“It’s because of the sap dripping from the trees in front of my apartment house,” Layton said gloomily. “Hardens the wipers so they cut like steel. How much would a new windshield set me back, Joe?”
“I’ll have to look it up. But it don’t have to set you back nothing.” Joe grinned through the glass he was cleaning. “You carry comprehensive, don’t you?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t cover things like this.”
“It covers glass breakage, don’t it? So just before you bring it into the shop, wham it. The insurance companies never question broken glass.”
“Thanks, Joe.” Layton grinned back. “But no, thank you. You know me. The original square.”
Joe shook his head and went around to remove the hose, which had shut itself off. He hung it back on the pump, screwed the cap on the tank, returned to investigate the oil and water situation, and finally made out the charge slip. All the while he kept shaking his head. Layton watched him with amusement.
He handed Layton the pad and said grumpily, “Do I put a new windshield in or don’t I?”
“Well... all right,” Layton said. “When do you want the car, Joe?” He signed the slip and handed the pad back.
“Better make it Monday,” Joe said, giving Layton the carbon. “I got a big week next week. I’ll have Billy get the new shield early Monday morning. Monday okay?”
“I’ll drop it off first thing.”
As Layton started the car Joe, visibly struggling with his better judgment, turned back. “Look, Mr. Layton. I hate to see you have to shell out for a new shield when all you have to do is wham this one with a small sledge — I’ll lend you one—”
“Joe, it isn’t honest.”
The garage man stared at him. “What do you mean it ain’t honest? What are you, a millionaire or something? These insurance companies expect it. Everybody does it.”
Not everybody, Joe.” Layton smiled. “Thanks just the same.”
“Beats me!” Joe said. “Well, I’ll try to hold the cost down, Mr. Layton. Okay if I phone a few auto graveyards to see if I can locate a good used one?”
“Okay? I’ll kiss you!” Layton waved and drove out.
He became uncomfortably aware as he drove north that Nancy was giving him quizzical sidelong glances. “I don’t know whether you’re an oddball, Jim, or just too good to be true. You meant that back there, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” Layton said shortly.
“I’ve been trying to think of a single person I know who wouldn’t have taken Joe’s advice, and I can’t. Tutter would have tipped Joe five dollars and borrowed the hammer.”
“Maybe that’s why Tutter wound up taking payola,” Layton retorted. Then he mumbled, “I’m sorry, Nancy. I shouldn’t have said that.”
She was silent. “Have you ever been offered a substantial — well, gift not to print something?” she asked suddenly.
Layton said, “Yes,” and let it go at that.
“And didn’t take it?”
“No.”
“That was a bad example,” Nancy murmured. “You wouldn’t be working for a newspaper reporter’s salary if you didn’t have respect for your job. But if you were offered a million dollars?”
“That’s an even worse example,” Layton said with a grin. “It’s purely academic.”
“But if you were? Would you turn it down, Jim?” There was a curious urgency in her tone that stirred him. She apparently felt a need to cut him down to her dead husband’s size.
Layton thought a long time. “I don’t suppose you’ll believe me. Yes, I think I’d turn it down.”
“A million dollars?” She didn’t believe him. Or maybe, Layton thought, she didn’t want to believe him.
“Look, Nancy,” he said, “honesty is almost entirely a matter of training and precept. I’m the kind of shmo who was unlucky enough to have been brought up by parents who not only preached honesty, but lived it. The day I was twelve years old my father and mother took me to the movies for my birthday. Pop not only paid full fare for me on the bus, but when the cashier at the movies asked him how many, he promptly said, ‘Three adult.’ And I was a scrawny, undersized kid who could have passed for ten... To this day I can’t even pocket a public phone jackpot — you know, when instead of getting your dime back a whole handful of silver comes pouring out. I send it back to the phone company. You don’t believe me, do you?” He glanced at her.
“You are unbelievable,” she murmured. “What was your father, a minister?”
“Pop?” Layton chuckled. “He was a mail carrier.”
They were well out into the Valley before Nancy spoke, again. “I realize now why you despised Tutter.”
“Tutter was only a symptom, Nancy. Our whole civilization is on the take. I suppose you could say I despise humanity.”
“Oh, no, Jim!”
“Well” — Layton smiled — “maybe with an exception here and there.”
“You mean your wife and children?” She was looking at the road.
“Wife and children?” He turned to stare at her. “I’m not married. Never could afford it.”
“Oh,” Nancy King said.
When he helped her out of his car at her door, she asked him in for a nightcap. But she looked so exhausted that Layton took her off the hook. “You’d better hit the sack, Nancy, before you fall on your face.”
“I am tired,” she murmured. “I think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight. Somehow, our talk relaxed me. I’m so grateful, Jim. I feel as if I’ve known you for years.”
He muttered, “Good night,” and turned to the car.
“Jim.”
“Yes, Nancy.” He did not quite turn back.
“Will I see you at the funeral?”
“If I’m assigned to cover it.”
“I see.”
She unlocked her door quickly and went inside. Layton jumped into his car and took off in a shower of gravel.
12
Layton was in the Police Building by 8:20 a.m. There were already half-a-dozen officers in the Homicide squad room. Detective Sergeants Harry Trimble and Ed Winterman were seated side by side at one of the long tables; Winterman was filling out a form and Trimble seemed to be telling him what to write down.
As Layton strolled in, the hot-shot speaker coughed and began to blare: “Attention all units vicinity Vermont Avenue and Olympic Boulevard. ADW northeast corner intersection. Victim down, dead or seriously injured. Suspect armed with hatchet last seen proceeding on foot south on Vermont. Description WMA, dark complexion, black hair...”
Everyone in the squad room had automatically stopped to listen. At the “Approach with caution” sign-off one detective, with a Mexican face, hung up the phone he had been using. “Sandy and I’ll take it. Let’s roll, Sandy.” A towheaded officer hurried out after him. The remaining officers, including Trimble and Winterman, just as automatically resumed what they had been doing. Layton had to remind himself that all over Greater Los Angeles people were either getting ready to go to church or turning luxuriously over in bed.
Trimble nodded at Layton’s approach. Winterman did not even bother to raise his head.
“Park it, Layton,” Trimble said. To his partner he said, “Can the report for now, Ed.” Winterman slipped the form into a file folder sourly.
Layton sat down on the opposite side of the table. “Understand you were looking for me late yesterday. You come up with something?”
“A couple of pretty good motives for murder,” Layton said.
The glass eye stared at him. “For instance.”
Layton took the recording company Christmas letters to Hathaway from his breast pocket and tossed them across the table. Both detectives reached for them quickly. “Note that every one of these, at the bottom, refers to the enclosure of a check. There were lots more letters, but I only took the ones where the secretary had pulled the boner. Motive?”