by Bill Crider
“Why not? Your pal Frank isn’t going anywhere?”
“No, but you are. If that little spark in the ashes out there was live, that means the killer hasn’t been gone long. Someone probably heard the shot that killed Frank, and that somebody might have called the cops. And if the cops were called…”
“Then they should be on the way here,” Bogart said.
“Give the man a silver dollar.”
“And we shouldn’t be here when they arrive.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“What about the pistol?”
I’d thought about that. I said, “Where did you get it?”
“I served in the Navy. Don’t you read the papers?”
“I also read that you and some writer had opened a rattlesnake farm in Arizona.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read. Only the true things.”
“About the pistol,” I said.
“I brought it home with me after the war. Lots of guys did the same.”
“It probably can’t be traced to you, then. We can leave it for the cops.”
“It might be traceable. I’m not sure.”
“It’s no different from a thousand others. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m worried. I don’t want the cops to get it.”
I was going to argue with him, but that’s when we heard the sirens.
“Time for you to get out of here,” I told Bogart. “Do you think you can get out of the neighborhood and catch a cab?”
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“I’ve done things like that often enough,” he said. He twisted the ruby ring. “What happens after I catch the cab?”
“Go back to the studio, get your car, and go home. Garden of Allah, right?”
“That’s right, but I don’t think Allah’s visited it lately.”
“I’ll come by later.”
I took out my wallet and located a card, checked to be sure it was the right one, and handed it to Bogart.
He looked at it and said, “This your shyster?”
“That’s right. If I’m not at your place by midnight, call him and have him come bail me out of jail.”
“You think they’ll take you in?”
“They’ll take us both if you don’t get out of here.”
“And the pistol?”
“Leave it. I’m not going to withhold evidence of a murder. We’ll just have to hope they don’t trace it to you.”
He looked at the pistol and shook his head sadly.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Maybe it has the killer’s fingerprints all over it.”
I didn’t believe that, and neither did he, but he gave me a half smile.
“You know what happens in the movies, don’t you?” he said.
“Sure. They always arrest the wrong guy, which is what’s going to happen if you don’t get out of here.”
He thought that over for a second and then nodded.
“See you later, Junior,” he said, and walked out of the bedroom.
I heard the front door close when he left. I hoped the cops didn’t spot him. Mr. Warner would surely fire me if Bogart was jailed for murder. There was a story about one of Mr. Warner’s assistants, a man who’d been with him for nearly twenty years. One day, Mr.
Warner fired him outright. When Darryl Zanuck asked him why, Mr.
Warner said, “It just wasn’t working out.” So you couldn’t call him a sentimental guy. At any rate, while I wouldn’t withhold evidence, I didn’t see any need to have Bogart there for questioning. And I might even lie a little if the need arose. Which it probably would.
I looked out the window until Bogart disappeared into the night.
After that it was only a couple of seconds until the cops arrived.
I went to the door to let them in. While I was standing there, I smeared the fingerprints. I didn’t think Bogart had touched anything 23
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else. Except maybe that pistol. I didn’t smear those prints, though. I wasn’t going to withhold evidence, and I wasn’t going to taint it, either.
The cops didn’t come to Frank’s place first. There were two of them, and they stopped by my car to look it over. I saw one of them put his hand on the hood for a second as if he were resting. He didn’t rest long. The two of them went to another one of the small units and knocked on the door. I figured that whoever called them lived there.
They’d ask where the shot had come from, and then they’d come to Frank’s place. I sat down on the couch, avoiding the sprung cushion, and waited for them.
While I sat there, I thought about Frank, and about Bogart’s pistol.
Mostly about the pistol.
It was a cinch that it had been used to kill Frank, and there were only a couple of ways it could have gotten there. One was that Bogart could have brought it earlier and used it.
I didn’t much like that idea, but it could be true. I hadn’t seen the spark in the ashtray, and it sure wasn’t there now.
What if Bogart had told me about it just so I’d think there’d been someone there earlier?
What if this whole thing was just a set-up to use me as his witness when the cops found out that Frank was dead?
There were a couple of things wrong with those questions. The cops, for one. They wouldn’t have come unless someone had called them, but Bogart could have set that up, too, with the person who’d done the calling. Of course the coroner would establish a time of death, and that might let Bogart off the hook. I hoped so. I’d gotten to like him.
The other thing was the pistol. It didn’t seem likely that Bogart would have left it behind had he done the shooting. He wasn’t that careless.
But it didn’t have to be Bogart who’d done Frank in. There was always Mayo, who was known to be violent and who couldn’t afford to have Frank spreading any scandal about her. She’d known where the pistol was kept, and Bogart was still living where he’d lived when they were married. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to get her hands on the .45.
Mayo couldn’t afford to pay Frank’s blackmail, but she could afford 24
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a bullet. Hell, Bogart probably kept the pistol loaded, and she could have figured out the safety. It wasn’t very tricky.
