by Parnell Hall
There was a pause. I could almost hear MacAullif thinking all that over.
“Now,” I said. “You told me to find out what was going on and report to you, and then we’d figure out what to do about it. All right I’ve reported.”
Another pause. “Right.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Well, we have to keep Harold from getting his head broken.”
“I’m not a bodyguard.”
“I never said you were.”
“That’s less than helpful.”
“I know, I know,” MacAullif said. “Jesus. All right. What about the private dick Harold hired?”
“What about him?”
“He still on the job?”
“He wasn’t when I checked this morning. That’s the best I can tell you. I’ve been rather busy.”
“So I see.”
There was another pause.
“So what do you want to do?” I said. I had the feeling of having said it before.
“All right, look,” MacAullif said. “This thing about Harold and the loan shark—I gotta think about it. At the moment it seems to be status quo. Harold’s just made a payment, that should hold the guy at least twenty-four hours, anyway.
“But this private dick he hired is another thing. We can’t let him give Harold any hard evidence on my daughter. Harold’s a slime and a shit, and he’d use it.”
“No argument there.”
“So that’s your main concern for the moment. Keep tabs on the dick and let me know if he makes a move on my daughter.”
“That’s a roundabout and highly ineffective way of doing it. The only way to be sure is for me to talk to your daughter.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“I can make up a story. She doesn’t have to know who I am.”
“No, no. It wouldn’t work. Barbara’s too sharp. You do it just the way I tell you. You don’t keep her away from Steerwell. You keep Steerwell away from her.”
“But—”
“Look, I got three murders on my hands here. I gotta go. You’re doing fine. Just play it the way I said.”
He hung up the phone.
I must admit I slammed the receiver down.
Hell!
Doing fine, was I? Well, it was sure nice of him to let me know.
I thought about it some and decided, hell, if that’s the way MacAullif wanted me to play it, that’s how I’d play it.
Wonderful. Around and around Atlantic City, the private dick chased the Weasel.
It was three o’clock, so I checked in with Rosenberg & Stone and then drove out to Margate City. I must say I wasn’t happy. Aside from everything else, MacAullif had seemed strangely reticent on the phone. It wasn’t like him. Even in this case, and even though it was family. He’d seemed confused before and not quite himself, but not reticent.
I didn’t like it.
On Ventnor Avenue a car passed me going back the other way that looked a lot like Harold’s, and I realized I’d left him alone since after lunch. I wondered if it was really him. I wasn’t about to turn around and find out, however. I kept going to the Weasel’s house.
This time his car was parked in the driveway. But I didn’t stop. I drove on by and parked a couple of houses down the street.
Because another car was parked in front of the Weasel’s house. A Chevy station wagon. One I thought I knew.
I got out of my car. As I did, I heard a bloodcurdling scream. It came from the direction of the Weasel’s house.
Barbara MacAullif Dunleavy came running out the front door. She was screaming hysterically. She stopped on the front porch and looked around, frantically. She had a gun in her hand. She seemed to see it for the first time. She looked at it, screamed, and threw it on the ground.
Miss Busybody from next door came out on her porch. Barbara saw her, screamed again, ran to the station wagon, jumped in and drove off.
I jumped in my car and gave chase. I probably would have caught her, but just my luck, I got stopped by a cop. How he let her go by and stopped me is beyond me, but the guy did. He gave me a speeding ticket, too.
It occurred to me it wasn’t my day. It also occurred to me not many of them were.
It also occurred to me Barbara MacAullif Dunleavy was in deep shit. I figured I’d better find out how deep.
I turned around and drove back to the Weasel’s house.
I didn’t turn into his street. I didn’t have to. Just driving by I could see a half a dozen police cars with flashing lights on top and a meat wagon parked out front.
Deep shit, indeed.
Pop goes the Weasel.
15.
I DIDN’T CALL Rosenberg & Stone at five o’clock. Frankly, I didn’t even think of it. I had other things on my mind and other things to do.
I was halfway out to the Dunleavy’s when I remembered the pictures. What a jerk. I’d forgotten all about them. The Weasel was dead, and I had his pictures. So far nobody knew that, but it was a murder investigation now, and with all my errands for MacAullif, I couldn’t count on keeping myself in the dark for long.
I drove back downtown to the post office and bought a mailer. I went back to the hotel, got the bag of pictures out of my suitcase and packed them in it. I addressed it to myself, General Delivery, Atlantic City. I figured I wanted them out of the way, but where I could put my hands on them if I had to. I drove around, found a mailbox, and dropped the package in. That was at five o’clock, the time I should have called Rosenberg & Stone. I didn’t think of it because to me, five o’clock meant just one thing.
The local news would be on.
I switched on the car radio and found a local station.
It was the lead story. “Murder in Margate,” said the newscaster. He went on to give out all the details they had on the demise of Joseph T. Steerwell. There were a lot. He’d been shot in the face with a .38-caliber automatic. The gun had been recovered at the scene of the crime. It had been carried from the house and dropped on the front lawn by a young woman who had escaped in a station wagon. The woman was described as in her mid-twenties, short black hair, medium height and build, attractive. I figured the “attractive” had come grudgingly from Miss Busybody.
