by Paul Cain
The house was all by itself on a private road about a quarter of a mile off the main highway. I pulled up and snapped off my headlights and took the front steps in one jump. The front door was partway open. There was a big tanned athletic looking gent in a light camel’s hair coat lying on his back just inside; his eyes were wide open and one of his legs was sticking out through the doorway. There was a bullet hole in the middle of his chest, high. I’d never seen him before. I stepped over him and went across to Fritz.
He was lying near the big table in the middle of the room with one arm hooked over a chair and the other twisted under him. One of his legs was twisted under him, too. It looked like three or four heavyweights had worked him over for an hour or so; I’ve seen quite a few badly beaten up men at one time or another but never anything like that. He was very dead.
The phone was on the floor a little ways beyond his body. I picked it up and wiggled the receiver a couple times and it buzzed; I called the police station in LA—I didn’t know anybody in the Beverly Hills or Hollywood Divisions and I wasn’t in the mood for a lot of trick questions from strange coppers. I finally got a detective lieutenant named Moore, whom I’d met through Fritz, on the wire and told him about it.
Then I went over as far away from Fritz as I could and sat down and thought I was going to be sick. I’m not exactly a nance when it comes to carnage but he looked like he’d been stepped on by an elephant. I sat there trying to adjust myself to the idea of him being dead—I liked him as well as any man I’d ever known and it was no cinch—and then I heard a noise behind me and damn near dislocated my neck turning around.
It was the Norwegian woman who cooked and kept house for the Kiernans. She was wearing a white kimono with yellow and green and purple chrysanthemums on it. She looked from one body to the other and then at me and then back at Fritz. I thought her eyes were going to fall out on her cheeks.
I asked: “See anybody here tonight?”
She shook her head slowly without taking her eyes off Fritz. “No, sir—only Mister Kiernan.”
“Hear anything?”
“I heard three shots… .”
“All at once?” She turned to me. “No—there were two, and then after several minutes there was another.”
“What’d you do?”
She hesitated a moment, said slowly: “I locked my door and stayed in my room.”
“Where’s Mrs Kiernan?”
“Went to Palm Springs this morning.” She was about winded.
I said: “You’d better get dressed—the police will be here in a few minutes.”
She clucked mournfully a couple times and hurried away. I caught her in the doorway with one more question: “Did Mister Kiernan mention that he was having visitors tonight or anything like that?”
She shook her head. “No, sir—nothing at all. I cooked his dinner and he ate by himself and then came in here. I went to bed at nine o’clock.” She clucked some more and disappeared.
In about a minute I heard a car pull up and stop out in front and I got up and went out on the porch. It was pretty dark but when my eyes got used to it I saw a coupé parked down the driveway about forty feet. It didn’t look like a police car and no one got out so I stalled, waiting for whoever was in the car to play. They didn’t. I finally strolled over and stuck my puss in. Myra Reid was sitting hunched down back of the wheel, her face green-white in the glow of the dashlight.
Myra was a kind of perennial “baby star”; she never seemed to get very far in pictures and she never seemed to be hungry. I think it all began when some contest judge dubbed her “Miss Most Beautiful Legs in Minneapolis.” Minneapolis lost a fair stenographer and Hollywood got the legs. She had a “long term” contract at one of those collapsible studios on Gower Street and made enough money to have a nice address in Toluca Lake and a flash car for front so she could run up bills.
Every so often a bunch of self-appointed talent sharks would get together and vote her and a couple dozen of her pals the “most promising young actresses of the coming year.” She’d been “promising” for about five years.
With my customary flair for the unique and penetrating question, I asked: “What are you doing here?”
She stuttered something about having a date with Fritz.
Fritz wasn’t a chaser. I knew that Myra was on our books for about four grand and figured it might have something to do with that.
She was ahead of me, went on: “I wanted to talk to him about the money I owe you; I called him up after dinner and he said he’d be home all evening. Didn’t he tell you?”
I shook my head and reached in and turned the nickel cap on the dashlight so I could see her face better. She was pretty shaky.
I said: “Well—why don’t you go in?”
She managed to smile. “I was just getting out of the car when you came out on the porch. I didn’t know who it was so I waited.”
I nodded and opened the door of the car and waited for her to get out. She put one foot out on the running board, hesitated, chirped: “Fritz is all right, isn’t he? … .”
“Sure—Fritz is fine. Why?”
She laughed self-consciously. “I just wondered… .”
I said: “Fritz is dead.”
She stared at me a few seconds without saying anything. Then she put her hands up to her mouth and moaned something that sounded like “Oh my God! …”
I waited. It was a good hunch. If I’d started asking questions she’d probably have closed up like a clam but instead she went entirely screwy and started babbling about “Mel” and “her career” and “poor Fritz” and a couple dozen other things. Pieced together it went something like this:
She’d made the date with Fritz at his house because she wanted to have a heart to heart talk about paying off a little at a time, and he was always so busy at the club.
My own guess was that she’d figured she might go into her baby star routine for him and he’d break down and tear up her markers or take it out in trade, or something. Maybe not.
