Dave watched him open drawers, scoop out the contents, dump them on the bed. Not a lot of clothes. A few papers. He slid back closet doors. Little hung inside. He took down what there was, spilling coat hangers, clumsily stooped, pushed the papers into a pocket, then bundled all the clothes into his arms and turned to face Dave. “That ten thousand dollars would have meant a lot to my church—new wiring, shingles, paint, new flooring to replace what’s rotted—” He broke off, a man used to having dreams cancelled. He came at the door with his bundle of dead man’s clothes and Dave made way for him. “Well, at least these will keep a few needy souls warm for the winter.” He lumbered off down the length of the apartment, onto the deck and out of sight.
Dave looked after him. The view was clear from this room to the deck—maybe forty feet. Lily could have stood here with the thirty-thirty. At that distance the bullet hole wouldn’t be too messy. Dave went for the door where cold, damp air came in. Also the little man who owned the place. He collided with Dave.
“Your turn,” Dave said.
“It rents furnished,” the little man said. “A preacher, for God sake! Crookeder than a politician. Did you see? Did he take kitchen stuff? I saw that bundle. Anything could have been in it. All the kitchen stuff stays with the place. Sheets, towels? All that’s mine.” He rattled open kitchen drawers, cupboards, slammed them shut again, dodged into the bathroom, banged around in there—“Jesus, look what that fag did to the walls!”—shot out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. Merwin Robinson had left the chest drawers hanging. From the doorway Dave could see their total emptiness. The little man stopped in front of them. His shoulders sagged. In relief or disappointment?
“All okay?” Dave asked.
“What? Oh, yeah. Looks like it.” He didn’t sound convinced.
Downstairs, Dave pressed a buzzer next to a glass panel like the one directly above that had opened into Arthur Thomas Robinson’s apartment. While he’d talked to the dead man’s brother and the black officer, he’d looked past their wet shoes through the slats in the deck and seen the short-haired girl go into this apartment. She came toward him now with Daily Variety in her hand, looking as if she didn’t want to be bothered. She still wore the Kobe coat but her hair wasn’t short anymore. She had on a blonde wig out of an Arthur Rackham illustration—big and fuzzy. She slid the door. A smell of fresh coffee came out.
“Were you at home when Robinson was killed?”
She studied him. Without makeup she looked like a ten-year-old boy dressed up as the dandelion fairy. “You a cop?”
He told her who he was, gave her a card. “The police like to think Lily killed him because it’s easy, it will save the taxpayers money. I’m not so sure.”
She tilted her head. “Whose money will that save?”
“Not Medallion’s,” he said. “I’d just like to see it go to somebody else.”
“Than?” She shivered. “Look—come in.” He did that and she slid the door to and put the weather outside where it belonged. “Coffee?” Dropping Variety on a couch like the ones upstairs, she led him to the kitchenette, talking. “Who did Robbie leave his money to?” She filled pottery mugs from a glass urn. “It’s funny, thinking of him having money to leave when he was hitting on me and everybody else for twenty here, twenty there.” She came around the counter, pushed a tall, flower-cushioned bar stool at Dave and perched on one herself. “He was really sick.”
“Sick?” Dave tried the coffee. Rich and good.
“Over that Eddie. Nothing—beautiful junk. Like this pad. Robbie was nice, a really nice, gentle, sweet, warm human being. Of all things to happen to him!” She took a mouthful of coffee, froze with the cup halfway to the countertop, stared, swallowed. “You don’t mean Robbie left Ed Lily that money?”
“That would be too easy,” Dave said. “No—he left it to Bruce K. Shevel.”
“You’re kidding,” she said.
Dave twitched an eyebrow, sighed, got out cigarettes. “That’s what everybody thinks. Including Shevel.” He held the pack for her to take one, took one himself, lit both. He dropped the lighter into his pocket. “Was Shevel ever down here?”
“How? He was a wheelchair case. Robbie told me about him. It was one of the reasons he chose this place. So Shevel couldn’t get to him. The stairs. Why would he leave Shevel his money?”
“An oversight, I expect. After all, what was he—thirty-two? At that age, glimmerings of mortality are still dim. Plenty of time to make changes. Or maybe because Shevel had bought him the policy, he thought he owed him something.”
“Robbie owed him? That’s a laugh. He used him like a slave for ten years. If anything, it was the other way around. Shevel owed Robbie. But he wouldn’t shell out a dime when Robbie asked for it.”
“So I hear,” Dave said. “Tell me about Lily.”
She shrugged. “You know the type. Dime a dozen in this town. They drift in on their thumbs, all body, no brains. If they even get as far as a producer, they end up with their face in his pillow. Then it’s back to Texas or Tennessee to pump gas for the rest of their lives. Only Eddie was just a little different. Show business he could live without. Hustling was surer and steadier. He always asked for parts in pictures but he settled for cash. A born whore. Loved it.
“I tried to tell Robbie. He wouldn’t listen. Couldn’t hear. Gone on the little shit, really gone. You want to know something? Eddie hadn’t been here a week when he tried to get me into the sack.” Her mouth twitched a half grin. “I told him, ‘I don’t go to bed with fags.’ ‘I’m not a fag,’ was all he said. As if I and every other woman in the place didn’t know that. Woman. Man. Everybody—except Robbie.” She turned her head to look down the room at the glass front wall, the gray rain beyond it, the deserted beach, the muddy slop of surf. “Poor Robbie! What happens to people?” She turned back for an answer.
“In his case,” Dave said, “murder.”
“Yeah.” She rolled her cigarette morosely against a little black ashtray. “And he never said a wrong word to Eddie. Never. Eddie was all over him all the time—I want this, I want that. You promised to introduce me to so-and-so. Take me here, take me there.”
Dave looked at the ceiling. “Soundproofing another thing they cheated the owner on?”
“I got pretty familiar with Robbie’s record collection. Sure, I could hear damn near every word. And a lot that wasn’t words. The bedroom’s right over mine too.”
“Was that where the shot came from?” Dave asked.
“I wasn’t here. Didn’t I tell you? I was on location in Montana. Up to my elbows in flour in a tumble-down ranch house with little kids tugging at my skirts and my hair hanging over one eye. Twenty seconds on film. All that way on Airwest for twenty seconds.”
“Too bad,” Dave said. “Were you ever up there?”
“Robbie’s? Yeah, for drinks. Now and then.”
“Ever see a rifle?”
“They found it, didn’t they?” She jerked the big fuzzy wig toward the beach. “Talking to Dieterle, I saw the cop fish it out of the kelp and run to you with it. You brought them luck. They were raking for it all day yesterday too.”
“But did you ever see it in the apartment?”