It was a fairly expensive territory, an established neighborhood of well-maintained older houses, many of them with brilliant hanging gardens. The grounds of 1427 were the only ones in the block that looked unkempt. The privet hedge needed clipping. Crabgrass was running rampant in the steep lawn.
Even the house, pink stucco under red tile, had a disused air about it. The drapes were drawn across the front windows. The only sign of life - was a house wren, which contested my approach to the veranda.
I lifted the lion's-head knocker and let it drop, hardly expecting an answer. But after a while soft footsteps came from the back of the house, The door was opened, minimally, by a hefty middle-aged woman in a wet blue cotton bathing suit.
'My name is Archer. Is Mrs. Ketchel home?'
'I'll see.'
The woman stepped out of the puddle that had formed on the tile around her bare feet, and disappeared into the back of the house. I pushed the front door wide open and walked in, conscious of the gun bulging like a benign tumor in my armpit.
There were several closed doors in the hallway, and an open door at the end. Through it I could see across a room, through sliding glass, to the dappled blue water of a swimming pool.
Kitty came out of the water dripping. She crossed the room, leaving wasp-waisted footprints on the rug, and faced me in the doorway. She had on a white elastic bathing suit and a white rubber cap shaped like a helmet which made her look like an Amazon sentinel.
'You get out of here. I'll call the cops.'
'Sure you will. They're combing the state for Leo as it is.'
'He hasn't done anything wrong.' She hedged. 'Not recently.'
'I want to hear him tell me that himself.'
'No. You can't talk to him.'
She stepped forward, pulling the door shut behind her, moving so abruptly that she blundered into me. She put her hands on my shoulders to regain her balance, and recoiled as if I was very hot or cold.
She must hive felt the holster under my jacket. Her fear came back. It made her face work as if she had swallowed poison.
'You came here to kill us, didn't you?'
'You and I have been through all this before. You seem to have killing on your mind.'
'I've seen too many-' She caught herself.
'Seen too many people die?'
'Yeah. In traffic accidents and stuff like that.'
She tried to put on an innocent expression. With her paint removed, and her garish hair covered, she looked younger and realer. But not innocent. 'What do you want from us? Money? We have no money.'
'Don't try to snow me, Kitty. This is the head office of the money factory.'
'It's true what I tell you. That cat who calls himself Martel eloped with our ready cash, and we can't realize on our investments.'
'How did he get his hands on the cash?'
'He was supposed to be bringing it to Leo. Leo trusted him. I didn't, but Leo did.'
'Martel was shot to death in Los Angeles yesterday. Another accident for your memory book. He had a hundred thousand dollars in cash with him.'
'Where is it?'
'I thought it might be here. It was black money, wasn't it, Kitty?'
She flung up her arms in a jagged movement, bringing her fists to her shoulders, then flung them down again. 'I'm not admitting anything.'
'It's time you did some talking, don't you think? There's such a thing as buying immunity with information, especially on an income tax rap.'
Though it wasn't cold in the hall, she had begun to shiver.
'On a murder rap,' I said, 'it isn't so easy. But you can't afford to hold back. Did Leo or one of his boys knock off Martel?'
'Leo had nothing to do with it.'
'If he did, and you know he did, you better tell me. Unless you want to go on trial with him.'
'I know he didn't. He hasn't left this house.'
'You have.'
She was shivering violently. 'Listen, mister, I don't know what you're trying to do to us-'
'You've done it to yourselves. What you do to other people you do to yourself - that's the converse of the Golden Rule, Kitty.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Three murders. Martel yesterday. Marietta Fablon the night before, when incidentally you were in Montevista. And Roy Fablon seven years before that. Remember him?'
She nodded jerkily.
'Tell me what happened to Fablon. You were there.'
'Let me get some clothes on first. I'm freezing. I've been in with Leo for about an hour.'
'Is he out by the pool?'
'Yes, he's working with his physiotherapist. Don't say anything in front of her, will you? She's a square.'
Kitty peeled off her rubber cap. Her red hair blossomed out. When she opened one of the closed doors, I caught a glimpse of a tousled pink female bedroom with a mirror in the ceiling over the king-sized bed, alas.
I went outside. A wheelchair stood among the poolside furniture. The woman in the blue bathing suit was standing breast-deep in the water with a man in her arms. His face was moon-shaped and flaccid, his body loose. Only his black eyes held some measure of controlled adult life.
'Hello, Mr. Ketchel.'
'I'll say hello for him,' the woman said. 'Mr. Ketchel had a little cerebral accident about three months ago and he hasn't said a word since. Have you, honey?'
His sad black eyes answered her. Then they shifted apprehensively to me. He smiled placatingly. Saliva dripped from one corner of his mouth.
Kitty appeared at the sliding glass doors and beckoned me inside. She had put on sequined slacks, which winked suggestively, a high-necked angora sweater, a hasty paint job which reduced her face to meaninglessness. It was hard to tell what she had in mind for me.
She took me into a small front room, out of sight of the swimming pool, and opened the drapes. She stood at the window competing with the view. Beside the bulbs and hollows of her body, the sails on the sea looked dinky and remote, like cocked white napkins on a faded blue tablecloth.
'You see what I've got on my hands?' she said with her hands out. 'A poor little sick old man. He can't walk, he can't talk, he can't even write his name. He can't tell me where anything is. He can't protect me.'
'Who do you need protection from?'
'Leo made a lifetime of enemies. If they knew he was helpless, his life wouldn't be worth that.'
She snapped her fingers. 'Neither would mine. Why do you think we're hiding out in the tules here?'
To her, I thought, the tules meant any place that wasn't on the Chicago-Vegas-Hollywood axis. I said: 'Is Leo's partner Davis one of the threats?'
'He's the main one. If Leo dies or gets knocked off, Davis has the most to gain.'
'The Scorpion Club.'
'He already owns it on paper: the Tax Commission made Leo give it up. And he has a beef against Leo.'
'I talked to Davis last night. He offered me money to tell him where Leo is.'
'So that's why you're here.'
'Stop jumping to conclusions. I turned him down.'
'Realty?'
'Really. What's his beef against Leo?'
She shook her head. Her hair flared out in the sunlight. Oddly it reminded me of the orange-pickers' fire in the railroad yards. The queer forced intimacy of that night still hung as a possibility between me and Kitty.
'I can't tell you that,' she said.
