“That’s right,” I smiled. “Would you happen to have his telephone number and his address?”
He wrote in a small notebook on his desk, tore out the page, and handed it to me.
I looked at the paper, saw that the number was the one I already had and noted the address. “Thank you. I’ll just direct all my questions to him.” I stood up. “It was nice meeting you and I do appreciate your time.”
I walked straight back to my office and called Sheila.
“I’m hoping you’ll do something for me. And you’ll do it without asking too many questions.”
“What is it, Phil?”
“I want you to call Blinder and have him meet you at your uncle’s house.”
“Ok.” She was curious, but that was all she said.
“Tell him you found some papers you need him to explain. Papers you can’t make sense of, or something. If he complains or puts you off, mention some earrings he sold to your uncle.”
“Why earrings?”
“They were the fake ones. The ones Jack stole. That should get his interest.” I thought for a second and added, “If you have to use that, tell him it’s not a conversation you want to have over the phone. And when he shows up just ask him where he got them, how much he paid, stuff like that. But do whatever it takes to get him to come. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Have him meet you at six. I don’t care how long he stays. He can leave right away; it won’t matter. So don’t worry about keeping him around too long. There must be papers on your uncle’s desk you can show him and ask questions about. Or use the earrings, like I said.”
She was quiet, and I continued, “I hate to ask you to do this, but I can’t think of another way.”
After a moment, with a thin and uncertain voice, she asked, “This is for Bill?”
“Yes. But you don’t need to know any more than that.”
She was quiet again, and I ran my tongue around my teeth and asked, “Will you do it?”
She said “yes,” quickly, but with little confidence.
“Thanks. I do hate to put you in this, but there’s no other way. Not that I can think of.”
“It’s ok,” she said, a little stronger.
“Call me after you’ve talked to him and let me know if he bit.”
We hung up, and I lit a cigarette and spent several nervous minutes waiting for her call.
When it came, she said Blinder had agreed to come, only it would have to be at five, not six, and he wouldn’t be able to stay long. “He said he’s expecting someone.” I told Sheila that was fine and thanked her, and we said our goodbyes.
But I was worried that hour would cost me. I needed to frisk his place and wanted time enough to do it right. I figured I’d have a little over an hour to toss the joint if he went to Beverly Hills and just turned around. I also wanted time to take a careful look at the place from the outside and make my plans. But that could be done before he left. I worked the math in my head and figured I ought to be at Blinder’s place no later than 3:45, but my office clock said it was already 3:30 and I had no time to waste.
I picked up my hat, and walked out, leaving my light on. I told Betty I’d be back before long, and she needn’t bother closing up my office. Once again, I went down to the basement and left the building through the service entrance. I took a few unnecessary turns, enough to convince myself I didn’t have a shadow, and then picked up my car at Buster’s garage.
As I turned out onto 5th, I told myself that, even if Drakos was still interested in me, I must have left him waiting outside my office building and he wouldn’t know I was gone. But, when I left the garage, that must have been when he put the tail on me. I can’t make it work any other way.
Blinder’s place, the fake castle Hayden Tinge built, sat at the top of a hill above Silver Lake. The street rose steeply as it approached the house and then fell away almost as steeply on the other side down towards the lake. All I could see of the house itself was the top of a square plaster tower painted a warm yellow ochre. Three arched windows were on the side facing me, with one more on the other visible side. The rest of the house was hidden behind a dense and overgrown hedge of cypress, wax myrtle, purple sage, and God knows what else, all in a confused and neglected jumble. A driveway ran up about fifteen feet to meet the hedge and was blocked there by a metal gate. On one side of the gate, a wall of bricks disappeared into the hedge, while on the other side was a brick column and then a smaller metal gate – big enough to let a man through – and then another brick wall passing into the hedge. From what I could see of the walls, though, it looked as if no one had paid attention to them in years. Some of the bricks had started to crumble, and the mortar had decayed between many of them.
I parked just down the street and walked up the driveway. The gates were locked, and they and the walls were all too visible from the street to climb. Looking for another way in, I walked down the road. Cars were parked haphazardly here and there and didn’t seem to have any particular place but had been shoved in wherever they could fit. Several smaller houses huddled around Tinge’s castle – probably built on the grounds Clayman had divided away from the original estate – and none offered a promising way through the hedge. I walked around the block, and on the back side of the house, where the hedge bordered the street, I found what I was looking for.
A small dirt path snaked through the bushes and the trees. The path made a low tunnel, just tall enough for an eight-year-old boy to stand in, I guess, but I had to crouch my way through. After twists and turns, the path broke through the hedge and opened on a small, flat space that may have been a garden of some kind in the past, but now was overgrown with horsetail, manzanita, and telegraph weed. A few wild lilies were still hanging on late into the year, though their blooms were ragged, and none had all their petals.
The wall of the house directly behind the abandoned garden was shorter than I expected – maybe no more than twenty feet long. But it rose three floors up and the bottom floor had a door and two small windows facing into the garden. The windows were filthy, curtained with the gray wash of dirty rain, and too small to be useful to me. The door, sturdy and well locked, wasn’t promising either.
