She went on licking her lips, and I stepped over to the side of the room with Samson. We spoke softly so that nobody else in the room could hear us.
He whispered, "Nice going, Shell. I've got an idea. What say I take Press out in the hall? I'll find a room on this floor and keep after him. You work on the old bag. One of 'em ought to bust open."
"Good deal, Sam." I flipped out the cylinder of my.38 and made sure the chambers were full and it was ready to go. "There's something else. I, uh, held out on you, Sam. That time I picked up the glass with the prints, I also picked up a couple of registers. Lists of the people who attended the sunrise services."
He thought for a moment, forehead wrinkled. "Then that list should give us the names of a flock of hopheads. You know, the ones that went regular."
"It should and it does. I talked to some."
Sam pushed out his lips and frowned. "And you held that out on me? Why, you dirty bastard." But he grinned when he said it. "Where are those ledgers?"
"Here. In the office. In a couple of magazines on top of the desk—those copies of True over there."
"Give me one of 'em."
"Now?'
"Yeah. I'm not going to say anything about it for a while. Just let our pals sweat a little." He glanced over at Press and Maggie to make sure they were keeping apart. "Besides, I want to see what they do when you haul them out. I guess they know you got the things, huh?"
"Press is sure to—they were in his room. I'm not sure about Maggie. Press might have been scared to tell her they were gone. There's a chance."
"Good. O.K., Shell. Let's start it."
I walked back over to the desk. Tracy was still standing by it. "For Pete's sake, honey," I said. "I'm sorry. Here, sit down." I pulled out the swivel chair for her.
Her eyes were wide. "It's all right," she answered. "I hadn't even noticed." She looked a little pale. She was probably just realizing what had almost happened to her. She sat down and I opened the magazines where I'd stuck the ledgers. They were still there. I took them both out, said, "Here you are, Sam," and started to hand one to him.
He wasn't watching me; he was looking at Mrs. Remorse. I glanced at her. She'd just about forgotten where she was. She rose part way out of her chair, staring at the ledgers in my hand. She said something unintelligible, then opened her mouth wide, lumbered around toward Press, and with one tremendous sweep of her massive left arm smacked him across the face and sent him sprawling on his back, blood gushing from his nose in a red stream.
Chapter Twenty-two
MAGGIE BENT OVER Press, her fingers curled into hooks reaching for his throat. Sam, moving like a cat in spite of his bulk, was across the room and had her by both arms before she could do any more damage. She'd done enough. Press was a mess.
Samson wrestled Maggie back to her chair, where she sat with her huge breasts rising and falling like two beach balls as she breathed heavily through her open mouth. Sam took one of the books from my hand, winked at me, then lifted Press off the floor and out of the room.
I pulled a chair up in front of Maggie, out of reach of her hamlike fists, and balanced my .38 on my knee while I talked to her. "What's the matter, Maggie? Didn't you know Press took us into his confidence? How do you think I knew so damn much about the racket? Where do you think I got those ledgers? Get smart, sister. Why do you think we brought him up here? You don't think I pulled all this information out of the air, do you?"
She was going around in circles and her brain was dancing a sloppy schottische. She didn't know which way to go or how to get there.
She rumbled, "You…you got nothin' on me." She didn't sound as if she believed a word of it.
I laughed in her face. I opened the ledger I still held and flipped some of the pages, watching her out of the corner of my eye. She started licking her lips again.
"S'pose I knowed somethin'?" she said hoarsely. "What if I did?"
"You could tell me about it."
"An' what's that get me?"
"I don't know, Maggie. I can't promise you a thing. A private eye can't promise any immunity. You've heard of state's evidence, though, haven't you? You can bet your good pal—I mean ex-pal—Press has. Anyway, maybe it'd be for what's left of your soul."
She looked around the room, not knowing what she was looking for, took a deep breath, and said nothing.
"Think about it, Maggie. We've got it all, anyway, But you think about it."
