“Lance Wexler,” the woman said brightly. “You’re looking for Lance Wexler. He’s got a penthouse suite.”
“Is there a number on that suite, dear?” I asked in the wake of a deep sigh.
“P-four. That’s his apartment.”
“P-four,” I said, pretending to write it down. “Can you connect me to his room, please? I need to see when he wants to take delivery.”
“We can take the package at the front desk.”
“I know,” I said. “But Mr. Pasternak wants me to go there myself and get the man’s signature. Either I put the package in his hand by four o’clock today or I can kiss sweet butter good-bye.”
“But Mr. Wexler isn’t here,” my new friend Sue said.
“Are you sure? Or is it that he just doesn’t want to be bothered?”
“No. He’s out. I’m sure of it. No. He’s definitely not here. He hasn’t been in for a few days.”
THE BERNARD ARMS RESIDENCE HOTEL was nowhere near any colored neighborhood. They wouldn’t have rented a toilet to Kit Mitchell.
Next door on the right was a florist’s shop called Dashiel’s. On the left was a stationery store with no name posted. I went into the stationery store and bought a big blue envelope and a small stack of gummed labels. I attached one of the labels to the envelope and wrote the name Mr. John Stover. Beneath that I penned The Bernard Arms.
With the envelope under my arm I went around to the alley behind the building.
The back door of the residence hotel had a concrete platform in front of it. On that dais stood six large metal trash cans. Next to that was a double doorway. The doors were unlocked. They opened onto a hallway that smelled of garbage with a hint of freshly hatched maggots. The walls down that passage were painted dark brown to waist level and light blue the rest of the way up. It was as if the management had decided to make the working environment as hard and ugly as they possibly could.
At the far end of the unsightly corridor was a doorway that had a red-and-white sign that read FIRE EXIT attached to it. The stairwell beyond the door was also of utilitarian design. Filthy bare wood stairs led me past rough plaster walls that were painted a shade neither yellow nor green but a color that took on the worst aspects of both hues.
With the blue envelope securely nestled under my arm, I walked up the zigzag stairwell until it came to an end. I opened the door and came out on a tar paper and gravel roof. Realizing that I had overshot my goal by one floor I was about to turn back, but then I heard a sound, what a poet on my bookshelves might have called a susurration.
I looked around the side of the small structure that housed the doorway and saw the tan shoes and bare butt of a very white man humping away between a woman’s shuddering legs. She was wearing a maid’s uniform and he was most likely the valet. They were going at it on a sheet spread out over the gravel and tar.
“Warren. Oh, oh, Warren,” the woman moaned.
It was her calling out a name that was common but not someone I knew that struck me. The name Wexler came back to me. Hercules’s name suddenly seemed familiar.
I backed toward the doorway and descended a floor to the penthouse.
The penthouse hall had emerald carpeting and muted lime walls. There were potted ferns between the entrances to the suites and crystal chandeliers hung every six feet or so. The window at the end of the hall looked out over the tops of trees. It was more like a view of Paradise than some upstart brick-and-plasterboard city.
I thought about the lovers wrestling above me—Warren and the woman who called his name. Again I thought of the name Wexler. Where had I heard that name before?
My heart was thumping by then. I had made it all that way by using stealth that would have been better suited to a much braver man. I had planned my steps carefully, all the way down to the envelope under my arm. Hercules wasn’t home but Kit might be up there with some railroad prostitute. And all I had to do was mention Fearless’s name to keep him from doing something violent. Everyone who knew Fearless also knew not to cross him.
But the lovers on the roof had disconcerted me.
The cream yellow door sported the characters P4 cut out of mother-of-pearl. I felt my heart leap when I knocked. A moment went by. I knocked a bit harder. More time passed.
I sighed out loud. What the hell was I doing there anyway? I wasn’t Fearless Jones’s father. What did I care if he had to leave California? I had gone further than many a friend would.
But who was Hercules Wexler? I could see his family name printed somewhere.
I grabbed the knob, remembering my nightmare, and turned it. The door was unlocked. There was nothing left to stand in my way but common sense.
I entered Suite P4.
7
THE LARGE ROOM WAS STIFLING, filled with sunlight pouring in from at least a half-dozen closed, unshaded windows. The walls were yellow cream and the carpet royal blue. The ash furniture was heavy and bright. Glass-door cabinets exhibited fine china and porcelain knickknacks. Copies of Renaissance paintings in ornate gold frames hung here and there. A glossy finished dining table in the middle of the room supported a large vase with at least three dozen long-stemmed, once-red roses displayed like peacock feathers.
The only problem was that the roses had blackened and died and the hot room smelled sour.
I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly. Maybe some envelope or receipt that would give me and Fearless a line on Kit Mitchell. Just something so that when the police came down on Fearless he could give them a lead.
I could have been arrested for burglary, but I only planned to spend five minutes searching.
The first thing I did was to locate the fire escape. Then I leaned the back of a chair under the front doorknob. If somebody tried to get in I could be down in the street and off before they saw my face.
The dining room had a wide doorway, with no doors attached, which connected it to a living room that was two steps down. This room was also yellow and blue with windows and light. The paintings here had the same garish frames, but these copies were from the Postimpressionist period. Cézanne and Lautrec, Manet and Monet, but no Van Gogh or Gauguin. I knew about paintings. I once got a whole boxful of art books discarded by the Santa Monica library. They were mostly in black and white and had been thrown out in favor of the color plates found in newer texts.
There were no books or bookshelves anywhere in Mr. Wexler’s home.
There was a swinging door that was partly open. The temperature in that apartment must have been at least ninety-five degrees, but the wedge holding the door ajar made me cold enough to crave a sweater.
The foot that kept the door from closing was bare, connected to a large white man with a butcher’s knife buried in his chest. All he wore was a pair of brand-new blue jeans. His arms and legs went in all directions. His eyes were open and he was beginning to stink. His wrists were bruised and bloody, as if he had been struggling with tight bonds. There was a balled-up knot of white cloth wedged in his mouth. The open mouth, puffed-out cheeks, and bulging eyes made him look somewhat like a gasping fish.
My first instinct was to run. I even turned and took three steps. But then I stopped myself. The man was obviously dead. From the smell he had been there awhile. A killer wouldn’t stay around the body, I thought. And I’d seen worse. Less than a year before, I’d searched a room full of slaughtered men, looking for the fingertip that Fearless had gotten shot off.
The man was partly on his side, so I didn’t have to move him much to get the wallet out of his back pocket. There was a driver’s license for a Lawrence Wexler.