by Craig Rice
She told the rest of the story slowly, carefully. “But I don’t think I shot Espinoza. I shot at him, but I think I missed him. I’m a very bad shot and it was dark. And when I thought it over, I swear I heard another shot.”
Malone scowled. “You’ve probably been traced. We’ve got to—” He broke off as the door opened and Helene came in. “Helene, this is Meri Adsmith. You’ve read about it in the papers. I’ve got to hide her for at least twenty-four hours.”
Helene’s eyes widened. She looked at Meri, and they grew warm. “You poor baby!”
“If there’s an apartment in your hotel—”
“There is,’ Helene said cheerfully, “on the same floor as ours. Let me at that phone.” It was a very dear friend of hers, she explained to the desk clerk, who’d had a terrific shock and needed complete seclusion. Apartment 310? Fine. Her name? Mrs. Wiverly. She’d be there in a few minutes. Mr. Malone’s secretary would bring her up the back elevator.
“Wiverly!” Malone groaned. “Good Lord.”
“First thing that came into my mind,” Helene said. “And now I’m going to call Dr. Quigley, have him shoot this exhausted child so full of sedatives that she won’t even move for twenty-four hours.”
“Helene,” Malone said admiringly, “you should have been a general.” He turned to Meri. “One thing more. Where is the briefcase now? And the gun?”
Wordlessly she opened her purse and took out a key. Malone examined it carefully. It was the key to a parcel locker.
“Oh lord,” Malone said. “Women!”
She whispered, “Greyhound bus station. Santa Monica.”
He slipped it into his pocket. “Now,” he said, “you two trade coats and hats. Maggie!”
Maggie came in, looked confusedly from one to the other.
“Take this young lady out of here fast. Take her by taxi to Mrs. Justus’ hotel. Use the back elevator. Apartment 310. Leave word at the desk she is to receive no phone calls and no visitors except Dr. Quigley. Put her to bed and come back here fast.”
“Mr. Malone,” Meri began, her voice shaking, “how can I—”
“No more talking,” Malone said firmly. “Git!” He sat down behind his desk and mopped his brow.
“And now,” Helene said, “we wait around for the cops to mistake me for Meri Adsmith and march me off to the jailhouse.”
“Where,” Malone said, “it will take you about five minutes to establish your identity.” He pulled out a cigar and lit it.
“In the meantime,” she told him, “if you don’t satisfy my curiosity—”
When he had finished, adding every detail, she scowled at him. “Crazy enough to be true. But you’ll never sell it to a jury. Malone, what are you going to do?”
“I wish I knew,” he said. “I wish I knew.” For a moment he buried his face in his hands.
“Take a drink and cheer up,” Helene said. “You’ve never lost a client yet.”
There were loud voices in the corridor and heavy footsteps.
“Here they are,” Malone said in a soft voice.
Helene pulled her chair closer to his desk. “You see, Mr. Malone, it was like this—”
The door burst open and two unnecessarily husky plain-clothes men walked in. One, the taller, said, “That’s her. That’s her, all right.”
The little lawyer looked up indignantly. “What do you mean, breaking in like this? I’m having a conference with my client.”
“She may be your client,” the other said, “but she’s our prisoner. Come on, Miss Adsmith, let’s go.”
She looked at Malone, tears beginning to form in her eyes, “But you told me there wouldn’t be any trouble. You told me you’d fix everything. That it was just a matter of money.”
“Don’t worry, my dear,” Malone said. “I’ll have you out in ten minutes. Or less.”
“Not on this charge, you won’t,” the taller detective said. “Now come along, Miss Adsmith, don’t give us any trouble.”
Reluctantly, she allowed herself to be led through the door.
Well, that was that, Malone reflected. But what next? He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and ran Meri Adsmith’s story over in his mind. Somewhere in it was the answer, but where? If he could just put his mental finger on it.
