Night Lady

by William Campbell Gault

  “I don’t blame you,” I said. “Look, if you want to play it the maidenly way, I can stay here for a few days and you can use my apartment. It might be wise.”

  “I wouldn’t be afraid to stay with you,” she answered. “I think you’re probably a real gentleman, underneath it all.”

  “Those are the worst kind, gentlemen,” I told her. “And you should know it. The Duncan Guest kind. The Gregory Harvest kind.”

  “Who’s Gregory Harvest?”

  “Duncan’s lawyer. Didn’t you ever meet him?” She shook her head.

  “He was right next door this noon, picking up Guest’s clothes.”

  “I wasn’t here this noon.”

  “Why don’t we go look at the water?” I asked. “I like to look at it on these gray, gloomy days.”

  “All right. I guess a towel around my head won’t bother anyone on the beach.”

  We went out to the beach and we sat where Deborah and I had sat. I wanted to get her away from that apartment, to fix her mind on something besides the apartment next door and the two hoodlums and the suddenly inquisitive Einar Hansen. She lived alone and loved it but she wasn’t really self-sufficient.

  We talked about dances and dancing, the Palladium and the Arragon, Benny Goodman and Lawrence Welk and about a few recent movies. She seemed to need to talk, as though it was some kind of catharsis after her original miffed semisilence.

  ‘ Irish,” I said, “we started out with the lovely, nasty kind of relationship we both cherish and now we’re getting to be friends. It’s kind of revolting.”

  “I’m naturally friendly,” she said, “and so are you. Couldn’t we have dinner together? Dutch.”

  “Not Dutch,” I said. “I never go Dutch.”

  “Even with Deborah Huntington? Or does she pay?”

  I looked at her levelly. “Stop that.”

  “I hate her,” she said, “but I’ll stop.”

  In many ways, that afternoon and evening were a replica of my afternoon and evening with Deborah, but there were a few minor differences and one essential one.

  We went to the Fox and Hounds for dinner and I paid the bill, two minor differences. We went to a movie after that, another minor change.

  And then, when I took her home, she stood on the runway in front of her door and said, “I’m scared. I’m scared green. Couldn’t I go home with you?”

  “Of course,” I told her, some quiver in my voice.

  “I’ll get a few things,” she said.

  Well, what would you think?

  You’re wrong.

  She came to my place and I went through the elaborate and (I was sure) unnecessary routine of fixing her bed on the studio couch and taking the other half of it into my dinette for me, the pressure in me mounting all the while, the sense of imminent ecstasy bursting in me.

  I mean, through it all, she was so natural and friendly. Even though it was plain to my practiced eye that she was quivering in anticipation of ecstasy herself.

  And we bedded down in our separate compartments, both, I was sure, laughing inwardly at the fraudulence of it all.

  And I lay awake a long time, waiting. She was my guest; I was the host. Sexual deportment decreed she must make the first move.

  She never did. We slept through until morning, and I never laid a hand on her. That was the essential difference.

  In the morning, I smelled coffee and wakened to see her in my little kitchen. Outside, it was gray, and I called, “What time is it? It looks early.”

  “It’s almost seven o’clock, lazy-bones. Rise and shine.”

  “Seven o’clock. What’s your hurry?”

  She turned to smile at me.

  And then I remembered, and I asked, “Don’t you work nights?”

  “Not Monday nights. I work at Streeter’s.”

  Streeter’s was a nightclub, a barn of a place, with comics and dancing girls, jugglers and crooners.

  “What do you do there?” I asked.

  “I dance in the chorus,” she said. “Get up; the morning’s half gone.”

  There is Joe Puma for you, all night in the same apartment with a chorus girl and didn’t lay a hand on her. That should silence my occasional critics.

  I was in the bathroom when there was a knock at the door. Sheila called, “I’ll go. I’m dressed.”

  The bathroom door was closed, but it isn’t thick. Through it, I recognized the voice of Detective Dolan, Sergeant Macrae’s side-kick.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he said, “since three this morning. I never thought of looking here. Where’s Puma?”