Anyway, she was all set to leave for Bel-Air when in walks Mel, her current chump—fiancé was her word—and says: “Where are you going, my pretty maid?”
“I’m going to Fritz Kiernan’s on business,” says she—honest lass.
“Business my eye!” says he, or words to that effect, and the battle was on.
Mel, I gathered, was a lovely boy, but given to jealous rages in which he completely blew his noodle. This had been one of his best, and after building it for about an hour he’d stamped out with the loudly proclaimed intention of wiping such scum as Fritz Kiernan off the face of the earth, or some equally lousy curtain line. It seems he’d missed the point that Myra had made the date and that it was business, and a few inconsequential details like that.
She beat him to her front door and stood there with her arms spread out, yelping “No, no—not that!” or whatever seemed appropriate and he clipped her on the button and she went bye-bye. Nice fella.
I asked her what Mel looked like and she managed to tell me, with sob effects; I knew who the husky lying in the doorway was. All of which got me exactly nowhere in trying to figure out what’d happened. It was a cinch Mel hadn’t beaten Fritz to death; no one man could’ve done that without a sledgehammer. And if Fritz shot Mel where was the gun? And how could he shoot anybody if he was dead? And what did he say, “Somebody took a shot at me,” on the phone for? Mel didn’t sound like the type to take a shot at anyone; he’d be a bare-hander. None of it made sense.
I asked Myra if Mel ever carried a gun, just to be sure, and she shook her head.
Then I tried to lay out the little I knew about it in chronological order in my mind and kept on getting nowhere, fast. The only thing I was sure of, or thought I was sure of, was that Myra was telling the truth and was in a fair way of being smack in the middle of the worst jam a gal like her c
an draw. She believed in her career whether anyone else did or not and a scandal like that would put her on the shelf for good, even if they didn’t stick her as an accomplice or accessory or what-have-you.
So impulsive, big-hearted Finn bleated: “Listen, Myra—the Law will be here in a minute. You duck, and duck quick. And if they tie you up with this in any way keep your mouth shut until I get in touch with you. Got it?”
She stopped sobbing long enough to bob her head up and down.
“Under any circumstances don’t crack about coming here tonight, or seeing me. And don’t try to reach Mel—he won’t be home tonight.”
She looked at me big-eyed, nodded again.
I didn’t tell her any more about Mel; she’d find out about that soon enough. I watched her out of sight and went back into the house.
The whole piece of business with Myra was the kind of thing I’d call anybody else a sap for doing. It got me into plenty of trouble but I’d probably do it again the same way. I guess everybody has to be a sucker one way or another.
The cook had put on her best bib and tucker in honor of the occasion. A couple patrolmen in a radio car got to the house a little before Moore and got difficult with her and I objected and they got difficult with me; Moore got there just in time to save one of the cops and probably me from a good sock on the nose.
Moore was pretty new on the homicide squad—I think he’d been in the narcotic division or something like that—but he had an Italian named Amante with him who was as efficient as any half-dozen dicks I’ve ever seen.
He was a short gray-haired gent with wide-set intelligent eyes and a nice smile. Inside of half an hour he’d heard all I had to say and all the cook had to say. He’d found the spot on the porch where Fritz had been standing when whoever it was took the first shot at him. He’d decided that that first shot missed and he’d found the slug buried in the side of the house near the door. The second shot had creased Fritz’s leg and smacked into the house alongside of the other and there was a thin trail of blood from the porch into the house.
That, according to Eagle Eye Amante, was when Fritz had called me. Then the “party or parties unknown” which meant Mel and somebody else according to Amante’s theory, had followed him into the house and dragged him away from the phone and proceeded to systematically beat him to death.
That being accomplished some slight difference of opinion had arisen and he or she or they had let Mel have it. And to top it Amante found the revolver, lacking three slugs, that both Fritz and Mel had been shot with under the table near Fritz’s body. They’d have to dig the lead out of the house and out of Mel before they could be sure, of course, but it looked like a cinch.
It was swell reasoning as far as it went. And when Amante found a lot of stuff on Mel that identified him as Melville Raymond, including a wire thanking him for some flowers, signed Myra, I almost broke down and told all, but her story was still with me and I believed it and Amante’s version didn’t jibe with it at all. Call it a hunch, call it anything you like; I kept my trap closed and followed Amante’s leads in my best “Marvelous, Mister Holmes” manner.
One thing that worried me was how Mel had come out to Bel-Air. If he’d been by himself what had happened to his car? If he’d come in a cab I figured the driver would report it as soon as the story broke and that would complicate Amante’s theory a little.
The coroner and his outfit finally got there and checked perfectly with Amante. Fritz had been beaten to death—the leg wound was superficial—and Mel had died from a slug from the same gun high in the chest, shattering the breastbone and lodging in the spine.
I didn’t get home until about two-thirty. I still had to call Barbara Kiernan at Palm Springs and tell her the bad news. I hated that job because I knew she’d take it big—tear her hair and wring her hands and whatnot. She was that kind of gal, a hair tearer. I decided to put off calling till morning, and then after I got into bed I thought what the hell, I might just as well get it over with.
