“Alpha plus,” I said. “You pass the course. But you didn’t say that the guy who did it was Chinese.”
“It’s the light in here,” he explained. “Outside in the sunlight I could have told you the province his grandmother came from.”
“You’ll go far. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Save your money,” the student said. “You probably need it more than Fat Phil does.”
“I do. Speaking of Phil, have you seen him today?”
“Earlier, yes. But not in the last couple hours. Do you want a prognosis of his chances of reaching his fortieth birthday?”
“No, thanks, I—” Just then a sound, not a big sound, more like a sharp phoum or a dull crack—I’m not much good at onomatopoeia— came from somewhere over our heads, followed by something that could have been a groan.
“You’re back in court,” I told the student. “What was that sound?”
“What sound?”
“You flunked,” I said, getting off the bar stool. “But you can win back some of my esteem if you’ll do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Look at that clock.” The timepiece in question was embedded in the belly of a plastic model of Tina D’Oro in working costume. “If I’m not back sitting on this stool in exactly ten minutes, get some police down here.”
“Okay,” he said. “But what will I tell them?”
“You won’t,” I said. “They’ll tell you. Remember. Ten minutes. No more.”
“Ten minutes,” he said a bit doubtfully.
As I suspected, the door leading to the toilets also gave onto the stairs going up to the floors above The Jungle. In a previous incarnation, the building must have been a family house, and these would have been for the servants. The stairs were narrow, dirty and creaked a lot, but they did the job.
They took me up one flight through a peeling, green-painted stairwell. And then another. From the top of the stairs, I could hear that it was all happening on the other side of a door on which someone had had the bad taste to paste a luminous orange star. Even through the door, a strange counterpoint of voices—angry, pleading, desperate-filtered into the hallway.
I tried the knob and found the door unlocked. As I turned the knob, another crack! sounded, this time definitely the report of a small-caliber pistol. I pushed in through the doorway with my .38 in my hand.
The scene was not a pretty one. Fat Phil was in one comer of a ticky-tacky overstuffed room, doing his best to hide behind a red-leather pouf. He wasn’t succeeding, and two bullet holes in his massive, pink-shirted right side testified to his failure. The wounds, no larger than cigarette bums, weren’t bleeding much, as if Phil’s fat weren’t so much part of him as a removable blanket of armor.
“Joe,” Phil cried when his terror-widened eyes had focused enough to recognize me, “stop her. Save me. She’s trying to kill me.”
He seemed to be right about that. Standing no more than ten feet away was Irma Springler, holding a tiny, .22-caliber automatic as if it were an electric hair dryer. She was standing spraddle-legged with an intent expression on her face and her lower lip caught between her even teeth.
“Go away, Joe,” she said without looking at me.
“Joe,” said Phil. “Please, Joe.” He abandoned the idea of shrinking to fit behind the pouf, cast his eyes in several directions, then compromised by forming a shield of his hands and massive forearms and peering with frightened eyes at his determined huntress. “Joe!” he added in a shriek which climbed until it died as a moan.
“I don’t like to be nosy,” I said to both of them, “but could somebody tell me what’s going on here—except for the obvious, that is?”
“It’s none of your business,” Irma said, still not looking at me. Her eyes had Phil pinned like a gross butterfly. “Go away.”
“Nooooooo!” howled Phil.
“I’d like to, Irma,” I said. “I really would. But I’ve got an uneasy feeling that if I did, you’d go on shooting Phil here. And I wouldn’t want you to do that.”
“He deserves it,” Irma said. “He killed Tina, and I’m going to kill him.”
“It’s not true, Joe,” Phil said. “She’s crazy.” But somehow the way he said it lacked conviction. A thought came to me.
“Is she, Phil?” I asked. He didn’t say anything, just crouched there sweating and bleeding and wishing I’d blow Irma’s head off. I wouldn’t have wanted to do that. It was a pretty head. “Tell me something, Phil,” I added. “What are you doing up here, up these two flights of steep stairs? I thought your climbing days were over. I thought your heart couldn’t handle that sort of exercise anymore. You haven’t been faking, have you?”