But, around the corner, I found a loggia that ran along the front of the house. It was lined with large windows and littered with dead leaves and small branches and other wind-blown rubbish. I surprised a crow pecking at something up in the near corner. It rasped angrily and flew away. A pair of French doors cut into the wall in the center of the loggia, providing access to the house. I crawled to them, keeping below the windows, and peered into the room behind. I couldn’t see much and pulled on the handles, but not too hard. They didn’t open, but the glass would be easy to break, and the room was dark and seemed empty. Since I wasn’t worried about being too careful, they would do if I couldn’t find a better way in.
I crawled to the end of the loggia and found what must have been the front door of the house at the base of the tower I had seen from the street. The door itself was wide planks of wood and had three, stout, cast iron hinges. The size of the hinges suggested the door was quite heavy. I could also make out two locks, and, even from a distance, I knew I shouldn’t waste time on them.
Another loggia led away from the front door and the tower for about 20 feet and then turned the corner to wrap around the other end of the house. There were no French doors on the side facing me, but there were windows through which I could see a lighted room. I peered up at the house and the tower. The section across from me, above the lighted room, was just two stories. The tower had four. It was a big place, and I’d have to work fast.
I looked at my watch and it was after four. I crawled back down the loggia, returned to the hole in the hedge, crept through, and walked quickly back to my car. A black Pontiac coupe crawled along the street, as if looking for an address or a place to park.
I sat in my car and watched Blinder’s gate. I smoked a cigarette and checked my gun. About 4:15, a taxi arrived. The driver got out and pressed a bell. The gate rumbled open, the driver got back into his hack, and drove through. After a bit, the gate swung shut. Five minutes or so went by, the gate opened, and the cab drove out. I thought I could see a little man nestled in the back seat. The taxi went down the street and the gate closed.
I grabbed the flashlight I kept in the glove box, looked at my watch, and headed back towards the hole in the hedge. Once through, I didn’t waste any time looking around but walked straight to the French doors, broke the glass nearest to the handles, and let myself in.
I was in a long living room, filled with dusty furniture. Two sofas and some chairs were under sheets, and at the far end, down by the door and the dirty windows, there was a grand piano, the lid down, the keyboard covered. I guessed Blinder didn’t do much entertaining.
A doorway out of the living room led to a formal hall at the base of the tower I had seen from the outside. Dark stone tiles covered the floor and a stone staircase with an iron handrail spiraled up the tower. Light, though not much, fell from windows at the top of the tower, four stories up, and from others of stained glass placed along the stairs. One floor above, there was an ornate wooden balcony in front of a doorway that led to the rooms on that level. The door was framed by two niches carved into the plaster of the tower, and in the niches were statues of what I thought might be deformed dwarves.
Another door led from the tower down a hallway along which I found the kitchen, a small dining room, and finally a study. These rooms all showed signs of life. The kitchen was clean and there was even a small bowl of fruit – apples and pears – on the counter. There was a sink under a long window with a door just to the right. I walked back to the door and found a sliding bar lock made of iron, which I pulled back. It squealed and complained, begging for some oil or grease, but, with a bit of persuasion, it opened. I shoved it closed and tried it again. Its complaints were softer, but not by much. I opened the door and stuck my head out. A concrete walk ran along the side of the house, heading back towards the overgrown garden and the hole in the hedge. I pulled the door closed but left the lock open.
Just to my right, on the interior wall, there was another door. I opened it and found a narrow wooden staircase. Servants’ stairs I thought.
The dining room looked out onto the driveway and a patch of untended grass at the front of the house. There were chests in two corners, each filled with China and glasses. A table with four delicate chairs around it filled the middle of the room. A few days’ newspapers were stacked on the table, and cards were laid out in an unfinished game of solitaire in front of one of the chairs.
The study had a big walnut desk with two matching armchairs – one on each side. A few books, some files, and a telephone sat on the desk. The chairs were old, with the stain rubbed away from their arms, while the fabric on the seats was frayed and worn. Short cases filled with law books took up two walls, while a few file cabinets and a squat, free standing safe filled up another. To the right of the desk was a small closet.
I thought most of my time would have to be spent searching the study, but I still needed to take a quick look through the rest of the house to be sure I wasn’t missing something more obvious. I looked at my watch. It had been over ten minutes since Blinder had gone, and I gave myself no more than fifty minutes to complete my search.
I went back to the tower hall and climbed the stairs. Up close, the statues in the little niches were even more grotesque than I expected: human skulls on monkey bodies with snakes wrapped around their arms and legs. Through the door, I found a room like a medieval great hall – open and spacious with a timbered ceiling. I assumed Tinge had used it for his dinner parties, but Blinder apparently had no use for the room because it was completely empty. Another door took me through a small hall with built in cabinets on both sides that certainly once had been filled with dishes, glassware, flatware, and all the cutlery and serving ware necessary for big, formal dinners. On one side of this hall, the servants’ staircase dropped down to the kitchen, while on the other, I found a room with two chairs covered in sheets shoved up against one wall. I guessed it might have been a billiards or smoking room at one time – a place where men could retire after dinner. But that was just a guess.