She might have panicked and dropped the pistol after killing Frank, or she might even have left the pistol there deliberately, depending on how she was feeling about Bogart at the time. She might have wanted him to take the fall for her.
Mayo or Bogart, I wondered. Had one of them pulled the trigger or not? Well, I’d find out sooner or later. People had tried to keep secrets from me before, but it hadn’t worked out for them. It never did.
25
CHAPTER
7
It didn’t take the cops long to find their way to Frank’s place. They knocked on the door, more or less politely, but I could tell it wasn’t Emily Post out there.
I opened the door and got out of the way. They didn’t come in like Emily Post, either.
The first one through the door said, “You Frank Burleson?”
He was in a plainclothes unit, probably homicide, and he wore a dark double-breasted suit with a light stripe in it. He was big, with wide shoulders, long arms, and thick, clumsy-looking fingers that could twist your ear off in about half a second. He had big white teeth that could chew up the ear in even less time than that. He looked about as excitable as a fireplug.
But he wasn’t bad looking, for a cop, with sort of a square face, with bushy eyebrows and dark eyes. The thing that would keep him out of pictures was the wart just to the right of his nose. It was the size of a pencil eraser, and there were a couple of short black hairs growing in it.
The other man was in uniform. He was smaller, but he looked plenty tough. His face was seamed, and his nose was crooked, as if it had been broken more than once.
“I’m not Burleson,” I said. “And
who aren’t you?”
The big one took off his hat and ran his hands through his hair, 27
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which was black and shiny, as if he’d used one dab of Brylcreem too many. I could see that the leather liner was stained dark.
He put his hat back on his rumpled hair and said to the uniform,
“Tell me something, Garton. Is this guy Lou Costello, or not? He looks like Costello. He’s funny like Costello. So he must be Costello. Tell me it’s Costello.”
Garton smiled, and his face got even more seamed. He looked a little like a chimp that had escaped from a Tarzan movie.
“It ain’t Costello, Lieutenant Congreve,” he said.
“Damn. I always wanted to get that guy’s autograph.” He turned back to me. “Now we know you’re not Burleson, and we know you’re not Costello, so you can cut the comedy. Who the hell are you?”
I told him. He didn’t seem impressed. I almost wished I were Costello.
“And what are you doing in Frank Burleson’s house?” he asked.
“Frank and I are old friends,” I said. As long as everybody thought I was Frank’s pal, I might as well take advantage of it. “I dropped by to see how he was doing.”
“I see. And how is he doing?”
“Not so hot,” I said. “Cold, in fact.” “How cold?”
“Getting colder all the time,” I said.
Lieutenant Congreve sighed and turned back to Garton.
“He’s funnier than Costello, don’t you think?”
Garton didn’t smile this time. He was edging around Congreve toward the open door of the bedroom, fumbling to release the thong that held the pistol in the holster he wore on his belt.
“Ah-ah,” Congreve said, putting a hand on his arm. “Don’t get in such a rush, Garton. We’ll take a look in there in just a minute. Maybe Mr. Scott would like to tell us what we’ll find.”
“Frank,” I said. “You’ll find Frank.”
“Sleeping, is he? And at this hour of the night. You’d think he’d be out here talking to his old friend Scott, maybe having a little drink.
Is he feeling ill?”
“He’s not feeling much of anything,” I said.
“Feeling no pain, is he? Been drinking a little too much? Carousing a bit with his old friend?”
“Look,” I said. “I’m no Costello, and you’re no Bob Hope. Frank’s lying in there on the floor, and he’s dead as a hammer.”
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Congreve sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that, I really was. I wish you hadn’t, though. Cuff him, Garton.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I didn’t kill him. What’s the matter with you. You think I killed him and then sat on the couch waiting for you to get here? I haven’t been here more than five minutes, myself.”
“That may very well be, and we’ll find it out for sure in time. In the meanwhile, put your hands behind your back so Garton can slip the cuffs on you, gently and politely. Or we’ll do it the hard way.
Garton would like that.”
On the last sentence, his voice changed. It had been almost pleasant, as if we were having a conversation about the weather. But now it was so hard you could crack glass with it.
I put my hands behind my back. Garton cuffed me, but there was nothing gentle or polite about it. I hadn’t really expected that there would be.
When he had the cuffs on tight enough to satisfy him, Garton gave me a quick frisk. He didn’t find anything. I never carry a pistol. My theory is that if you carry one, you might have to use it, and I don’t plan to shoot anybody.
Garton shoved me in the back, and I stumbled across the room toward Congreve, who was standing in the bedroom doorway, looking down at the body.
“So this is Frank,” he said.
“It was Frank,” I said. “At least it was the last time I looked.”
Congreve knelt down by the body and felt for a pulse in Frank’s neck. He didn’t find one.
“He’s stone cold, all right,” Congreve said when he’d stood back up. He wiped his hands on his pocket handkerchief. “Why did you kill him?”
“I didn’t kill anybody,” I said evenly. “I came by to see how he was doing, talk over old times. I found him there, and then you knocked on the door. That’s all I know.”
