'I haven't the faintest idea. He's just a name to me.'
Vera's eyes were on me, pushing me out.
The cops were still in the kitchen. Marietta wasn't. Neither was Peter. The big room had taken on an air of grimy official desolation, which was familiar to me. I had once been a cop myself, on the Long Beach force; hardly more than a howitzer throw from here.
17
I DROVE BACK toward the harbor by way of the ocean boulevard, to spend what was left of the night at the Breakwater Hotel. One or both of the Hendrickses might turn up there, though I didn't expect them to.
I found myself slowing down as I came near the hobo jungle. It was just as well as I did, or I might not have noticed Harry's Cadillac. It was on a strip of grass on the ocean side, nosed into the trunk of a palm tree.
There had been a violent impact. The base of the tree was gashed. The Cadillac's heavy bumper had been forced back into the radiator. The shatterproof windshield was blurred in one place by a head mark. I found some spatterings of blood on the front seat.
Whoever had taken and wrecked the car had left the keys in the ignition. I did what I should have done before: used them to open the trunk.
Harry lay there with his back to me. I put my hand under his head and turned up his face. He had been badly beaten. Until he moaned I thought he might be dead.
I got my arms under his shoulders and legs and lifted him out. It was like delivering a big inert baby from an iron womb. I laid him out on the grass and looked around for help.
The wind hissed in the dry palm fronds overhead. There was nothing human in sight. But I didn't want to leave Harry. Somebody might steal him again.
I walked across the beach to wet my handkerchief in the water and got one of my feet wet, to no avail. Harry moaned I when I wiped his face with the wet cloth, but he didn't come to. When I lifted one of his eyelids, all I could see was white.
I calculated that he had been unconscious in the trunk for six or seven hours: there wasn't much doubt in my mind that the blood on Martel's heel was Harry's blood: and I decided to get him to a hospital. I heaved him up in my arms again.
I was halfway to my car when a city patrol car with a red light on the roof drifted into sight. It stopped and an officer got out.
'What do you think you're doing?'
'This man was in an accident. I'm taking him to a hospital.'
'We'll do that.'
He was a young officer, with a keen edge on his voice. He lifted Harry out of my clutches and deposited him on the back seat of the patrol car. Then he turned back to me with his hand on his gun butt.
'Looks to me like he was beaten.'
'Yeah.'
'Let's see your hands. Come around in the headlights.'
I showed him my hands under the white beam. A second officer got out of the driver's seat and come up behind me.
'I didn't beat him. You can see for yourself.'
'Who did?'
'I wouldn't know.'
I didn't feel like going into the subject of Martel. 'I saw the wrecked car and opened the trunk and he was in it. It's his car. I think it was stolen.'
'You know him?'
'Slightly. His name is Harry Hendricks. We're both staying at the Breakwater Hotel. You can reach me there later if you want to.'
I told them who I was. 'Right now you better get him to a hospital.'
'Don't worry. We will.'
'Which hospital?'
'It'll be County, unless you want to pay for him. Mercy asks for a one-day deposit.'
'How much?'
'Twenty bucks, on the ward.'
I gave him twenty of Peter's dollars. The officer said his name was Ward Rasmussen, and he would bring me a receipt from the hospital.
The lobby of the Breakwater Hotel was empty except for the ancient bellhop asleep on a settle. I touched him. He started and called out: 'Martha?'
'Who's Martha?'
He rubbed his bleared eyes. 'I knew a girl Martha. Did I say Martha?'
'Yep.'
'Must have been dreaming about her. I knew her in Red Bluff. Martha Truitt. I was born and raised in Red Bluff. That was a long time ago.'
Eye-deep in time he trudged around behind the desk and let me register and gave me the key to room 28, which I asked for. The electric clock over his head said it was five minutes past three.
I asked the old man if the red-headed woman, Mrs. Hendricks, had come back to the hotel. He didn't remember. I left him shaking his head over Martha Truitt.
I fell into bed and dreamed about nothing at all. The wind died just before dawn. I heard the quiet and woke up wondering what was missing. Gray light fogged the window. I could hear the sea thumping like a beggar at the bottom of the town. I turned over and dropped back to sleep.
The telephone woke me. The desk said a policeman wanted to see me. It was full morning, a quarter to eight, by my watch.
While I thought of it, I phoned Eric Malkovsky's studio. He was there.
'Have you been up all night, Eric?'
'I get up early. I made some enlargements of that negative. Something came out on them that I want to show you.'
'What is it?'
'I'd rather you saw them for yourself and drew your own conclusions.'
'Can you bring them to the Breakwater Hotel?'
He said he could.
'I'll be either in room 28 or in the coffee shop.'
I pulled on my clothes and went down to the lobby. The young officer, Rasmussen, was carrying Harry's pearl-gray hat. He handed me a receipt for twenty dollars.
'I hate to get you up so early,' he said, 'but I'm going off duty.'
'It's time I was up. How's Harry?'
'He's coming out of it. They'll be shunting him off to County unless you deposit more money today.'
'Does that make sense?'
'It's the way the hospital runs its business. I've seen people die on the way between Mercy and County. I don't mean that your friend is liable to die,' he added carefully. 'The doctor says he'll be okay.'
'He isn't my friend, exactly.'
'He must be twenty dollars' worth of a friend. Incidentally, if you're going out to the hospital you can give him his hat. I took it out of his car before the wreckers towed it away. It's a good hat, and he'll want it back.'
He gave me the hat. I didn't bother pointing out that it had the wrong name in it. I was wondering who L. Spillman was, and how Harry got his hat.
'The car's totaled out.' Rasmussen said. 'It wasn't worth much, but auto theft is auto theft. We picked up three suspects, by the way. They made it easy for us. One of them got a cut head in the accident, and his buddies brought him to the emergency ward.'
'The orange-pickers?'
'Pardon?'