She thought about it. She was still thinking about it when Samson came back in alone. "Got it, Shell," he said. "I caught the radio boys and sent Press down to Headquarters with 'em. They're taking his deposition down there."
Maggie's, immense bulk quivered uneasily. "Whatsa deposition?"
Sam walked over by her. "That's a formal statement, Mrs. Remorse. Signed, witnessed, taken under oath. All very legal. This particular deposition is what cooks your goose."
"Cooks…" she croaked.
Sam ignored her and turned to me. "The main thing Homicide was interested in was the Martin girl. Press gave it to me. Saturday night she"—he gestured toward Maggie—"calls the temple and says there's trouble—"
"He's a goddamn liar!" she yelled.
Sam continued to ignore her and went on calmly: "—at this night club, this El Cuchillo, and for the Seipel boys to get down there and fix up Miss Martin and you." He grinned at me. "Cute, huh? Well, it looks like Press is in the clear himself. Mrs. Remorse didn't get him. She talked direct to one of the Seipel boys—Paul, it was—so Press didn't know anything about it till it was all over. Naturally—"
"Hey!" said Maggie.
"—we can't hold him as an accessory on that murder rap if he—"
"Hey! Wait a minute." Maggie was part way out of her chair again.
Sam frowned down at her. "What's eating you?"
"He can't do that," she rumbled. She paused a moment, eyes flicking from Sam to me, teeth nibbling on her lower lip. Then she made up her mind, blew breath out of her nostrils, and went on through with it. "He's lyin'. You'll screw me up, but he's in it. I called from the club, all right. But I talked to Press. Get me? Press I talked to. I swear I did. So he had to tell the boys himself. That makes him accessory or whatever the hell you call it."
Sam pushed out his lips in a frown. "Hmm. That's funny. That's not the way, Press tells it."
"The bastard! He's lyin'!"
"If you'd care to sign a statement to that effect, Mrs. Remorse… "Sam looked at me. "Got pen and paper, Shell?"
I scooted for the desk while Mrs. Remorse hesitated. Sam said, "Of course, we can leave it the way it is. It's just as good—"
"I'll sign it."
From there on in it was easy. Once she got started, she was in so deep there was no point in stopping, and we got it all. She'd been in the narcotics traffic in a small way when she bumped into Press and his new Inner World racket. Her shrewd mind played with that a while and came up with the racket to end all rackets. Inner World was a made-to-order blind for her narcotics deal, but more than that, her twisted mind saw it as a way to create a demand for her product. The way she looked at it, it was a simple case of the law of supply and demand. She had a supply of narcotics, a big supply from poppy fields in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico; more than she could use. And her go-between, or contact man, incidentally, was the little "sensual Latin" I'd first seen at El Cuchillo—Juan Porfirio. All that was needed for a really rich take was the demand: addicts. And IW could create that. A little morphine or heroin in the Inner World "cosmic fluid" that the suckers gulped with religious fervor, half hypnotized by Narda's sirupy phrases, and in a matter of weeks, presto, bigger demand. It wasn't 100 per cent, but even 10 or 15 per cent of the suckers added up to a staggering profit. Particularly when Maggie and Press could get the pure stuff in from Mexico, cut it ten times or even more with milk sugar, then push the cut dope directly to the addicts with nobody in between to worry about. Only Maggie, Miguel, the Seipels, and Press had been in the know on the narcotics angle
, and Miguel—the only one left unaccounted for—was hiding out at a house of Maggie's in the San Fernando Valley. We got the address and, later, Miguel.
Anyway, Maggie had sold Press the idea, playing up the fantastic profits possible, arranged for Jordan Brent to ghost Narda's speeches, and had Narda fire all the old crew, get new help, and start in fresh on a really businesslike basis. It was a messy deal all around. Oh, yeah—the uncut dope was in El Cuchillo in cans of "imported chili," imported from Mexico just like it said, bold as hell, on the club's menus.
