I took my hat off the telephone and called a man named Willy Peters who was in the insurance business, so he said, and did a sideline selling unlisted telephone numbers bribed from maids and chauffeurs. His fee was five bucks. I figured Lindley Paul could afford it out of his fifty.
Willy Peters had what I wanted. It was a Brentwood Heights number.
I called Reavis down at headquarters. He said everything was fine except his sleeping time and for me just to keep my mouth shut and not worry, but I ought really to have told him about the girl. I said that was right but maybe he had a daughter himself and wouldn’t be so keen to have a lot of camera hounds jumping out at her. He said he had and the case didn’t make me look very good but it could happen to anyone and so long.
I called Violets M’Gee to ask him to lunch some day when he had just had his teeth cleaned and his mouth was sore. But he was up in Ventura returning a prisoner. Then I called the Brentwood Heights number of Soukesian the Psychic.
After a while a slightly foreign woman’s voice said: » ’Allo.»
«May I speak to Mr. Soukesian?»
«I am ver-ry sor-ry. Soukesian he weel never speak upon the telephone. I am bees secretar-ry. Weel I take the message?»
«Yeah. Got a pencil?»
«But of course I ’ave the pencil. The message, eef you please?» I gave her my name and address and occupation and telephone number first. I made sure she had them spelled right.
Then I said: «It’s about the murder of a man named Lindley Paul. It happened last night down on the Palisades near Santa Monica. I’d like to consult Mr. Soukesian.»
«He weel be ver-ry pleased.» Her voice was as calm as an oyster. «But of course I cannot give you the appointment today. Soukesian he ees always ver-ry busy. Per’aps tomorrow —»
«Next week will be fine,» I said heartily.’ «There’s never any hurry about a murder investigation. Just tell him I’ll give him two hours before I go to the police with what I know.»
There was a silence. Maybe a breath caught sharply and maybe it was just wire noise. Then the slow foreign voice said: «I weel tell him. I do not understand —»
«Give it the rush, angel. I’ll be waiting in my office.»
I hung up, fingered the back of my head, put the three cards away in my wallet and felt as if I could eat some hot food. I went out to get it.
FOUR
SECOND HARVEST
The Indian smelled. He smelled clear across my little reception room when I heard the outer door open and got up to see who it was. He stood just inside the door looking as if he had been cast in bronze. He was a big man from the waist up and had a big chest.
Apart from that he looked like a bum. He wore a brown suit, too small for him. His hat was at least two sizes too small, and had been perspired in freely by someone it fitted better than it fitted him. He wore it about where a house wears a weathercock. His collar had the snug fit of a horse collar and was about the same shade of dirty brown. A tie dangled from it, outside his buttoned coat, and had apparently been tied with a pair of pliers in a knot the size of a pea. Around his bare throat above the collar he wore what looked like a piece of black ribbon.
He had a big, flat face, a big, high-bridged, fleshy nose that looked as hard as the prow of a cruiser, He had lidless eyes, drooping jowls, the shoulders of a blacksmith. If he had been cleaned up a little and dressed in a white nightgown, he would have looked like a very wicked Roman senator.
His smell was the earthy smell of the primitive man; dirty, but not the dirt of cities. «Huh,» he said. «Come quick. Come now.»
I jerked my thumb at the inner office and went back into it. He followed me ponderously and made as much noise walking as a fly makes. I sat down behind my desk, pointed at the chair opposite, but he didn’t sit down. His small black eyes were hostile.
«Come where?» I wanted to know.
«Huh. Me Second Harvest. Me Hollywood Indian.»
«Take a chair, Mr. Harvest.»
He snorted and his nostrils got very wide. They had been wide enough for mouseholes in the first place.
«Name Second Harvest, No Mr. Harvest. Nuts.»
«What do you want?»
«He say come quick. Big white father say come now. He say —»
«Don’t give me any more of that pig Latin,» I said. «I’m no schoolmarm at the snake dances.»
«Nuts,» he said.
He removed his hat with slow disgust and turned it upside down. He rolled a finger around under the sweatband. That turned the sweatband up into view. He removed a paper clip from the edge of the leather and moved near enough to throw a dirty fold of tissue paper on the desk. He pointed at it angrily. His lank, greasy black hair had a shelf all around it, high up, from the too-tight hat.
I unfolded the bit of tissue paper and found a card which read: Soukesian the Psychic. It was in thin script, nicely engraved. I had three just like it in my wallet.
I played with my empty pipe, stared at the Indian, tried to ride him with my stare. «Okay. What does he want?»
«He want you come now. Quick.»
«Nuts,» I said. The Indian liked that. That was the fraternity grip. He almost grinned. «It will cost him a hundred bucks as a retainer,» I added.
«Huh?»
«Hundred dollars. Iron men. Bucks to the number one hundred. Me no money, me no come. Savvy?» I began to count by opening and closing both fists.
The Indian tossed another fold of tissue paper on the desk. I unfolded it. It contained a brand-new hundred-dollar bill.
«Psychic is right,» I said. «A guy that smart I’m scared of, but I’ll go nevertheless.»
The Indian put his hat back on his head without bothering to fold the sweatband under. It looked only very slightly more comical that way.
I took a gun from under my arm, not the one I had had the night before unfortunately — I hate to lose a gun — dropped the magazine into the heel of my hand, rammed it home again, fiddled with the safety and put the gun back in its holster.
This meant no more to the Indian than if I had scratched my neck.
«I gottum car,» he said. «Big car. Nuts.»
«Too bad,» I said. «I don’t like big cars any more. However, let’s go.»
I locked up and we went out. In the elevator the Indian smelled very strong indeed. Even the elevator operator noticed it.
The car was a tan Lincoln touring, not new but in good shape, with glass gypsy curtains in the back. It dipped down past a shining green polo field, zoomed up the far side, and the dark, foreign-looking driver swung it into a narrow paved ribbon of white concrete that climbed almost as steeply as Lindley Paul’s steps, but not as straight. This was well out of town, beyond Westwood, in Brentwood Heights.
We climbed past two orange groves, rich man’s pets, as that is not orange country, past houses molded flat to the side of the foothills, like bas-reliefs.
Then there were no more houses, just the burnt foothills and the cement ribbon and a sheer drop on the left into the coolness of a nameless canyon, and on the right heat bouncing off the seared clay bank at whose edge a few unbeatable wild flowers clawed and hung on like naughty children who won’t go to bed.
And in front of me two backs, a slim, whipcord back with a brown neck, black hair, a vizored cap on the black hair, and a wide, untidy back in an old brown suit with the Indian’s thick neck and heavy head above that, and on his head the ancient greasy hat with the sweatband still showing.
Then the ribbon of road twisted into a hairpin, the big tires skidded on loose stones, and the tan Lincoln tore through an open gate and up a steep drive lined with pink geraniums growing wild. At the top of the drive there was an eyrie, an eagle’s nest, a hilltop house of white plaster and glass and chromium, as modernistic as a fluoroscope and as remote as a lighthouse.