  “He’ll be right out,” she said. “What’s the trouble, officer?”

  “Maybe I’d better come in,” he said. “I don’t like to talk for the neighbors’ benefit.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  I heard the door close, and I tied up my robe and went out. Dolan looked at me and then at Sheila and shook his head. “Cozy, aren’t you?”

  “She was frightened,” I said. “Those hoodlums watched her apartment for two hours Sunday night and not a cop molested them. She was promised police protection.”

  Dolan said cynically, “She can’t expect the Department to give her the same service you do, Puma. Most of the boys are married.”

  “Easy, now,” I warned him. “Things are not always as they seem to people with vulgar minds.”

  He sniffed. He said, “I suppose you two figure you’ll be each other’s alibi, huh?”

  “Alibi — ” I stared at him, “Alibi for what?”

  He held out a hand, palm up, in front of Sheila. A jet pendant earring lay there. “Recognize it?”

  She nodded. “It’s mine. Where’s the other one?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  She shook her head timidly. “I lost a pair like that some months ago. I’m sure it’s mine.”

  A silence, and I asked, “What’s the story, Officer? Where did you find the earring?”

  “In Einar Hansen’s closed, dead hand,” he answered. “He was killed last night, murdered.”

  TEN

  “DON’T BE a damned fool,” Macrae said. “Of course I’m going to hold her. That was a stupid question.”

  We were back in the same airless room in the Venice Station, but it wasn’t hot today. The morning was still cold and gray.

  I asked, “Hold her for what?”

  “Suspicion of murder,” he said. “She lusted for him and he jilted her, didn’t he? And Hansen’s got her earring, hasn’t he, in his cold hand?”

  “But she was with me,” I said. “She was with me every minute since two o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

  “Huh!”

  “Are you calling me a liar, Sergeant?”

  “I said ‘Huh!’ and I’ll say it again. Huh!”

  I took a deep breath and fought my temper. I said calmly, “Maybe Guest jilted her. But why would she kill Hansen?”

  “Because Hansen knew she killed Guest. Why else? Or maybe Hansen jilted her, too, huh? You’d better not jilt her, Puma.”

  “If you book her on suspicion of murder, Sergeant,” I said steadily, “you are going to make an ass of yourself. Because I’m telling you the honest-to-God truth; she was with me every minute since yesterday afternoon. I’ll bet her neighbors noticed her car on the lot all that time.”

  “Which proves what? Only that you drove her over to Hansen’s house, so she could kill him.”

  “Slow down,” I said. “You’re getting more absurd every second.”

  He colored and his voice shook. “You slow down, Puma. You’re in real hot water. Maybe you didn’t know Gregory Harvest complained about you yesterday. And maybe you didn’t know he’s a very good friend of the District Attorney’s.”

  “I don’t worry about Gregory Harvest, Sergeant. You should, though. He’s likely to be in both these murders right up to the last curl on his pretty head.”

  “Huh!” he said again. “Jesus, you are reaching now, aren’t you?”<
br />
  I didn’t answer that. I asked calmly, “May I use your phone?”

  “Once,” he said. “One call, that’s the privilege.”

  I phoned my attorney, Tom Devlin. He wasn’t in, but I gave my story to his partner and he promised Tom would phone me as soon as he came in.

  I sat back and lighted a cigarette, and Macrae said, “I won’t slap you in a cell if you promise to sit there and keep your mouth shut. You can manage that for an hour or two, can’t you?”

  I nodded.

  I sat and watched him function, the hub of half-a-dozen spokes out in the working world now going around with questions. I saw his certainty waver as they sent in their reports. I had a nosey neighbor who had seen me come home with a woman around eleven o’clock and who would swear neither of us had left before three, when she had finished the late, late, late, late show on Channel Eleven. Sheila had a friend she had told about the lost earrings two months ago. I had a former client who had seen Sheila and me enter the theater and would testify we were there when he left.