Maggie signed the long, badly spelled statement and Tracy, Samson, and I witnessed it. We had Margaret Remorse where she squirmed the most.
Samson used my phone and called Headquarters for a couple of cars. When he got up from behind the desk he put the statements in his coat pocket and I noticed him hitch up his pants. He didn't have on any belt.
A glittering idea began growing in my mind.
"Sam," I asked, "Where's your belt?"
"Huh?"
"Your belt. Where is it?"
"Oh, that?"
"Uh-huh."
"I, uh, lost it."
"Sure, Sam. You lost it. Where was it you lost it?"
"Why, Shell, I don't exactly remember."
I grinned at him. "Samson, you dog! Just how did you get Press to spill? A psychological approach? Hit him on the head with a telephone book? Or did you beat him with your belt? Or did you maybe tie him up with it and leave him?"
Captain Phil Samson of Homicide grinned right back at me. He chuckled. "Shell," he asked me, "you got to be the only genius?"
I started to bust out laughing, but Maggie butted in with supercharged hate in both eyes. "Yaaaah!" she screamed hoarsely. "You crooked bastards! Go—"
The rest of Maggie's remarks will not be recorded here.
Chapter Twenty-three
AFTER SAM AND I untied Press from where Sam had left him—verifying my suspicion that Press hadn't told Sam a damn thing—and both he and Mrs. Remorse were on their way to Headquarters, we put Tracy in a cab and then went to Sam's office.
Sam leaned back in his chair and said, "Some crazy deal." He held up thick fingers and counted on them. "A murder, 'way back—by Press. Another murder when things started getting shaky—as they had to sooner or later with that setup; that was the Martin girl. Dope peddling and smuggling, some more killings, then the suicide of—"
I butted in "No suicide, Sam."
"I mean that Loren. Pess's sweetie."
"No suicide, Sam. She was murdered."
Sam rolled the cigar around between his lips, then clamped it between his teeth and shoved the words around it. "O.K. So she was murdered. So now we start all over again, huh? Or have you got it all sewed up?"
"Uh-huh. At least I know who killed her."
"Who?"
It was a brand-new cigar, but Sam took it out of his mouth, rolled it around inside the ashtray, then mashed it out.
He leaned back in his chair and said, "O.K. I know you're gonna tell it. How? And why?"
I felt as if I was carrying a ton around on my back. I was tired, and I felt as if I could sleep for twenty-four hours straight. I lit a cigarette, dragged smoke deep into my lungs, and said wearily, "It's funny, isn't it? Georgia Martin. It starts with her and now it ends with her. One hell of a vicious circle. Well, the 'how' is the toughest, Sam. We know she was mixed up with the IW bunch. She was one of the disciples, and she must have been in and out of the temple. I think she got messed up with them through one of the Seipel boys—you can check with Tracy Martin on that. Anyway, she was always a little wild, ready for anything, Tracy said.
"It wouldn't have been too tough for her to slip into Loren's room and mix a fat slug of cyanide with Loren's dream powder. You know what the stuff looks like, Sam; it'd work all right. Then when Loren took her usual speed ball, if she's on it steady—or maybe just a pop if she only took one for a lift now and then—bang, she's dead and it's murder. Georgia, being on the stuff herself, could recognize the symptoms in another one. Or maybe Loren talked to her." I took another drag on my cigarette. "She could have done it without too much trouble, if she had a reason. And that brings us to the 'why'."
"Yeah. Get around that."
"Take a look at Georgia, Sam—the way she was before she got messed up with Narda's outfit. A fairly sweet kid, a little wild, maybe, but good enough. Then she gets tangled up with Inner World and she listens to Narda's guff, which was pretty damn good. Too bad you can't hear him in action. Maybe Georgia even started falling for it. Maybe she started getting an unconscious itch for Narda—the way people sometimes do for their doctors and for their psychoanalysts. Ask any psychiatrist.
