Part 39 (2/2)
De Ruse took gloved hands out of his pocket and began to roll a five-dollar bill around his left forefinger.
”What do they know that you don't know?”
Sam grinned slowly, watched the bill being wound tightly around the gloved finger.
”That's a fac', boss. Yeah-he was in. Comes most every day.”
”What time he leave?”
”He leave 'bout six-thirty, Ah reckon.”
”Drive his blue Lincoln limousine?”
”Shuah. Only he don't drive it hisself. What for you ask?”
”It was raining then,” De Ruse said calmly. ”Raining pretty hard. Maybe it wasn't the Lincoln.”
”'Twas, too, the Lincoln,” Sam protested. ”Ain't I tucked him in? He never rides nothin' else.”
”License 5A6?” De Ruse bored on relentlessly.
”That's it,” Sam chortled. ”Just like a councilman's number that number is.”
”Know the driver?”
”Shuah-” Sam began, and then stopped cold. He raked a black jaw with a white finger the size of a banana. ”Well, Ah'll be a big black slob if he ain't got hisself a new driver again. I ain't know know that man, sure'nough.” that man, sure'nough.”
De Ruse poked the rolled bill into Sam's big white paw. Sam grabbed it but his large eyes suddenly got suspicious.
”Say, for what you ask all of them questions, mistah man?”
De Ruse said: ”I paid my way, didn't I?”
He went back around the corner to Hudson and got into his black Packard sedan. He drove it out on to Sunset, then west on Sunset almost to Beverly Hills, then turned towards the foothills and began to peer at the signs on street corners. Clearwater Street ran along the flank of a hill and had a view of the entire city. The Casa de Oro, at the corner of Parkinson, was a tricky block of high-cla.s.s bungalow apartments surrounded by an adobe wall with red tiles on top. It had a lobby in a separate building, a big private garage on Parkinson, opposite one length of the wall.
De Ruse parked across the street from the garage and sat looking through the wide window into a gla.s.sed-in office where an attendant in spotless white coveralls sat with his feet on the desk, reading a magazine and spit over his shoulder at an invisible cuspidor.
De Ruse got out of the Packard, crossed the street farther up, came back and slipped into the garage without the attendant seeing him.
The cars were in four rows. Two rows backed against the white walls, two against each other in the middle. There were plenty of vacant stalls, but plenty of cars had gone to bed also. They were mostly big, expensive closed models, with two or three flashy open jobs.
There was only one limousine. It had License No. 5A6.
It was a well-kept car, bright and s.h.i.+ny; royal blue with a buff tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. De Ruse took a glove off and rested his hand on the radiator sh.e.l.l. Quite cold. He felt the tires, looked at his fingers. A little fine dry dust adhered to the skin. There was no mud in the treads, just bone-dry dust.
He went back along the row of dark car bodies and leaned in the open door of the little office. After a moment the attendant looked up, almost with a start.
”Seen the Candless chauffeur around?” De Ruse asked him.
The man shook his head and spat deftly into a copper spittoon.
”Not since I came on-three o'clock.”
”Didn't he go down to the club for the old man?”
”Nope. I guess not. The big hack ain't been out. He always takes that.”
”Where does he hang his hat?”
”Who? Mattick? They got servants' quarters in back of the jungle. But I think I heard him say he parks at some hotel. Let's see-” A brow got furrowed.
”The Metropole?” De Ruse suggested.
The garage man thought it over while De Ruse stared at the point of his chin.
”Yeah. I think that's it. I ain't just positive though. Mattick don't open up much.
De Ruse thanked him and crossed the street and got into the Packard again. He drove downtown.
It was twenty-five minutes past nine when he got to the corner of Seventh and Spring, where the Metropole was.
It was an old hotel that had once been exclusive and was now steering a shaky course between a receivers.h.i.+p and a bad name at Headquarters. It had too much oily dark wood paneling, too many chipped gilt mirrors. Too much smoke hung below its low beamed lobby ceiling and too many grifters b.u.mmed around in its worn leather rockers.
The blonde who looked after the big horseshoe cigar counter wasn't young any more and her eyes were cynical from standing off cheap dates. De Ruse leaned on the gla.s.s and pushed his hat back on his crisp black hair.
”Camels, honey,” he said in his low-pitched gambler's voice.
The girl smacked the pack in front of him, rang up fifteen cents and slipped the dime change under his elbow, with a faint smile. Her eyes said they liked him. She leaned opposite him and put her head near enough so that he could smell the perfume in her hair.
”Tell me something,” De Ruse said.
”What?” she asked softly.
”Find out who lives in eight-o-nine, without telling any answers to the clerk.”
The blonde looked disappointed. ”Why don't you ask him yourself, mister?”
”I'm too shy,” De Ruse said.
”Yes you are!”
<script>