“We just had some taken,” she said, “by a professional photographer… If you’ll wait here…”
She exited the kitchen and returned moments later with a triple frame, from which she removed a grinning photo of her husband, a young, handsome if jug-eared fellow. “Do you want these, as well?” She indicated the other two photos-one of herself and Robert, beaming at each other, and another of the family with Robert, Jr., in his mother’s arms, mom and dad looking adoringly at junior.
Fowley said, “If you don’t mind.”
“Take them.”
I took them from her. Harriet Manley looked radiant in the photos, which were beautifully shot.
“We would appreciate it,” Fowley said, as we headed out through the living room, “if you didn’t talk to anyone else about this, especially if newspaper reporters should start coming around.”
“Oh, I won’t talk to any reporters,” she said.
Fowley, having no shame, stayed at it. “And if your husband calls back-”
“I won’t say anything. I know he has to… face up to this.”
“If he’s innocent-”
“He didn’t kill that girl, Detective Fowley. But he’s not ‘innocent,’ is he?”
“Are you going to stand by him?”
We were at the door, now.
“I’ll have to think about that. We have a son, after all, and I do love my husband very much. Bob has his flaws, his problems, but I never thought he was… stepping out on me. I never imagined-”
I said, “You don’t have to go on.”
Harriet Manley swallowed, her big blue eyes hooded. “Terrible… terrible.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to that poor girl, I mean.”
“Right.”
“She was… very pretty, wasn’t she?”
“Elizabeth Short? Yes. But if you don’t mind my saying so, not compared to you. Not nearly as beautiful.”
She managed a slight smile. “You’re kind, Mr. Heller.”
“Hardly. It’s the truth. Your husband’s a damn fool.”
“I know… I know. But I still love him, anyway.”
On the way down the cobblestone walk, “Detective” Fowley said, “Jesus Christ, she’s gonna forgive the bastard! What a woman… Where do I go to find a dame like that?”
I glanced back-it was after dark now, and the beautiful mother of Robert Manley’s son was watching us go, haloed in the doorway of the precious little bungalow on Mountain View Avenue. Red Manley had everything any man could ever hope for, and-whether a murderer or not-had risked it all for a piece of tail.
Then she disappeared, and I could hear the muffled sound of crying-Robert, Jr.’s. I had a hunch he wouldn’t be crying alone.
With Manley due back in town around ten tonight, we took time to grab burgers at a greasy spoon on Colorado Boulevard.
“Well, even if Red Manley isn’t our murderer,” Fowley said, dragging a french fry through a river of ketchup, “he’s how Elizabeth Short got from San Diego to L.A.”
“ Six days before her body was found,” I reminded the reporter, across from him in a booth.
“Yeah,” he said, chewing the fry, “but once we know where Bob dropped her off, we’ll know where to pick up her trail. And, anyway, who’s to say his alibis are gonna hold up? Maybe the little woman’s covering for him, and after she has time to stew over hubby straying, she’ll change her story.”
I nibbled at my cheeseburger. “If Red and his boss were in San Francisco when the coroner says Elizabeth Short was killed, then Manley’s biggest problem is going to be holding his marriage together.”
Fowley shook his head. “I can’t wait to see this sap. I’d kill the Pope in the May Company window for a night with that wife of his.”
“Not if I got my hands on the wop, first,” I said.
The Eagle Rock district was high on the foothills between Glendale and Pasadena. Manley’s boss, Mr. Palmer, lived on Mount Royal Drive, another quiet, if more exclusive residential street, in another Spanish-Colonial number, only this was no bungalow. The glow of a streetlamp mingled with the ivory wash of moonlight to illuminate the sprawl of red-tile-roofed, off-white stucco, a patio to one side, a two-car garage under the main floor, the rest of the house spilling up an elaborately landscaped slope with palm trees, century plants, and cacti. Lights were on in the place, a few anyway.
The night was chilly, almost cold. We left the ’47 Ford at the curb, across the street and down a ways, and Fowley peeked in the garage windows while I climbed the curving cobblestone path to the front door.
A heavyset Mexican maid in a pale green uniform answered my knock. I asked her if Mr. Palmer was home, and she said Mr. Palmer was not, but that Mrs. Palmer was. I said my business was with Mr. Palmer, excused myself, and walked back down the path.
“Only car in the garage is Manley’s,” Fowley reported. “Same license number he gave at the motel-a light tan Studebaker, prewar model.”
“Palmer isn’t home yet. His wife is, but I ducked her.”
“Okay, then-we wait.”
We waited, sitting in the Ford with the windows down while Fowley smoked one Camel after another. After a while, I got the old urge and smoked a couple, myself-I think it was right after Fowley said he was going to advise Richardson to call the Herald-American, Hearst’s Chicago paper, and get a crew out there sniffing around after the Short girl.
“Maybe we oughta send you, Heller,” Fowley said.
“What, and interrupt my honeymoon?”
Now and then headlights swept across us, as the occasional car made its way up quiet Mount Royal Drive- little or no through traffic, just neighborhood residents. Just after ten, a pair of powerful highbeams blinded us, as a big automobile swung into the driveway, the headlights flooding the red garage door.
We got out just as the driver-a tall, horse-faced man in a suit but no hat, revealing a balding dome-climbed out of the Lincoln Continental, a dark blue vehicle that blended into the night.
“Freeze!” Fowley called out, flashing the deputy sheriff’s badge.
Fowley gave the driver just enough time to glimpse the badge before he straight-armed the guy in the back, shoving him against the garage door, barking at him to assume the position.
On the rider’s side, Robert “Red” Manley was getting out onto the cement driveway, or rather was sneaking out, trying to slip away as Fowley was occupied with the man I figured was Palmer, Manley’s boss.
Manley-eyes wide and wild, mouth open-was maybe six foot, wearing a snappy brown sportjacket and tan slacks. He had the build of a defensive end, and was taking off like one, too, dashing across the lawn, tie flapping, weaving around exotic plants.
He hadn’t seen me; but I, of course, had seen him.
I cut around a cactus and threw myself at him, bringing him down in a hard tackle, and we both rolled down the slope of the lawn, dropping off the curb into the street. I hit the cement pretty hard, scraping the skin along my right hand, and yelped in pain, letting loose of him reflexively, which allowed him to scramble up and out of my grasp, and then he was running down the street, arms churning, like a Zulu trying to outrun another Zulu’s spear.
I didn’t have a spear and I didn’t have my nine-millimeter, either.
But I didn’t feel like chasing the fucker, so I just took off my shoe and took aim and hurled it.
The heel of the Florsheim caught the heel of the Manley household in the back of the head; the sound, in the quiet night, was like the popping of a champagne cork. It knocked him off balance, and he yiped like a dog getting its tail stepped on, as he tripped over his own feet, tumbling to a stop against a curb.
I walked over and collected my shoe, put it on, and then I walked over and collected Robert Manley.
“First you trip over your dick, Bob,” I said, “and now you trip over your own feet.”
As I hauled him by the arm to those feet, he blurted, “I know what this is about!”
“Swell,” I said, and patted him down for a weapon. Clean.