Phil still didn’t say anything. He was doing a damned fine impersonation of someone doing his best to overcome a great handicap and being modest about it.
“Sure, he’s faking,” said Irma bitterly, “the fat, murdering phony. After you left Rico’s, I went to my place and then I remembered what it was that was missing from this room. It was a crazy brass letter opener Tina had—one with a phallic symbol for a handle. Somebody sent it to her for a joke. I came here, and the door was open. Phil was in here rummaging around. He tried to bluff his way out, but I kept him talking. And the more he talked, the more something seemed to be fishy. Then I knew; he’d killed Tina. I knew it, Joe, and I’ve been trying to get him to admit it. I’ll kill him if he doesn’t.”
“And if he does, Irma?” I asked. “What then?”
I could see that Irma hadn’t really explored that possibility. She hadn’t had time. She gave it a bit of thought. So did Phil.
“I’ll kill him,” she said flatly, raising the tiny automatic until it was aimed directly at Phil’s sweaty moon face half sheltered behind his hands and arms.
“Don’t,” he said. “Please, Irma, don’t.”
"You know, Phil,” I said. “I think she really is going to kill you if you don’t convince her that you’re innocent. That is, if you are innocent. Talk to the lady, Phil.”
“Christ,” he said, “how can I talk with that gun in my face? I’m afraid to open my mouth.”
“He’s right,” I said. “You could at least lower that popgun a bit, Irma. Phil’s not going anywhere. If he ran for it, you could shoot his legs off before he got to the door. Besides, I’m here, and I’ve got a real gun.”
Irma thought it over carefully. Then she lowered the barrel of the .22 until it was aimed at Phil’s knees instead of his face.
“That’s better,” I said. “Now, Phil, you were saying?”
Despite his relief, Phil hadn’t lost the look of apprehension which would have wrinkled his brow if he hadn’t been so fat. “Could I sit down?” he asked. “My legs are shaking so much I’m going to fall down in a minute.”
“Sure,” I said. “That is, if it’s okay with Irma.”
We both looked at Irma, and she gave a cool nod. Phil reached for Tina’s padded dressing chair and let his awesome weight down onto it. The chair, unused to such burdens, shuddered delicately.
“You comfy now, Phil?” I asked.
“I don’t feel good, Joe,” he complained.
“You’ll feel better after you start talking.”
“I’ve been shot, Joe,” he said, surveying his vast side with apparent detachment. “I’m bleeding. I need a doctor. This isn’t fair.”
“No, it isn’t,” I agreed. “But if you don’t start saying something, Irma is going to put some more holes in you that a doctor might not be able to do anything about.”
“But, Joe…”
“Talk!”
“I didn’t kill Tina, Joe,” Phil said in a rush. “I—I loved her.” He looked down shyly. If you’ve never seen a 350-pound man look demure, it’s a frightening spectacle. But my mother taught me never to laugh at a fat man with two bullet holes, however small, in him. As it turned out, I didn’t have to. Irma did it for me. It was a nasty laugh, like somebody ripping up old linoleum, but it expressed
our mutual doubt if not a good deal of amusement.
“It’s true,” Phil insisted, glaring at Irma with such righteousness and indignation that I almost believed him. “I did love her. You don’t understand. I made Tina what she was. I took Olga Dombrowitz, just an ordinary North Beach bimbo, not even very young anymore, and I turned her into Tina D’Oro—that was my name, you know; I chose it—the hottest thing in North Beach. Hell, in all of America. I made her a celebrity on network TV. Without me, she’d have been just an aging hooker.”
I was watching Irma’s face while Phil said all this, and she didn’t like it much. She believed it, but she didn’t like it. And that last bit about the aging hooker made her blink fast and bite her lip. But she didn’t say anything. Somebody had to, so I did.
“So, why did you kill her, Phil?”
“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “She said she was leaving. Really leaving, this time. Not like all the other times when she was trying to get more money, better billing, a bigger slice of the action. Hell, she owned half of The Jungle as it was.”
