Читать книгу Double Take - Roy Huggins - Страница 5

I WAS sitting in his panelled office on the top floor of the Security Building looking at him across a desk that was bare as a mannequin’s mind and large enough for a pair of midgets to play badminton on. His name was Ralph Johnston and he was president of Johnston and Forbes, Advertising. We had been talking for about twenty minutes, pleasant, aimless talk that didn’t tell me anything about why he had brought me up there. He was thirty-eight or so, and he filled his high-back swivel chair to capacity. He sat with one knee drawn up almost under his chin in a small-boy gesture that said, Don’t take these executive trappings too seriously, I don’t.

He ran a hand roughly through coarse blond hair and said, “I don’t know. Maybe this thing will turn out to be a bad joke, some sofa slug’s idea of a very funny gag.” He went on rubbing his head lightly and looking at me out of the round eyes that were the clear transparent blue of copper sulphate.

I didn’t have any comment.

“It happened about a week ago, and I’ve just got around to doing something about it. It probably isn’t too late.”

I nodded and crossed my legs. There still didn’t seem to be anything to say.

“I’m afraid some of my friends resent my wife,” he went on. “Think she’s too chilly. Any one of them might be capable of getting stuccoed and pulling a stunt like that.” He had a lean, tanned face, and there was a hint of sweat at his temples; and I was beginning to wonder if he’d brought me up there to listen while he talked himself out of a case of nerves.

“This thing that might be gag,” I said. “Is it a secret?”

Johnston had been raising his hand to his head again. It stopped midway and his mouth came open. Then he grinned. It was a broad, warm grin, a little lop-sided, backed up by a nice set of teeth.

He said: “Maybe it would help if I told you what I’m talking about.”

“That would be fine.”

“Six days ago I got a phone call. I don’t recall the exact words, but the fellow asked me how much it would be worth for him to keep quiet about my wife. I asked him what he was talking about and he said, ‘Let’s not be coy.’ I asked who was calling and he came back with ‘I’ll give you a couple of weeks to think it over and maybe find out what I’m talking about. After that we’ll get together for business.’ Then he hung up.”

Johnston leaned forward and folded his hands. “Do you think it’s a gag?”

I said: “If it isn’t, it ought to be.”

His blond brows pulled together into a divot over his nose and he said: “Then you don’t think I ought to take the thing seriously?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Wouldn’t it depend on what he might have on your wife?”

Johnston hadn’t expected that. He was surprised first, then amused. He said, “I guess that’s the point of this meeting. She’s a quiet, refined girl I met at a concert at U.C.L.A. We’ve been married over a year, and I knew her for several months before that. She’s probably the most conservative, discreet woman I’ve ever known.”

“Did he talk tough — Hollywood tough, I mean?”

“No. He was kind of polite about it.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “But it still sounds more like a gag than a case of blackmail. That must be a rather rugged circle you run in…”

“There are a few people with bad taste in every circle,” he said. “But what makes you so sure it isn’t blackmail?”

“I’m not sure. But I don’t like the delay. After all, if he’s got something to sell, why not sell it now? Instead, he gives you two weeks to get set for him. It doesn’t make sense. Blackmailers generally work for the quick touch.”

“And they don’t use phones, do they?”

“Yes, they use phones. They’re real modern now.”

* * * *

JOHNSTON leaned back and nodded slowly. There was a distant look in his eyes and they seemed to have darkened a little. He got up and walked to a walnut cabinet and opened it. It was a bar, and he made two drinks with a nice economy of motion, pushed one into my hand and sat down again.

He gestured toward me with his glass grinned, and said: “I think you’ll do. I don’t agree with you, and I’m not crazy about your attitude. But I like your honesty—if it’s a gag, there’s no job in it for a detective, is there?”

I tasted the drink just to be sociable and said: “There might be, but I didn’t expect you to agree with me anyway.”

He put the glass down slowly, laughed, and said, “You didn’t? Why not?”

“I don’t believe I’ve said anything so far, Mr. Johnston, that you couldn’t have figured out for yourself. What’s the rest of the story?”

He stood up again and turned his back and pulled open the Venetian blinds on the wide window behind his desk. The air conditioner came on and filled the room with a quiet competent drone, and the world outside was lost in a soft summer silence.

He turned back and looked at the drink in his hand as if he were wondering how it got there.

“It’s a funny thing, Bailey. That phone call. It made me realize something. I know very little about my wife. The man might have something.” He sat down heavily on the edge of his desk and went on, talking to his glass:

“I met Margaret at the University of California here in L.A. a year and a half ago. She was a freshman out there, but a little older than the average freshman. She’s twenty-four now. She was a member of my niece’s sorority. We went together about six months. I—I asked her to marry me several times, and she refused me as regular as clockwork.” The smile became wry. “Then one day she asked me if I still wanted her. I abducted her right on the spot, and we went to Tijuana for the wedding…”

He stopped for a drink and I kept him company—never let a client drink alone. It was good whiskey. Soft as a candle’s flame and only slightly warmer going down.

“Well, she never went back to school after our honeymoon, although I told her she could. She had come down from Portland, Oregon, to go to U.C.L.A. But she never gets any mail from Portland…and she never talks about her home. She told me her parents were both dead and she had had to take care of her mother for several years, so she lost touch with her friends.

“Then this phone call made me remember another thing. After we got married she never had any contact with people she had known at the University. Last week I checked up and found out she hadn’t told anyone at the House about our marriage, and she hadn’t left a change of address with the Dean’s office. My niece had graduated before we were married, so she didn’t know about it. Margaret just suddenly dropped out of the world as far as the University was concerned, and the same as far as her home is concerned, apparently.” He sat down and brought his knee up again.

I said: “What did she say when you asked her why she broke her trail at U.C.L.A.?”

