'Thanks. I could use one, I think.'
'Bottle all right?'
'Sure.'
He went down the hallway again and into the kitchen. I wandered over to the writing table, the way you do, and I was looking at one of the manuscript pages lying face up beside the typewriter when Dancer returned with two bottles of Lucky Lager. He handed me one and said, indicating the rough-typed page, 'Dancer's answer to The Ox-Bow Incident. I call it Gunsmoke on the Brazos, and I do two a year in the same vein for one of the cheaper paperback houses.'
'I didn't know you wrote westerns,' I said.
'I write anything they'll pay me to write. Crime stuff, westerns, Gothics, confession stories, juvenile sports novels, an occasional soft-core porno when the cupboard gets especially bare. I stay alive because after thirty years in the business, I'm like a machine-I can turn out fiction in any field, with any style and slant. The poor bastards who've really got something to say can't say it because the markets are glutted with stuff by guys like me-guys who haven't had anything worthwhile to say for too goddamn many years. But that's not the really tragic thing; the really tragic thing is that literature, fiction, printed matter itself is dying. It's being phased out by television and computers and space-age thinking; the writer, and especially the professional writer, is a vanishing breed-like the kit fox and the bison. In twenty years or so, we'll be in a class with hansom cabs and surreys and buggy-whip manufacturers. I hope to Christ I never live to see it.'
I was not sure I went along with that kind of thinking, but then he was in a position to know more about it than me; it was a depressing theory, anyway. I said as much-and then I said, 'If this were some other time, some other day, I'd be damned interested in why you think the way you do on the subject, Mr. Dancer; but right now, I'd better get to the point of my visit.' I was thinking about Judith Paige again.
'Sure, I understand,' he said, and shrugged.
'It has to do with one of your books.'
'Yeah? Which one?'
'The Dead and the Dying.'
He drank some of his beer, frowned, and shook his head. 'I've written maybe sixty novels, and I can remember the titles of about six, offhand. That's not one of them. It sounds like a crime thing, but I haven't done a crime novel in more than five years. How far back does it go?'
'It was published in '54, by Onyx Books.'
'I sold Onyx a lot of stuff, as I recall. That was one of the reasons they went broke in the late fifties. The Dead and the Dying. Well, why would a book published in '54 bring a private detective to see me?'
'There was a killing in Cypress Bay last night,' I said. 'Did you hear about that?'
'A killing-you mean a murder?'
'Yes.'
'No, I didn't hear about it,' Dancer said. 'I'm coming on the end of the western, and I haven't been out of here in two days; and when I'm working I don't listen to the radio. What does a book of mine have to do with a murder?'
'It was found in the dead man's overnight bag.'
'The hell you say!' Dancer was incredulous. 'What's this guy's name?'
'Walter Paige.'
'Paige-Walter Paige.' He rubbed his free hand over the back of his neck, frowning. 'Well, I don't know. I knew a guy named Walt Paige once, about five or six years ago.'
I released the breath I had been holding. 'Where?'
'Cypress Bay.'
'How well did you know him?'
'Not very. He was a kind of drinking companion. We used to make the rounds together, along with a bunch of other regulars at the Mount Royal Bar-a place near Carmel Highlands. That's where I met him, at the Mount Royal. He was a smooth, glib bastard, one of these Errol Flynn types with the women. I didn't like him much.'
I described Walter Paige. 'Is that the guy you knew?'
'It sounds like him, all right,' Dancer said.
So we've got a connection now, I thought; but what else have we got? I said, 'Did Paige know you were a writer?'
'Sure. But he didn't seem particularly interested. All he cared about, as far as I could see, was pussy and money.'
'Then you don't have any idea why he would have one of your old books?'
'Christ no-not one that was written twelve years or so before I ever knew him.'
'What about the others in this group you mentioned?' I asked. 'Did you know any of them back in '53 or '54?'
'No. This was a pretty young crowd, aside from me.'
I pulled at my beer reflectively. There didn't seem to be anything of import in the copy of The Dead and the Dying itself-and yet it had thus far led to a tie-up with the author, Russell Dancer, and a link six years in the past between Walter Paige and Cypress Bay. I said, 'How long was Paige in this area originally?'
'Six or seven months, I think.'
'What kind of job did he have?'
'None, that I knew of. But he was always flush.'
'Like that, huh?'
'Like that,' Dancer agreed.
'Where did he live?'
'Cypress Bay somewhere, I think.'
'Why did he leave, do you know?'
Dancer shrugged. 'They come and they go.'
'Any idea where Paige went?'
'Seems to me somebody said he'd headed south.'
'To Santa Barbara maybe?'
'Could be. Does Paige tie up there?'
'Uh-huh. He took a fall for burglary and spent four years in San Quentin. He got out five months ago.'
Dancer pursed his lips sardonically. 'Nice company I used to keep.'
'Have you heard anything from him or about him since he left those six years ago?'
'Not a word. I'd forgotten all about him. Hell, why would he come back after all these years?'
'It might have been for a woman. There were indications.'
'I can imagine what they were,' Dancer said. 'You figure this woman did for him?'
'Possibly.'
'Well, if so, she probably had plenty of provocation.'
'Yeah,' I said. 'Were there any females in this group you and Paige were part of?'
'Sure. It was pretty free-wheeling.'
'Some were more regular than others, though?'
'A kind of nucleus, you mean?'
'More or less.'
'Two, I guess.'
'Was Paige involved with either of them?'
Dancer shrugged again. 'If so, they weren't talking and neither was he. I'll say this for Paige-he didn't brag up his conquests.'
'Is the group still active?'
'No, not for a long time. You know how those things go.'
'Do the two women still live in Cypress Bay?'
He nodded. 'But I don't see either one committing murder.'
'Maybe not, but they might be able to offer a lead.'
'I suppose so.'
