by Sam Roskoe
“Who?”
“My dog, Steinbeck. How much exactly did you have to drink?”
He tried to make that measurement in the air again.
“A tot, not even a tot really, more of a—“
“Yeah, I know, a quart of a tot. That doesn’t help us here and now with my dog—“
As I said the words I heard a bark coming from nearby.
“Hail, hail! I do believe that the piper is calling us both!” Tarquin said, punctuating his sentence with a finger jammed into the air.
I turned him in the direction of the bark and it was then that I saw what I hadn’t seen earlier.
In the darkness of an alley was the dark shape, a shadow that stood out against other shadows that was all too familiar to me. A long shadow that as I got closer I realized was Elsnick’s limousine. The side door was open.
“Wait here,” I told Tarquin, “you hear me, do not move.”
He saluted me.
“My word is my bond, Captain.”
“We’ll see.”
Gun drawn, I approached the limousine.
As I got closer I saw the scene unfold in all its gory detail.
A new blood trail began at the edge of the darkness and ended where the body of Johnny Jackson lay prone on the floor, the silver-tipped cane dagger jammed into his chest.
I gave his body a prod with my shoe, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He may have been able to keep moving with a slug in his leg and three more I put in his back, but nobody could outrun a dagger to the heart.
Skirting around him, I came to the interior of the limousine, gun first.
Steinbeck welcomed me with a bark.
I welcomed him with a suspicious look as I peeked inside.
He lay out flat on his back, while Elsnick rubbed at his tummy. Sweat poured off Elsnick’s body in a shower. With his other chubby hand he held onto the spreading pool of blood on his stomach.
“Seems like it’s over, Mr. Finch?” he said.
I dropped the .38 back in my pocket and climbed inside.
“Looks that way,” I said.
“My son is dead.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“The man out there, he did it. But I managed to kill him. At least I managed to do that.”
“I know that too.”
He grimaced, bit at his lips before he spoke again.
“So what happens now, Mr. Finch?”
I looked at him up and down. That gut wound was going to kill him, but not quite yet. There would be a good few hours before Elsnick met his maker. Maybe that was payback enough for what he’d done to Marla, maybe not, whatever it was I didn’t envy him his ending.
“What happens now is I call the police and you tell them everything.”
“Mr. Meriwether’s name cleared, the story ends, yes?”
“It does.”
“I once said you were an unhappy ending, Mr. Finch, but I’m not too sure now. Is it a happy ending, Mr. Finch? Does this story of ours end happily?”
I looked at Steinbeck.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me one thing.”
“Fire,” he said, his grimace wrapping around a laugh, “dear me, the irony of that word is not lost, I assure you. Please, go ahead.”
“Have you been following me all the while I’ve been here?”
“I have at that.”
“And wherever you found me, you petted my dog here, didn’t you? You were the one rubbing his belly?”
Elsnick fixed upon Steinbeck for a moment.
“He seemed to like it,” Elsnick said.
“He does, the traitor.”
“The question I asked, Mr. Finch, what is the answer?”
I let out a long sigh.
“This story of ours has a happy ending, Elsnick, a real happy ending.”
“But not for me, I assume. Not for Kay Martin or my son or….Marla Donovan?”
“Not for you or them, no.”
He closed his eyes.
“Someone though, someone will have a happy ending, and maybe that’s enough,” he said, his voice drifting away
Chapter 27
“Remember me?” I said.
“I’ll need a little more, Mack,” Malone said.
“A few nights ago I asked if you’d heard of the San Francisco Sun Intelligencer. Ring a bell?”
“Oh, the wise guy, is it?”
“Maybe, maybe not, but I am the guy whose serving you up a killer on a plate, that’s if you want it?”
“I’m listening.”
“You know Grauman’s Chinese Theater?”
“If that’s a joke, it ain’t much of a one. This is Hollywood, Mack, I’d have to be deaf, dumb, blind and stupid not to know the place.”
“Well that’s the place you’re going to find Marla Donovan’s killer.”
He sniggered.
“King Kong too, I suppose, and maybe I’ll find that dame went missing in her plane as a bonus. You’re trying my patience.”
I was dog tired and wishing for a long, dreamless sleep, but that wasn’t coming just yet. Looked like my last but one act before I headed home would be to convince Malone of what would be staring into his face in no time at all.
“There’s a Limousine parked in an alley across the way from the theater. In back of the limousine is a big shot who’s feeling real small about now. Maybe you’ve heard of him, second name of Elsnick?”
“You’re real quick with the jokes tonight, and I’m not in the mood for—“
“It’s the worst kind of joke,” I said. “It’s the kind of joke without any laughs. You better get to him soon he’s got himself a belly full of trouble.”
“Gut shot?”
“Yep.”
“By you?”
“Nope. Guy who put the hammer down on him got a dagger to the chest for his trouble. A one of a kind dagger, same one that killed Marla Donovan. It’ll have your killer’s prints all over it. The guy with it sticking out of his chest is a Gumshoe by the name of Johnny Jackson, heard of him?”
“I know him, knew him. Always figured I’d find him on the other end of something bad. I suppose it wasn’t you who put that dagger into his chest was it?”
“Nope. That was Elsnick. So that should wrap it up all nice and neat for you.”
“There’s nothing neat when you work around corpses for a living.” His voice was that kind of low you got just the opposite side of midnight, when the dawn seemed a whole lifetime away and daylight was just a rumor you’d heard. “I don’t suppose you’re going to give me a name or stroll on in here and make it even neater, are you?”
I smiled a tired smile.
“Have a good night, Mack,” I said and disconnected the call.
***
Steinbeck trotted along beside me as I walked up to the apartment building the next evening. I was dressed well, with the promise of a big check from a happy lush in my near future. I wore a big smile on my lips and carried a five dollar bouquet of flowers in my hand.
I knocked five times before somebody answered the door.
That somebody was a woman by the name of Denise.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s me. Now how about that date I promised.”
She crossed her arms at me and shot a glance at Steinbeck.
“Is he coming?”
“I think he’d feel bad if he wasn’t invited.”
“Your dog feels bad, does he?”
I smiled.
“Only when nobody is rubbing his tummy.”
Website
You can find out more about the further adventures of Finch & Steinbeck at http://www.roskoe.com or follow Sam Roskoe on twitter @samroskoe.
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Food for the mind
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
> Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
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