"Act your age, Kerrigan." I yanked my .38 Colt Special out of its holster, grabbed it by the two-inch barrel and handed it to him. "My gun hasn't been fired for days. What did I do with the murder gun? Eat it? Flush it down the drain? This guy was a client; I never saw him before in my life. I was supposed to help the guy, not knock him off. Whoever did it took a shot at me too, incidentally."
Kerrigan sniffed at the gun barrel, mumbled something under his breath, then shut up temporarily while the boys from Scientific Investigation went through their flashbulb routine around the body. I did get my gun back, but when the lieutenant left, I went along with him.
After half an hour at Headquarters I was on my way with the usual admonition to keep myself handy. It was after six o'clock so I had to use the Main Street exit from the City Hall, then took a right toward First. My office is between Third and Fourth on Broadway, just five blocks away, so I walked and wondered what the hell.
I was still wondering what the hell when I crossed Third Street and approached the Hamilton Building, where my office is, but I also wondered vaguely why a car would be parked in the alley at its edge. The car was facing left into Broadway, half out over the sidewalk, and I'd casually noticed it a few moments before. As I got closer, I could hear the soft purr of the motor running. Maybe I was keyed up, but I kept an eye on the car as I drew abreast of the Hamilton's wide doors.
It was a good thing.
There was a guy behind the steering wheel and when I caught the glint of metal in his hand I jumped sideways and dropped to my knees. It was pure reflex. I've seen too many guns not to get out of their way in a hurry. I was digging for my .38 before my knees hit the sidewalk.
Flame licked out of the car window, and the slug tugged at the cloth of my coat and burned across the skin of my shoulder. I flipped my gun up and snapped once at him. It had to be quick.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not usually that good. It was a lucky shot. But I got a glimpse of him as he slumped forward onto the steering wheel and his gun fell from relaxed fingers and clattered into the alley. The car horn started braying raucously as his body pressed against it. A couple of pedestrians darted frightened glances at me and scurried down the street like startled birds.
I kept my gun ready, got to my feet, and walked up to the car. I pulled the guy away from the steering wheel and the horn stopped braying suddenly.
He was a little guy, and he had an empty space in his mouth, as if he'd lost a tooth. He had. He'd also lost the back of his head. He was nobody I'd ever seen before and I started what-the-helling all over again. It didn't make sense; but it was finally filtering through my skull. Somebody wanted me dead.
Captain Phil Samson, tough, tricky, but thoroughly honest head of the Los Angeles Homicide Division, peered at me through bushy gray eyebrows after I gave him the whole story. His big jaw stuck out like a lump of cast iron and he wiggled a big-knuckled finger at me.
"Two of 'em," he said sweetly. "Two stiffs. One wasn't enough, huh. Shell?"
"Look, Sam," I said. "I told you how it happened. You've known me long enough so you know that's the straight copy. Why it happened, I don't know — not yet, anyway. Loring didn't get to tell me a damn thing except that he needed help. And he mumbled something about blackmail."
"Then this mysterious person plugged him from the window; that what you said?"
I nodded.
Samson didn't say anything; he just looked at me, wagging his big paw slowly from side to side like a cast-iron pendulum.
I got up. "Well, Sam, I'll be getting along. Not enough sleep lately. Pretty tired."
He started to say something, then changed his mind. I started for the door and he spoke.
"Guess I don't have to remind you to stick pretty close, Shell."
"You don't have to remind me."
Nobody said anything to me on my way out. It was easier than I'd expected. Too easy. I'd have bet fifty bucks Samson — my pal — had a tail on me.
I wasn't sleepy as I'd pretended to Samson so I headed for the office for a new coat. The hole in the coat I was wearing and the burn across my shoulder were reminding me I had a personal interest in this case now.
Samson had told me the guy I'd popped was Slippy Rancin, a two-bit torpedo with an I. Q. like two and two. I couldn't see Rancin dreaming up this caper all by himself the way it was beginning to shape up. And I wanted the right guy to get kissed off for the slug with my name on it. Besides, there was five grand of Loring's money resting where I'd stuck it in my inside coat pocket and I like my clients to get their money's worth. Even the dead ones.
