gun and an excuse to use it can be murder, literally. I made one more attempt: `Do you know a photographer named Harold Harley who used to be here?'

`Never heard of him. Now you get out of here before I blow a hole in you. You're trespashing.'

He lifted the heavy revolver. I withdrew, as far as the service station across the street. A quick-moving man in stained white coveralls came out from under a car on a hoist and offered to sell me gas.

`It ought to take ten,' I said. `Who's the character in the Barcelona Hotel? He acts like he was bitten by a bear.'

The man gave me a one-sided smile. `You run into Otto Sipe?'

`If that's the watchman's name.'

`Yeah. He worked there so long he thinks he owns the place.'

`How long?'

`Twenty years or more. I been here since the war myself, and he goes back before me. He was their dick.'

`Hotel detective?'

`Yeah. He told me once he used to be an officer of the law. If he was, he didn't learn much. Check your oil?'

`Don't bother, I just had it changed. Were you here in 1945?'

`That's the year I opened. I went into the service early and got out early. Why?'

`I'm a private detective. The name is Archer.'

I offered him my hand.

He wiped his on his coveralls before he took it. 'Daly. Ben Daly.'

`A man named Harold Harley used to stay at the Barcelona in 1945. He was a photographer.'

Daly's face opened. `Yeah. I remember him. He took a picture of me and the wife to pay for his gas bill once. We still have it in the house.'

`You wouldn't know where he is now?'

`Sorry, I haven't seen him in ten years.'

`What was the last you saw of him?'

`He had a little studio in Pacific Palisades. I dropped in once or twice to say hello. I don't think he's there any more.'

`I gather you liked him.'

`Sure. There's no harm in Harold.'

Men could change. I showed Carol's picture to Daly. He didn't know her.

`You couldn't pin down the address in Pacific Palisades for me?'

He rubbed the side of his face. It needed retreading, but it was a good face. `I can tell you where it is.'

He told me where it was, on a side street just off Sunset, next door to a short-order restaurant. I thanked him, and paid him for the gas.

The short-order restaurant was easy to find, but the building next door to it was occupied by a paperback bookstore. A young woman wearing pink stockings and a ponytail presided over the cash register. She looked at me pensively through her eye makeup when I asked her about Harold Harley.

`It seems to me I heard there was a photographer in here at one time.'

`Where would he be now?'

`I haven't the slightest idea, honestly. We've only been here less than a year ourselves-a year in September.'

`How are you doing?'

`We're making the rent, at least.'

`Who do you pay it to?'

`The man who runs the lunch counter. Mr. Vernon. He ought to give us free meals for what he charges. Only don't quote me if you talk to him. We're a month behind now on the rent.'

I bought a book and went next door for dinner. It was a place where I could eat with my hat on. While I was waiting for my steak, I asked the waitress for Mr. Vernon. She turned to the white-hatted short-order cook who had just tossed my steak onto the grill.

`Mr. Vernon, gentleman wants to speak to you.'

He came over to the counter, an unsmiling thin-faced man with glints of gray beard showing on his chin. `You said you wanted it bloody. You'll get it bloody.'

He brandished his spatula.

`Good. I understand you own the store next door.'

`That and the next one to it.'

Вы читаете The Far Side of the Dollar
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