Congreve wasn’t listening. He went into the bedroom and looked things over. Then he turned to face me.
“I told you to cut the comedy. We come in here, we find you with the body. You killed him, all right.”
“Why don’t I just shoot him,” Garton said behind me. “We could say he was trying to escape.”
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Congreve shook his head. “We’re cops, Garton. Cops don’t do that kind of thing, not in L.A. We don’t want to ruin our reputation. Let’s have a look around and see what else we can find.”
They searched the bedroom and the little bathroom beside it. They did a quick but thorough job, and of course they didn’t find anything much. If Frank had kept a file on his work for the studio and used it for blackmail, he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to keep it at home. Or maybe whoever had killed Frank had already found it. The only interesting thing they found was a pistol, which was in the top drawer of the dresser.
Garton sniffed it. “Hasn’t been fired in a long time. Hasn’t been cleaned lately, either.”
“We’re not here to worry about anyone’s firearms hygiene,” Congreve told him, and they kept on looking.
They searched the living room and even the kitchen, neither of which the killer had searched. Finally Congreve said, “All right, Scott.
We give up. Where did you hide it.”
“What?” I asked, with big innocent eyes that Bambi would have envied.
“Whatever you killed Burleson for. I can tell when a room’s been tossed.”
“I didn’t toss it. If there was anything in there, the killer probably took it with him.”
“Maybe, or maybe you had help.”
“Think about it, Lieutenant,” I said. “If I’d killed him, would I have waited here and opened the door for you, or would I have lammed out of here long ago? Which one makes more sense to you?”
Congreve ignored my questions. He said, “You never told me how you and Burleson got to be friends. You told me your name, but you didn’t tell me anything about who you are.”
“I have a card,” I said. “In my wallet. Garton knows where it is. If he’d gotten any friendlier, we’d have to get married.”
“Get the wallet,” Congreve said, and Garton reached inside my jacket and pulled it out of the pocket. He handed it to Congreve, who went through it carefully.
“You have a lot of cards here,” he said when he was done.
“Yeah, but only a couple of my own.”
“So I see. And they say you’re a private eye, just like on the radio.”
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“I don’t get hit on the head as often as they do, but I’m a private eye, all right. So is Frank. We’ve never worked together, but I’ve met him a few times over the years. We keep in touch.”
That last bit wasn’t true, naturally, but Congreve didn’t need to know that, not now. Maybe not ever.
“Just a pair of old buddies,” Congreve said. “So I guess you’d know who’d want to kill Burleson, you being such a great pal of his, wouldn’t you.”
“Just about everybody who knew him would want to kill him,” I said, “except me. Listen, Congreve, Frank worked for Thomas Wayne at Superior Studios. He did a lot of jobs that the studio wanted to keep quiet. That’s where I’d start if I were you.”
“But, thank God, you aren’t me,” Congreve said. He looked down at Frank’s body with distaste. “And neither was this poor bastard.
Spending his life trying to cover things up like a sick cat covering crap. What a hell of a way to
make a living. Don’t you agree, Scott?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “A terrible thing.”
“Not that you’d know anything about it.”
“That’s right. I do mostly divorces, runaway daughters, that sort of thing.”
“Good clean jobs,” Congreve said. “Isn’t that right, Garton.”
“I wouldn’t know, Lieutenant. I’m just a cop. I get mostly the dirty jobs. Like this one.”
“You don’t have to worry about this one,” Congreve said. “This one’s mine, all the way.”
“Yes, sir. That’s the way it should be, Lieutenant.”
“Is that your car out front, Scott?” Congreve asked. “The old beat-up Chevy?”
I resented his description of my car, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea to let Congreve know it. So I just said, “That’s right.”
“You really haven’t been here long, then. The hood was still warm when we got here.”
I nodded. Whatever else Congreve was, he wasn’t stupid.
“And your friend’s been dead for a while. Probably longer than you’ve been here.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you.”
Congreve looked at me as if I were something he’d found on the bottom of his shoe.
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“I’d have liked it a whole lot better if you’d been Lou Costello.”
“So would I,” I said. “He’s a funny guy. And he makes a lot more money than I do.”
“Uncuff him, Garton,” Congreve said, ignoring my remark. “We’re not going to keep him.”
“Damn,” Garton said. “I really did want to shoot him, Lieutenant.”
“Maybe next time.”
Garton unlocked the cuffs, and I rubbed my wrists, trying to restore a little of the circulation. It was a good thing I didn’t want to hit anyone. I wasn’t sure I could even make a fist.
“I don’t suppose you work for Superior,” Congreve said. “You didn’t mention it if you do.”
“I don’t. Divorces, remember? Runaways. Like I said.”
“I remember. And you don’t have any ideas about getting revenge on whoever killed Burleson here, do you? You know. Like Sam Spade when somebody killed his partner. What was his name?”
“Archer,” I said. I wished he hadn’t mentioned Sam Spade. “Frank wasn’t my partner, though, just a guy I knew.”
