heels. I touched him enough to know that he was cold enough so that there was no point in cutting him down.
He had made very sure of that. He had stood by the sink in his kitchen and knotted the rubber tube around his arm, then clenched his fist to make the vein stand out, then shot a syringe full of morphine sulphate into his blood stream. Since all three of the tubes were empty, it was a fair guess that one of them had been full. He could not have taken in less than enough. Then he had laid the syringe down and released the knotted tube. It wouldn’t be long, not a shot directly into the blood stream. Then he had gone out to his privy and stood on the seat and knotted the wire around his throat. By that time he would be dizzy. He could stand there and wait until his knees went slack and the weight of his body took care of the rest. He would know nothing. He would already be asleep.
I closed the door on him. I didn’t go back into the house. As I went along the side towards Polton’s Lane, that handsome residential street, the parrot inside the shack heard me and screeched:
Who is it? Nobody, friend. Just a footfall in the night.
I walked softly, going away.
19
I walked softly, in no particular direction, but I knew where I would end up. I always did. At the Casa del Poniente. I climbed back into my car on Grand and circled a few blocks aimlessly, and then I was parked as usual in a slot near the bar entrance. As I got out I looked at the car beside mine. It was Goble’s shabby dark little jalopy. He was as adhesive as a band-aid.
At another time I would have been racking my brains for some idea of what he was up to, but now I had a worse problem. I had to go to the police and report the hanging man. But I had no notion what to tell them. Why did I go to his house? Because, if he was telling the truth, he had seen Mitchell leave early in the morning. Why was that of significance? Because I was looking for Mitchell myself. I wanted to have a heart to heart talk with him. About what? And from there on I had no answers that would not lead to Betty Mayfield, who she was, where she came from, why she changed her name, what had happened back in Washington, or Virginia or wherever it was, that made her run away.
I had $5000 of her money in traveler’s checks in my pocket, and she wasn’t even formally my client. I was stuck, but good.
I walked over to the edge of the cliff and listened to the sound of the surf. I couldn’t see anything but the occasional gleam of a wave breaking out beyond the cove. In the cove the waves don’t break, they slide in politely, like floorwalkers. There would be a bright moon later, but it hadn’t checked in yet.
Someone was standing not far away, doing what I was doing. A woman. I waited for her to move. When she moved I would know whether I knew her. No two people move in just the same way, just as no two sets of fingerprints match exactly.
I lit a cigarette and let the lighter flare in my face, and she was beside me.
“Isn’t it about time you stopped following me around?”
“You’re my client. I’m trying to protect you. Maybe on my seventieth birthday someone will tell me why.”
“I didn’t ask you to protect me. I’m not your client. Why don’t you go home—if you have a home—and stop annoying people?”
“You’re my client—five thousand dollars worth. I have to do something for it—even if it’s no more than growing a mustache.”
“You’re impossible. I gave you the money to let me alone. You’re the most impossible man I ever met. And I’ve met some dillies.”
“What happened to that tall exclusive apartment house in Rio? Where I was going to lounge in silk pajamas and play with your long lascivious hair, while the butler set out the Wedgwood and the Georgian silver with that faint dishonest smile and those delicate gestures, like a pansy hair stylist fluttering around a screen star?”
“Oh, shut up!”
“Wasn’t a firm offer, huh? Just a passing fancy, or not even that. Just a trick to make me slaughter my sleeping hours and trot around looking for bodies that weren’t there.”
“Did anybody ever give you a swift poke in the nose?”
“Frequently, but sometimes I make them miss.”
I grabbed hold of her. She tried to fight me off, but no fingernails. I kissed the top of her head. Suddenly she clung to me and turned her face up.
“All right. Kiss me, if it’s any satisfaction to you. I suppose you would rather have this happen where there was a bed.”
“I’m human.”
“Don’t kid yourself. You’re a dirty low-down detective. Kiss me.”
I kissed her. With my mouth close to hers I said: “He hanged himself tonight.”
She jerked away from me violently. “Who?” she asked in a voice that could hardly speak.
“The night garage attendant here. You may never have seen him. He was on mesca, tea, marijuana. But tonight he shot himself full of morphine and hanged himself in the privy behind his shack in Polton’s Lane. That’s an alley behind Grand Street.”
She was shaking now. She was hanging on to me as if to keep from falling down. She tried to say something, but her voice was just a croak.
“He was the guy that said he saw Mitchell leave with his nine suitcases early this morning. I wasn’t sure I believed him. He told me where he lived and I went over this evening to talk to him some more. And now I have to go to the cops and tell them. And what do I tell them without telling them about Mitchell and from then on about you?”
“Please—please—please leave me out of it,” she whispered. “I’ll give you more money. I’ll give you all the