The woman was not the only suspect however. There was also a young man who had entered the house some ten minutes before. He had been observed by the next door neighbor, one Priscilla Martin, entering and leaving the house. He had been inside for less than five minutes. He had seemed terribly agitated when he left. The man was described as in his mid-thirties, 5’ 10” to 6 feet, 165 pounds, dark hair and blue eyes, wearing a suit and tie.
Leave it to Miss Busybody, I thought. She’d described Barbara and Harold Dunleavy to a T.
The news report concluded with speculation as to whether the man had shot the victim and the woman had merely found the gun and picked it up, or whether the woman had brought the gun and shot him.
It was an incredibly detailed report. I couldn’t imagine the police giving out that many facts. I figured they probably hadn’t. They probably just had been unable to stifle Miss Busybody.
One thing puzzled me about the story. There was no mention of a shot. Surely Miss Busybody must have heard one. And if she had heard a shot while either Harold or Barbara was in the Weasel’s house, that would have clinched the case. So why hadn’t she mentioned it? Or, if she had, why wasn’t it part of the story?
I tried to think back to when I’d seen Barbara running from the house. It had all happened so fast that it was blurred in my memory. But it seemed to me the gun she was carrying had a long barrel.
I wondered if it had a silencer.
One other thing puzzled me about the story. Why the hell would Harold have wanted to kill the Weasel? He’d hired him, for Christ’s sake. Barbara might have wanted to, but not Harold.
Unless.
I remembered the pictures I’d looked at that morning, the pictures I’d mailed to myself.
The pictures of the Bea
r.
As so often seems to happen to me in the course of my life, I felt like a total asshole. What a shmuck! Anyone with half a brain would have looked at the pictures before putting them in the mailer. I mean, Jesus Christ. The Weasel had taken pictures of the Bear. The Bear was a notorious loan shark with a reputation for breaking heads. The Weasel’s head had been broken. It didn’t take an Einstein to know that those pictures might be important.
But I hadn’t looked at them.
Some detective.
Sallingsworth had given me the Bear’s address. It was out in Somers Point.
I drove out there. I went by the Weasel’s on the way. I thought of stopping in to chat with Miss Busybody. I decided against it. She was a loudmouth and she was cooperating with the police. I didn’t want her telling them about me.
There were lights on in the Bear’s house and there was a car in the drive.
I went up on the front porch and rang the bell.
I must confess, I didn’t know what I was going to say. I hadn’t stopped to think about it. If I had, I wouldn’t have been there. I was winging it. I was doing it quickly and impulsively, which was the only way I could have done it. As I’ve said, I’m not long on guts, and calling on a scary Bear who has people hurt is not my idea of a good time.
But I had to do something. The Weasel was dead, the Bear was my only other lead, so here I was.
Grasping at straws.
There was no answer. That was strange, what with the car there and the lights on.
I peered in the front window. The drapes were pulled, but as with Barbara’s, there was a small gap. Through the gap, I could see the end of a couch and a coffee table.
Near the end of the coffee table was a shoe. There was nothing particularly strange in that. I often sit on the couch, take off my shoes, and leave ’em lying under the coffee table.
Only the toe of this one was pointing up.
I tried the front door. It was unlocked. I pushed it open and went in. I went through the foyer and into the living room.
There was a man lying on the floor. It was the Bear. He’d been shot once in the face.
The Bear was dead as a mackerel.
16.
THE BEAR WAS ONLY the second dead body I’d ever seen. The first one had been stabbed in the back with a knife. There’d been a lot of blood, but his face hadn’t been messed up. The Bear’d been shot right in the bridge of the nose, which had splintered. Blood covered most of his face. I can’t say it marred his appearance, though. In his case, it was almost an improvement.
None of those thoughts ran through my mind when I found the body. The only thing that occurred to me was that I was going to be sick. I ran out the front door and heaved my guts out over the rail of the front porch.
I’d thrown up when I’d found my first body, too. So at least I’m consistent.
When I’d recovered some of my composure, I looked around to see if anyone had been watching my performance. No one had. I took a deep breath, which forced some particularly nauseating air into my nose and mouth, and blew it out again. All right. So what did I do now?
I knew the first thing I had to do. I had to go back inside and look at the body again, and see what I could deduce from it. See if I could find any clues.
I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t figure I’d necessarily throw up again, but on the other hand, when I write down my Christmas wishes, looking at bloody dead bodies is not high on the list.
You can’t always get what you want. I went back inside and looked at the body. It was easier the second time. Still not fun, but easier. At least I managed to stay in the room.
I walked all around the body, observed it from every angle. I studied its position in the room. After careful analysis, my expert opinion was this: someone who didn’t like the Bear had shot him in the face.
I went through his pockets. It took me a bit to persuade myself to do this, but not much. Barbara and Harold were in pretty deep. And I was getting in pretty deep myself.
I found nothing interesting. The most I learned was the body hadn’t been robbed. The Bear had three hundred and some odd dollars in his wallet. I’d never robbed a corpse before, and I wasn’t about to start now. I left it there.
