police board. If I don’t crack it, I’ll be thumbing a ride out of town. You said I was dumb. Okay, I’m dumb. Where does Kingsley live? One thing I know is how to make people talk.”
“965 Carson Drive, Beverly Hills. About five blocks on you turn north to the foothills. It’s on the left side, just below Sunset. I’ve never been there, but I know how the block numbers run.”
He handed me the green and yellow scarf. “Tuck that back into your pocket until we want to spring it on him.”
35
It was a two-storied white house with a dark roof, bright moonlight lay against its wall like a fresh coat of paint. There were wrought iron grilles against the lower halves of the front windows A level lawn swept up to the front door, which was set diagonally into the angle of a jutting wall. All the visible windows were dark.
Degarmo got out of the car and walked along the parkway and looked back along the drive to the garage. He moved down the driveway and the corner of the house hid him. I heard the sound of a garage door going up, then the thud as it was lowered again. He reappeared at the corner of the house, shook his head at me, and walked across the grass to the front door. He leaned his thumb on the bell and juggled a cigarette out of his pocket with one hand and put it between his lips.
He turned away from the door to light it and the flare of the match cut deep lines into his face. After a while there was light on the fan over the door. The peephole in the door swung back. I saw Degarmo holding up his shield. Slowly and as if unwillingly the door was opened. He went in.
He was gone four or five minutes. Light went on behind various windows, then off again. Then he came out of the house and while he was walking back to the car the light went off in the fan and the whole house was again as dark as we had found it.
He stood beside the car smoking and looking off down the curve of the street.
“One small car in the garage,” he said. “The cook says it’s hers. No sign of Kingsley. They say they haven’t seen him since this morning. I looked in all the rooms. I guess they told the truth. Webber and a print man were there late this afternoon and the dusting powder is still all over the main bedroom. Webber would be getting prints to check against what we found in Lavery’s house. He didn’t tell me what he got. Where would he be— Kingsley?”
“Anywhere,” I said. “On the road, in a hotel, in a Turkish bath getting the kinks out of his nerves. But we’ll have to try his girl friend first. Her name is Fromsett and she lives at the Bryson Tower on Sunset Place. That’s away downtown, near Bullock’s Wilshire.”
“She does what?” Degarmo asked, getting in under the wheel.
“She holds the fort in this office and holds his hand out of office hours. She’s no office cutie, though. She has brains and style.”
“This situation is going to use all she has,” Degarmo said. He drove down to Wilshire and we turned east again.
Twenty-five minutes brought us to the Bryson Tower, a white stucco palace with fretted lanterns in the forecourt and tall date palms. The entrance was in an L, up marble steps, through a Moorish archway, and over a lobby that was too big and a carpet that was too blue. Blue Ali-Baba oil jars were dotted around, big enough to keep tigers in. There was a desk and a night clerk with one of those mustaches that get stuck under your fingernail.
Degarmo lunged past the desk towards an open elevator beside which a tired old man sat on a stool waiting for a customer. The clerk snapped at Degarmo’s back like a terrier.
“One moment, please. Whom did you wish to see?”
Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. “Did he say whom’?”
“Yeah, but don’t hit him,” I said. “There is such a word.”
Degarmo licked his lips. “I knew there was,” he said. “I often wondered where they kept it. Look, buddy,” he said to the clerk, “we want up to seven-sixteen. Any objection?”
“Certainly I have,” the clerk said coldly. “We don’t announce guests at—” he lifted his arm and turned it neatly to look at the narrow oblong watch on the inside of his wrist—”at twenty-three minutes past four in the morning.”
“That’s what I thought,” Degarmo said. “So I wasn’t going to bother you. You get the idea?” He took his shield out of his pocket and held it so that the light glinted on the gold and the blue enamel, “I’m a police lieutenant.”
The clerk shrugged. “Very well. I hope there isn’t going to be any trouble. I’d better announce you then. What names?”
“Lieutenant Degarmo and Mr. Marlowe.”
“Apartment 716. That will be Miss Fromsett. One moment.”
He went behind a glass screen and we heard him talking on the phone after a longish pause. He came back and nodded.
“Miss Fromsett is in. She will receive you.”
“That’s certainly a load off my mind,” Degarmo said. “And don’t bother to call your house peeper and send him up to the scatter. I’m allergic to house peepers.”
The clerk gave a small cold smile and we got into the elevator.
The seventh floor was cool and quiet. The corridor seemed a mile long. We came at last to a door with 716 on it in gilt numbers in a circle of gilt leaves. There was an ivory button beside the door. Degarmo pushed it and chimes rang inside the door and it was opened.
Miss Fromsett wore a quilted blue robe over her pajamas. On her feet were small tufted slippers with high heels. Her dark hair was fluffed out engagingly and the cold cream had been wiped from her face and just enough makeup applied.