  The reports came in and then Tom Devlin, my attorney, phoned. And I told him, “I don’t think I’ll need you, Tom. I’ll call back if I do.”

  Macrae said, “Maybe you won’t, but she sure as hell will.”

  I said politely, “If I’m her alibi, she’s mine.”

  “For Einar Hansen, maybe. There was another man killed, Guest, let us not forget.”

  “And she wasn’t even under suspicion for that. Why now?”

  “So Hansen’s killed and he’s trying to point a finger, what would he do, if he had a minute before he died? He’d try to show us, some way, who killed Guest, right? So he’d take one of the earrings in his hand, right?”

  “Not in a million years, unless he was an English mystery writer,” I said. “If he thought he was going to die, he’d get to his phone and call a doctor. He wouldn’t give the tiniest damn if Guest’s murderer was ever found. Would you like something better, something more reasonable, Sergeant?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I’m waiting.”

  “I’ll bet when Sheila Gallegan checks back, she’ll remember she probably left her earrings in Duncan Guest’s apartment. Guest’s killer probably found them there and thought they were valuable. When he, or she, learned they weren’t, the killer figured it would be a good way to throw suspicion on whoever owned them. The earring is a red herring.”

  “I don’t think the person who killed Duncan Guest was there to rob him.”

  “Probably not. But so the trip shouldn’t be a total loss, what’s wrong with picking up anything valuable around? Guest wasn’t going to use them any more.”

  “You’re wild,” he said. “I’m holding her.”

  “You were going to hold me, too, until the reports started to come in. Are you holding her out of resentment, Sergeant?”

  He said quietly, “Apologize.”

  “I apologize. Will you admit, though, holding her doesn’t make much sense?”

  “I’ll hold her for her own protection,” he said. “I’ll hold her here, not take her to my house, like you did.” He grimaced. “That’s why you took her to your place, wasn’t it, for her own protection?”

  “Believe it or not, that’s true, Sergeant. And I’ll tell you something even stranger — we didn’t even hold hands, all night.”

  He nodded. “I believe both of those statements to the same degree. You’re not that old and she’s not that ugly.” I said nothing.

  He said softly, “Okay, Joe, I almost believe you. Dolan told me there were two beds rumpled. You admit it’s hard to believe, don’t you?”

  “May I see her?” I asked. “I want to find out if I should get a lawyer for her.”

  “You can see her. For ten minutes.”

  “Did you pick up Koski and his buddy yesterday?”

  He nodded. “And they’ll come up for assault. With a big lawyer representing them, probably, and they’ll get off. They weren’t armed, they claimed.”

  “They’re out on bail now?”

  He nodded.

  “They could have killed Einar Hansen. They told me they’d been looking for him.”

  “They’ve been checked. And they’re covered for the time. They were at Mike Petalious’ house, playing cards. Mike wasn’t the only player to testify for them. There was a Santa Monica Police Officer in the game, too.”

  “What was his name?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Sheila Gallegan has a friend in the Santa Monica Department. I wondered if, by coincidence, it could be the same man.”

  He smiled. “You doubt her, too, do you?”

  “I doubt everybody,” I said. “I’ll go see her now.”

  She had a cell all to herself and she was sitting stiffly on the cot in there, staring at the bars opposite, her face showing no evidence of recent tears.

  “Sergeant Macrae,” I told her, “has no case and I think he half knows it. He claims he wants to hold you for your own protection. Do you have a lawyer, or should I have mine come down for you?”

  “Lawyers cost money,” she said.

  “Mine won’t cost you anything. I’ll put him on the expense account for me.”

  She looked at me anxiously. “That would be dishonest.”

  I nodded and smiled. “There are times, honey, when the only thing to do is be dishonest.”

  “All right,” she said quietly.

  I said, “Think back. Couldn’t you have left those earrings in Duncan Guest’s apartment some — day or night?”

