threat?'
'Fablon's wife. You can't question that.'
'You can question anything human.'
The ambiguities of last night's conversation with Marietta still teetered in my mind. 'I understand that before the inquest she claimed her husband was murdered.'
'Perhaps she did. The physical evidence must have persuaded her otherwise. At the inquest she came out strongly for the idea of suicide.'
'What was the physical evidence you referred to?'
'The chemical content of the blood taken from the heart. It proved conclusively that he was drowned.'
'He could have been knocked out and drowned in a bathtub. It's been done.'
'Not in this case.'
Dr Wills answered smoothly and rapidly, like a well-programmed computer. 'The chloride content of the blood in the left ventricle was over twenty-five percent above normal. The magnesium content was greatly increased, as compared with the right ventricle. Those two indicators taken together prove that Fablon drowned in ocean water.'
'And there's no doubt that the body was Fablon's?'
'None whatever. His wife identified it, in my presence.'
Wills adjusted his glasses and looked at me through them diagnostically, as if he suspected that I had an obsession. 'Frankly I think you're making a mistake in trying to connect what happened to him with - this.'
He gestured again toward the wall on the other side of which Marietta lay in her refrigerated drawer.
Perhaps I should have stayed and argued with Wills. He was an honest man. But the place and its basement chill were getting me down. The cement walls and high small windows made it resemble a cell in an old-fashioned jail.
I got out of there. Before I left the hospital I found a telephone booth and made a long-distance call to Professor Allan Bosch of Los Angeles State College. He was in his office and answered the phone himself.
'This is Lew Archer. You don't know my name ' He cut in: 'On the contrary, Mr. Archer, your name was mentioned to me within the past hour.'
'You've heard from Tappinger then.'
'He just left here. I gave him as full a report as I could on Pedro Domingo.'
'Pedro Domingo?'
'That's the name Cervantes used when he was my student. I believe it's his true name, and I know for a fact that he's a native of Panama. Those are the points at issue, aren't they?'
'There are others. If I could talk to you in person-' His rapid young voice cut in on me again. 'I'm jammed at the moment - Professor Tappinger's visit did nothing for my schedule. Why don't you get the facts from him and if there's anything else you need to know you can get in touch with me later?'
'I'll do that. In the meantime there's something you ought to know, Professor. Your former student was shot dead in Brentwood this afternoon.'
'Pedro was shot?'
'He was murdered. Which means that his identity is something more than an academic question. You better get in touch with Captain Perlberg of Homicide.'
'Perhaps I had better,' he said slowly, and hung up.
I checked with my answering service in Hollywood. Ralph Christmas had phoned from Washington and dictated a message. The operator read it to me over the line: 'Colonel Plimsoll identifies mustached waiter in photograph as South or Central American diplomat named Domingo, he thinks. Do I query the embassies?'
I asked the operator to call Christmas for me and tell him to try the embassies, especially the Panamanian one.
Past and present were coming together. I had a moment of claustrophobia in the phone booth, as if I was caught between converging walls.
25
SEKJAR, KITTY'S MAIDEN NAME, wasn't in the telephone book. I went to the public library and looked it up in a city directory. A Mrs. Maria Sekjar, hospital employee, was listed at 137 Juniper Street. I found the poor little street backed up against the railway yards. The first person I saw on Juniper Street was the young policeman, Ward Rasmussen, marching toward me along the dirty path which served as a sidewalk.
I got out of my car and hailed him. He looked a little disappointed to see me. You feel that way sometimes, when you're out bird-dogging and another man crosses your path.
'I found Kitty's mother,' he said. 'I went to the high school and dug up the girls' counselor who remembered Kitty.'
'That was resourceful.'
'I wouldn't say that.'
But he was soberly pleased. 'I didn't have much luck with the mother, though. Maybe she'll say more to you. She seems to think her daughter's in serious trouble. She's been in trouble since she was in her teens, the counselor told me.'
'Boy trouble?'
'What else?'
I changed the subject. 'Did you have a chance to get to the bank, Ward?'
'Yessir, I had better luck there.'
He got his notebook out of his pocket and flipped the pages. 'Mrs. Fablon has been getting a regular income from that bank in Panama, the New Granada. They sent her a draft every month until last February, when it stopped.'
'How much every month?'
'A thousand. This went on for six or seven years. It added up to around eighty thousand.'
'Was there any indication of its source?'
'Not according to the local people. It came from a numbered account, apparently. The whole transaction was untouched by the human hand.'
'And then it stopped.'
'That's correct. What do you make of it, Mr. Archer?'
'I wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions.'
'No, of course not. But it could be underworld money. You remember that thought came up at breakfast this morning.'
'I'm pretty sure it is. But we're going to have a hell of a time proving it.'
'I know that. I talked to the foreign-exchange man at the National. The Panama banks are like the Swiss banks. They don't have to reveal the source of their deposits, which makes them a natural for mobsters. What do you think we should do about it?'
I was anxious to talk to Mrs. Sekjar, and I said: 'Get the law changed. Do you want to wait for me in my car?'
He got in. I approached the Sekjar house on foot. It was a small frame dwelling, which looked as if the passing trains had shaken off most of its paint.
I knocked on the rusty screen door. A woman with dyed black hair appeared behind it. She was large and heavy, aged about fifty, though the dyed hair made her look older. Handsome, but not as handsome as her daughter. Her cheap dye job was iridescent in the late afternoon sun.
'What do you want?'
'I'd like to talk to you -'
'About Kitty again?'
'More or less.'
'I don't know anything about her. That's what I told the other ones and that's what I'm telling you. I've worked hard all my life so I could hold my head up in this town.'
She lifted her chin. 'It wasn't easy, and Kitty was no help. She has nothing to do with me now.'
'She's your daughter, isn't she?'