The wallet had the usual number of credit cards, a driver’s license, and a Blue Cross/Blue Shield card. Pretty small pickings, except for the three hundred bucks.
The other pockets were even less rewarding. Some pens, some small change, a handkerchief and some keys on a ring. No notebook with names and addresses. No letters.
Not a clue.
I stood up and looked at the body again. The Bear hadn’t done anything helpful, like scrawling the name of his killer in blood on the floor. He’d just fallen over backwards and expired.
O. K. So what did I do now?
The first time I’d found a dead body I’d called the police and waited for them to arrive. I didn’t want to get in a rut. I got the hell out of there.
I drove back to Atlantic City, stopped at a pay phone and called the police. They put me on hold. I waited about two minutes, then a bored-sounding voice came on the line.
“Yeah?” it said.
“I want to report a homicide.”
“What?”
“A homicide. I’m reporting a homicide.” I gave the guy the address of the Bear’s house.
He seemed a little less bored. “Who are you?” he asked.
I hung up and drove out to the Dunleavy house. Lights were on and the station wagon was in the garage.
The convertible was gone.
I drove back to Atlantic City and parked in Tallman’s garage. I went into the casino.
Harold was sitting at the blackjack table. The blonde, presumably M. Carson, was dealing. Harold was concentrating on his cards, same as always.
I had to admire Harold, somehow. Admire his cool. If Miss Busybody were to be believed, Harold at best had found the Weasel’s body and knew he was dead, and at worst had killed him. And yet, here he was, playing cards as if nothing had happened.
I wondered if Harold knew that his obligation to the Bear was over. I wondered if he’d be playing cards so intently if he knew he didn’t need the money so desperately.
On the other hand, if Harold could be so cool about the Weasel, maybe he could be that cool about the Bear, too. I wondered if he was.
I wondered if Harold had killed the Bear.
While I was wondering that, a group of men made their way through the center of the room. That probably sounds strange—after all, lots of men were wandering all around the huge room. But this group was different. They moved en masse, like a procession, somehow. Like a retinue.
The man in the center was clearly in charge, was clearly the big cheese. His tailor-made suit looked like a million bucks.
The men stopped right in front of me, so I could get a good look at them. One of the men was talking animatedly to the big cheese, but I could tell he wasn’t listening. His attention seemed to be on the blackjack table, where the blonde was dealing the cards. The big cheese seemed pretty interested in the blonde.
Even without his gold chain and medallion, I could recognize the big cheese.
He was the King.
It was a little much. I mean, come on, give me a break. This was getting to be like one of those fucking Ross Mcdonald novels where everyone is involved with everyone else and the plot keeps turning back in on itself. Not that they’re not damn good, by the way. I just didn’t want to live one.
This morning I’d looked at pictures taken by the Weasel. Among them were shots of the Bear and the King. Since then, the Weasel had been shot in the face. The Bear had been shot in the face. And here was the King, presumably the owner of Tallman’s Casino, standing and looking at the blonde dealing blackjack to Harold Dunleavy and presumably cheating to boot so that Harold Dunleavy would have enough money to pay off the Bear. And Harold Dunleavy had hired the Weasel to spy on his wife.
All right. Next case.
<
br /> The King and his retinue moved on.
I moved on, too. I didn’t need to watch Harold and the girl work the blackjack scam. I’d seen that routine. I got my car and drove off.
I didn’t feel like driving all the way out to Somers Point to see if the police had taken my phone call seriously. Fortunately I didn’t have to. It was on the local news. I don’t know how the reporters get on to those things—some cop must tip ’em off—but they were damn good.
Frederick Nubar had been found shot dead in his Somers Point home. He’d been shot once in the face. There were no suspects and no motive for the murder. It was not yet known if there was any connection between this murder and the murder of Joseph T. Steerwell of Margate, who had also been discovered shot in the face in his home earlier in the day.
I could have called the reporter up and suggested a connection. I didn’t do it. I sat in my car and tried to think what to do next.
I still hadn’t called MacAullif. And I wasn’t about to. You see, Barbara MacAullif had gone to see the Weasel. Whether she shot him or not, she’d been out there. And there were only two people that knew that Harold had hired the Weasel to spy on his wife: MacAullif and me. And I sure hadn’t told her.
Which meant MacAullif had. It was the only explanation. After agonizing about it, he’d called her and warned her. And if he had, as I’d pointed out to him, he’d have had to tell her how he knew. There’d be no other way out.
That was why MacAullif had sounded so reticent on the phone. No wonder he didn’t want me to warn her. He’d already warned her. After forbidding me to do it, he’d gone ahead and done it himself. And he was so embarrassed about it, he couldn’t bring himself to tell me.
I can’t say that I blamed him. It was his daughter. It was family. Blood is thicker than water. But the thing was, he’d warned her. And the thing was, that was before anything had happened. That was when her biggest trouble was some private dick snooping around. Now it was a double homicide. And MacAullif’s daughter was mixed up in it right up to her eyebrows. He’d move heaven and earth to save her. He’d do anything. Whatever else might happen, he’d save her first. So I couldn’t really count on his support anymore.
