Too Sweet to Die (8 page)

Easy put another five-dollar bill on the counter.

Onesy put his false hand over it. “I guess you’re legit.” His good hand went into a pocket of his sharkskin slacks. “Here’s a passkey. Room 204. One floor up, you can use the stairs over there. If you’re there more than five minutes I’ll come up for you.”

The second floor corridor had once been painted a delicatessen green. It smelled of unchanged sheets and dying old men. The phone in 204 was ringing as Easy approached the room. No one answered and it stopped. Street laughter drifted up through the half-open window at the corridor’s end.

After standing in front of the green door for a moment, Easy used the passkey. He pushed the door in hard, let it stand open. Finally he stepped across the threshold.

The empty room had two windows covered with brittle lace curtains. There was a metal frame bed, painted a flat white. The neon glowing out on Eddy Street illuminated the room.

Easy closed the door and walked toward the lopsided wood bureau which held the phone.

Across the room a closet door snapped open. Someone muttered, “Bastard.”

As Easy spun a big dark-haired young man in Levis and a T-shirt leaped over the bed and grabbed him in a crushing bear hug. “Hold off, Poncho,” said Easy.

“Bastard,” repeated Poncho, tightening his hold. “Dean told me some pig was nosing around. I been halfway expecting you all day. Superpop said you looked tough, but that must of been bullshit.”

“Okay,” said Easy. He strained and flung his arms out sideways, breaking Poncho’s grip. While the big man was still stumbling back toward the bed Easy stepped after him and slammed him three times in the stomach.

Poncho sat down on the bed and the springs whanged. He bounced upright. “Don’t like nosing bastards.” He dodged Easy’s grab, threw himself to the floor. He kicked hard at Easy’s calf with one booted foot as he rolled by.

Easy dropped to one knee.

Hopping to his feet, Poncho dived forward to try to give Easy a knee in the face.

Easy was up and away in time to avoid that. He caught Poncho’s rising foot, twisted, flipped the big young man over.

Poncho’s curly head twanged against a metal bedpost. The bed jumped three feet to the right. “I’m in good shape,” warned Poncho. “I can knock the shit out of you.”

“Except tonight.” Easy rushed the stumbling actor. Clutching him by elbow and wrist, Easy twisted Poncho’s arm up behind his back. He jerked hard.

Poncho cried out, trying to jog himself free of Easy’s grasp. He got a few feet, then hit the wall.

Putting more pressure on the twisted arm, Easy pushed Poncho hard against the calcimined wall. “Where’s Jill Jeffers?”

“Kiss my ass.”

Easy pulled Poncho to him, slammed him against the wall again. A Maxfield Parrish print of dawn fell off its hook. “You brought her here Saturday.”

Poncho tried to clutch at Easy with his other hand.

The big detective forced him to the wall again. “What did you do with her?”

“The same thing you would of, man.”

“Tell me about it.”

His broad face against the wall, Poncho said, “You from her father?”

“No,” said Easy.

“He’s somebody important, isn’t he? She kept talking about him.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know, man,” insisted Poncho.

“When did you see her?”

“Saturday night.”

“You brought her here to the Pearl?”

“Not here,” said Poncho. “You can’t make that kind of noise here. We used a guy’s place over on O’Farrell, couple blocks away.”

“What happened?”

“What do you think,” said Poncho. “We took down her pants.”

“How many of you?”

“Oh, shit man,” said Poncho. “Hardly two of us got a turn. She was too crazy. By the time the third guy tried she was talking all out of her head and it wasn’t much fun.”

“What did you give her?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Drugs I mean,” said Easy, twisting Poncho’s arm tighter.

“Oh, maybe a little speed is all,” said Poncho, starting to breathe through his dry mouth. “It didn’t seem to work right for her. She started talking strange before we even got her over to this guy’s place. And, you know, after we started fooling around with her, she wouldn’t quit talking.”

“Talking about what?”

“Everything. She said she remembered now about her mother. About her mother had been murdered or something. She kept screaming, ‘It wasn’t suicide. I knew that all along.’ Very spooky stuff. Then she said something about she knew where the money was, too. They’d tried to make her forget but now she remembered.”

“Who did all that to her?”

“She didn’t say,” said Poncho. “Or maybe I didn’t hear. I took the first go at her and I don’t listen too clear at times like that. You know?”

