'A white man and a couple of darker brothers?'
'You saw them, did you?'
Rasmussen said.
'I saw them. What are you going to do with them?'
'It depends on what they did. I haven't figured it out yet. If they locked your friend in the trunk and drove him someplace, it's technically kidnapping.'
'I don't think they knew he was in the trunk.'
'Then who beat him up? The doctor said he took quite a clobbering, that he was beaten and kicked.'
'I'm not surprised.'
'Do you have any thoughts on who did it to him?'
'Yes, but it will take time.'
He said he had plenty of time, all day in fact. I bought him breakfast, over his objections, and with his ham and eggs and coffee I made him the dubious gift of a piece of the Martel case.
Rasmussen listened intently. 'You think Martel beat up Hendricks?'
'I'm morally certain he did - caught him spying on his house and let him have it. But there's not much point in speculating. Hendricks can tell us about it when he's able to talk.'
Rasmussen sipped his coffee and made a bitter face. 'How did Hendricks's car get down on the boulevard?'
'I think Martel drove it there, with Hendricks in the trunk, and left it where it would be liable to be stolen.'
Ward Rasmussen looked at me sharply over his coffee cup. His eyes had the blue intensity of Bunsen flames. With his square jaw and disciplined young mouth it gave him a slightly fanatical look. 'Who's this Martel? And why would Virginia Fablon marry him?'
'That's the question I'm working on. He claims to be a wealthy Frenchman who's in trouble with the French government. Hendricks says he's a cheap crook. Martel may be a crook, and I suspect he is, but he isn't a cheap one. He's traveling with a hundred grand in cash, in a Bentley, with the prettiest girl in town.'
'I knew Virginia in high school,' Rasmussen said. 'She was a beautiful girl. And she had a lot on the ball. She made it to college when she was sixteen years old. She graduated from high school a whole semester ahead of the class.'
'You seem to remember quite a lot about her.'
'I used to follow her down the street,' he said. 'Just once I got up the nerve to ask her to go to a dance with me. That was when I was captain of the football team. But she was going with Peter Jamieson.'
A shadow of envy moved across his eyes. He lifted his crewcut head as if to shake it off. 'It's funny she'd turn around and marry this Martel. You think he came to town to marry her?'
'That's what happened, anyway. I don't know what his original plans were.'
'Where did he get the hundred thousand?'
'He deposited it in the form of a draft on a bank in Panama City, the Bank of New Granada. It fits in with his claim that his family has holdings in various foreign countries.'
Rasmussen leaned across the table, elbowing his empty cup to one side. 'It fits in equally well with the fact - the idea that he's a crook. A lot of criminal money gravitates to Panama, on account of their banking laws.'
'I know. That's why I mentioned it. There's another thing. The woman who was shot last night, Virginia Fablon's mother, had an income from the same bank.'
'How much of an income?'
'I don't know. You may be able to get the details from her local bank, the National.'
'I'll give it a whirl.'
He took out a new-looking notebook.
While he was making some shorthand notes, Eric Malkovsky arrived, carrying a manila envelope. I introduced the two men. Then Eric got his enlargements out of the envelope and spread them on the table.
They were about six-by-eight inches, fresh and clear as though they had been taken the day before. I could see every line on Ketchel's face. Though he was smiling, sickness lurked behind his smile. The lines around his mouth might just as well have meant dismay. He had the look of a man who had fought his way to the top, or what he considered the top, but took no pleasure in that or anything else.
In the enlargement, the meaning of Kitty's face had changed a little. Her eyes seemed to hold a faint suspicion that she was a woman who could do something better than just wear clothes, but in the Kitty I had met last night, here in the Breakwater Hotel, the suspicion seemed to have died and left no trace.
'You did a good job, Eric. These pictures will be a big help.'
'Thanks.'
But he was impatient with me. He reached across me and stabbed at the top picture with his forefinger. 'Take a good look at the man in the background, the one holding the tray.'
Almost immediately I saw what he meant. Behind the busboy's wide black mustache I recognized a younger version of Martel.
'He was nothing but a waiter at the club,' Malkovsky said. 'Not even a waiter. A busboy. And I let him walk all over me.'
Rasmussen said politely: 'May I see one of those?'
I handed him the top picture, and he studied it. The waitress came to the table with a pot of coffee and a breakfast menu spotted with samples of past breakfasts. The waitress herself wore visible clues to her history, in her generous mouth and disappointed eyes, her never-say-die blonde hair, her bunion limp.
'You want to order?' she said to Eric.
'I've already eaten breakfast. I'll have some coffee.'
I said that I would, too. The waitress noticed the picture in front of me when she was pouring it.
'I know that girl,' she said. 'She was in here last night. She changed the color of her hair, didn't she?'
'What time last night?'
'It must have been before seven. I went off at seven. She ordered a chicken sandwich, all white meat.'
She leaned above me confidentially. 'Is she a movie star or something?'
'What makes you think she's a movie star?'
'I dunno. The way she was dressed, the way she looked. She's a very lovely girl.'
She heard her own voice, raised in enthusiasm, and lowered it. 'Excuse me, I didn't mean to be nosey.'
'That's all right.'
She limped away, looking slightly more disappointed than she had.
Rasmussen said when she was out of hearing: 'It's a funny thing, but I think I know her, too.'
'You may at that. She says she was raised here in town, somewhere in the neighborhood of the railroad tracks.'
Ward Rasmussen scratched his crewcut. 'I'm pretty sure I've seen her. What's her name?'
'Kitty Hendricks. She is, or was, Harry Hendricks's wife. According to her, she's still married to Hendricks, but they haven't been living together. Seven years ago she was living with the man in the picture there - his name is Ketchel - and she probably still is. She fed me an elaborate story about being private secretary to a tycoon that Martel stole some securities from. But I don't put much stock in that.'
Ward took some notes. 'Where do we go from here?'
'You're in this, are you?'
He smiled. 'It beats citing people for jaywalking. My ambition is to do detective work. Incidentally, may I keep a copy of this picture?'
'I want you to. Remember she's seven years older now, and redheaded. See if you can track down her family and get a line on her whereabouts. She probably knows a lot more than she told me. Also, she'll lead us to Ketchel, I hope.'
He folded the picture into his notebook. 'I'll get right on it.'
Before he left, Ward wrote his address and telephone number on a page of his notebook. He was still living with his father, he said, though he hoped to get married soon. He handed me the torn out page, and strode out of the coffee shop, eager even on his own time.
My heart went out to the boy. More than twenty years ago, when I was a rookie on the Long Beach force, I
