Night Lady

by William Campbell Gault

  It doesn’t necessarily lead to lesbianism or homosexuality, but is quite often apparent in those afflictions.

  That wasn’t all he told me, but that was the trigger word and it revealed to me why the word funeral should have been bouncing around in my subconscious mind for so long.

  People of decorum are likely to observe the social proprieties unless some strong repugnance prevents it. Right?

  I had caught him at five-thirty, just before it was time to go home, and spent half an hour with him and now I was hungry, despite the remnants of my headache. As long as I was in his office, I had asked him about the headache and he had assured me it was to be expected and unless it persisted tomorrow, further medical exploration would not be required.

  I ate at Bar-B-Q Rancho and while I ate a Rancho Bar-B-Q, I thought about the earring. Earrings come in pairs, so far as I knew, and where was the other one?

  If they were Sheila’s earrings, why were they stolen in the first place? The killer, if my theory was correct, had enough money to buy better earrings than those. Once stolen, of course, the earring in Einar Hansen’s hand was an effective red herring, temporarily effective, at least. And in Sergeant Macrae’s mind Sheila Gallegan still had a lot of explaining to do about the one in Einar Hansen’s hand.

  But why were they taken in the first place?

  Add it up, Puma, all that is obvious, the lies and the attitudes and the conflicting statements of the participants and the bystanders and try to see why a pair of ordinary seventeen-dollar earrings were stolen.

  Perhaps the killer thought they were more valuable than that? Even if they were, what difference would it make?

  Did the killer know they were Sheila’s?

  Sheila knew they were Sheila’s.

  According to my theory, Sheila was not the killer.

  So go back: did the killer know they were Sheila’s?

  It hit me, then, an interesting and highly plausible theory, and I went to the phone booth next to the cashier’s desk.

  I called the Venice Station, but Macrae had gone home. I told them it was important and they gave me his home phone number.

  I told him, “I’ve got a pretty strong hunch and I want some people rechecked, some neighbors and friends.”

  “Let’s hear the hunch, first.”

  “No,” I said. “You’ve got to ride with me, Sergeant. This would require some shenanigans I’m sure no police officer would want to be a part of.”

  “Sure. And the three grand is yours, too, huh?”

  “Goodness me,” I said in surprise, “hasn’t that offer of Devine’s been withdrawn?”

  “Don’t get cute,” he said. “You haven’t the build for it. We pussyfoot around, getting the case strong enough for trial, and you confront the killer and get three grand.”

  “Sergeant,” I said nobly, “five hundred of it to the Pension Fund when and if I collect.”

  “Okay.”

  “Providing,” I added, “that when you get a confession, if any, Devine is notified so he can have his picture taken at the station. Maybe for that kind of publicity, I could even milk another five hundred out of him for the Pension Fund.”

  “Lord, you’re a cynical man. Okay.”

  “How about Harvest?” I asked. “Got a case?”

  “God knows. He is a slippery one and one hell of a lawyer. And the influential friends that man has got — ”

  “He’s got a broken hand,” I said consolingly, ‘and I have a strong feeling that he’ll have more than that if he ever tangles with a certain man who has reason to hate him.”

  “What certain man? What are you witholding, Puma?”

  “Only what I must, Sergeant. Only enough to keep me functioning and solvent. Our only cooperative concern is murder; let’s stick with that.” I took a breath. “How about Koski and Kranyk?”

  “Koski died. That will take care of Kranyk.”

  “He didn’t mean to shoot his buddy.”

  “Ain’t that too damned bad? Are you crying for him?”

  “You’re a cynical man, Sergeant. Check these people now, the same neighbors you checked before and the same servants.”

  It was now seven o’clock and I drove home. My headache was almost gone but I didn’t feel well, by any means. I got home at seven-twenty and took a hot and soapy shower and my aches went away and some of my tensions. I had some things to explain carefully and delicately and perhaps they could be explained better in bed. I added a touch of the manly cologne a client had given me.

  She came before eight, bringing another bottle of Jack Daniels. Or maybe it was the same bottle, for all I knew. She said, “You look worried. Bad day?”

  “Bad day. What’s my attraction, Deb?”

  “To me? Or to Sheila Gallegan?” I said nothing, waiting patiently.

  “You’re — both gentle and virile,” she finally answered. “That isn’t a very common combination in men.” She kicked off her shoes. “And of course you’re always-available. Would insatiable be a better word?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “No more questions?” she asked mockingly. “Do you have a cigarette handy?”

  I reached into the pocket of my terry-cloth bathrobe and brought out a cigarette. I lighted it for her and said, “You’re a big girl now, aren’t you? Ready to face the world and the facts?”

  She nodded. She unbuttoned the top three buttons of her blouse.

  I asked, “Do you have a pair of jet pendant earings?”

  She took a deep breath and stared at me.

  “You’re a big girl now,” I reminded her. “Do you have a pair of jet pendant earings?”

  She nodded gravely. “You know everything now, don’t you?”

  I shrugged. “Curt should have gone to the funeral. A man of his decorum is expected to observe the proprieties. Particularly after he made such a great public show of being a friend and admirer of Duncan Guest’s. Curt hated Duncan Guest, didn’t he?”

  She nodded solemnly. She put the cigarette carefully on an ashtry and bent over to peel off her stockings.

  “Einar knew he hated him, because Einar was close to Guest. He knew Guest was despicable in Curt’s eyes. That’s what gave Einar his lead.” I paused. “And caused his death.”

  She looked up to stare at me, the fragile stockings still in her hand. She put them silently and timidly on a chair.

