from Arnhelm. The Kingmans, according to the affidavits they'd supplied in the process of incorporating the Temple, hailed from Philadelphia, where Kingman had been in the hardware business. He was fifty-nine, she was fifty-one. References consisted of the people here who had supplied capital for establishing the sect. And that was just about the sum total of usable information.
Sergeant Thoms, who sat at Sergeant Lake's desk on Lake's days off, was still patiently working his way through the phone-book list of model agencies. He shook his head silently at Mendoza.
The autopsy report wasn't in yet. Ballistics was silent on the gun. Mendoza went out for coffee, and at the drugstore counter found Goldberg sneezing violently into Kleenex over a half-eaten sandwich.
'The very man I wanted to see,' and he climbed onto the adjoining stool. Goldberg emerged from the Kleenex long enough to say that it was supposed to be his day off but something had come up.
“Whad cad I do for you?'
'Allergies,' said Mendoza. 'Everybody talks about them but when it comes down to it I don't seem to know much about them, except that they hit you different places. What are the symptoms?'
'Are you kidding?' said Goldberg. The paroxysm over, he put the Kleenex away. 'We could sit here until tomorrow while I told you. Almost anything. Me, I've read all the books and spent a lot of money on specialists, and I've come to the conclusion that nobody knows anything about it for sure. They can tell you what you've got- sometimes-and sometimes what to do about it, but by the time you've got one allergy cleared up you've developed another one. What are your symptoms?'
'I haven't got any. What I want to know is this. If you find somebody using about three times as many handkerchiefs as the normal person, used handkerchiefs stashed away in every pocket, isn't it likely to be a symptom of an allergy? That's the way it takes most people?'
'That it does,' said Goldberg. 'Some people have hives too, and some people itch, and various other things, but you can say that practically anybody with allergies is going to have, to start with, the nasal drip and the stuffed-up sinuses, and so he's going to be using a lot of handkerchiefs. Or Kleenex. Why?'
'Yes, I thought so. My latest corpse did, I think. I wonder if he was going to an allergy specialist.'
'If he was crazy or a millionaire, he was,' said Goldberg.
'Don't they say it's psychosomatic?'
'Listen, damn it, you say it if you want a good punch in the nose-go on, say it's all emotional. That's what they tell you when they mean they don't know and can't do anything else for you. So I'm allergic to about forty things, see, like whiskey and cat hair and the glue on postage stamps; all right, so I get hay-fever when I haven't been near any one of the things I'm allergic to, so what do they say? They say, well, well, Saul my boy, you must have grown another allergy, maybe your wife's nail polish, we'll find out-but if I haven't got the ten or twenty or thirty bucks for more tests, then they say, it's psychosomatic, maybe you'd better see a head doctor. Passing the buck. The hell with them.'
'I see. I suppose I can get a list of specialists from the Chamber of Commerce or somewhere.'
'And I wish you joy of them,' said Goldberg, beginning to sneeze again.
When Mendoza got back to his office Sergeant Thoms had finished calling the agencies, without result. 'But being it's Sunday, I couldn't get hold of only about half of them, sir, and at most of those places it was an emergency number, not their office, and they couldn't say for sure without checking records. We're to check back tomorrow on those.'
'Damn Sunday,” said Mendoza. 'I suppose none of the doctors' offices would be open either.' It would, of course, be easier to check with someone who had known Twelvetrees: always providing they told him the truth. But there couldn't be much in it… 'When Frank Walsh comes, shoot him in.' He had called Slaney to borrow Walsh for more questioning. He went into his office and called the Temple, got Kingman, and asked him if Twelvetrees had had an allergy problem. Why, yes, so he had. Was he going to a specialist? Yes, Kingman thought so, but couldn't tell him which one definitely-it had been a doctor on Fairfax Avenue, he remembered that, and the name was something like Grass or Glass.
Mendoza thanked him and had recourse to the phone book; and there was a Dr. Graas on Fairfax Avenue. Child's play, and what did it mean? Very likely nothing. Nevertheless, he'd ask. Just on the chance that there was something.
He called Alison. 'Would you like to visit a place called the Voodoo Club tonight? I'1l pick you up about eight. Preferably in that amber silk thing.'
'I can't say the prospect thrills me. Of the Voodoo Club, that is. You know I don't like night clubs-neither do you-why this sudden passion to be conventional?'
'I just want to take a look at it, it may be mixed up in a case.'
'That doesn't reassure me,' said Alison. 'The first time I went out with you it was the same sort of thing, a place you just wanted to look at, and it ended in our getting shot at and my ruining a brand new pair of stockings.'
' Mi carina bella, not that sort of thing at all. I hope. I'll take good care of you. Eight o'clock.'
'Oh, damn,' she said suddenly in his ear. 'No, that's not for you, but that devilish kitten you insisted on giving me-Sheba, no!-I've been painting the view out the bedroom window, and she's got into the rose madder- Sheba, get down, not on the bed, darling-' The receiver crashed in his ear and Mendoza laughed.
Sergeant Thoms put his head in the door and said Walsh was here. 'Fine,' said Mendoza, 'bring him in and go get some coffee for all of us.!
SEVEN
'No you're not lucky to catch me exactly,' said Mr. Stanley Horwitz. 'I keep legit show business schedule- dark on Mondays-fancy of mine. Usually get a lot done on Sundays too, but it's been slow lately
… So you want to know something about Mona Ferne? I could write a book. Homicide-has she killed somebody?'
Hackett said he shouldn't think so but you never knew.
'Pity,' said Mr. Horwitz. 'Offer you a drink?… You boys don't have to be so damn moral about rules, you just do it to annoy. No pleasure drinking alone-but I will.' He got out a bottle of Scotch, flicked down the lever on his intercom, said, 'Milly, I'm busy for the next half hour or so, if that nance who thinks he's America's answer to Sir Laurence Olivier comes in, he can wait. And wait.' Mr. Horwitz, who was edging sixty, five-feet-four in his elevator shoes, and possessed a shock of curly gray hair, poured himself a drink and slid down comfortably in his upholstered desk-chair. 'I wish you'd have a drink, Sergeant. Nice to see somebody approximately normal in here, for a change.'
“Don't you usually?'
'Dear God, these people,' said Horwitz. 'These people. Nobody, Sergeant, nobody at all is mixed up in show business to start with-or wants to be-unless he, she, or it has an exhibitionist complex. Just in the nature of things they're all egotistic as hell, and that's right where you can get into the hell of a lot of trouble with them, because they're so very damn smooth in covering that up, you know? You got to keep it in mind every minute, that they're just front. It gets tiresome.' He swallowed half of the drink. 'And maybe you better keep it in mind about me, because God knows I don't suppose I'd be in this rat race of a business if I wasn't a little bit like them. Just a little bit. Right now, of course, they're all busy overcompensating for the granddaddy of all inferiority complexes, and that makes 'em a little quieter than usual.'
'How's that?' asked Hackett.
Horwitz eyed him in faint surprise over the glass. 'You grow up in this town?'
'Pasadena,' said Hackett.
'Don't you notice what's going on? Time was they were this town-this was the capital of honky-tonk, the Mecca for all faithful pilgrims who never missed the change of show at the Bijou. Time was, all the money in this town, the real money, was theirs-show-business money. Everything important that happened here was show- business kind of important. Sure, the legit folk back on Broadway kept their noses in the air, but, brother, when one of 'em got the nod from Goldwyn or De Mille, he came a-runnin'-and for why? The folding stuff, the long green. Oh, this was quite a town in those days, Sergeant. And them days is gone forever. The real money behind
