Dockard's tone was tolerant. 'His prints aren't on file. Apparently he was never in the service and hasn't got a record.'
I thanked the lieutenant and hung up. The fact that Branly had no record was in itself interesting. It made the possibility of his having been killed in a gangland assassination all the more unlikely.
There was little comfort for me in that unlikelihood. The lone and unpredictable killer frightened me more than the underworld hit man. If I had to be murdered, I wanted it done by a professional. Anything to reduce the possibility of prolonged pain.
I shook my head and called myself a few derogatory but accurate names. After setting my watch by the clock on the nightstand, I left for my appointment with Carlon at the Star Lane house.
I was ten minutes early but Carlon was there, waiting in front of 355 Star Lane in his gray Mercedes. When he saw me drive up in the green compact, he got out of his car and came toward me. He was dressed in a tailor- made, very expensive navy-blue suit that was as out of place on Star Lane as was his Mercedes. I, on the other hand, fit right in.
Carlon nodded a hello to me, then handed me a house key. 'You might as well keep it, Nudger.'
'Okay,' I said, 'let's go see if it works.'
I unlocked the front door and we stepped inside, onto the red shag carpet. The atmosphere was hot and stifling, and I had the same claustrophobic feeling that I'd experienced entering the house the first time, with Dockard and Avery. There was even an aftertaste of fear.
'My God!' Carlon said. 'Don't they have any air conditioning?' He spotted a thermostat and went for it, pushing something that brought a click, a rattling hum and supposedly cool air.
I walked around the living room slowly, then went into the kitchen. The rotting remains of the carryout chicken dinner had been removed. The slugs had been dug from the wall, and presumably, the bullet in the cupboard had been located and removed. Everything else seemed unmoved, as if I were looking at a photograph for the second time. The chrome-legged chair still lay on its side on the linoleum, and I saw that the kitchen wastebasket still contained litter.
'The landlord's being compensated to keep hands off for a while,' Carlon explained behind me.
I opened the green refrigerator, found a still-sealed quart of milk, a few condiment jars and some bologna going bad on the top shelf. The refrigerator clicked on to add its hum to the air conditioner's, and I closed the door.
'Do you really expect to find something here that the police missed?' Carlon asked.
'Not necessarily, but I might interpret something differently.'
He faded back into the living room. After checking out the kitchen, looking inside cupboards and drawers, under shelf paper, behind the stove and then through the litter in the wastebasket, I joined him.
'Find anything?' he asked.
'Only what you'd expect after somebody moved out on a few hours' notice.' I went to check the bedrooms.
The first bedroom must have been Melissa's. There were a few toys lying about, some brightly covered books and some threadbare dresses in the closet. The dresser drawers contained only the usual assortment of underclothes and some blankets. Decals of cartoon characters covered the wall behind the bed, and their happy, zany expressions seemed out of place in the otherwise drab room.
The other bedroom had been Branly and Joan's, a pale blue room furnished cheaply and sparsely. There was little sign of Joan there-a pink hairbrush on the dresser top with a few dark hairs caught in its bristles, an empty perfume bottle and a pair of high-heeled shoes with one of the heels broken. There were more of Branly's effects in the bedroom, but they were curiously impersonal. A suit and three shirts in the closet- pockets empty-and some socks and underwear in one of the dresser drawers. I could almost imagine Joan Clark removing anything,that might pertain to his identity before she left. Sadly enough, she seemed to have forgotten nothing.
I checked empty drawers, the tops of closet shelves; I even peered under the bed. With no results. On the floor, near the bed, were a couple paperback books-a Gothic romance and a self-help book on salesmanship, both worn and dog-eared. I turned the books binding-up and thumbed through the pages in the hope of finding something wedged there, but nothing fell out. Maybe Branly had been a salesman, or maybe the books had been left in the house by a previous tenant. I walked back into the living room, disgusted with my lack of progress, my stomach churning just from being in the small and depressing house.
'It seems to me you're wasting valuable time here, Nudger,' Carlon said, standing with his hands locked behind him as he stared out the front window.
'There was only one way to know for sure,' I said, reaching for my roll of antacid tablets. I fumbled, trying to pry the top disk loose from the silver foil, and the roll of tablets squirted from my fingers and bounced across the carpet, not getting very far in the thick red shag. When I bent to pick up the roll, I saw something that made me forget my immediate need for a tablet.
The house had apparently been decorated just before Branly and Joan had moved in; the woodwork was freshly enameled. But near the kitchen doorway, where the telephone sat on a small table, I saw a set of numerals scratched on the underside of the flawlessly enameled molding that ran along the wall, four feet above the floor. I moved nearer and examined the phone number more closely.
'This number mean anything to you?' I asked Car-Ion, then read off the numerals.
But he hadn't heard me. He was staring, as if fascinated, at a newspaper on the sofa. I walked over and saw that the paper was folded to the story and photo of a man named Robert Manners, a Los Angeles business executive who had committed suicide due to the pressures of his job. He'd jumped from the high roof of his office building, and a photographer had caught his image on the way down, arms and legs outspread, tie trailing like an aviator's scarf, coattails of an expensive dark suit-one like Carlon's-standing straight out in the rushing wind. I wondered how much contentment Carlon's money had really bought him. Then I recited the phone number again and he gave a little start and focused his attention on me.
'I'm unfamiliar with the number,' he said. 'Where did you find it?'
'It was freshly scratched on the woodwork near the phone. There's a writing pad and pencil by the phone, so it could be that whoever scratched this number considered it very important. A piece of paper can get lost a lot easier than a piece of woodwork.'
'That makes obvious sense, to a point,' Carlon said. 'How could the police have overlooked.it?' There was an edge to his voice, the voice of a man uncompromising toward incompetence.
'It wasn't meant to be found. I'd have missed it myself but for the good fortune of being clumsy.' Why was I sticking up for Dockard?
'I don't see any reasonable excuse,' Carlon said. 'The number was in the house; it should have been found.'
He was right, but it was a waste of time to quibble. I went to the phone, started to lift the receiver, then replaced it. A call might only serve to put someone on his guard. 'The phone company should have a cross directory that will give us the address that corresponds with Why don't I give the number to Dockard and let him check it through them?' 'The police overlooked, the number,' Carlon said. 'I see no reason to give it to them now.'
I stood, dumbfounded, and stared at him. 'You want your daughter found, don't you?'
'Of course! That's why I hired you. But perhaps we should take the incompetence of the Layton police as a measure of luck. As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Nudger, the police are involved in this case only because I have no choice.'
I stood in the stale air of the living room, waiting for him to continue. The rattling air conditioner had made little headway, and a bead of perspiration sought its way like a drop of cold mercury down the contours of my ribs.
'What I don't want,' Carlon said, 'is for the police to be delving into my daughter's private life. There's more at stake here than just the solution to a murder, to which Joan happens to be merely coincidental. Ruthless as it may sound to you, I have my career to consider. And beyond that, certain political possibilities that might surprise you.'
'And your daughter's behavior reflects on you, is that it?'
'Not only that. For her own sake I don't want Joan's reputation blackened by aspersions.'
'Or facts?'
'Or facts, damn it!'