This thing was screwier than a rejected pretzel. Probably the damnedest case I'd seen in two years of private-eyeing in L. A. A guy had been murdered right under my broken nose and in my own office; I'd shot a hood myself, and slugs had been tossed at me twice; I'd been twice to Headquarters; and I had a dead man's five G's in my kick. And I hadn't even started on the case.
Hell, I didn't even know what it was all about. But I did know somebody wanted me removed from among the living. They'd tried twice and maybe they thought the third time would be the charm.
It was high time the sleuth sleuthed.
My disgustingly yellow '47 Cadillac convertible got me to the Loring place on Lorraine Boulevard by a quarter to nine. The phone book had given me the address but it hadn't given me the dimensions. Anyone with a house that big had to be in the social register. Or a politician. It looked a little bit like a southern colonel's old mansion with glass bricks and modern improvements added. And it looked like enough moolah to choke all the cows in Carnation.
There were lights on inside so I walked up and fingered the buzzer. The door opened and a small, birdlike woman with a middle-aged, doll-sized face turned a pair of clear brown eyes on me. She didn't look like a wife who'd just learned she was a widow, so I asked for Mrs. Loring.
"I'm Mrs. Loring."
So she was the widow, but apparently she didn't know it yet.
"I'm a private investigator," I said. I'd just started to give her my name and state my business when she interrupted me with a remark that stopped me like Louis stopped Schmeling. The second time.
"Oh, yes. Come in, Mr. Ellis."
Ellis! I tossed that around like a hot dime while she led me in a spacious, soft-looking living room and sat down facing me under the one lamp that was burning.
She said, "I won't need you after tonight, Mr. Ellis. The police were here earlier and informed me that my husband had been murdered."
She said it as if she was telling me it was Booth who shot Lincoln.
She glanced toward the shadowed corner of the room and said, "Nancy, bring me my checkbook, please." She turned to me again, "Do you have anything to report?"
My head was spinning like the tenth Martini. I've been told I'm fast on the uptake, but I was a lap behind and losing ground fast. After everything else, now this. Ellis? Checkbook? Nancy? Report?
Nancy. I glanced toward the corner where there was some kind of a low-slung divan just in time to catch a dim flash of white thighs as someone I hadn't noticed up to now swung her legs to the floor and got up. I didn't know whether to appreciate it or be disinterested; Nancy might be nine or ninety.
"Report?" I mumbled. "Well, no. I haven't anything to report. Nothing of any importance." What the hell could I say? I was as confused as a pallbearer at the wrong funeral.
Mrs. Loring shrugged her tiny shoulders. "No matter," she said. "Oh, thank you, Nancy."
I looked up.
I gnashed my teeth.
I breathed heavily.
The girl was standing by Mrs. Loring and I could see with half an eye she wasn't nine or ninety. She was closer to twenty-five and she looked as if she'd started life with a beautiful face that had grown easier to look at every year.
And the body. The body had tagged right along.
She was about five-four of perfectly proportioned woman dressed in a terrifically curved white sweater and a pleated black skirt
. Red hair hung down around her shoulders and she had a sullen red mouth with lips so full they looked as if they'd been bruised and swollen. On her, they looked good. Her eyes didn't fit with the sensual body and the bruised-looking lips. They were a deep brown that was almost black — and they were the widest, most innocent-looking eyes I'd ever seen in all my thirty years.
She was staring at my big frame with a hungry look.
I've got short-cropped blond hair that sticks straight up half an inch all over my head, almost white eyebrows that slant up and then swoop down at the corners of my gray eyes, a nose that hasn't been the same since it got busted on Okinawa, and a strong jaw. My face has seen a lot of sunshine and a lot of women, and some of the women have given me that hungry look before. But this was the full treatment.
She looked well-fed but half-starved. Do you follow me?
Mrs. Loring took the checkbook and said, "Nancy, this is Mr. Ellis. Mr. Ellis, my daughter, Nancy Howard." I must have looked a little surprised because she added, "By a previous marriage."