He was still brooding about it when the phone rang. As he had expected, it was Daniel von Flanagan.
“Malone!” he roared. “What kind of a trick is this?”
“No trick,” Malone said smoothly. “Mrs. Justus was in my office asking me to fix up a two-dollar parking ticket for her, when your two dumb cops walk in and pick her up. I kept my mouth shut because I wanted you to find out for yourself just how dumb they were.” He added as an afterthought, “She’ll probably sue the city for false arrest.”
Von Flanagan groaned, “She won’t need to. She’s shooting craps with some of the boys right now. Malone, I appeal to you. For years we’ve been friends. I’m trying to cooperate with California on this. I’m going to vacation there this year. Guy from out there traced her to your office, gave us the tip, and he was waiting to identify her positively when Helene Justus walked in.”
Malone felt an ice-cube run up and down his spine. It had been a fast job of tracing.
“Malone, for friendship’s sake. Where is she?”
“Do you think I’d tell you?” Malone said.
This time the roar from the other end of the phone made the receiver tremble. “Malone, you’re hiding out a murder suspect, withholding important information, obstructing justice—”
“Prove any of it,” Malone said and hung up. For the first time that day he felt almost happy.
The sceond call came from Helene who said she was calling from the first corner drugstore she’d been able to find. “Duck soup,” she said cheerfully, “and I won twenty-two dollars at dice. Malone is it all going to be okay?”
“Yes,” he said, and suddenly had the feeling that he was telling the truth.
He went back to brooding about the problem. This time it was Maggie who interrupted him.
“I’m thinking,” Malone growled at her.
“A restful change, I imagine,” Maggie snapped. “Your client is safely tucked in bed. Dr. Quigley has been in and she’ll sleep for hours. But before he got there, she made a phone call.”
Malone stiffened and said nothing.
“She called the lawyer who manages her estate. No, don’t look like that. They don’t want to know where she is, and they don’t want anyone else to know. All they want is for you to get her out of this.” Her eyes softened. “Oh Malone, you’re going to, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Malone said for the second time that hour.
“She ordered them to send you a certified check by special messenger. For a retainer. A thousand dollars. It just got here and I signed for it.”
Malone caught his breath, relaxed, and said, “Praise be. Because Heaven knows we’re going to need it. Maggie, cash it, get me a round trip plane ticket to Los Angeles and a reservation on the first flight available. And move fast.”
Maggie said “But what are you going to do out there?”
“I don’t know yet,” Malone said, “but I’ll figure it out on the way.”
Maggie moved fast. There was a reservation available if he hurried. Malone hurried.
“Take good care of our little client. Don’t tell anybody where I’ve gone. I’ll phone.”
And even before he left the elevator, the little black cat of fear appeared from nowhere, only this time, it was following Malone.
Someone was following him. He didn’t know it, he sensed it. More, he reasoned it. Because he had suddenly realized the one important thing in Meri Adsmith’s story that told him who had murdered Frank Espinoza. And the murderer knew he knew.
Malone’s little black cat was a full-grown leopard by the time he reached the airport.
He asked for a seat in the rear of the plane. The stewardess smilingly obliged. Stewardesses, waitresses, s
alesgirls, they always smiled at Malone. He told her that he didn’t want to be disturbed with meals, with anything, he only wanted to rest. She smiled again and tucked a blanket over him.
He kept his eyes open while other passengers came on board. But how, he asked himself, can you spot a man following you, when you don’t know what he looks like? He tried to size up everyone, and everyone looked like a good honest citizen. Imagination, he told himself. But he knew in his heart it wasn’t imagination.
After the take-off he slipped into a half-doze, sometimes sleeping, sometimes dreaming, and in the dreams the sound of the motors became the growl of the black cat of fear.
It wasn’t until the landing at International Airport that he became fully awake, and then it was because the stewardess was shaking him gently. Everyone else had left the plane. That meant the man who had been following him had already disembarked—and would be waiting outside.