At the end of the hall, there was a decent sized bedroom that was obviously in use. The bed was made, and a silk robe lay draped across a ladder-back chair. Slippers sat on the floor at the foot of the bed. There was a closet, filled with hanging clothes, and a chest of drawers with folded clothes in each drawer. There was also a small bathroom.
I went back through the hall, and then up the winding stairs of the tower. The stairs ended after one flight, at a door.
I tried the door, but it didn’t move. The lock wasn’t much and using a small piece of cellophane from my wallet, I forced it, and shoved at the door, which opened with an ugly scraping sound, as though it hadn’t moved in years. I pulled out my flashlight, stabbed the light down a long hall. Dust and cobwebs made it obvious no one had been here in a very long time. Still, I walked down the hall and looked into rooms that once must have held guests and flowers and light but that now were dark and empty. I didn’t see any reason to examine any of them closely and made my way back to the tower and walked down the stairs to the study. Blinder owned a castle built for show and crowds and he lived alone in four or five rooms.
My tour of the house had taken me almost fifteen minutes, but at least I knew I could spend my remaining time in the study and the bedroom without worrying I had missed something.
I worked my way methodically through the desk. The folders and books on its surface were old files and old law books. I thumbed quickly through them but found nothing. In one of its drawers I found several unopened packs of cigarettes, and each pack was white with a large red circle, like a target – Lucky Strikes. The same as had been found in room 914.
Under a false bottom in one of the big drawers at the base of the desk, I found a junky’s kit – a small metal case with a rubber tourniquet, some syringes, and a glass vial of a colorless liquid. Along with the kit, there was an open box of .41 short ammunition. Blinder didn’t seem like the type to own a derringer, but the box told me to assume he did. I didn’t find the gun in the desk.
The safe was locked and I wasn’t going to bust it unless I found the combination.
It was possible something might have been hidden in the law books in the shelves, but there were an awful lot of them, and I didn’t see anything that made me think Blinder had looked at any of them recently. I ignored them and moved on to the closet.
There were several coats hanging in there, all bunched to one side. I went through each coat and found nothing. Three cardboard boxes were on the floor, pushed to the same side of the closet as the coats. I opened the topmost box, and it was full of old papers and files. The few I scanned quickly were all dated from March of 1933 and related to oil leases in the Wilmington field down around Long Beach and San Pedro. It looked like Blinder’s client was “L. Rose Exploration.” A shelf above the coats held a selection of hats – among them were two homburgs, one black and one grey, and an old top hat with water spots marring the fur – and nothing else.
But the thing that captured my interest most was the floor. Everything seemed placed to keep one area clear. And though the floor was carpeted, the carpet bunched unusually towards the center of the closet. I poked at it with my foot, and it moved. I knelt and pulled the carpet back. Underneath, I found a small trapdoor. And under the trapdoor I found a box, with printing in French – though it wouldn’t take any knowledge of that language to guess what it held. The box read: “Les laboratoires Mercier –produits médicaux – Marseilles.” Inside the box were more glass vials filled with a colorless liquid along with several small jars holding a white powder. It wasn’t what I had come looking for, but it gave me cards to play. I replaced everything as carefully as I could.
According to my watch, I had just over ten minutes left to search. I went upstairs to Blinder’s bedroom.
I went quickly through the closet and the chest and found nothing. The night table had a drawer that held four pulp novels – all westerns – which made me laugh. But on top of the table there were some candles and a little porcelain chest. I opened the chest and found a ring that matched the one David Henschel had given me. Only this one was beautiful in a way the other couldn’t duplicate.
I looked at it for a long minute, and pictured Addison Blinder lying in bed, staring at that ring – lost in its brilliance and sparkle.
Then I heard something downstairs.
I froze and listened carefully. A door closed and a voice called, “Addison?”
I put the ring back in the chest and walked down the hall as quietly as I could, listening all the while. As far as I could tell, the man was standing in the entry hall, down at the bottom of the winding stairs, waiting for an answer. He called “Addison?” again, and I heard him walking, back towards the kitchen and dining room and the study, it seemed. After a moment, there was another “Addison,” farther away, towards the study. There was quiet for a bit and then I heard him singing to himself. I recognized the tune as one of those that had been on the radio a lot that year, a song called “Little White Lies.”
I couldn’t tell where he was, but the sounds were getting louder. He called “Addison” again, and I thought he was in the entrance hall. Then I heard feet climbing the stone steps.
I ducked into the stairway that led down to the kitchen and closed the door.
The man walked by, said “Addison” once again, and walked to the bedroom. It wasn’t long before he came back down the hall. He was singing to himself again.
I didn’t need to see him to know who it was. I knew Benny’s voice well enough.
Lettres d'un Inconnu 