I nodded moronically at Nancy while she said, "How do you do?" in a voice that rustled against my ears like a caress.
I hated to stop drooling but I had to stop nodding some time and I had an idea this screwball situation wasn't going to last much longer. I'd noticed some big framed canvases hanging on the wall so I asked Mrs. Loring, "Incidentally, how long had Mr. Loring been interested in art?"
She looked at me curiously, then smiled thinly. "Mr. Ellis," she said, "isn't that what you were supposed to tell me?"
She continued to stare at me with dawning suspicion on her doll's face as she tore a check out of the book and waved it gently back and forth. I figured the party was about over, so I stood up.
"Sorry," I said. "No check. My name isn't Ellis; it's —"
"What!" I could almost hear her girdle ripping. "But you said — you told me . . ."
I interrupted politely, "No ma'am — you said. I told you I was a private investigator, which I am, but I didn't get a chance to give you my name. I came out to investigate your husband's death."
I might have said more, but Mrs. Loring opened her mouth a couple of times to say something, then thought better of it and whirled to face the dream girl.
"Nancy," she said in a quiet, controlled voice that might have come straight from the depths of Siberia, "show this man out. Quickly!"
By the time we reached the door, Mrs. Loring had stalked into another room where she was probably quietly hating me. Nancy followed me onto the porch and shut the door behind her.
"That wasn't nice," she said. She didn't sound angry.
"What wasn't?"
"Impersonating that man."
"I didn't intend to. Your mother jumped to the wrong conclusion."
"I know. It's all right. She's naturally a little upset."
She hadn't looked particularly upset until she'd found out I wasn't Ellis. The thought must have showed on my face because Nancy said, "I suppose you think we should have been crying in our pillows."
I didn't say anything.
"Well, we shouldn't have," she continued hotly. "John Loring was no good. I don't know how mother stood him for two years."
I let it ride. "Incidentally," I asked, "who is this Ellis? Mrs Loring didn't seem surprised to find a private dick at the front door."
"That's what he is. A detective, I mean. Mother hired him a few weeks ago."
"Hadn't she ever seen the guy?"
She shook her head. "No. She arranged everything by phone. It was a little distasteful to her anyway."
"Want to tell me why?"
"Why what?"
"Why your mother hired Ellis in the first place."
She frowned delightfully and said, "It couldn't possibly have anything to do with John's death. Honestly."
"Okay," I told her, "skip it for now. Can you give me an idea why anybody would want to kill your stepfather? Any scandal? Blackmail, maybe? Had he stepped on anyone's toes lately?"
"No. Not as far as I know. Just that he was a heel."
That wasn't much help so I thanked her, said good night, and turned to go.
She stepped close to me and laid a hand on my arm. I could feel the gentle pressure of her fingers through the rough tweed of my jacket.
"Wait," she said. "If you aren't Ellis, who are you?"
"Scott. Shell Scott."
"Honestly, Mr. Scott — Shell — I'd help you if I knew anything that would do you any good. I just don't know a thing I could tell you. I would like to help. Really I would."
For no good reason I believed her. Maybe because there was no good reason not to. I said. "I've got a couple things to do. If you're not in bed, maybe we could talk later when I've got a little more on this."
"I won't be in bed."
Maybe I imagined it, but I thought she swayed closer to me. Her hand felt like a branding iron on my arm, and the dim light from inside the house spilled soft shadows on her face. She was looking up at me with her lips moist and half parted in apparent invitation. But at the same time her wide innocent eyes were screaming, "No, no. A thousand times, no!"
A hell of a note. What would you have done?
I mumbled thanks, and good night again through lips that were a little dry, and started down the steps.
Her voice rustled softly down to me: "Call me later, why don't you, Shell? I'm interested, really."
I said, "Sure," wondering just what she meant by that.
After driving up a couple of one-way streets just in case a tail was on me, and checking a phone book, I found Ellis listed in a small hotel on Hill Street. It was only a little after nine-thirty p.m. but the room was dark. I rapped on the door thinking Ellis wasn't going to like being waked up.
