Double Take. Roy Huggins
for your show,” I went on. “She was born Margaret Bleeker.”
There may have been a change, a subtle release of tension in the room. Or maybe I just thought there was, because I was looking hard for a reaction. The man behind me moved audibly for the first time, and Keller’s shoulders and face seemed to relax imperceptibly. He chuckled softly and said:
“What’s that high-nosed little brat got herself into?”
“She’s just missing.”
Kellar squirmed slightly and glanced at a clock on the corner of his desk. He was bored. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. Bailey. She left here in 1938 when I sold the Hofbrau. Went to L.A. with a two-bit comic named Buffin.”
“That’s a long time ago. Sure of the date?”
He stood up slowly, painfully, and came around the desk. “I’m afraid so,” he rumbled. “Do you know her, Mr. Bailey?”
I shook my head.
“Private operator?”
“Uh-huh.”
He chuckled again. “She was quite a young lady. Luscious as a pomegranate, and twice as acid. I don’t think anyone ever got to her. Buffin was just a sleeper ticket to L.A.”
I stood up. “Would you know anyone who might have kept in touch with her in Los Angeles?”
He patted me on the shoulder with a hand like a pink pin cushion and said, “Sorry I can’t help you. But six years is a lot of years, sir.”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t have any picures around would you?”
“I might. I have a room full of relics I trucked over from the Hofbrau. Want to go through it?”
“I’d like to.”
He walked over to a bar set in a blond-wood cabinet and began to mix a drink. His hands shook a little.
“You know the room, George. Take him down and let him go through it.”
I walked to the door and turned around. Keller was taking a long, business-like drink. I said:
“Thanks for your time, Mr. Keller. Sorry I had to disappoint you.”
He lowered the glass and looked at me blankly over it. He belched majestically. He didn’t say anything.
* * * *
THE room was large and cold and had a sour smell to it. There was a 100-watt bulb burning fiercely in the high ceiling and throwing a begrudging light on a collection of junk stacked against the far wall. I could make out a few sandwich boards, some broken floodlights, and a collection of cheap silvered shields, the kind a five-man orchestra sits behind.
I left George standing at the door and started through the junk. It was probably forty-five hot and dusty minutes later that I turned over the large rectangle of black cardboard. It was the kind of board that fits into a glass-enclosed box, like those outside some of the Hollywood spots on Vine.
There were nine eight-by-ten photographs glued on the board at meaningless angles. And in the center in fancy gold-leaf that was flaking badly now it said: “Gala show tonight with these popular stars,” and then it listed the names. The fourth name was Peggy Bleeker, the seventh name was Buster Buffin.
Three of the faces were male, so I only had to look at six. She was easy to find. The hair was blonde, but the eyes in their seeming shadows, and the wide smile, were the same.
It was a full-length picture, and the figure was slender as a boy’s, with long trim legs. But there wasn’t any doubt about it. It was Mrs. Ralph Johnston of U.S.L.A and the Hofbrau.
I had to use a knife, to get it off. George had come over from the door and was watching me carefully w’hile I folded it and put it away in an inside pocket.
“Which one of them is Buffin, George?”
He indicated one of the photographs with his foot and said, “Cute, ain’t he?”
It was a studio photograph of a hatchet-faced man with a hungry grin, a cocky straw hat, and a bow tie that might have been somebody’s horse-blanket. I cut it off and put it away with the one of Mrs. Johnston.
George said: “How d’ya know the other one was Peg Bleeker? I thought you said you didn’t know her.”
“You don’t miss anything, do you? But you ought to carry a smaller gun. I saw a photograph of her in Los Angeles.”
“Oh.” He ushered me down to the elevator, left me without saying anything and knocked at Keller’s door. It clicked, and he slipped in quickly.
Outside, the mist was heavy and the street had the echoing darkness of a deserted alley. Strands of fog wandered aimlessly. I had thought I would find a cab, or a place to call one. In ten blocks I didn’t find either. A car passed me, appearing from nowhere out of the night and going nowhere into it. I lost it in the drifting mist and stopped and listened to the night silence. A ship moaned distantly. I put a cigarette in my mouth and lit it. I didn’t really want a smoke, but the bright warmth of the match was pleasant.
Then I heard it. The quiet shush of leather on the wet walk, growing suddenly hurried and confused as I turned. Something glinted brightly and came down across my head. I went down on my hands and knees. Nausea pulsed upward and pounded at my throat, and I pulled myself up and my feet slipped on the wet pavement. I heard a gentle, sighing sound and light suddenly broke into bright fragments behind my eyes. Then there was only darkness stretching away endlessly.
CHAPTER IV
THE sidewalk had a clean wet smell.
I came to know that smell. I smelled it for a long time before I moved my face and decided I didn’t like it down there. I dragged myself up slowly and reached out and steadied the darkness while my stomach throbbed like a base fiddle, sending sour tones hammering against my skull.
At my feet several of my cards were scattered, with my wallet and the pictures of Mrs. Johnston and Buster gleaming in the midst of them. I picked them up and put the pictures and the cards away. They were soft and wet. I opened the wallet with clumsy, palsied fingers and looked into it. It was empty.
It didn’t have to mean anything. Just a man with a donnegan; someone who liked to crack a head now and then in a friendly way for whatever it was worth. A nickel here, a nickel there. Heads are hard and I was a stranger in town.
I didn’t believe a word of it.
I found a cab a few blocks away and went back to the hotel. The elevator girl clicked her tongue at me impersonally and asked me what floor I wanted, if any. I leered at her and held up four fingers. She cracked her gum and said, “Mister, it’s a good thing you don’t live on the first floor.” She showed me her teeth.
I got out on four and wandered down the dim hall to my room. I let myself in, turned on the light, and stood looking the place over. I couldn’t see anything different about it. It still looked like a cave man’s dream of a home away from home. I went through the drawers, the unlocked suitcase in the closet, the pockets of my extra suit where I had about sixty dollars. The money was still there. If the place had been searched, it had been down with a nice professional touch. The bottle looked a little emptier, but that might have been on account of my consummate thirst. I didn’t take a drink. It wouldn’t have helped.
I lay down on the bed and thought it over. If Keller, just for example, had wanted to know a little more about me, or to see what I carried around, he’d have had a go at my room. And how would he know where that was? Not from the cab driver who took me down there, because I picked him up two blocks from the hotel. But, easily enough, from the little girl with the shaven legs. I liked those legs. I wanted to see more of them. I rolled over and sat up slowly and picked up the phone.
I got the bell captain, tried to get the proper tone of oily obscenity and said, “This is four-eighteen. I’ve got a little time now. How