'It was a gentleman by the name of Brooke Twelvetrees.'
She sat up from her ungraceful slouch and stared. 'Brooke? Who on earth would want to murder him? He's not-not important enough.'
'Somebody evidently thought he was.'
'Funny,' she said. 'And you have to go round asking questions to find out who and why. What a dull job. But I suppose you're used to it. Do they pay you much for sorting through other people's dirty laundry?'
Hackett didn't often get mad, and he was used to overlooking insults from people he questioned, but unaccountably he felt his temper beginning to slide with this girl. 'It's a living,' he said shortly.
'And gives you that nice feeling of power, I suppose, you can b-bully witnesses and beat up gangsters whenever you pl-'
'Oh, for God's sake!' said Hackett angrily, and then stopped. Belatedly it came to him that she hardly knew what she was saying: she was caught up in some violent emotional maelstrom, and he'd just walked into the middle of it. She was trembling convulsively; now she sprang up, crushing both fists against her mouth, turning her back on him.
'Here,' he said, anger dropping away from him, 'what's the matter?'
She just stood there shaking. He went up and laid a hand on her shoulder. She was taller than he'd thought; unlike most women, she'd reach above his shoulder if she straightened up. But too thin.
'Look, don't do that,' he said helplessly. 'You'll go working yourself up into hysterics in a minute, and that pune-faced maid'll think I'm murdering you.'
She gave an involuntary, half-tearful giggle. 'I'm s-sorry. Just a minute. I'll be-all right-in a minute.' She groped blindly for a handkerchief, blew her nose; after a minute she turned around and sat down again. 'I'm sorry,' she said more steadily. 'I've been saying horrible things, I didn't mean- Not your fault… You'd better try Mr. Horwitz's office if you want Mona, and if she's not there I think she was going to the Fox and Hounds for lunch.'
She sat stiff and upright on the edge of the chair and said it like a child reciting a lesson. A child with nobody to see her hair was combed and her face washed and her nails scrubbed. Hackett was curious and oddly irritated: what was wrong with her? She wouldn't be bad-looking at all if she'd fix herself up a little. She had a small straight nose, nice teeth, a clear pale complexion; her eyes were good hazel-brown with black lashes, and if she was tall for a woman she wasn't all that outsize. And she sat there looking like hell, like some female in one of those funny sects where they thought colored clothes and short hair and lipstick were engines of Satan-worse, because those people did comb their hair and wash their hands. Her nails were like a child's, short and unpainted, and her hands weren't very clean, and that straight limp hair falling stringily down her back… And the maid had called her Miss Angel. Angel, my God, what a name, and for this one.
He got up and said, 'Thanks very much, I'll see if I can find her there.'
She went to the door with him. 'I'll give you a little tip,' she said, and her flat voice was metallic. 'You just start out by telling her you remember all her pictures and think she's the greatest actress since Bernhardt, and she'll fall over herself to oblige you.'
'I thought I remembered the name-Mona Ferne-she's the same one who used to be in pictures, then?'
'Oh, goodness, don't say that to her. Used to be. She's just taking a little rest between jobs, according to her. A little twenty-year rest.' In the merciless light, from the open door, of pewter-gray cold daylight, she looked awful: she looked gray and cold as the sky, and her eyes I were too bright, too expressionless on him. 'She'll like you, she likes big men. What's your name?… Oh, yes, that'll be all right too, a nice American-sounding name. Now I look at you, you look quite nice, because I like big men too. I've got to, haven't I, being so big and clumsy myself, but it's rather an academic question, of course, because it doesn't work the opposite way-nobody ever looks twice at me, no reason. Will you do me a favor, Sergeant Hackett?'
The little fixed smile on her colorless mouth was somehow terrible. He said carefully, 'Well, now, that depends on what it is, Miss Carstairs.' Something very wrong here.
'Oh, it's nothing difficult. Just, when you do locate Mona, and talk to her, or should I say listen to her, I'd like you to remember that she's my mother, and I'm twenty-six years old, and she was thirty-four when I was born-it was fashionable to have a baby that year, you see. Will you do that?'
'Yes, I'll do that.'
'Thank you very much,' she said. 'I'm sorry I said nasty things to you, before. Goodbye.' She still wore the fixed smile when she shut the door after him.
Hackett got out a cigarette and lit it, and was surprised to find that his hand was shaking. That one, he said to himself, is just about ready for the men in white coats. But it didn't pass through his mind academically or cynically. And as a cop he'd seen a lot of trouble and grief and evil and lunacy, and he'd learned to shut off much feeling about it because that got you nowhere-you'd just tear yourself to pieces over it and accomplish nothing. But right now he felt something, he couldn't help it, about that girl-he felt so damned sorry for her he could have wept-and that surprised him all over again.
'I just had the feeling,' said Mendoza, 'that Mr. Martin Kingman is a little too smooth and slippery to be entirely unacquainted with the law. Of course there's a very thin line there, I admit it-that kind is always very smooth. The same essential type, it goes in for politics and the church and show business, as well as legally dishonest jobs, and you've got to separate the sheep from the goats
… But it was all very pat, rather like a pair of professional gamblers sitting with a pigeon, you know-I had the distinct feeling there was a cold deck rung in.'
'Not surprising,' said Lieutenant Arnhelm, and sighed. He looked like someone's jolly and indulgent grandfather, bald, round, and amiable, but in reality was a bachelor and a complete cynic. “They get that way. After all, it's six of one, half dozen of another whether they keep inside the letter of the law or not-it's still a racket. It's still a front they're putting up, and it gets to be like a seasoned vaudeville act, the automatic routine.'
'I wish you could give me something else on them.'
'I've got just so many men and there are still only twenty-four hours in a day,' said Arnhelm. 'We can't go looking every place there's a possibility of fraud. Keeps us busy enough investigating complaints. Sure, we keep a little list, just on the chance we'll be looking into this or that some day-another fortune teller takes out a county permit, another funny cult gets set up, we file what information shows up on the applications and so on-but that's as far as it goes, unless somebody comes in with a complaint.'
'Yes, and what are the odds on the information being false? It's like income tax returns, you can't check them all. I know those applications for permits, those affidavits-Have you ever served a prison-term, Have you ever been known by another name, and so on. Like asking when you stopped beating your wife. Nobody in his right mind is going to put down Yes, and give chapter and verse, but so long as he scratches in No with a post office pen and signs any name that occurs to him, it gets duly approved.'
'I tell you,' said Arnhelm, 'you go out and recruit the force about five thousand more men, nice bright boys with superior I.Q.'s, and we might begin to do things the really efficient way. Check up on every single application for every kind of permit, among other things.'
'All right, all right, I know the problem. And at that, those recruits would do more good walking beats the old-fashioned way-and five thousand just a drop in the bucket for that job, in this town.'
Arnhelm agreed gloomily. 'And the point is here, what's the difference? It's a way to milk the public, sure. So is any business, in the long view, except that some businesses sell things the public needs. Mostly it's things they just think they need, which is what's called human nature. You're got to gull the public in some way to sell anything, but the law draws a line as to how bad you can gull them. As long as people like the Kingmans keep inside the line, we can't go poking our noses into their private racket, any more than we can into the cosmetic business, or the automobile factories, for instance. And if we did it wouldn't do any good, they'd just find more pigeons. People are such damn fools. Why d'you think women go on buying some new brand of face powder? Because the ads say it'll make them look younger. Why do men go on buying hair restorer? Because they're damn fools. We can't cure that situation.'
'All true, but it doesn't stop me wishing you had something more on the Kingmans,' said Mendoza. “However, thanks very much for the lecture.' He started back to his own office thinking about the little he'd got
