Chapter 2: The Lady in the Lake
It was late. Or early, depending on how you looked at it. I was sitting at my desk in my apartment, a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Jack's finest within easy reach. Spread out before me was all the information I could find on one Randall Julian and his associates – namely a Mr Johnny Nevada. Nevada owned a ring of underground casinos near the docks. They disguised themselves as Cafes, but really they were a place where older men and younger women came to drink and lose their money.
It seemed as though Miss Karen was a regular at Nevada's casinos and Ingrid played there occasionally. Whether their father knew about it was unclear. Ingrid was smart and always left with more money then when she'd arrived. Karen on the other hand was careless. She bet money like it was matchsticks and didn't care if she lost. Only problem was, she never paid her debts. On a couple of occasions it seemed as though her sister had bailed her out, but more than once Nevada had sent notes to Hartley – demanding payment and threatening to do something about it, if he didn't get it.
I reached for the bottle, twisting the cap off one-handed before pouring myself another shot. A knock on the door interrupted my attempts at consuming the drink. I opened the door to reveal Joseph Anza – a detective with homicide. He looked like he'd just rolled out of bed. His tie was crooked, his shirt displaced, and his pants had creases in them as though they'd been lying on the floor. There was lipstick on his collar.
He looked at me and shook his head. "Don't you ever go to bed Fillmore?" I stood aside and he walked in. He glanced over at my desk, eyebrows crawling skywards when he saw the J.D. and the shot glass beside it.
"So who is she this time?" he asked. Every time Joe found me drinking he assumed there was a woman involved. He was usually right.
"A married woman." I said, waving with a hand for him to take a seat in whatever chair he could find.
Anza laughed. A rasping, dry laugh that said he probably smoked more than was good for him but drank less than most. "You haven't changed." He told me.
"And I don't intend to." I replied. "Now why don't you quit pretending like this is a social call and tell me why you're here?"
He surveyed me for a long moment – like actors in a movie when they're waiting for something profound to happen. "You're working for Charles Hartley?" He asked eventually.
"I am." I said. I didn't like where this was heading. When a homicide detective turns up at your door, looking like he's given up much better company to be there a fellow tends to get suspicious.
"You done anything for them yet?"
I frowned. This is the way interrogations start – when the cops think you're good for something but they've got no way of proving it without a confession. "What sort of a question is that?" I demanded.
"It's a question." he answered. That statement told me both nothing, and everything I needed to know.
"Yeah, well I don't like it." I said. "Now how about you stop being cagey and tell me what's going on."
Anza looked at me, before reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a cigarette. He lit it with one of those chrome lighters – the type you keep – taking a deep drag before he spoke to me.
"Okay Fillmore. About half an hour ago we pulled a car registered to the Hartley family out of the river. There's a body in there and –"
"McAlistair?" I interrupted.
"You mean that thug that Hartley used to keep around?" Anza asked, "The one who went missing a few months ago? Nah, it's not him. It's a girl. Why'd you think it was McAlistair?"
"No reason."
"Fillmore." he cautioned. I was pushing my luck and I knew it, but I was damned if I was going to give him more than he already had.
"Let it drop Joe." The words were kind, friendly even. My tone was anything but. I don't like the police, but I put up with Joe because an 'alright' kind of guy. We think alike and he's not adverse to putting holes in the rule book.
Joseph Anza was the type of man who was a man of honour in all things - by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it and certainly without saying it. He was the best man in his world and good enough for any world. I did not care much about his private life; he's neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin. That was just the kind of man he was.
I reached out and downed the shot I'd left unfinished earlier. "I still don't see what all this has to do with me."
Anza sighed. "The D.A.'s office likes you for this. They wanted me to get you to come down, look and the body, see how you reacted."
"I know that game. A calm man's guilty and a nervous one's hiding something. You can't win either way. But if that's the case why tell me anything? The D.A. won't like that you ruined the surprise."
"You didn't do this." Anza stated.
"What makes you so sure?" I asked.
Anza looked at me. It was a long hard look, the kind that made hired thugs keel over at twenty feet. "You telling me I'm wrong?" he said.
I smiled. "No. I'm asking what makes you so sure."
Joe snorted and took another long drag of his cigarette. "You're out of the game Fillmore, besides this ain't your style. Even when you were wrecking havoc on the streets of D.C. your name never crossed Homicide's desk. That wasn't your thing."
I nodded, acknowledging the fact. "So," I said at last. "You want me to come look at the body."
Anza gave me one last stare and nodded. "Yeah."
The moon was bright – a dime suspended in a velvet clouds and sky. The roads were slick with rain, drops of water sparkling in the street like quicksilver. In the canal the moon played across the water, creating dapples and shifting lights that made it impossible to discern shapes from shadows.
The banks of the canal were steep and you could see where the car had ripped through the barrier. The itself car was relatively new – a black and grey New Yorker that Chrysler had released in '42 right after the completion of the Alaskan Highway – and sat, a squat black beetle, on the banks of the canal. In the front seat was a girl. She was short, blond, dressed in what had once been a crisp, clean uniform, and a bullet had removed half her face. The registration in the glove compartment told me that the car itself was registered to Mr Hartley's eldest daughter – but under the name of Hartley, not Third. Interesting.
The girl's name was still a mystery.
As I was about to return to the group, a flicker of white caught my eye. Leaning over, I eased a sodden envelope from its prison between the edge of the seat and the floor lining. Holding it up to the moonlight I could just make out a watermark in the top right hand corner: the Hartley family crest.
