He had to tussle with the weak new Layton inside to keep from looking back.
He won, but it took everything he had.
Layton passed up the countless epicurean palaces along Ventura Boulevard which served superb food at superb prices in favor of a homely little Italian restaurant he knew outside North Hollywood, where he could dine just as superbly on a reporter’s salary. But tonight the lasagna tasted like rubber cement and the espresso like boiled roofing tar; the only reason he finished the meal was to spare Mama Ludofacci’s easily bruised feelings.
He phoned his office before he left. The King case had kicked up a storm, he learned; reporters for rival newspapers were running around wildly, trying to catch up with the Bulletin; the big cheese, it seemed, had been overheard to make a complimentary remark about one Jim Layton, an unprecedented event in the Bulletin’s history. There was nothing new.
It was only after he hung up that Layton realized he had said nothing at all about the deceased’s secret home on Chapter Drive, or that he had just come from a tête-à-tête there with the widow. The realization did not buoy up his sunken spirits.
Later, he found himself surveying his three-room apartment on Seventh, near Parkview, with a sour eye. It had always seemed to him a comfortable, even an attractive, place from which to tell the world to take a flying leap. Now it was all wrong, a flophouse with shabby furniture, bad Modigliani and Dufy reproductions, and a mountain of sterile second-hand books and far-out hi-fi recordings. It was all male, and it all stank.
Why, for God’s sake, Layton thought, I’m living like a pig. Crushed, butts in the browned-up ash trays, empty beer cans lying around like corpses, that soiled shirt I forgot to take to the laundry hanging from the three-way lamp — why am I tossing away my hard-earned dough on that drab who’s supposed to keep this joint clean?
This angry thought reminded him that Luella might be a drab, but there were plenty of women in the world who could take a dirty flop like this and make something warm and clean and beautiful out of it. And thinking about this untapped supply of female paragons naturally led him to thoughts of the strange, pale, black-topped female living alone in her lovely ranch house remote in the Valley, mourning a skunk who hadn’t deserved to lap the lees of her bath water.
At this point Layton abruptly went to bed.
To hell with her!
8
On Saturdays Layton worked half a day. Early in the morning he phoned Homicide and learned from Harry Trimble that there was still no decisive development in the case. After lunch, on the drive back to his apartment, he suddenly found the prospect of walking into its unkempt emptiness too grim to contemplate. He drove, instead, to the Police Building on Los Angeles Street and parked in the Building lot.
Layton took one of the automatic elevators to the third floor and went down the hall, past the Detective Bureau, to room 314. Sergeant Trimble was sitting at one of the long tables in the squad room studying the contents of an open file folder.
Layton dropped into a chair opposite him, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and reached over the table to hold it under Trimble’s nose.
The one-eyed detective glanced up. “Hello, Layton,” he said. He took a cigarette absently, his eye going back to the folder. Layton stuck a match and made for Trimble’s nose again. “Oh, thanks,” Trimble said. He puffed, began to choke, leaned back, and eyed the cigarette suspiciously. “What are you smoking these days, cubebs? What is this thing?”
“It’s a new cigarette named Safe Side. All filter — no tobacco.”
“You kill me.” Trimble tossed the cigarette into an ash tray and lit one from a pack of his own. “Well? How did you make out with the widow?”
“I didn’t know you cared,” Layton said lightly. Had they had a tail on her? “Beautiful place she and Tutter built out in the Valley. Full of his stuff, by the way. That Arkwright number was lying her red head off.”
Trimble grunted a noncommittal grunt. “Tell me more, Layton.”
“There ain’t no more,” Layton said. “What’s on this end? Anything on King since I phoned this morning?”
“I’ve just been going over the paper.”
“Coroner’s report?” Layton asked, eying the folder.
The detective closed the folder. “Just an oral one. Inquest is Monday.”
“Don’t I know it. They called me at the shop — I’m a witness. What’s the oral report?”
“King died practically instantly — the blade went into his heart dead center. Angle of wound such that it could have been self-inflicted. Unless we turn something up before Monday, the coroner’s jury is sure as hell going to bring in a verdict of suicide.”
“Do you think it was suicide?”
The detective scowled. “No sign of a struggle, no sign that anybody else was in the room... I dunno, Layton.”
“The room,” Layton murmured. “I ask you, mon sergeant: Does a guy leave his own dressing room to walk across a hall and go into an empty one in order to commit suicide?”
“Yeah, there’s that,” Trimble said. He sighed. “The screwy thing about this case is that, if it was murder, a lot of people had the opportunity to, commit it. Each one passed those dressing rooms alone.”
“Except the two kids.”
“And they could be in cahoots.” A grin lifted Trimble’s scar and made his glass eye glitter in the shaft of light. “Even you were alone in that hall, Layton.”
“Me?” Layton said, astonished. “You mean I’m a suspect?”
Trimble laughed outright. “No motive. We know you never met King before yesterday afternoon. Unless you’ve got a thing about disc jockeys.”
“Mad about them?” Layton asked hastily.
“Anyway, you were there on an assignment. We checked with your editor.”
“Thanks, pal!”
“We also checked,” Trimble said with a shift of tone, “we also checked into Mrs. King’s and Lola Arkwright’s backgrounds.”
Layton said casually, “And?”
“Seems both were telling the truth about their relationship with Tutter.”
“How can that be? Their stories contradict each other. One of them has to be lying, Trimble, and it’s obvious that it’s Lola—”
“No.” The detective stopped.
“Go on.”
“No,” Trimble said again. “You’re too damn easy to talk to. Nice to have seen you, Layton.” He stubbed out his cigarette.
“Look, Sergeant,” Layton snapped, “I was in on this from the start. From before the start! I figure that entitles me to the inside track. Besides, you and I share something on this case.”
“What?”
“We’re both pretty sure it’s murder. Loosen up, Trimble. Maybe we can help each other on this one. It’s Saturday afternoon, and you know what that means — I’m here on my own time. So I can play it any way you say.”
Trimble’s one eye speared him “I’m probably going soft in the head to trust one of you bastards,” he said suddenly. “But all right.” He leaned forward planting his huge palms on the table. “It’s King who was lying. To both women.”
Layton said softly, “The double-life bit.”
“That’s it.” Trimble opened the folder. “This is a report just in. Two couples out in the Valley back up Mrs. King’s story — she and King have been living as man and wife in that Chapter Drive house right up to yesterday, and these friends of theirs say they never saw any evidence of marital trouble. And here’s a report on the Arkwright girl. Friends of hers bear out her story. They say King and Lola have been cozying up for months. She bragged to her friends only a few days ago that he was going to marry her as soon as he got certain personal matters straightened out. The friends took it for granted Lola meant the mess he was in because of the payola scandal. They didn’t know King had a wife.”