people, and you develop an instinct for the good ones. Like Stella.'
Stella blushed. Her mother peered at me without understanding. In my rear-view mirror, as I started away, I saw them walking down the driveway, far apart. It seemed a pity. For all I knew, Rhea Carlson was a good girl, too.
I drove downtown, and took Sponti's two-thousand-dollar check to the bank it was drawn on. I endorsed it, under Ralph Hillman's signature: `With many thanks, Lew Archer.'
It was a weak riposte for being fired, but it gave me some satisfaction to think that it might bring out the purple in Dr Sponti's face.
The transfusion of cash made me feel mobile and imaginative. Just on a hunch, I drove back to Harold Harley's place in Long Beach. It was a good hunch. Lila answered the door.
She had on an apron and a dusting cap, and she pushed a strand of black hair up under the cap. Her breast rose with the gesture. Lila wasn't a pretty woman, but she had vitality.
`Are you another one of them?' she said.
`Yes. I thought you left Harold.'
`So did I. But I decided to come back.'
`I'm glad you did. He needs your support.'
`Yeah.'
Her voice softened. `What's going to happen to Harold? Are they going to lock him up and throw the key away?'
`Not if I can help it.'
`Are you with the FBI?'
`I'm more of a free lance.'
`I was wondering. They came this morning and took the car away. No Harold. Now no car. Next they'll be taking the house from over my head. All on account of that lousy brother of his. It isn't fair.'
`It'll be straightened out. I'll tell you the same thing I told Harold. His best chance of getting free and clear is to tell the truth.'
`The truth is, he let his brother take advantage of him. He always has. Mike is still-' She clapped her hand to her mouth and looked at me over it with alarm in her brown eyes.
`What is Mike still doing, Mrs. Harley?'
She glanced up and down the dingy street. A few young children were playing in the yards, with their mothers watching them. Lila plucked at my sleeve.
`Come inside, will you? Maybe we can make some kind of a deal.'
The front door opened directly into the living room. I stepped over a vacuum-cleaner hose just inside the door.
`I've been cleaning the house,' she said. `I had to do something and that was all I could think of.'
`I hope Harold will be coming home to appreciate it soon.'
`Yeah. It would help him, wouldn't it, if I helped you to nail his brother?'
`It certainly would.'
`Would you let him go if you got Mike in his place?'
`I can't promise that. I think it would probably happen.'
`Why can't you promise?'
`I'm just a local investigator. But Mike is the one we really want. Do you know where he is, Mrs. Harley?'
For a long moment she stood perfectly still, her face as unchanging as one of her photographs hanging on the wall. Then she nodded slightly.
`I know where he was at three A.M. this morning.'
She jabbed a thumb toward the telephone. `He called here from Las Vegas at three A.M. He wanted Harold. I told him I didn't know where Harold was - he was gone when I came home last night.'
`You're sure it was Mike who called?'
`It couldn't have been anybody else. I know his voice. And it isn't the first time he called here, whining and wheedling for some of our hard-earned money.'
`He wanted money?'
`That's right. I was to wire him five hundred dollars to the Western Union office in Las Vegas.'
`But he was carrying over twenty thousand.'
Her face closed, and became impassive. `I wouldn't know about that. All I know is what he said. He needed money bad, and I was to wire him five hundred, which he would pay back double in twenty-four hours. I told him I'd see him in the hot place first. He was gambling.'
`It sounds like it, doesn't it?'
`He's a crazy gambler,' she said. `I hate a gambler.'