"So all of sudden she wakes up. Say it's morphine she's been getting. She's a morphiophague—what they call them when they get a mouth habit on morphine. She's been stabbed in the back; now she's got to have the stuff. And who's the guy responsible? Narda. He's a bastard, a sham, it's all been a laugh. Narda's the guy who's been spouting the pretty words and passing the refreshments.
"Take another look at her now. She's sick, and she's all loused up, and she's got to get back at Narda. O.K., kill him. But that's too fast; he doesn't suffer. And Georgia wants him to suffer. How? Then she gets the big idea. She must have noticed, just as that writer kid and I did, that Narda and Loren made goo-goo eyes at each other—and maybe that burns her still more. Remember, too, she's either hopped up all the time now or needing it bad, and she doesn't think right every minute. Beside, she's a woman, and who knows what the hell a woman's thinking? O.K., take away Narda's sweetie-pie, and Narda goes through his own private little hell. As soon as she thinks of it, it's as good as done. She fixes it up, but she gets killed before she can enjoy it." I ground out my cigarette. "But I'll bet you one thing, Sam: Wherever she is, she's laughing."
Sam nodded his head. "Maybe…maybe."
"Something else, Sam. Remember, 'way back when this all started? When Georgia died, she managed to gasp, 'I killed…Narda,' and the last word trailed off in a sibilant whisper. No wonder it was sibilant. I didn't know then what the hell or who the hell Narda was. But later I thought about it a lot. Here it is: It boiled down to three possible things Georgia could have been trying to say. One, she meant she'd killed Narda. Two, she meant she'd killed somebody she thought was Narda. Three, she hadn't meant Narda at all. That exhausts all the possibilities. Well, we know she and Narda knew each other—Narda, or Press, told you that himself when you or your boys first went out to see him. And it's obvious he was, and is, alive. The only answer is she didn't mean Narda at all. She wasn't saying 'Narda,' but 'Narda's.' Possessive. That's why the sibilant business at the end. And she started to say Narda's sweetie, or sweetheart, or babe, or anything. We'll never know just the right word. She didn't get to finish. But she wanted to get it off her chest, Sam. And she did, just barely."
Sam didn't say anything for a minute and I added, "Of course, just between you and me, it's only a wild theory. I couldn't prove it. And nobody would benefit from knowing that Georgia murdered Loren. Least of all her father. Or Tracy."
Sam worked his thick lips in and out. "No proof," he said slowly. "Sounds like a pipe dream to me. You're off your trolley this time, Shell. Suicide. Open and shut."
We both sat and thought about it for a few minutes, neither of us saying anything. Then I got up, told Sam it was bedtime for me, and gravely shook his big hard hand.
Like always, I was pleased to shake hands with a good cop, and a good man.
Chapter Twenty-four
THE BOURBON FILTERED down my throat, cool and pleasant and heady. I swallowed from a highball glass, let liquor roll around on my tongue, and slide down, down, down into my stomach. I was as relaxed as a doped amoeba. My eyelids slid down easily over my eyes, but it was an effort to get them back up again. I sank deeper into the cushions of the divan in the front room of my apartment, and looked down at Lina through half-lidded eyes. Even out of half an eye she looked terrific.
She looked up at me and long black lashes fell sleepily down over her eyes, then swept up slowly. "Querido," she said softly, "how terrible, that story. That Maggie. That Miguel." She shuddered.
"Terrible's the word, Lina. They were worse than their hired killers, actually. Their kind of people kill, too, but they murder slowly, over years, draining the suckers of their money and their respect, and finally their reason and life. Lord! When I think of how I almost got you killed messing around with Maggie…"
"But I am all right, Shell."
"Honey," I said, "it's too late tonight, but tomorrow—I mean later today—you've got to get out of here. There's no more danger for you. The gang's in jail. Case closed. So out you go."
The long lashes dropped down over her eyes again. The smooth, golden forehead furrowed in concentration. She opened her eyes and a faint smile curved her red lips.
The Case of the Vanishing Beauty Page 17