He didn't seem to mind. The light inside clicked on and the door opened and a short husky guy in white shorts opened the door and squinted at me through brown hair hanging down over his eyes.
I asked him, "Are you Mr. Ellis?"
He brushed the hair out of his eyes and grunted an affirmative.
I showed him my credentials. "I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind."
He blinked sleepily a couple of times, then his face brightened a little. "Yeah, sure," he said more cheerfully. "Come on in. A brother peeper, huh?" He waved me to a straight-backed wooden chair and sat down on the edge of the rumpled bed.
"I hate to say it," I told him, "but you're out of a job."
"Huh?"
"I just had a little chat with Mrs. Loring. She's got a final check all made out for you."
He looked puzzled. "I don't get it. She change her mind?"
"About what?"
"Don't she want no divorce? Or am I taking too long?"
"Neither," I said. "Somebody shot Loring through the head tonight. And in my office. You can see why I'm interested."
He whistled through his teeth, "Brother! Why'd you want to see me?"
"I haven't got much to go on; thought maybe you could give me a lead."
He was cooperative enough. Mrs. Loring had wanted a divorce, but papa said no sale. Mrs. Loring thought her husband had maybe been playing around so she'd hired Ellis by phone to follow Loring and try to catch hubby with his pants down. Figuratively speaking.
Ellis had trailed Loring for three weeks without digging up anything he could take to Mrs. Loring. She'd told him to call on her when he had something; he'd never had anything, he said, so he'd never called on her.
I asked him, "Where did he go mostly? Who did he see? I need some kind of a lead." I thought for a minute and added, "And how about his artistic interests? There's some kind of an art angle."
Ellis tossed me a cigarette, lit one himself, and held a match for me. "Tailing Loring was a dull job. He played a lot of golf at the Wilshire Country Club, had all his meals either at Mike Lyman's in Hollywood or at home, spent all his nights at home. Not many kicks in his life. Now, if I had all that dough . . ." His face got a dreamy look for a minute. "Art, huh?" he continued. "
Well, he bought a couple pictures at Massy's on Grand. Modern stuff like a wormhole in a apple called 'Triumph of Dawn.' You know the junk. Then he went to an art class at a walk-up on Broadway near Sixth. Least I guess it was an art class; guys went in carrying brushes and easel things."
I got interested. "What kind of a class?"
"I dunno. Some painting thing run by a guy named Fillson."
Enter Fillson again. I dug out the card I'd taken off Loring's body, looked at it and asked, "How long had Loring been going to Fillson's?"
"I dunno how long." He fumbled in his pants draped over a chair, dug out a dimestore memo book, and flipped the pages. "Let's see. I started tailing him on a Monday three weeks ago. He went to Fillson's Tuesday and Thursday at one-thirty that week, Tuesday and Thursday the next week, and Tuesday this week. He didn't go this Thursday — that's yesterday. He'd usually stay about an hour."
"Anybody else go with him, or was he alone?"
"Never with anybody. A bunch of others showed up about the same time. Around a dozen; all men about forty or fifty. Looked like they'd all probably already made their dough and were maybe taking up painting as a hobby."
"How about tonight?" I asked.
"What about tonight?"
"If you were tailing Loring, maybe you saw someone follow him to my office."
"Oh." He shook his head. "Not tonight. I been tailing that guy day after day and sitting outside that mansion half of the nights. I gotta sleep some time. Besides, Loring always stays home nights. I been in bed since four this afternoon. He was home when I left and came here." He frowned and scratched his head. "Maybe I shoulda slept yesterday."
"Maybe," I said. "What do you know about Fillson?"
"Not much. Tall, thin guy. No chin and a black mustache with about ten whiskers in it. Used to run an artists' supply store. I guess you'd say he's graduated now. Has an expensive taste in dames."
"How's that?"
Ellis held up two fingers wrapped around each other. "He's like that with Velma Vail, strip queen of the Sabre Club. Torchy and terrific." He sighed, "But terrif. For a tomato like that I could learn to like pictures of wormy apples myself."
Have Gat—Will Travel Page 12