He smiled at the stewardess, said, “Thank you for a pleasant trip,” and walked briskly down the runway.
It was safe here at the airport. But this was not the time to think of safety. He moved slowly, keeping his eyes straight ahead.
Was someone watching him?
He went through the airport office, paused to buy a package of cigarettes he didn’t want and looked around. No, no one paid any attention to him. But, he reminded himself, the man wouldn’t pay any attention to him.
It seemed like a hundred-mile walk to the cab stand.
He ducked into the first one that came along and said, in a voice loud enough to be heard halfway to San Francisco, “Beverly Hills Hotel.”
Five minutes later he leaned forward and said to the driver, “Changed my mind. Got to go to Santa Monica first. Don’t take a main highway.”
“Mister,” the driver said, “you being followed?”
“By little elves,” Malone said. He added, “Don’t mind me, I’m just still asleep. First stop, the bus station.”
He leaned back and lit a cigar. It had been raining that day and the streets were still glistening. The neon signs along the way reflected like Christmas tree lights. Then the cab turned off the highway and went through a succession of odd-angled corners, curves and occasional straight stretches of half-lighted streets.
With difficulty, Malone restrained himself from looking behind him. If they were being followed, it was too late to do anything about it now.
The driver pulled up at last behind the bus station and said, “You don’t hafta go in through the front door. Want I should wait?”
Malone nodded. He looked in through the wide glass doors of the rear entrance. The station was crowded with passengers. Was someone there watching for him? For a brief moment he considered asking the driver to go in with the key, then thought better of it. The crowd was his safety.
“Safety in numbers,” he muttered.
“What’s that you said?” the driver called.
“I said, never play the numbers,” Malone said, getting out, “You never get ahead.”
He walked into the station, opened the parcel locker, pulled out the briefcase and a grocery brown bag that felt heavy in his hand, and went back to the cab.
“Move,” he said. There was sweat on his forehead, and he was breathing hard.
The cab shot ahead down an alley into the next street.
“Police headquarters,” Malone said, “and go like a jet-propelled rabbit.”
The next street was dark and deserted save for parked cars and unemptied garbage cans. Malone reached for a cigar and began to unwrap it, but it slipped through his fingers. He leaned down and grabbed for it, and at the same moment he heard and felt an explosion that covered him with shattered glass. The cab screamed its way around the next corner.
“I’m taking you the long way,” the driver yelled to him.
Right then Malone, crouched on the floor, wouldn’t have minded being taken by way of Mars.
It was a little under two minutes, however, when the cab pulled up behind the pleasant California-style building that housed the police headquarters.
The driver said “You okay, Mister?” He helped Malone out. “Somebody shot at you.”
Malone nodded. He shook his head to clear it a little. “Missed. Pure accident.” He looked things over. One window had been shattered, the other was intact. “Let’s see if we can find the bullet.”
They found it embedded in the upholstery across from the broken window. Malone slipped it in his pocket, and reached for his wallet. The meter read five-fifty. He pulled out three tens, on second thought added one more. “Thanks for saving my life. And park here for an hour.”
He picked up the briefcase and paper bag and went on into the building.
Everything about the room was still the same, including the antiseptic smell, except that there were only two men in it this time, Detective Andy Connelly and the lazy-eyed man named Johnson, when John J. Malone walked in. There was a small cut on his face from flying glass, his Finchley suit looked as though it had been slept it, and it had, and his face was pale.
He walked up to the desk, put down the briefcase and the gun, and said, “I’m John J. Malone. Chicago lawyer. Here’s the stuff you’ve been looking for.”
It was obvious that Connelly was making a great effort to keep calm as he examined the gun and the briefcase. “This must be the gun,” he said at last. “Ivor-Johnson .22—she had a permit for one like that.” He opened the briefcase, gasped. “Malone, do you have any idea how much this is worth?”