The cook had given me Maude Foley’s number in Palm Springs. Maude was Barbara’s sidekick and had a house down there where Barbara spent most of her weekends. I called long distance and finally got a sleepy “Hello” from Maude. That was a break—her answering instead of Barbara. I told her what had happened in as few words as possible and told her to tell it to Barbara any way she thought best. I got to sleep a little after three.
Amante called me at eleven-thirty in the morning and asked if I could stop by the station about one. Next to grave-yards and hospitals I like police stations least so I suggested we meet at the Biltmore and have lunch and he said okay.
Maude Foley called a little later and said she and Barbara were out at the house and that Barbara was pretty badly broken up. I promised to stop by later in the afternoon.
I drove out to Number Two in Beverly and told the housemen to soft pedal talking about Fritz’s murder; the morning papers were full of the case and there’d be plenty of talk without our own men joining the chorus. Then I stopped by the place in Hollywood on the way downtown and suggested the same thing to the boys there.
I was about ten minutes late at the Biltmore and found Amante in the grill with a long skinny shiny-haired guy who he introduced as Arthur Delavan of the Department of Justice.
Amante wanted to know all about Fritz—what he’d done back east, who his enemies were and why, that kind of thing. I gave him all I could, which wasn’t much. Fritz had hustled a string of books in New York and Boston, same as Hollywood, only on a smaller scale. As far as I knew he didn’t have an enemy in the world. And so on.
Delavan didn’t have much to say. I finally asked how come he was interested in a case that was so strictly local and he said he wasn’t particularly interested, he’d just come along for the ride, or words to that effect. I said “Oh, I see” out loud, but to myself I said “Nuts, baby—you’re plenty interested.”
Amante said he had several men working on Mel Raymond and he wouldn’t be surprised if something important turned up during the afternoon. They hadn’t been able to get a line on the gun because the numbers had been filed off and there weren’t any fingerprints.
He finally got around to the most important piece of evidence that had turned up so far: Mrs Bergliot, the Kiernan cook, had admitted that she thought she’d heard a woman’s voice in the living room after she’d gone to bed. That was all they could get out of her. She didn’t recognize the voice and she said she might have been dreaming. I wondered why she hadn’t told me about it.
Amante watched me very closely while he was telling me about Mrs Bergliot and so did Delavan. I began to feel pretty uncomfortable but I don’t think I showed it.
After lunch we left each other with a hey nonny-nonny and assurances of mutual cooperation and I drove out Wilshire doing a lot of wondering. I’d about decided to call up Myra and tell her to sail her own boat, to go down and tell Amante her story and see if he believed it, when I turned off Wilshire on Crescent Heights Boulevard to cut over to the apartment. There’s very little traffic on Crescent Heights that far south and it saves a lot of time.
In the second block a dark blue roadster came up from behind and passed and when it was a few feet ahead somebody opened up on me with an automatic. I think it was an automatic—I only had a split second flash of it. The first shot made a neat hole in the windwing and thudded into the seat near my shoulder. I jerked the wheel as hard as I could and heard two more shots bite into the side of the car as it bounced up over the curb, across a lawn, and stopped within inches of the front door of a pink stucco house.
I leaned out and watched the roadster go north like a bat out of hell. Then I got out and looked at the holes in the side of the car. The people who lived in the pink house were evidently not at home; a couple neighbors strolled over to watch me maneuver the car back on to the street. I guess they thought I was drunk and that the car had backfired when it
went out of control; they didn’t crack about any shooting.
Outside of the damage to the car it’d accomplished one thing very definitely: I’d decided what to do about Myra. Fritz murdered and somebody trying to murder me meant an entirely new angle—one that certainly didn’t have anything to do with the Mel-Myra combination.
I drove a few blocks and stopped at a drug store and called and told Myra Amante was working on Mel and would probably get to her before long and for her to sit tight. She said she’d been trying to get me at home: her colored maid knew Mel had been at her house Friday night and had probably overheard some of the battle. She wanted to know whether she should give the maid a couple month’s salary, or what.
I told her that if she did she’d be paying off blackmail when she had a long gray beard, and if they picked her up to play dumb—which shouldn’t be hard—because no one would believe her story and it would only get her jammed up so tight that no one could get her out of it.
Then I called Amante. After talking to about half a dozen assorted assistants I finally got him and said: “Somebody tried to shoot me on Crescent Heights Boulevard about ten minutes ago—three slugs in my new car. Who do I charge it to?”
He said: “That’s very interesting.”
I told him it was not only interesting, it was assault with intent to do great bodily harm and I didn’t like it. I asked if it changed his theory any and he said it didn’t. I gave him a description of the roadster and that was that.
Then I stopped at the place in Hollywood and picked up Harry Gaige. He’d been a sort of protection-man for Fritz for a long time, had the reputation of being fast and accurate with anything from a water-pistol to an elephant-gun. I figured if strangers were taking potshots it would be a good idea for him to travel around with me for a while. I told him about it on the way out to the Kiernan house.