“Tina was The Jungle, you slimy bastard,” Irma said, as if coming out of a trance.
“Sure,” Phil said, “sure she was The Jungle. Without her, it was just another topless joint. Don’t you think I know that? And this time she was really leaving. Some offer from a big hotel in Vegas. ‘Tina D’Oro’ in neon lights over the strip. Those magnificent tits I paid for bouncing in some Vegas show bar. She was really going to do it this time. Nothing I said made any difference. She was sitting right in this chair, playing with that stupid letter opener and laughing at me. Telling me how empty The Jungle was going to be after she left. I got mad. I’ve got feelings, too, you know. I grabbed the letter opener out of her hands, and she tried to get it back. She called me names. She called me some awful names.”
Phil ran down like an obscene mechanical toy. He let his head fall forward and sat slumping in the sleazy, padded chair. Sweat from the top of his head ran down over his vast brow.
“And then what, Phil?” I asked. Irma just stared, her mouth unconsciously hanging open. The .22 hung limply from her hand. I could have taken it away from her. Maybe.
Fat Phil raised his head and looked directly at me. It was as if he had forgotten that Irma and her gun were there.
“I got mad, too,” he said. “She was trying to scratch me. I said, ‘Take the fucking thing’ and I pushed it at her as she was coming toward me. It went in just like cutting butter. Honest to Christ, just like nothing. It went in right between her tits, and she started pumping blood, gallons of it. She was still coming toward me, but I dodged out of her way, and she fell on that big, orange rug I bought her. And she was dead. There was no way I could have stopped that blood. She was dead. Right there. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You could have called for an ambulance,” said Irma in a calm, almost dead voice. “You could have saved her life.”
“She was dead, I tell you! She died like that.” He tried to snap his sausage fingers, but they slid across each other wetly and noiselessly. As silently, probably, as Tina had died. “Like that.”
“And that’s how you’re going to die, Phil,” Irma said, coming to life again and raising the handgun on a level with Phil’s head. “Now.” I could sense her gathering all her strength to pull the trigger.
“Irma!” I said sharply. “Hold it.” She didn’t lower the pistol, but she turned her head and lifeless eyes toward me. She said nothing, but I knew she was waiting for what I had to say.
“You don’t want to kill him,” I said. “It’s not worth it. Let the State take care of Fat Phil. With that heart of his, even a manslaughter rap will finish him off. He’ll die in jail. If you kill him, you’ll be an old, old lady before you see the street again.” I was still holding my gun in my hand, but it felt as useless as a steam iron. “My God, Irma, why waste your life on this slug?”
“I have to, Joe,” Irma said. “I have to kill him.”
Fat Phil was following our dialogue as a tennis fan follows the ball in flight. He was interested. But I think he felt left out too.
“Could someone please get me a doctor?” he said plaintively to nobody in particular. “I’m bleeding.” He was hunched over with his chins on his chest and his hand splayed over his right side, trying to cover the two bullet wounds which were still seeping only a little blood.
“For Christ’s sake, why, Irma?” I asked. “All right, you were Tina’s friend. Maybe you were her only friend. But that’s no reason to feel that you’ve got to take personal revenge on Phil. Do you think you’ll feel better if you kill him?”
“No,” Irma said, and out of the comer of my eye I could see Phil brighten up as much as a fat man with two bullet holes in him is capable of brightening up. Then Irma continued, “But I’ve got to do it.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew there was a reason in there somewhere, and that it would come out by itself. It would have to, or Irma would crack. Then it did.
“Joe,” Irma said softly but with great force, “I loved Tina. I loved her. She was my life.”
Irma read something into my expression that I didn’t know was there yet. Her eyes brightened, and her mouth went firm. “You can scoff if you want to, Joe. I don’t expect you to understand.” She blinked hard and tossed her head.
Tm not scoffing, Irma,” I said as sincerely as I could. “I’m just a bit—uh—”
“Surprised? Surprised that a woman can love another woman rather than a man? That Tina could prefer me to—to a machismo copper who thinks a woman is just something to push into bed?” That hurt. It really did. I didn’t push her.
