He went on into the office cottage and I heard the girl say to him: “He’s kind of cute, Jack—but you shouldn’t have done it.”
I heard his answer too. “I hate that guy Mitchell—even if he is a pal of the owner.”
4
The room was bearable. It had the usual concrete couch, chairs without cushions, a small desk against the front wall, a walk-in closet with a built-in chest, a bathroom with a Hollywood bath and neon shaving lights beside the mirror over the basin, a small kitchenette with a refrigerator and a white stove, a three-burner electric. In a wall cupboard over the sink enough dishes and stuff. I got some ice cubes and made myself a drink with the bottle from my suitcase, sipped it and sat in a chair listening, leaving the windows shut and the venetian blinds dark. I heard nothing next door, then I heard the toilet flush. Subject was in residence. I finished the drink, killed a cigarette and studied the wall heater on the party wall. It consisted of two long frosted bulbs in a metal box. It didn’t look as if it would throw out much heat, but in the closet there was a plug-in fan heater with a thermostat and a three-way plug, which made it 220 volts. I slipped off the chromium grill guard of the wall heater and twisted out the frosted bulbs. I got a doctor’s stethoscope out of my suitcase and held it against the metal backing and listened. If there was another similar heater back against it in the next room, and there almost certainly would be, all I had between the two rooms was a metal panel and some insulation, probably a bare minimum of that.
I heard nothing for a few minutes, then I heard a telephone being dialed. The reception was perfect. A woman’s voice said: “Esmeralda 4-1499, please.”
It was a cool contained voice, medium pitch, very little expression in it except that it sounded tired. It was the first time I had heard her voice in all the hours I had been following her.
There was a longish pause, then she said: “Mr. Larry Mitchell, please.”
Another pause, but shorter. Then: “This is Betty Mayfield, at the Rancho Descansado.” She pronounced the “a” in Descansado wrong. Then: “Betty Mayfield, I said. Please don’t be stupid. Do you want me to spell it for you?”
The other end had things to say. She listened. After a while she said: “Apartment 12C. You ought to know. You made the reservation… Oh. I see… Well, all right. I’ll be here.”
She hung up. Silence. Complete silence. Then the voice in there said slowly and emptily: “Betty Mayfield, Betty Mayfield, Betty Mayfield. Poor Betty. You were a nice girl once—long ago.”
I was sitting on the floor on one of the striped cushions with my back to the wall. I got up carefully, laid the stethoscope down on the cushion and went to lie on the day bed. After a while he would arrive. She was in there waiting for him, because she had to. She’d had to come there for the same reason. I wanted to know what it was.
He must have been wearing crepe soles because I didn’t hear anything until the buzzer sounded next door. Also, he hadn’t driven his car up to the cottage. I got down on the floor and went to work with the stethoscope.
She opened the door, he came in and I could imagine the smile on his face as he said: “Hello, Betty. Betty Mayfield is the name, I believe. I like it.”
“It was my name originally.” She closed the door.
He chuckled. “I suppose you were wise to change it. But how about the initials on your luggage?”
I didn’t like his voice any better than his smile. It was high and cheerful, almost bubbly with sly good humor. There was not quite a sneer in it, but close enough. It made me clamp my teeth.
“I suppose,” she said dryly, “that was the first thing you noticed.”
“No, baby. You were the first thing I noticed. The mark of a wedding ring but no wedding ring was the second. The initials were only the third.”
“Don’t call me ‘baby’, you cheap blackmailer,” she said with a sudden muted fury.
It didn’t faze him in the least. “I may be a blackmailer, honey, but”—another conceited chuckle—”I’m certainly not cheap.”
She walked, probably away from him. “Do you want a drink? I see you have a bottle with you.”
“It might make me lascivious.”
“There’s only one thing about you I’m afraid of, Mr. Mitchell,” the girl said coolly. “Your big loose mouth. You talk too much and you like yourself too well. We’d better understand each other. I like Esmeralda. I’ve been here before and I always wanted to come back. It’s nothing but sheer bad luck that you live here and that you were on the train that was taking me here. It was the worst kind of luck that you should have recognized me. But that’s all it is—bad luck.”
“Good luck for me, honey,” he drawled.
“Perhaps,” she said, “if you don’t put too much pressure on it.
If you do, it’s liable to blow up in your face.”
There was a brief silence. I could see them in my imagination, staring at each other. His smile might be getting a little nervous, but not much.
“All I’ve got to do,” he said quietly, “is pick up the phone and call the San Diego papers. You want publicity? I can arrange it for you.”
“I came here to get rid of it,” she said bitterly.
He laughed. “Sure, by an old coot of a judge falling to pieces with senile decay, and in the only state in the Union—and I’ve checked on that—where it could happen after the jury said otherwise. You’ve changed your name twice. If your story got printed out here—and it’s a pretty good story, honey—I guess you’d have to change your name again—and start traveling a little more. Gets kind of tiresome, doesn’t it?”
“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “That’s why you’re here. How much do you want? I realize it will only be a down payment.”
