“Need any help?” he said to me.
“Don’t be ridic,” Sally said. “I’m in perfect control. Mr. Archer, meet brother Jud, Judson Foley.”
“Hello,” he said. “You shouldn’t have let her drink. She’s got a weak head for liquor. Here, I’ll take her.”
With weary skill he looped her arm over his shoulders, clasped her around the waist, walked her through the front room into a lighted bedroom, laid her out on the Hollywood bed, and turned off the light.
He seemed unpleasantly surprised to find me still in the front room. “Good night, Mr. Archer, or whatever your name is. We’re closing up for the night now.”
“You’re not very hospitable.”
“No. My sister is the hospitable one.” He cast a sour glance around the little room, at overflowing ashtrays, clouded glasses, scattered newspapers. “I never saw you before, I’ll never see you again. Why should I be hospitable?”
“You’re sure you never saw me before? Think hard.”
His brown eyes studied my face, and then my body. He scratched nervously at the front of his thinning hair. He shook his head.
“If I ever saw you before I must have been drunk at the time. Did Sally bring you here when I was drunk?”
“No. Were you drinking last Friday night?”
“Let’s see, what night was that? I think I was out of town. Yeah. I didn’t get back here until Saturday morning.” He was trying to sound casual and look unconcerned. “It must have been two other guys.”
“I don’t think so, Jud. I ran into you, or you ran into me, about nine last Friday night in Pacific Point.”
Panic brightened his face like a flash of lightning. “Who are you?”
“I chased you down Helen Haggerty’s driveway, remember? You were too fast for me. It took me two days to catch up.”
He was breathing as if he’d just finished the run. “Are you from the police?”
“I’m a private detective.”
He sat down in a Danish chair, gripping the fragile arms so hard I thought they might break. He snickered. It was very close to a sob.
“This is Bradshaw’s idea, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer him. I cleared a chair and sat in it.
“Bradshaw said he was satisfied with my story. Now he sends you up against me.” His eyes narrowed. “I suppose you were pumping my sister about me.”
“She doesn’t need much priming.”
Twisting in the chair, he threw a wicked look in the direction of her bedroom. “I wish she’d keep her mouth shut about my business.”
“Don’t blame her for what you did yourself.”
“But the hell of it is I didn’t do anything. I told Bradshaw that, and he believed me, at least he said he did.”
“Are you talking about Roy Bradshaw?”
“Who else? He recognized me the other night, or thought he did. I didn’t know who it was I bumped in the dark. I just wanted out of there.”
“Why?”
He lifted his heavy shoulders and sat with them lifted, head down between them. “I didn’t want trouble with the law.”
“What were you doing at Helen’s?”
“She asked me to come. Hell, I went there as a good Samaritan. She called me at the motel in Santa Monica and practically begged me to come and spend the night. It wasn’t my beautiful blue eyes. She was frightened, she wanted company.”
“What time did she call you?”
“Around seven or seven-thirty. I was just coming in from getting something to eat.” He dropped his shoulders. “Listen, you know all this, you got it from Bradshaw, didn’t you? What are you trying to do, trap me into a mistake?”
“It’s an idea. What sort of a mistake did you have in mind?”
He shook his head, and went on shaking it as he spoke. “I didn’t have anything particular in mind. I mean, I can’t afford to make any mistakes.”
“You already made the big one, when you ran.”
“I know. I panicked.” He shook his head some more. “There she was with a bullet hole in her skull and there I was a natural setup for a patsy. I heard you fellows coming, and I panicked. You’ve got to believe me.”
They always said that. “Why do I have to believe you?”
“Because I’m telling the truth. I’m innocent as a little child.”
“That’s pretty innocent.”
“I didn’t mean in general, I meant in this particular situation. I went a long way out of my way to give Helen a helping hand. It doesn’t make sense I’d go there to knock her off. I liked the girl. She and I had a lot in common.”
I didn’t know if this was a compliment to either of them. Bert Haggerty had described his ex-wife as corrupt. The man in front of me was a dubious character. Behind the mask of his good looks he seemed dilapidated, as if he’d painfully bumped down several steps in the social scale. In spite of this, I half-believed his story. I would never more than half-believe anything he said.
“What did you and Helen have in common?”
He gave me a quick sharp up-from-under look. This wasn’t the usual line of questioning. He thought about his answer. “Sports. Dancing. Fun and games. We had some real fun times, I mean it. I almost died when I found her the other night.”
“How did you happen to meet her?”
“You know all this,” he said impatiently. “You’re working for Bradshaw, aren’t you?”
“Put it this way: Bradshaw and I are on the same side.” I wanted to know why Roy Bradshaw loomed so large in Foley’s mind, but other questions had priority. “Now why don’t you humor me and tell me how you knew Helen?”
“It’s simple enough.” He jabbed his thumb downward like a decadent emperor decreeing death. “She rented the downstairs apartment when she was putting in her six weeks this summer. She and my sister hit it off, and eventually I got into the act. The three of us used to go places together.”
“In Sally’s car?”
“I had my own car then – sixty-two Galaxie five hundred,” he said earnestly. “This was back in August before I lost my job and couldn’t keep up with the payments.”
“How did you happen to lose your job?”
“That wouldn’t interest you. It had nothing to do with Helen Haggerty, nothing whatever.”
His overinsistence on the point made me suspicious. “What were you working at?”
“I said you wouldn’t be interested.”
“I can easily find out where you were working. You might as well tell me.”
He said with his eyes down: “I was in the cashier’s cage at the Solitaire in Stateline. I guess I made one mistake too many.” He looked at his strong square fumbling hands.
“So you were looking for work in Los Angeles?”
“Correcto.” He seemed relieved to get away from the subject of his job and why he lost it. “I didn’t make a connection, but I’ve got to get out of this place.”
“Why?”
He scratched his hair. “I can’t go on living on my sister. It cuts me, being on the ding. I’m going down to L.A. again and have another look around.”
“Let’s get back to the first time. You say Helen called you at your motel Friday night. How did she know you were there?”
“I already called her earlier in the week.”
“What for?”
“The usual. I mean, I thought we could get together, have some fun.” He kept talking about having fun but he looked as if he hadn’t had any for years. “Helen already had a date that night, Wednesday night. As a matter of fact she had a date with Bradshaw. They were going to some concert. She said she’d call me back another time. Which she did, Friday night.”
“What did she say on the telephone?”
“That somebody threatened to kill her, and she was scared, I never heard her talk like that before. She said that she had nobody to turn to but me. And I got there too late.” There seemed to be grief in him, but even this was ambiguous, as if he felt defrauded by Helen’s death.