“It was very reasonable: Her sorority sisters bored her, and she never intended going back to school, so why bother letting them know where she was.” He looked up at me for the first time since he started to tell the story, and he was trying hard to keep the placid look of easy humor on his face. But the effort showed. I wondered what the expression he was holding back might have been: fear or deep concern.

“But that’s why I’ve called you, Bailey. I used to think it was just reticence, or that she’d simply been unhappy in Portland. But that call gave me the jitters. If she’s hiding something, if she’s got something to fear, I’ve got to know what it is and help her.”

“Why don’t you just ask her what it’s all about?”

* * * *

THE warm smile came painfully back. “I hope you’re not as crude as you seem, Bailey. I’m willing to pay you good money to keep from asking Margaret that question or telling her about the phone call.”

“A dollar will just about cover it. For that price the Merchant’s Credit Association in Portland will give you a pretty full report on her.”

Johnston gave me a quizzical up-from-under look and drawled: “You come to your conclusions with the slow deliberation of a greyhound starting after a mechanical rabbit. Her maiden name as I know it was Margaret Bleeker. I think we’ll find that that is her name, but we don’t know that. We don’t really know anything at all…”

“It takes a high school transcript in good order to get into U.C.L.A., Mr. Johnston. I don’t like to seem difficult, but my services are specialized and I charge accordingly. I like to feel that a job is worth the money before I take it.”

“Are you married?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well, when a man waits till he’s thirty-nine to marry, it’s usually a kind of severe case.” He reddened slightly, but he went on with an unobtrusive dignity that seemed an innate part of him. “I can’t go on wondering if Margaret’s in trouble. And I want what I do about it to be in capable hands. You came pretty highly recommended. I’m not just asking you to go to Portland and see if there’s anything up there Margaret is ashamed or afraid of. I want to retain you to help me handle this…whatever this phone call means. Do you want the job?”

“That phone call wouldn’t have any connection with your appointment to the State Planning Commission would it?”

“Don’t tell me anybody outside my immediate circle of friends and enemies knows that I’m a State Planning Commissioner?”

“Yeah. I read about it.”

Johnston laughed. “I’m afraid there’s no connection. I wish there was, then I could just resign, and solve the problem—the job isn’t what you’d call a political plum.”

I got up and put the empty glass on the bar and sat down again.

“I’ll be glad to do what I can, Mr. Johnston. But I still think forty dollars a day and expenses is high for this job. I’ve done some pretty unpleasant work for a lot less.”

Johnston laughed again. It was a restrained, unaffected release of tension. “Ever kill anyone?”

“Not lately.”

“Are those your regular rates?”

“For an out-of-town job, yes.”

“My attorney told me you’d play hard to get…and end up taking the job. So I prepared for you.” He took an envelope out of an inside pocket and grinned. “There’s a round-trip ticket for Portland in here, to leave tomorrow, a three hundred dollar retainer, and a picture of my wife. I want the picture back; it’s the only one I’ve got.”

I took the envelope and said. “What about habits, names of friends in Portland, or of people she was intimate with at U.C.L.A.?”

He shook his head. “She’s never mentioned anyone in Portland except her mother. She wasn’t intimate, or even very friendly, with anyone at the University; and her habits are to spend a lot of rime at home or at our place at Malibu. She doesn’t like night life—neither do I particularly.”

* * * *

I HAD the picture out of the envelope. It was a three-by-four glossy print, the kind that goes with hot dogs and kewpie dolls.

Johnston said: “We got that on our honeymoon in Tijuana. Be careful with it.”

It was a good clear picture of a round-faced woman in tortoise-shell glasses. You couldn’t tell much about the color of the hair, but the eyes, hiding behind the tortoise-shell and glass were what stopped and held you. They were large and wide, with the remote subdued intelligence of a woman who has discovered the quality of sex and has come to terms with it. The pupils were without light, and the skin below the eyes was darker than the pale face, and it made them look deep-set and thoughtful.

I said: “Does she always wear glasses?”

“Not any more. She wore them when she was going to school. I don’t think it means anything.… There was another odd thing though: She lived like a Maharaja’s daughter at U.C.L.A. A swank apartment in Westwood, a cabin at Arrowhead, and all the accessories. But her personal fortune amounted to about six hundred dollars.”

I put the envelope away and stood up. Johnston came around the desk and walked with me to the door. He was a big man with lean shoulders, probably an inch taller than I. He didn’t slap me on the back.

“I know you’re going to find that things are just what Margaret says they are up there; so take it easy, and don’t show that picture around unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

I took hold of the mahogany-panelled door. “I’ll do my best. But you stir things up a little and get your information, or you let things lie and stay ignorant. It’s kind of hard to do both.”

“I’m paying you to get the information without stirring things up.”

“I’ll do my best,” I repeated. “But I’ll have to handle it my own way. If she hasn’t anything to hide, she’ll never know about me. But if there are any bodies buried she’ll know she’s being cased no matter how careful I am. She’ll probably find out I’m doing it. But she won’t know you’re behind it—at least not from me.”

Johnston nodded distantly and said, “All right, it’s in your hands. Good luck, and don’t stay any longer than you have to.” He shook my hand and turned back to his desk.

I said: “I suppose it’s occurred to you that the man on the telephone might have wanted you to do just what you’re doing.”

He wheeled around and shoved his hands into his pockets. He shook his head, grinned, and said, “Bailey, I can see why you don’t work for a salary. You wouldn’t last five minutes in the business world. No, it didn’t occur to me, and I don’t give a damn.”

I opened the door and grinned back at him. “By the way, you didn’t make that phone call yourself, did you?”

I thought I could still hear him laughing even after I closed the heavy door and walked away.

But I wasn’t trying to be funny. Not entirely anyway.