Tucking the envelope carefully into my breast pocket I climbed back out of the car, closing the door carefully behind me. The waterlogged nature of the car had done nothing to alleviate the stench of death and decay.
I strolled over to where Anza was standing next to a fat man in a tie. I recognised him as Det. Sgt. Vallejo – Anza's boss. The Sergeant looked me up and down and frowned. The gesture could have meant anything.
"For the record, I don't like P.I.'s messing around in my case." Apparently it meant he didn't like me.
I opened my mouth to retaliate when I was cut off by a voice as obnoxious as it was unwelcome. "And I, fail to see why – that being the case – you still proceeded to let a former criminal examine the evidence." The voice belonged to Assistant District Attorney Peabody.
Peabody was a thin, odious sort of man who bought expensive clothes and wore them poorly. His glasses were round and too big for his face and his mouth was a tight, thin line. There were two spots of colour sitting high on his cheeks and he was puffing and strutting like a peacock on parade.
Vallejo's attention instantly shifted from me to Peabody. "What are you doing here Peabody? Crime scenes aren't anything to do with the D.A.'s office." His voice had an edge that said once upon a time he had been polite to Peabody. But somewhere along the way the lawyer had pissed him off and Vallejo wasn't big in second chances. Peabody scowled at the Sergeant but made no reply. Eventually he stalked off to harass the uniforms and Vallejo turned his attention back to me. He looked me up and down at though Peabody's dislike of me was causing him to reassess his opinion of me. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
He nodded, once, and suddenly the cops around us were willing to share information. A blond kid, still in uniform but with a look that said he'd make a good detective, one day, stepped forward and gestured towards the wreck.
"The woman driving is, as of yet unidentified, but from her uniform and the fact that she was found driving a Hartley car, I'd say it's safe to bet she was a maid in their house." His eyes did a quick flick to the plain-clothes around him. Rookie, still looking for approval.
"Any evidence she was forced off the road or was she just looking for a new short cut to Virginia?" I asked. My eyes were drawn once again to the waterlogged car currently being scrutinised by over half a dozen uniforms. Crime scenes always seemed to accumulate more people than were needed – uniforms, plain clothes, the coroner and his people. Murders attracted even more. There was something fascinating about somebody else's death. Macabre but true.
Vallejo shrugged, "Rain's obscured most of the tire marks – we'll see what we can get from the car but –" he sighed and the rest of us followed suit. The only thing we could do was question the Hartley's – who may or may not tell us anything.
I nodded to Anza and turned my back on the scene. A few hours of sleep and then I was going to be asking my own questions.
I walked through the doors of Liggett and Fillmore investigations to see Lucille frowning at the telephone. Her pretty face was scrunched into a grimace as she jotted something down onto the notepad in front of her. She hung up with a curt farewell and marched in Wayne's office, leaving me staring at her back. I watched the door slam and rattle on its hinges and decided I didn't want to get involved.
Whistling a mindless tune, I sauntered through the doors to my own office, only to be pulled up short by the sight that greeted me. Perched on my desk sat Ingrid Third, a compact raised in front of her face, as she tried to paint the suitcases out from under her eyes. She saw me and snapped the compact shut, slipping in back into her purse as she artfully crossed her legs for my benefit.
I raised an eyebrow and settled myself against the now closed office door. I contemplated, and dispensed with, a few choice greetings before finally deciding on "I found your maid."
She blinked at me and if she hadn't been so well-bred I would have said she looked surprised. She eased herself down onto the floor, taking care to smooth her sleek black skirt as she did so.
I waited until she was firmly on two feet before adding, "I also found your car."
She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow at me and said nothing. I held her gaze and lifted the white envelope from the crime scene out of my breast pocket. The crinkled paper made a light scratching sound, testimony to the rigorous drying process I had subjected it to before coming here.
She looked at me with bored and empty eyes, but that quickly changed as I turned the envelope to face her. Though the ink was smudged beyond all recognition, it must have seemed familiar to her for her face melted into a mask of annoyance and anger.
"Where did you get that?" she hissed at me, stalking forward, "You had no right –"
"Would you rather the police have it?" I asked. She made a snatch for the paper but I lifted it out of her reach.
"I could always give it to the police." She smiled then, gleeful and bright, and I knew I had said the wrong thing.
She minced her way back to my desk, once again perching herself upon it, a look of triumphant delight curving her lips into a wicked grin. "You wont go the police Mr Fillmore." she told me, in a soft and condescending voice. "You've been hiding evidence – you stole that envelope from the crime scene – you'd be in the clink for sure, if you went to the police now."
I listened to her words and began to smile on my own. "I never said there was a crime scene." Her face fell. "I just said I'd found your maid and you car. They could have been anywhere." I paused. "Which means you must have known about your maid and how she ended up. The police might be interested in that detail."
"You cannot prove a thing." She told me, but her face showed a hint of fear. There was a fine tremble in her arms and the hand that rested on the desk was white knuckled and shaking.
We stayed there, staring at each other until the ringing of my phone jarred us from our stand-off. Abruptly she jumped down off the desk and marched across the room in quick easy strides. I moved out of her way.
"Goodbye Mr Fillmore." she said and promptly disappeared out the door. I went to answer my phone.
A/N: Apologies if this chapter lacks in action or if there is a barrage of spelling and grammatical errors. Noir is actually a lot harder to write than I had first anticipated so updates will take a while. As always reviews and criticisms are appreciated. Thank you.