Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

“She has no servants,” he said. “She can afford them, all right, but she claims she’d be bored silly all day, if she couldn’t clean house.”

We went from there to a bathroom in peach, to an ivory dining room, to a bedroom in orchid.

Nothing in the place. No exotic girl with a dagger in her throat, no distinguished gent with a neat hole in his aristocratic forehead, no blood, no mess, no clues at all.

The kitchenette was white tile, with a black rubber tile floor. Not even one dirty dish in the sink, nor one spilled grain of sugar. It was like a display home, all the way through.

I opened the back door and brought in the milk and put it in the refrigerator. There was some cheese in there, some wine, some butter, some cold meats.

There was nothing in the apartment to indicate a hurried trip, to indicate violence. It was as though she was gone for the day. But she’d been gone for eight.

I looked through some drawers. I looked through a scrapbook she kept, of newspaper items about herself. There might be something there. I took it along with me when we left.

Rodney was quiet, in the car. He was looking sick.

I asked: “Do you have a picture of her?”

He nodded.

“Could I borrow it?”

“Of course.” His eyes were straight ahead, on the road.

His poet’s imagination would be working now, thinking the unthinkable. I said: “Everything may be all right. We’re not sure of anything so far.”

“Sure,” he said. “Sure, of course.”

The Dusy made no comment, purring softly under her hood, moving quietly through the upper east side to the far upper east side, to the cottage of Rodney Carlton.

I waited in the car while he went in to get the picture. When he brought it out, it was wrapped in brown paper. I didn’t open it, but put it on the seat beside me.

“Don’t think about it,” I said. “We don’t know anything.”

“Don’t think about it?” His voice was ragged. “She was my life, that’s all. She was all there is in the world for me.”

A typical poetic exaggeration, I thought. He hasn’t even seen her for a month, I thought.

I drove from there down to headquarters. I went in and up to the second floor, to the Missing Persons Bureau. Old Pop Delaney was behind his mission oak desk in there, manufacturing cheap cigar smoke.

“What d’ya know?” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

He had a round head, topped with snow-white hair. He had a smooth face, unwrinkled, though he was crowding seventy. But perhaps he’d never worried — he had always worked for the city. So had I, for a while.

I told him about the need for discretion. “You get all that carriage trade, don’t you?” he asked. “How do you do it, Jonesy?”

I ignored that. I showed him the picture, and looked at it myself for the first time.

A tinted picture. A girl with jet hair and Pacific-blue eyes and with that challenge, that bold and alluring something that makes men aware of the person possessing it, that something more than beauty.

“Hey,” Pop said. “All right, huh?” Then he frowned. “This the best you got?”

“It’s good enough for me,” I said.

“Yeh, but for reproduction, a glossy print would be better. You got any others?”

“Just that,” I said.

He rolled the cigar in his mouth, studying the picture. “O.K., I’ll do what I can. You can pick this up this afternoon.” He continued to roll the cigar and study the picture. He shook his head sadly. “I’m an old man, Jonesy,” he said, “an old, old man.”

I left him with his dreams.

I was just going through the big entrance door downstairs, when I heard a voice. The voice. My worst friend and unkindest critic, the boss of Homicide, Devine.

“What’s your hurry, Jones?” he wanted to know.

“No hurry,” I said. “That was my usual gait. How are things with you?” As though I cared, as though he couldn’t be dying, right at my feet, without my caring.

“O.K.,” he said. “No murders, no important ones, anyway. Got a vacation coming up, end of the month.” He smiled. “In on business?”

“N-o-o,” I lied. “Just dropped in to say ‘hello’ to some of the boys. I’m glad everything is quiet.”

“You never drop in at Homicide any more,” he said. “Not mad at us, are you? No hard feelings? We work together, don’t we, Jones?”

“Always,” I said. “Cooperation, as the Chief says.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Be good, boy.”

“I will,” I promised. “I’m going to cut my cigarettes down to two packs a day, any day now.” I left him, and went out into the sun.

He’d be checking now. He’d be prowling the department, trying to find out my business. He didn’t like me. He knew I could have his job, any time I wanted it, and he would never like me. But Pop would tell him nothing. Everyone at the department disliked him as much as I did.

The Dusy chuckled, when I kicked her into life.

Back at the office, I went up the stairs slowly, mulling over all I had seen and heard this morning, searching for a thread to untangle, searching for something that didn’t fit, some piece out of the proper focus. I found nothing.

I opened my door quietly. It’s never locked.