agent.'
`Could you stand a visit from a slightly catalytic agent? I'll bring dinner from the delicatessen. I'll buy you a gardenia.'
`No. I don't want to see you tonight.'
`And you haven't changed your mind about that telephone call you wouldn't tell me about?'
`No. There are things about me you needn't know.'
`I suppose that's encouraging in a way. Why did you leave your number for me, then?'
`I found something that might help you - a picture of Carol taken in 1945.'
`I'll come and get it. You haven't really told me how you met her, you know.'
`Please don't come. I'll send a messenger with it.'
`If you insist. I'll wait in my office.'
I gave her the address.
'Lew?'
Her voice was lighter and sweeter, almost poignant. `You're not just putting on an act, are you? To try and pry out my personal secrets, I mean?'
`It's no act,' I said.
`Likewise,' she said. `Thank you.'
I sat in the echoing silence thinking that she had been badly treated by a man or men. It made me angry to think of it. I didn't go out for dinner after all. I sat and nursed my anger until Susanna's messenger arrived.
He was a young Negro in uniform who talked like a college graduate. He handed me a sealed manila envelope, which I ripped open.
It contained a single glossy print, preserved between two sheets of corrugated cardboard, of a young blonde girl wearing a pageboy bob and a bathing suit. You couldn't pin down the reason for her beauty. It was partly in her clear low forehead, the high curve of her cheek, her perfect round chin; partly in the absolute femaleness that looked out of her eyes and informed her body.
Wondering idly who had taken the photograph, I turned it over. Rubber-stamped in purple ink on the back was the legend: `Photo Credit: Harold 'Har' Harley, Barcelona Hotel.'
`Will that be all?' the messenger said at the door.
`No.'
I gave him ten dollars.
`This is too much, sir. I've already been paid.'
`I know. But I want you to buy a gardenia and deliver it back to Miss Drew.'
He said he would.
12
1945 WAS A long time ago, as time went in California. The Barcelona Hotel was still standing, but I seemed to remember hearing that it was closed. I took the long drive down Sunset to the coastal highway on the off-chance of developing my lead to Harold Harley. Also I wanted to take another look at the building where Harley and Carol had lived.
It was a huge old building, Early Hollywood Byzantine, with stucco domes and minarets, and curved verandahs where famous faces of the silent days had sipped their bootleg rum. Now it stood abandoned under the bluff: The bright lights of a service station across the highway showed that its white paint was flaking off and some of the windows were broken.
I parked on the weed-ruptured concrete of the driveway and walked up to the front door. Taped to the glass was a notice of bankruptcy, with an announcement that the building was going to be sold at public auction in September.
I flashed my light through the glass into the lobby. It was still completely furnished, but the furnishings looked as though they hadn't been replaced in a generation. The carpet was worn threadbare, the chairs were gutted. But the place still had atmosphere, enough of it to summon up a flock of ghosts.
I moved along the curving verandah, picking my way among the rain-warped wicker furniture, and shone my light through a french window into the dining room. The tables were set, complete with cocked-hat napkins, but there was dust lying thick on the napery. A good place for ghosts to feed, I thought, but not for me.
Just for the hell of it, though, and as a way of asserting myself against the numerous past, I went back to the front door and tapped loudly with my flashlight on the glass. Deep inside the building, at the far end of a corridor, a light showed itself. It was a moving light, which came toward me.
The man who was carrying it was big, and he walked as if he had sore feet or legs. I could see his face now in the upward glow of his electric lantern. A crude upturned nose, a bulging forehead, a thirsty mouth. It was the face of a horribly ravaged baby who had never been weaned from the bottle. I could also see that he had a revolver in his other hand.
He pointed it at me and flashed the light in my eyes. `This place is closed. Can't you read?' he shouted through the glass.
`I want to talk to you.'
`I don't want to talk to you. Beat it. Amscray.'
He waved the gun at me. I could tell from his voice and look that he had been drinking hard. A drunk with a
