Snowball in Hell

He had forgotten Mrs. Doyle was watching them. «He was very badly wounded, you know. They didn't think he would live,» she said quietly from the doorway, and Matt turned. «I don't think he has quite got used to the idea himself.»
«What happened?»
«I don't know. He never speaks of it. They gave him a medal. The George Medal. For civilian bravery. He won't speak of that either. I think he's a little ashamed. Newspaper men are supposed to be neutral, and in the end, he wasn't.»
Matt moved towards the door.
She said, «Whatever you think he's done, you're wrong. Nathan is a good man. A man of honor.»
Matt said only, «Thank you for letting me see this, ma'am.»
«No wonder he went off his rocker,» Jonesy remarked as they headed over to Bunker Hill.
Matt glanced at him, but didn't answer.
«From the first minute I saw him, I sort of thought something might not be right with him,» Jonesy pursued. «You get an instinct for it.»
Matt said, «I don't see any obvious motive for him wanting the Arlen kid out of the way, but I also can't see any reason for him to have concealed the fact he was at the club. But people hide things in a homicide investigation. They get spooked. It doesn't always mean they've committed murder.»
He remembered his father and Jonsey telling him this very thing many years before, but Jonesy looked unconvinced now. And Matt wasn't convinced himself.
Doyle lived in an apartment in one of the old original Victorian houses on Olive Street.
Matt and Jonesy identified themselves, and the apartment manager led them upstairs into a chilly room with large bay windows overlooking what must have once been a lovely garden. There was an unmade pull-down bed and a table with
a typewriter-a half-full bottle of Teacher's blended Scotch whisky beside it.
There were no pictures and no religious icons. There was a tall bookshelf, mostly empty except for a couple of Christmas cards, a parcel wrapped in reindeer paper, and several volumes on travel and history and archeology. There was a copy of the dialogs of Plato, and a couple of books about Thomas Aquinas.
You could tell a lot about a man by what he chose to read, in Matt's opinion. He liked a good western himself, but it was a long time since he'd read any.
There were more books stacked on the table, a couple of medical books, and books on psychology. A book lying next to the bed bore the title The Homosexual Neurosis.
«Thanks very much,» Matt said to the apartment manager. «We'll take it from here.» He turned, nudging the book beneath the bed with the toe of his shoe, and forced the man out into the hall, nearly closing the door on the end of his inquisitive nose.
His leaned back against the door, and realized his heart was pounding hard and heavily, as though he'd barely escaped some terrible threat.
«Couple of bottles of pain killers in the bathroom, Loot,» Jonesy said, poking his head out. «Nothing illegal.»
Matt nodded.
«Did you find something?» Jonesy asked him.
«Huh? No.» He turned away from Jonesy's curious gaze, and opened the drawer of a built-in dresser. A neatly wrapped Walther rested amidst some carefully folded sweaters and
corduroys. A beautiful weapon. Modern and efficient. The kind of weapon he personally would choose if he was going to commit murder.
But to each his own.
He closed the drawer again. Rain dripped soothingly from the eaves above the windows. Despite the physical temperature of Doyle's quarters, this room was more alive and warm than the room he had spent his boyhood in. He could feel Doyle here-feel him too well.
«Nothing,» Jonesy muttered from the bathroom, and for the first time Matt wondered if Jonesy was losing his touch. Of course, if it hadn't been for the war, Jonesy would have retired by now. But it was harder than hell to find good men right now.
Jonesy rejoined him in the main room. «I guess he didn't kill Arlen for the money,» he remarked as they stared around the monk-like setting. «It's like a barracks in here.»
Matt nodded.
They went downstairs and spoke to the building manager once more.
«Quiet. Keeps to himself. No problems.» The little man licked his lips. «Is there something I should know?»
Matt thought of the book he had shoved under the bed. He had thought of putting it under the mattress, but Doyle was liable to panic when he didn't find it. And the last thing he wanted to do was panic Doyle. Not with a gun in his drawer and a medicine chest full of painkillers.
«No,» he said firmly. «This was just a routine check.» Like LAPD routinely inspected for dust or something. «Please tell Mr. Doyle to get in contact with us when he has a chance.»
The little man nodded doubtfully.
«When he has a chance?» Jonesy repeated when they went outside.
«I don't want that nosey parker going through Doyle's rooms.»
Jonesy didn't answer.
Matt said, «Let's get a photograph of Pearl Jarvis and show it around.»
«Okey dokey,» Jonesy said slowly, still looking at him.
It was quite a while after he'd told Jonesy good night that Matt decided to head over to the Biltmore Hotel Bar.
Doyle's editor had told them that Doyle sometimes went there after work. Matt had hung around headquarters for longer than necessary in the chance Doyle might call, although he hadn't really expected Doyle would make the effort to get hold of him that evening; it was clear to him by now what secret Doyle was guarding.
And Doyle's secret confirmed what Matt already suspected of Phil Arlen.
He tried to put himself in Doyle's shoes, but he couldn't. He thought Phil Arlen was no loss to the world.
By now Doyle already knew that they had gone to his workplace-he might even know that they had visited his mother and his apartment. In his position … well, it was hard to picture being in Doyle's position. Matt wasn't sure he wanted to.
The Biltmore Hotel was known as The Host of the Coast, and that night it did indeed seem to be hosting the entire population of California-or at least most of the men in the armed services.
Matt ordered a beer and found himself a quiet table in a corner. It was a beautiful room, lots of warm wood and gold leaf. There were marble floors and hand painted ceiling frescoes and chandeliers-the kind of thing Matt would have expected to see in a museum-and there was Nathan Doyle way down at the far end of the bar knocking back highballs with a handsome dark-haired man in a naval uniform adorned with the gold & silver insignia of a Commander.
Doyle was clearly getting plastered. His face was flushed and his eyes were bright. He was smiling, but it was the quality of the smile that fascinated Matt. He had seen Doyle smile once or twice-always as though he had been caught off guard-but this smile was young and frank and … flirtatious.
He and the naval commander could have been alone in the packed bar; he was oblivious to Matt's presence, let alone his attention. Matt could have standing right next to him. Instead, Matt stayed in his quiet corner, sipping his beer and watching, gently and not so gently repelling the advances of a few dames on the prowl. After time and a second beer, Doyle and his friend left the bar, weeding their way through the crowd, and Matt rose and followed them out through the lobby with its parquet floors and rich jewel-toned carpets and carved ceilings, down the steps through the arches and columns into the damp night.
Doyle walked with the careful steadiness of the seasoned inebriate; the naval commander was in a little worse shape, stumbling a little and laughing, his voice bouncing back to Matt in the eerily empty street.
Matt dropped back a little. They were making for Pershing Square: five acres of banana trees, eucalyptus, and coca palms. In the daytime, the wide lawns and broad walks were busy with kids feeding birds, pedestrians, and radicals on soapboxes preaching at the top of their lungs about everything from communism to the end of the world.