Easy said, “Where is Jill now?”

“Who knows. We put her clothes back on her and got rid of her.”

“Got rid of her how?”

“Just tossed her out, man. I took her down in the street and told her to take a jump for herself.”

Easy leaned harder against the pinned Poncho. “When was that?”

“I don’t know. Sunday morning sometime, five o’clock in the morning or so.”

“Nobody’s seen her since, Poncho.”

“I tell you, man, I booted her out. That’s all. She was okay and on her feet then.”

“You don’t know where she went?”

“I didn’t care. She didn’t say.”

“You’re a nice guy, Poncho,” said Easy. “I wish you well.” He let go of him, then gave him three chops at the side of his neck.

Poncho went a foot up the wall before he began to slide down. His wrists flapped a few times as he went down, as though he were gently swimming.

When Poncho telescoped onto the floor Easy was at the door.

Onesy raised one eyebrow when he saw Easy. “All is well?”

Easy stepped in front of the desk. “It turns out Poncho was at home after all.”

“Oh, good.”

Reaching out Easy got a grip on the top of the clerk’s narrow head. He pushed him back from the desk and took the two five-dollar bills out of the breast pocket of Onesy’s dim flowered shirt.

“Son of a gun,” said the old man in the brown suit.

A
DRUNK MAN IN
a Midwestern business suit was trying to tell Mitzi Levin a dirty joke. He was bent far over, talking into the little money hole in the glass front of the ticket booth. “Did you catch that last part?” he was asking. “After the duchess farts …”

Easy lifted the pink-faced drunk out of the way by catching hold of his suit coat in two places. “I want to talk to you,” he told the chubby girl.

“I haven’t even come to the punch line yet,” complained the drunk.

“I can’t leave the booth for another half hour, Mr. Easy,” said Mitzi. “Besides I’ve talked myself out on the subject of Jill Jeffers.”

“You left out Poncho,” said Easy.

Mitzi glanced away, caught the eye of a thin blond boy standing next to the naked man cutout in the lobby. “Teddy, take over for me.”

“Nobody has any sense of humor any more,” said the Midwest drunk as he drifted away.

“Come around inside to my office,” Mitzi said.

The office was behind the ticket booth, a small room walled with publicity photos of forgotten actors and actresses. The pictures had all been inscribed to someone named Charlie with affection.

Easy waited until Mitzi was seated on the edge of her desk. Standing with his back to the door, he said, “This time tell me everything.”

Mitzi rolled a Flair pen across the desk top with her middle finger, saying nothing.

“When Poncho and his buddies finished with Jill and tossed her out,” said Easy, “she was only a few blocks from here. She must have come to you.”

“I’ve had a very troubled life,” said the chubby young girl, still rolling the blue pen slowly back and forth. “I try to minimize the amount of new trouble I take on.”

“Jill did come here Sunday morning.”

Mitzi gave a small nod. “Yes.”

“You’ve been telling me everything but the truth. That’s got to stop now, Mitzi.”

“Okay, I know,” said the girl. “She got here sometime around 5
A.M.
on Sunday. My luck being what it is, I was alone. I made up the clean-cut Jewish lawyer. Jill and I went over to Dean’s party in my car and Jill left her Porsche out on the street here.” Mitzi pushed the pen too hard and it rolled over the edge of the old desk. “Right at first she didn’t talk about Poncho or what they’d tried on her. I didn’t know about it right away, but I could tell something lousy had happened. From her clothes and her face. I’m not as casual about sex as this trap might lead you to believe. Things like Poncho shake me up.”

“Is that why you didn’t talk about it?”

“Only partly,” said the girl. “See, when Jill came back that morning she was very strange.” Mitzi laughed a thin humorless laugh. “I guess you would feel strange after a gang bang, if you’ll pardon the expression. No, but what I mean is … she was very up, manic. I figured she must have taken something, some kind of upper. But it wasn’t exactly like a drug high, I mean … the shock of Poncho and all that, on top of what she’d taken … it must have made her remember. It was remembering that made her high. If you follow me.”

“What,” asked Easy, “did Jill remember?”

“It’s pretty crazy sounding.”

“You believed it.”

“Yes,” said Mitzi. “Jill’s mother didn’t commit suicide. You don’t know Jill, but that whole lousy business, the suicide and after, she hardly ever talked about. Sunday, though … Jesus, she was filled with it.”

