The Case of the Vanishing Beauty (20 page)

Her eyes were wide open and staring with that peculiar, soul-shivering fixity and blankness of the dead. A little froth was on her lips. Her left arm was bent under her and the right was extended before her, both fists tightly clenched. Near her, on the floor, was a gleaming hypodermic syringe with the thin, hollow needle that had poured death into her veins.

I didn't pick up the syringe, but I knew if there were prints on it they'd all be hers. I sniffed cautiously at the needle and the barrel, and the characteristic peach-pit odor was the same as that on her lips.

What had happened was obvious enough. Loren had squeezed the hypodermic plunger and sent a few deadly grains of cyanide of potassium directly into her blood. She'd have died fast: dizziness and pain, the heart pounding and straining, muscles constricting, the entire body screaming for air that wouldn't come. She'd have died fast… and horribly.

I didn't touch her except to feel for the pulse I knew wasn't there. I sat down on the floor, leaned back against the wall, and thought about a lot of things: faces, words, glances, violence, slammed doors, and murder, among others. I hadn't expected to find Loren like this, and for a minute it threw me for a loss, but it cleared up something that had been puzzling me all along. I sat with the dead woman and thought about the last couple of days and nights, and thought quite a lot about Narda. Then I got up and walked back down the stairs and found the phone.

I lifted the phone wearily and dialed the number of my apartment. I heard the phone removed from the hook, but nobody answered.

I said, "Lina, this is Shell. I want you to do something for me."

Still no answer.

I got a cold chill for a second, then remembered I was the guy who'd told her to clam up till she was sure it was me. I'd never called her on the phone before, so she couldn't be expected to know my voice positively.

I fixed that. I said, "O.K., pepper pot," and mentioned an incident of the night before that nobody could have known about except me.

She laughed and said, "It is my querido, Shell. What do I do for you?"

"You know where the IW temple is out on Silver Lake Boulevard?"

"I know where it is, yes."

"This might sound silly, honey, but I think it'll help. Do you know this Narda? The big wheel out here?"

"No, Shell."

"Well, I'm out here at the temple with a big, gray-haired cop named Samson. He weighs damn near as much as I do, and he's got a kind of pinkish face and a jaw that looks like a chunk of rock. He'll probably be chewing a cigar. There'll be him and me and another guy in a room out here. The other guy is Narda. I want you to grab a cab and get out here as fast as you can. Don't stop to pretty up." I told her where we'd be in the house and went on: "Knock on the door of the room we're in, then walk right inside and start laughing at Narda. Get it? Start laughing like you'd just heard the funniest joke in the world. And the front door's open. Slam it when you come in so I'll know you're here. That's all. Got it?"
 

She said without hesitating, "Sí, querido. I will do what you say, but I think you are crazy."

I said, "Maybe I am, honey," hung up, and walked back to Narda's room. Samson was sitting in a wooden chair by the door and Narda stood opposite him, nervously twisting his bony fingers together.

Narda glanced at me as I came in the door and walked across the room toward him. I stopped in front of him, grabbed him by the loose front of his black robe, and with my other hand jerked the white turban off the gleaming bald head of the very active corpse of Walter Press.

Chapter Eighteen

PRESS CLAPPED HIS hands to his bald head and struggled a little as I spun him around and jerked at the padded, quilted robe that covered his body.

He tried to fight me. He screamed hoarsely, "Stop! Stop it. You can't, you can't!" but I slammed him up against the wall, pain lancing through my bandaged right hand, and ripped the robe from him and flung it to the floor.

He turned and flattened his back against the wall, arms spread and the palms of his hands pressed against the wall behind him, as if he could force his way into the wood and out of our sight.

He was a sad specimen of a man without his trappings of divinity and clad only in a pair of baggy white shorts. His frame was shrunken, hollow-chested, and potbellied, and his hairless chest was pale.

