'In the used car business?'
'You'd be surprised,' he said.
'And what do your connections want you to do to Martel?'
'Nothing to him. I'm just supposed to case the joint and find out who he is if I can.'
'Who is he?'
Harry spread his hands on top of the steering wheel. 'I only been in town less than twenty-four hours, and the local yokels don't know a thing about him.'
He peered at me sideways. 'If you're a cop like you say - '
'I didn't say. I'm a private detective. This area is strictly patrolled.'
The two facts were true, but unrelated.
Harry related them. 'Then you should be able to get the information. There's money in it, we could split it two ways.'
'How much?'
'A hundred I could promise you.'
'I'll see what I can find out. Where are you staying in town?'
'The Breakwater Hotel. That's on the waterfront.'
'And who is the woman who put you up to this?'
'Nobody said anything about a woman.'
'You said `she'.'
'I must have been thinking of my wife. She's got nothing to do with this.'
'I can't believe that. Your driver's license says you aren't married.'
'I am married, though.'
The point seemed important to him, as if I'd denied him membership in the human race.
'That's a mistake on the license. I forgot I was married that day, I mean - ' His explanation was interrupted by the smooth mutter of a car coming down the winding driveway above us. It was Martel's black Bentley. The man behind the wheel wore rectangular dark glasses, which covered the upper part of his face like a mask.
The girl beside him had on dark glasses, too. They almost made her look like any Hollywood blonde.
Harry got out his miniature camera, which was hardly bigger than a cigarette lighter. He ran across the road and planted himself in the entrance to the driveway, holding the camera concealed in his right hand.
The driver of the Bentley got out facing him. He was compact and muscular, dressed in English-looking sports clothes, tweeds and brogues, which didn't go with his own swarthy sleekness. He said in a controlled, faintly accented voice: 'Can I help you in any way?'
'Yeah. Watch the birdies.' Harry raised the camera and took his picture. 'Thanks, Mr. Martel.'
'You are not welcome.'
Martel's fleshy mouth became ugly. 'Give me that camera please.'
'Nuts. It's worth a hundred and fifty bucks.'
'It's worth two hundred to me,' Martel said, 'with the film in it. I have a passion for privacy, you see.'
He pronounced the word `passion' with a long nasal `o,' like a Frenchman. But he was dark for a Frenchman.
I looked at the blonde girl in the car. Though I couldn't see her eyes, she seemed to be looking back across the road at me. The lower part of her face was immobile, as if she was afraid to react to the situation. It had the dead beauty of marble.
Harry was calculating in his head, almost audibly. 'You can have it for three hundred.'
'Tres bien, three hundred. That should include a - what is the word? - receipt, with your signature and address.'
'Uh-uh.'
I had a quick impression of Harry's whole life: he didn't know how to stop when he was winning.
The girl leaned out of the open door of the Bentley. 'Don't let him hold you up, Francis.'
'I have no intention of that.'
Martel moved suddenly on Harry and plucked the camera out of his hand. He stepped back, dropped it on the asphalt, and ground it under his heel.
Harry was appalled. 'You can't do that!'
'But I have. It's a fait accompli.'
'I want my money.'
'No money. Pas d'argent. Rien du tout.'
Martel got into the black car and slammed the door. Harry followed him yelling: 'You can't do that to me! That camera doesn't belong to me! You've got to pay for it.'
'Pay him, Francis,' the girl said.
'No. He had his chance.'
Martel made another sudden movement. His fist appeared at the window, with the small round eye of a gun peering over his index finger. 'Listen to me my friend. I do not like to be bothered by 'canaille'. If you come this way again or trespass on my privacy in any way, I will kill you.'
He clicked his tongue.
Harry backed away from him. He backed to the edge of the driveway, lost his footing, and almost fell. Unimpeded by false shame, he came up like a sprinter and ran for the Cadillac. He got in wheezing and sweating.
'He almost shot me. You're a witness to that.'
'You're lucky he didn't.'
'Arrest him. Go ahead. He can't get away with that. He's nothing but a cheap crook. That French act he puts on is as queer as a three-dollar bill.'
'Can you prove it?'
'Not right now. But I'm gonna get that dago. He can't get away with smashing my camera. It's a valuable camera, and it wasn't mine, either.'
His voice was aggrieved: the world had let him down for the thousandth time. 'You wouldn't just sit there if you were a security cop like you say.'
The Bentley rolled out of the driveway into the road. One wheel passed over the broken camera and flattened it. Martel drove away sedately toward town.
'I've got to think of something,' Harry said more or less to himself.
He took off his hat as if it limited the sweep and scope of his mind, and held it on his knees like a begging bowl. The printing on the silk lining said that it came from The Haberdashery in Las Vegas. The gold printing on the leather sweatband said L. Spillman. Harry stole his hat, I thought. Or else he was carrying a false driver's license.
He turned to me as if he had heard my unspoken accusation. With carefully rationed hostility, he said: 'You don't have to feel you have to stick around. You've been no help.'
I said I would see him later at the hotel. The prospect didn't seem to excite him much.
3
LAUREL DRIVE ran deep between hedges like an English lane. An immense green barricade of pittosporum hid Mrs. Fablon's garden from the road. On the far side of the garden a woman who at a distance looked like Ginny's sister was sitting with a man at an umbrella table, eating lunch.
The man had a long jaw, which hardened when I appeared in the driveway. He stood up wiping his mouth with a napkin. He was tall and erect, and his face was handsome in a bony pugnacious way.
'I'll be shoving off,' I heard him say under his breath.
'Don't hurry away, I'm not expecting anyone.'
'Neither was I,' he said shortly.
He flung his napkin down on top of his half-eaten salmon mayonnaise. Without speaking again, or looking at me, he walked to a Mercedes parked under an oak, got in, and drove out the other side of the semi-circular driveway. He acted like a man who was anxious for an excuse to get away.
Mrs. Fablon stayed at the table, looking quite composed. 'Who on earth are you?'