  “I’ve been thinking back,” she answered, “and I could have. I’m almost sure I did, but maybe it’s because I want to believe it so much. And then, of course, they aren’t unique in any way. Hundreds just like them must be around this town.”

  “Weren’t they expensive? The one I saw looked expensive.”

  “They were seventeen dollars. There are expensive earrings that look just like that to a layman. But these weren’t.”

  “Well,” I said, “they’ve checked some of your friends and one of them told the officer you had lost the earrings months ago. And the Sergeant knows now that you couldn’t have killed Hansen. So there’s really not a hell of a lot to worry about at the moment.”

  “At the moment …? Will there be, later?”

  “I don’t know. If the killer thinks you know what Einar must have learned, perhaps. Have you told me everything you and Hansen talked about?”

  She nodded slowly. “I’m sure I have. I’ll try to think back carefully though. When will your lawyer be here?”

  “I’ll phone right now. Is it all right if I leave? You won’t feel I’m deserting you?”

  “I’ll be all right,” she said.

  I went to the iron door, and she said, “Joe?”

  I turned. “Yes?”

  “I’m — sorry about last night. I — wanted to come over but I — didn’t want to be pushy.”

  I smiled tolerantly. “Don’t hate yourself. There’ll be other nights, happier nights. Chin up, now.”

  She put her chin up and blew me a kiss.

  That skinny bastard at the Palladium should see me now. Some of the cruds that drip dragged home…. I went to Macrae’s room and phoned my attorney and then went out into the gray morning with renewed confidence.

  We never had got to the breakfast she’d been preparing. I was planning my menu when I saw the Cadillac at the curb. Mike Petalious got out of it as I came along the walk.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “Mr. Giampolo wants to see you.”

  “I’ve got to have breakfast first,” I said. “Tell your boss I’ll drop out there right after I eat.”

  “He don’t like to wait,” Mike said.

  “That is very damned unfortunate. I don’t intend to go to his house hungry. Now, run along, little messenger, and tell him that.”

  He looked me up and down, smiling slightly. “You were lucky last time, Puma. But we’ll meet again, un
der my terms.”

  “Live well until we do,” I told him. “Give my regards to the missus.”

  “Not that it’s any of your damned business,” he said, “but we’re getting married Saturday.”

  “You can thank me for that,” I told him. “I proved to her you were vulnerable and she moved in for the kill. Will all the Lindsay Hall girls be there?”

  “I’ve got a memory,” he said.

  He and Adonis, a great pair of mouth fighters. Mike had had his chance and not made it; would Adonis ever go into action? Koski and his buddy scared me more. They had been brought up in a world without referees and didn’t need an audience.

  The Times I read with my breakfast was too early to have the story of Sheila being found in my apartment. She was listed as missing in this edition. The old picture of her crying in front of her apartment was run again and a picture of Einar Hansen that must have been taken when he graduated from junior high school. He looked about twelve, a beardless, vapid youngster.

  He had been stabbed to death, stabbed in the throat.

  That didn’t look like a hoodlum operation. Women killers tend to stick with stabbing. Very few women are familiar with firearms but all of them are familiar with knives and ice picks. And even a few remember that old chasity-saver, the hat-pin.

  There was no mention of Joe Puma in this account; I wondered if Officer Dolan had been thoughtless enough to tell the reporters where Sheila Gallegan had finally been found. If he had, it would make a later edition. My reputation wouldn’t be changed much by the revelation but I hated to think Sheila would suffer heedlessly. It had all been perfectly innocent, as related.

  The sun was starting to break through as I headed for Arnold Giampolo’s. I was probably heading for another lecture and it seemed unfair to me that I should get them constantly from both sides of the law. But he was rich and influential and someday he might need a private investigator.

  He wasn’t in his back yard today. He was in his living room, listening to some opera or other on a built-in hi-fi. The sound seemed to come from the lofted ceiling, but the controls were built into a stand at the side of his overstuffed chair.

  “Some deal,” I commented.