leave? By car?”

“So I understand. Ask Dewey in the parking lot. Only you better slip him a little change first. He doesn’t enjoy the sound of his own voice the way I do.” Recognizing a good cue-line, he moved out of my range.

I drank up, and went outside. The hotel faced the sea, across a palm-lined boulevard. The parking lot lay behind a row of small expensive shops on its landward side. Moving along the sidewalk, I passed a display of silver and raw-hide pendants, two wax mannequins in peasant skirts, a window full of jade; and was hit between the eyes by the name Denise. It was printed in gold leaf on the plate-glass window of a hat shop. Behind the window a single hat hung on a stand by itself, like a masterpiece of sculpture in a museum. The shop was dark, and after a second’s hesitation, I went on.

Under an arc light at the corner of the parking lot there was a small green-painted shack like a sentry-box. A sign attached to its wall stated: The sole income of attendants consists of tips. I stood beside the sign and held a dollar in the light. From somewhere among the sardined ranks of cars, a little man appeared. He was thin and gray. Under his old Navy turtleneck the shoulder-bones projected like pieces of water worn driftwood. He moved silently in canvas sneakers, leaning forward as if he were being dragged by the tip of his long sharp nose.

“Make and color? Where’s your ticket, mister?”

“My car’s parked around the corner. I wanted to ask you about another car. I guess you’re Dewey.”

“I guess I am.” He blinked his faded eyes, innocently contemplating his identity. The top of his uncombed gray head was on a level with my shoulder.

“You know a lot about cars, I bet.”

“I bet. People, too. You’re a cop, or I miss my guess. I bet you want to ask me about young Charlie Singleton.”

“A private cop,” I said. “How much do you bet?”

“One buck?”

“You win, Dewey.” I passed the money to him.

He folded it up small and tucked it in the watch pocket of the dirtiest gray flannels in the world. “It’s only fair,” he said earnestly. “You take up my valuable time. I was polishing windshields and I pick up plenty money polishing windshields on a Saturday night.”

“Let’s get it over with, then. You saw the woman he left with?”

“Absotively. She was a pipperoo. I seen her coming and going.”

“Say again.”

“Coming and going,” he repeated. “The blonde lady. She druv up about ten o’clock in a new blue Plymouth station-wagon. I seen her get out in front of the hotel. I was around in front picking up a car. I seen her get out of the station-wagon and go inside the hotel. She was a pipperino.” His gray-stubbled jaw hung slack and closed his eyes to concentrate on the memory.

“What happened to the station-wagon?”

“The other one druv it away.”

“Other one?”

“The other one that was driving the station-wagon. The dark-complected one that dropped the blonde lady off. She druv it away.”