“If it wasn’t suicide, what did happen to Jill’s mother back there five years ago?”

“Jill had seen what happened, seen the last part of it anyway.” Mitzi bit her lip, frowning. “Her father … well, he killed her mother. Strangled her.” Mitzi inhaled, blinking. “It wasn’t in Carmel even. It was up in Sonoma County somewhere. Senator Nordlin had a hideaway sort of house up there. Well, not exactly a hideaway, since Jill and her mother both knew about it. Anyway, he liked to meet some of his … you know, he was playing around. Jill’s mother knew and finally got angry enough to drive up to the place. Nordlin didn’t have a woman with him at the time, but there was a showdown anyway. A big fight and he killed her.” She paused for a second. “I know how that can be. My own folks used to have some pretty good ones themselves.”

“Jill saw all this?”

“She walked in on the senator right after,” said Mitzi. “Jill had been having trouble with some guy and she decided to go to the hideaway and be by herself a little. She didn’t know anyone would be there that particular day.”

“And old Nordlin was able to cover everything up?”

“Yes. He got Jill to calm down and then he had his pet faggot, Montez, come up and take change. They rushed the body down to Carmel, where it was easier for Jill’s father to pull strings. He persuaded the coroner and the cops to buy the suicide story. Jill’s mother really had tried to kill herself before.”

“What about Jill? What did they do with her?”

“The senator dragged her back to Carmel with him,” said Mitzi. “First he tried to get her to promise not to talk, but she wouldn’t.” The girl bent down to retrieve the blue pen. “So he got some outside help.”

“From Dr. James Duncan Ingraham,” suggested Easy.

“Right,” replied the chubby girl. “The good doctor kept Jill doped up until the fake suicide had been bought and her mother put safely underground. Then … well, then he went to work on Jill.”

“Went to work how?”

“I guess,” said Mitzi, “I guess it must have been something like brain-washing. Jill didn’t tell me all the details. Well, maybe I didn’t want to hear. Drugs, electric shock …He made her forget about the murder and the house in Sonoma. For a good long while is seemed to have worked. Jill even gave up her apartment and went home to live with her dad. Except it didn’t stick. She finally broke with him. She went south and turned herself into Jill Jeffers. It looked like maybe she was going to be fine and happy. But back inside her head someplace there was what she really knew … I guess lately that’s been trying to get out. With a little help from Poncho it has now.”

“Where is Jill?”

“I’m not really sure,” said Mitzi. “When she told me about Poncho I wanted her to see a doctor. I have an intern friend who could have helped and then kept quiet.” Mitzi shook her head. “Jill wouldn’t agree to seeing him. I did get her to rest for a few hours. By Sunday afternoon, though, I couldn’t keep her down. She insisted on leaving.”

“To go and confront her father?”

Mitzi gave a long sigh. “Yes, she wanted to talk to him before she gave her story out. Even after everything she’s still sentimental about the old bastard. Well, I know how that is. My father used to hit me with a chair leg when he was high and I still send him a ten-dollar box of cigars every Christmas.”

“Jill drove her car down to Carmel?”

“Far as I know,” said Mitzi. “I told her she shouldn’t but she took off anyhow. See, I wasn’t really lying when I told you about her the first time. I thought maybe you’d check with Carmel and find her. All along, really, Mr. Easy, I’ve been giving you pieces of what’s true. Hoping, I guess, you’d be able to do the dirty part of putting it together.”

“You never heard from Jill after Sunday afternoon?”

“No,” said Mitzi. “I was going to phone her father’s place, but I was afraid. He’s still powerful enough to make me trouble.”

Easy put his hands in his trouser pockets, walked nearer the desk. “Did Jill talk about anything else in connection with the Sonoma place. About some money?”

Mitzi looked up at him. “Yes, I forgot. It seems trivial after the rest. Jill mentioned that up at this hideaway her father has several hundred thousand dollars in cash hidden away. Some kind of payoff money he gathered in during the years he was serving our great state. Jill hadn’t remembered about the money until now either.”

“Do you know where exactly the hideaway is?”

“No, Jill only told me it was in the wine country,” said Mitzi. “You don’t think she’s there, do you?”

“I think she’s someplace in Carmel.” Easy gestured at the phone on the desk. “I think I’d better have another talk with the Nordlin house. If they still won’t cooperate, we’d better bring the police in.”