His mouth opened wide and he pulled his lower lip down from his teeth in an anguished grimace, then rolled his eyes to the robe crumpled on the floor, the heavy robe that had covered his thin shoulders, scrawny chest, and bony knees, and made him look like a man. Without the protecting folds of the robe to hide them, the clumsy shoes on his feet made it obvious, too, how he'd grown from the five-seven of Walter Press to the more imposing five-ten or five-eleven of Narda. And it explained why, when he left the room after our first inverview, he'd looked as if he were walking on eggs—stiffly, awkwardly.

I said, "We came out to arrest you for murder, Press."

"Press? Press? I'm not Press. He's dead. He's dead. I'm Narda. Narda! Do you hear me?"

The booming voice was incongruous now, coming twisted and harsh from the almost naked man. Not at all like the "Disciples. Disciples. Listen to me…" I remembered from Sunday morning.

"Shut up, Press," I snarled. "You murdering bastard. You'll die in the gas chamber, Press. Want to tell us about it, Press?"

He was starting to crack just a little. He'd been Narda—powerful, masterful, almost divine Narda—so long he probably partly believed he was what he wanted others to think him. But it was tough going right now.

"I haven't killed anybody. I haven't. I swear it. I swear I haven't killed anybody."

"The hell you say, Press. And, Walter, I didn't mean lately. I meant about a year ago. About the twelfth of September, How about then, friend?"

He clamped his teeth together and pushed himself back harder against the wall, his eyes darting from one side of the room to the other. He didn't say anything.

I asked him again, "How about it, Press? Going to tell us?"

He lifted his eyes to glare at me and his lips twitched, but he didn't speak.

Samson had risen from his chair and was holding his cigar in his hand. He said, "Goddamn."

"Sam," I said, "take him. I'll be right back." I went out the door as Sam stuck the cigar back in his mouth.

I ran upstairs and banged on the door of the room where I'd left the other woman. She opened the door immediately.

I said, "What's your name, and where do you fit into this racket?"

She gasped, "I'm Phyllis. Phyllis Strong. I don't know what you mean."

The hell she didn't know what I meant. I barked at her, "Phyllis, you lie to me, or the police downstairs, and you'll get more trouble than you're already in. How much do you know about what goes on in this cockeyed setup?"

"Nothing," she said too quickly. "I just work for Narda."

"You ever see him without his robes and turban? I want that straight, baby. I mean it!

She shook her head. "No. No, I really haven't. I thought it was strange—"

"You sure?"

"Certainly I'm sure. I've wondered why myself."

"O.K., honey. You're going to see him now."

I told her almost the same thing I'd told Lina over the phone. For her to walk right in and burst out laughing. When she agreed I added, "And, baby, no tricks. A captain from Homicide's in there with him, and I'll be right beside you. Laugh like you're delirious. You're in enough trouble already, so follow instructions. If you've never seen him without his pretty clothes, it'll be easy."

I told her to give me about a minute, then ran back down the stairs.

Samson had Narda's shoes off and was shaking his head over the built-up soles and heels, while Narda sat on the edge of his bed with the spread pulled up in front of him like a coy bride. I walked up. Whim and with my left hand yanked the spread away from him, then pulled him into the center of the room.

"You might as well spill, Press. You haven't got a prayer."

He told me to go do something to myself that would never have occurred to Narda. He was starting to pull himself together, getting a little defiant.

"O.K., Press," I said. "If you—" That was as far as I got. Phyllis opened the door and walked into the room, and she came through with her part as if she were working on an Academy Award. It didn't look like all acting, even to me. Maybe it wasn't.

She glanced at Samson and me as she walked in, her face a little frozen and set.

I said, "Say hello to Narda, honey," and she turned and looked at Press standing with his small fists clenched.

Her eyes widened, eyebrows shooting up, and her mouth dropped open as she stared at him. She gasped incredulously, "Narda?" then literally exploded into laughter. She bent over, gasping, laughter catching in her throat and choking her, then bursting from her mouth and ringing in the room. She bent over, shrieks spilling from her throat.