Irma whipped around to Fat Phil. “Or a fat slob of a flesh peddler who considered Tina just another pair of tits to be sold over the bar like watered whiskey? Who would have been perfectly ready to dump Tina the minute the slobs who come into The Jungle got tired of her. Who couldn’t stop selling Tina’s body even after he’d killed her. Put her in the ground to rot…to rot.”
Irma’s voice had gotten shriller and shriller, and her whole body was drawn with tenseness. Her mouth was pulled back in a smile-snarl that wasn’t pretty to see. The hand with the gun in it started to rise from the vertical again as if under its own power. She could see nothing but Fat Phil.
The object of her hatred seemed to wake up from a light trance. Phil was shaking his head and mumbling something as if he were talking to himself. In the dead silence of the room, Irma and I strained to hear what he said. Then some words came clear.
“…Christ’s sake,” Phil was saying, “to think that Tina was a dyke, a fucking bull-dagger. I…”
That was exactly the wrong thing to say at that moment. The words set me in motion, but it was a little too late.
Irma’s gun hand sprang up. Instantaneously, the gun rapped, and Phil’s right eye was gone. Except for the blood which began to gush from the eye, Phil’s face didn’t change. It was frozen in an expression of mild wonder, and it would never change again. His body didn’t so much slump as settle into itself like a big balloon under a heavy weight. Then Phil toppled forward with a heavy thud onto the bare floorboards and lay unmoving, flat on his bloody face.
Irma moved quickly across the room and emptied the rest of the .22 bullets into the back of Phil’s fat, hairy, defenseless neck. It was a waste of bullets. Then she pivoted and threw the gun at my feet.
“You can call the police now,” she said. “I’m finished.”
“I don’t think I’ll have to.” Heavy footsteps pounded up the old stairs like second-hand thunder. The door buckled at about shoulder height, clung briefly to its catch, and then crashed open, admitting a well-fed young cop who tripped to a stop with his mouth open. Johnny Maher came in after him with a gun in his hand and certain conclusions rapidly forming behind his pale eyes.
“Hi, Johnny,” I said. “We were just talking about you.” Irma said nothing. I had put my gun away by then, but I’m sure I must have looked susp
icious.
“I’ll just bet you were,” Maher said.
22
Everybody was very happy.
Mayor Kolchik sat in his vast leather chair, beaming like the bride’s father at a Polish wedding. In his hand was a glass of the best whiskey the city’s money could buy. The Brother, splendid in his Bolivian admiral’s uniform, bubbled with bonhomie. He showed me more of his dentist’s artistry than I wanted to see. Ralph Lehman had that giddy, hysterical look of a man whose runaway car has just stopped, teetering on the brink of a high cliff. In his mind’s eye he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt on the dock in Sausalito, drowning live bait.
I tried to do my share of grinning, but I couldn’t help thinking about Irma Springler, just beginning to learn how to be a prisoner. Or about Phil Franks, who’d had to become a corpse without any practice at all. And I couldn’t ignore the fact that I hadn’t done much to slow down the process. If I’d been willing to shoot Irma—even just a little—he’d still be alive. But I consoled myself that I’d saved the State a tremendous amount of money for his food alone. Irma wouldn’t eat nearly as much, or for as long. I’d tried to see Irma in the cells, but she wouldn’t see me. The message she sent said that she was going to do it the hard way.
One of the reasons I’d accepted the mayor’s invitation to drop by his office was that I thought I’d do what I could to get Irma a break in court. I was biding my time until the right opportunity came up.
“Yessir, Joe,” The Brother was saying, “it’s all over now. Thanks to you. I have to admit I thought you were a dumb bastard, but you zeroed in where Maher and his jerks failed. Where we all failed,” he added, with a fairly meaningful look at Ralph. But Ralph wasn’t really there. He should have hung a big sign on his forehead: “Gone Fishing.”
“Tell me,” Bruno said, “how’d you know that the Springler broad would lead you to Tina’s murderer?”
Goodey's Last Stand: A Hard Boiled Mystery (Joe Goodey) Page 19
