He sagged against the stucco wall. Harlan leaned over him like a prosecutor, his face a leaden silhouette in the dim light from a blinded window.
“What else do you know about Lister, my man?”
“I’m going to throw him out on his ear if he don’t watch himself.”
“You mentioned his dealings with women. What about that?”
“I don’t know what goes on up there. But I’m going to find out.”
“Why don’t you go up now? You have the right to, you know, you own the place.”
“By God, I will.”
I went back to Harlan and took his arm. “Let’s get out of here, Reginald. You’ve made enough trouble for one night.”
“I make trouble? Nonsense. My sister’s married to a criminal, a whoremonger.”
The man against the wall wagged his gray head solemnly. “You couldn’t be righter. Is the woman with him your sister?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s married to him?”
“I believe so. But I can’t let her stay with him. I’m going to take her home–”
“Not tonight, Reginald.” I tightened my grip on his arm.
“I have to do something. I have to act.”
He tried to break away from me. His hat fell off, and his meager hair fell down over his ears. He almost screeched:
“How dare you? Take your hands off me.”
A woman’s full-breasted shadow fell on the blind. Her voice issued sharply from the window:
“Jack! Are you still out there?”
The gray-headed man straightened up as if he’d been touched by live current. “Yeah. I’m here.”
“Come inside. You’re drunk, and you’ve been talking nonsense.”
“Who’s going to make me?” He said it under his breath.
She heard him. “I said come in. You’re making a laughing-stock of yourself. And tell your friends to go home.”
He turned his back on us and walked uncertainly to the front door.
Harlan tried to follow him. I held Harlan. The door slammed. A bolt clicked home.
“Now see what you’ve done,” Harlan said, “with your mishandling and your interference! I was just about to learn something.”
“You never will.”
I released him and went to the car, not caring whether he came along or not. He caught up with me at the curb, wiping his hat with a handkerchief and breathing audibly.
“The least you can do for the money I paid you is drop me at my hotel. The cab fares are scandalous here.”
“All right. Where is it?”
“The Oceano Hotel, in Santa Monica.”
“This is Santa Monica.”
“Really?” He added a moment later: “I’m not surprised. Something guided me to Santa Monica. Maude and I have had a sort of telepathic communication, going back virtually to infancy. Especially when she’s in trouble.”
“I wonder if she is in trouble.”
“With that brute?” He laughed harshly. “Did you observe his conduct to me?”
“It seemed fairly normal under the circumstances.”
“Normal for this Godforsaken place, perhaps. But I’m not going to put up with it. And incidentally, if you intend to do nothing further, I expect a rebate of at least fifty per cent.”
I wanted to ask him who had stolen his rattle when he was a baby. Instead I said: “You’ll get paid in services. I’ll spend tomorrow on Lister. If he’s a wrong number, I’ll find out. If he isn’t–”
“It’s clear that he is. You heard his landlord’s remarks.”
“The guy was drunk. And I wouldn’t go around calling people names without some proof. You almost got your head knocked off.”
“I don’t care what happens to me. It’s Maude I’m anxious about. I have only one sister.”
“You have only one head.”
He sulked the rest of the way. I let him out at the white curb without a word. In the neon kaleidoscope of the ocean front, against the pink backdrop of the hotel, he looked like a displaced shadow from a dark dream. Not my dream, I congratulated myself.
Prematurely.
In the morning I called a friend in the District Attorney’s office. Lister had a record: two drunken driving convictions, a battery complaint reduced to disorderly conduct, nothing worse. He had been a smalltime producer before television. His last recorded place of employment was the University.
I made another telephone call, and paid a visit to the University. The spring semester had ended, and summer school had not yet begun, so the campus was bare of students. But most of the faculty were on the job. The acting head of the Speech Department, a man named Schilling, was in his office.
Schilling wasn’t a typical professor. Under the flesh which covered his face with a middle-aging mask, he had the profile of a juvenile lead. He was dressed like an actor in a very sharp gabardine suit and an open-throated sports shirt. The wavy brown hair which undulated back from his widow’s peak was very carefully arranged. I wondered if it was dyed. I said:
“It’s nice of you to give me your time, doctor.”
“Not at all. Sit down, Mr. Archer.” He sat at his desk by the window, where the light could make the most of his features. “When I spoke to you on the telephone, you expressed an interest in one of the members – one of the ex-members of our faculty family.” He enunciated his words with great distinctness, listening to the rich tones of his voice. They seemed to please him.
“Leonard Lister.” I sat down in a straight chair at the end of the paper-strewn desk.
“Exactly what kind of information do you wish? And what use would you put it to? We have our little professional secrets, too, you know, even in this sheltered world of ours.”
“I want to know if he’s honest. That’s the main thing. He seems to have married into a fairly wealthy family. They don’t know much about him.” Which was putting it mildly.
“And they’ve employed you to investigate him?”
“That’s the idea. Certain members of the family think he may be crooked.”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t say that.”
“Why did you fire him?”
“We didn’t fire him, exactly. Leonard didn’t have tenure, he was only a Special Lecturer in the Department. And we simply failed to renew his contract at the end of the fall semester.”
“You had a reason, though, and it wasn’t incompetence?”
“Certainly not incompetence. Leonard knows the theatre. He’s been in it for twenty years, in New York and on the Continent as well as here. And he was quite a figure in the movies at one time. He made a mint while it lasted, and he had a country house and a yacht and even an actress wife, I believe. Then he lost it. This was years ago. I don’t know all that happened to him in the interim, but he was glad to accept my offer of a teaching job.”
“What did he teach?”
“We used him mostly for Extension work, directing plays for various groups and lecturing on the drama. He was well liked by his students.”
“Then what was the matter with him?”
He hesitated. “I suppose I should say the matter was ethical. He’s quite a fellow in his way – I’ve always liked him personally – but he simply didn’t subscribe to the code of the teaching profession. Leonard spent some time in France, you know, in the old expatriate days, and a good deal of the Left Bank rubbed off on him. He drank too much, he liked women too much, he couldn’t face up to the realities of his position. He’s an enormous man – I don’t know whether you know him–”
“I know him.”
“–but he’s not really very grown-up. Out of touch, you might say, almost manic at times.”
“Could you be more specific, doctor?”
He looked away from me, out the window, and ran his hand carefully over his hair. “I hate to blacken another man’s reputation. And after all, the name of the University is involved. It’s a very delicate matter.”