It was a little sickening to watch Press wince and crumble. The defiance faded from his face and he seemed to shrink, his bony arms unconsciously rising to hide his spindly nakedness from the woman.

Sometimes you can be more cruel to a man than if you beat him with a club or a whip. Press was being whipped. Each ripple of laughter was leaving a welt across his mind, exploding in his skull like the end of his world. He was living one of those nightmares where you're naked in the sun and the whole world points at you and laughs and screams and gasps in its throat. He was the idol-with-feet-of-clay come to life in a frenzy of hisses and jeers: half Narda, half Press; half saint and half devil; and now half sane and half insane, for a moment.

He wrapped his arms across his chest, then around to grip the knobs of his shoulders, and backed slowly across the room. He stopped against the wall, then slid down it to the floor, his face screwed up, grimacing as a bound and frightened man grimaces before another blow. He sat huddled on the floor, arms about his knees and his face turned to the side, eyes staring, the shocked brain only half comprehending that the glorious figure of Narda he'd built for a while in the minds of his disciples, and finally in his own mind, was disappearing, dissolving in laughter.

I pushed the still gurgling Phyllis gently out of the door and went back and knelt in front of Press. "How about it, Walter? You still Narda? Don't you want to tell us about it now?"

He lifted his twisted face up and stared at me. His face moved slightly around his tight-pressed lips, but the lips didn't open. He didn't speak.

"Come on, Press. You'll get nowhere this way."

He turned his head away from me and stared dully at the wall on his right. Still tough enough, still clammed up. I put my hand Under his chin and pulled his face around till I could stare into his eyes. I said softly, "Where's Loren, Narda? Where's your little sweetie? You kind of go for little Loren, don't you, Narda?"

I felt like the lowest kind of animal as I said it, but I knew there was one lower—the guy I was talking to—so I kept it up. I'd keep it up all night if I had to, even if I hated myself for it.

"How about Loren, Narda? I mean Press. Yeah, Walter, I mean. Ever sleep with her, friend? Or were you just hand-holding sweeties, platonic? Was it platonic, Walter? Hey, Press. She ever see you like this? Loren ever get a good look at you, Narda? I mean Press?"

I didn't have to hold his face around to mine anymore. He was looking at me with a fixed, horrified expression that told me more than any words he might have said. He was half panting, half sobbing, his thin chest rising and falling with each choked breath.

I remembered it was about time for Lina to get here.

I reached up and tapped him gently on the chin with my bandaged hand. "I'll go get her, Narda. I'll go get your sweetie." I grinned at him.

"No!" The word came out like a cry. "Please," he said, "please don't. She's never seen me like this. She…she wouldn't understand. Please…"

I backed away from him, and he leaned forward onto his hands and knees like an animal, staring up at me. I kept telling myself he was an animal, the lowest kind of human on the face of the earth.

I stood in the middle of the room and looked down at him. The front door slammed. Lina.

I said, "Maybe that's Loren, Walter. I'll go get her."

His face got frantic. He screamed at me, "No, no, no. Please, don't get her. Don't."

I knelt down and glared at him. "You going to spill? You going to tell us everything? The whole damn thing, you low bastard. Come on, Press. Start talking. Fast."

He was right in the middle; he'd practically stopped thinking. He was still on his hands and knees on the floor, looking at me. He lowered his head for a moment, then raised it again and looked at me from dazed eyes.

Lina knocked on the door.

I said softly, "Come on in, Loren. Come on in."

The door started to open and Press screamed and scuttled into a corner of the room and cowered there, his face buried in his hands.

Lina came into the room, still dressed in one of my shirts and my trousers. She laughed shrilly and loud and without stopping. Press's body jerked and quivered. He ground his hands into his eyes, then slowly, his face terrible, he took his hands away and looked at Lina.