“I can guess,” Malone said, taking out a cigar. “I could probably retire on it, even with my tastes.”
“Now,” he said, “where did you find them?”
Malone told him.
Andy Connelly swore, and not gently. “And where is the girl?”
“I’ll tell you,” Malone said, “when you arrest the real murderer—which will probably be any minute now.” He finally got the cigar lit. “In the meantime—”
He told the story as Meri had told it to him, the trip to Ensenada, the stranger in the bar in San Diego and finally, the shooting of Espinoza.
“It all checks,” Connelly said. “Barrone and Espinoza were shot with the same gun. A .38. The bullet we dug out of the pilings in front of her place was from a .22. Probably this one.”
Malone said, “Someone took advantage of her frequent trips, and assumed names, to smuggle narcotics. That someone saw to it that Barrone would contact her in the San Diego bar. That someone managed to get here with Barrone, probably in the chartered plane that took them over the border on occasion, because this time he wanted to get the whole load himself, and because he could frame her—and here he is now!”
There were steps on the iron stairs outside. Malone went on louder, “Espinoza was a crooked cop. Praise be there aren’t many of them, but once in a while you get one.”
“He was under investigation,” the sleepy-eyed Johnson said, without moving a muscle. “We weed them out.”
Malone continued. “She was stuck in San Diego for a few more hours, with the briefcase. She went to a movie. When she tried to deliver the briefcase, she found Barrone—whom she’d talked to a very short time earlier in San Diego—dead as a mackerel and from what I’ve learned of him, smelling worse.” Malone paused and relit his cigar. “You’ll find that Barrone was warned he was under suspicion, and that Meri Adsmith could be talked into carrying his briefcase—Oh, innocently of course. I think you’ll find the private plane took both Barrone and his partner to Clover Field, where a car would take them to the beach. At the beach, he shot Barrone—not only for the contents of the briefcase, but to frame her for the murder. He was tired of playing guardian to a scatterbrain heiress. If he got her free, he could blackmail her for life. If he didn’t, he still had a small fortune for himself.
“He probably planned to shoot Espinoza. Must have. Because he was waiting behind her beach house when she returned. But she’s a smarter girl than he thought.” Malone hoped his voice was carrying i
nto the hall, where the sound of footsteps had stopped. “She called the police when she found Barrone’s body. She got back to the beach house, panicked, planning to run for it. She always knew she was being followed. She fired a shot at Espinoza—a shot that missed and landed in the pilings. At the same time a shot was fired from behind her, the one that got him.”
He paused. He lit a cigar.
“It gave her just time enough to get away.”
It was while he was throwing away the match that the tall man in the brown suit walked casually into the office, pointed to Malone, and said, “There he is. He has her hidden somewhere. Her family’s estate paid him a thousand dollars to come out and make a deal with you. Why don’t you hold him and make him tell where she is?”
There was a silent hostility in the eyes that faced him.
“Mr. Brown,” Andy Connelly said, “may I see your gun?”
“If it checks,” Malone said wearily, “hold him.”
He drew a long breath. “I told you the story, and he knows it.”
“All right,” Brown said, “I’ll show it to you. Like this.” He had it in his hand before any of the three could move. “And I’m taking this with me, and you won’t see me again.” He backed to the door. “I’ve taken chances and I’ll take one more.”
And just about that time Malone’s foot came down hard on his. He gave a squeal of pain and slid slightly off center. It took just that time for the lazy-eyed, overweight man to cross eight feet of floor.
A little later Andy Connelly said, “Yes, but how did you get the answers? Do you keep a troupe of trained gypsies?”
Malone said, “Meri Adsmith made it a point of traveling or vacationing under an assumed name. When I left my office to come out here, I told my secretary—don’t tell anybody where I’m gone. That hit it. Only one person could have known where Meri would be, and when—and that was the crooked private detective who was so expert that he could trail her to Chicago and to my office—and then trail me back here. It was just that one little thing.”