  “And,” I went on, “Curt feels protective toward you, whether you know it or not. And he must have known what a degraded, double-gaited piece of scum this Duncan Guest was. The night he killed him, he saw those earrings in Guest’s apartment and thought they were yours. He certainly didn’t want the police to find them there and trace them to you. So he took them along. Later, when he learned they weren’t yours, he used one of them as a red herring on Einar Hansen. Because if the police thought a woman had killed Guest, an earring in the hand of Einar Hansen might lead them to think the same woman killed Hansen.”

  Deborah didn’t look surprised, only shocked and sad. She unbuttoned the rest of her blouse and hung it neatly on the chair. She said quietly, “I’m sure Curt didn’t know they were Sheila’s earrings.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t. When did you — first learn he was a transvestite?”

  She took a deep breath. “A few years ago. I was out one night, walking along the path above the house there. And one of the drapes in Curt’s bedroom was partially open.” She looked at the floor. “I saw him in a black chiffon dress, wearing a wig. Later, when he was away on a trip, I went through his bedroom for half a day before I found this secret closet.”

  “Does he know you know?”

  She shook her head, fumbling with the stuck zipper on her skirt. “I doubt it.”

  “Is that when you started going to the psychiatrist?” She nodded.

  “Did you suspect all along he was the murderer?”

  She looked up from the stuck zipper to face me candidly. “I had such a small suspicion, my rational mind told me it was ab
surd. But I had to know. I’m a big girl now, and I have to know.”

  “Didn’t the police check him for that night?”

  She nodded. “And Greg Harvest was his alibi. As a matter of fact, when Greg swore he was with him at the time, I thought I might have been wrong.”

  “Greg lied for him? Then Greg must have known.”

  She said musingly, “Who can tell what Greg Harvest knows or doesn’t know? He’s a strange man.” She straightened, once more ignoring the zipper. “Tell me honestly, now, do the police have to know?”

  I gave it some thought, or pretended to. I didn’t want her to think I was callous. While I pretended to think, she went back to the zipper and conquered it. She put the skirt carefully on the same chair that held her other clothes.

  She stood there quietly in white lace panties and wired bra, studying me, and waiting for my answer.

  “The police have to know,” I said finally. “Einar Hansen and Guest weren’t much. But in their unique ways, they were human beings. So Curt’s fate is not ours to judge, it’s the law’s, and if we are mature, we support the law. Can you understand that, Deb?”

  “I can understand that,” she said.

  “Anything I can do to keep it quiet as possible, I will do,” I promised her. “We’ll keep the newspapers toned down. You know I’ll do anything I can for you, don’t you, Deborah?”

  “I know you will,” she said. She turned around. “And you can start by unhooking my bra.”

  We were back in the airless room, Macrae and I. Adonis was in another room with his body make-up on, having his picture taken in a number of poses, holding the check in all of them.

  I said, “You picked up Huntington. Have you got Harvest, too?”

  “And how. Right where the hair is short. We’ve got that man in a knot at the moment. He doesn’t know whether to spit or go blind. He can’t be sure right now where his best interests lie.”

  “Once he learns,” I said, “that’s the way he’ll go. How about Curtis Huntington?”

  Macrae shook his head wonderingly. “Damnedest thing, I think he’s worried more about his sister’s reputation than his own neck. He claims that angle about the trasver — what the hell is that word?”

  “Transvestitism,” I answered. “It means an urge to wear the clothes of the opposite sex. Like women in riding habits and men in silk Hawaiian sport shirts.”

  ‘Well, this went a little further than that, huh?”

  “Yes. What’s his complaint?”

  “It will look freakish, he claims,” said Macrae. “That won’t bother him, where he is likely to be, but it will reflect on his sister and he won’t confess unless we promise to keep that angle from the newspapers.”

  “Promise him,” I said. “It will protect his sister and get the confession from him. And consider, Sergeant, where the confession from him will put Harvest, lying to a police officer.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Ah, yes.” He smacked his lips.

  “And maybe he’d throw in a little donation to the Pension Fund,” I pointed out cynically.

  “Watch your tongue,” he said harshly. “That would be crooked.”

  “Huh!” I said.

  “And exactly what does that mean?”

  “It’s your word. You threw it at me; I’m now throwing it back. Huh!”

  A uniformed man came in and said, “Harvest wants to deal. How about it? Detective Levine asked me to ask you.”

  “I’ll answer for the Sergeant,” I told the officer. “The answer is huh! Right, Sergeant?”

  Macrae nodded. “But I want to talk with Huntington. Joe, here, thinks we should protect his sister’s name as much as possible, and we have reason to humor Joe. I think we can permit Mr. Huntington a few — minor graces.”

  “Because of the Pension Fund,” I explained to the officer.

  His face lighted up and he looked at Macrae. “Is he going to do it, Sergeant?”

  Macrae colored. There was a silence. The officer suddenly looked uncomfortable. For the first time since I’d met him, Macrae actually looked embarrassed.

  He said gruffly to the officer, “You may go. Beat it!”

  The officer went out and Macrae looked at the top of his desk.

  “Something is rotten in Venice,” I said quietly. “Confess, oh invulnerable one. Something has happened to shame you in front of me.”

  He looked at me rigidly.

  “It’s about the Pension Fund,” I said. “This sea of red faces started when that officer asked if I was going to do it. Do what, man of impeccable integrity?”

  “We’ll keep her name out of it, Joe,” he said softly. “Because you want us to, Miss Huntington’s name will stay spotless.”

  “And for this,” I asked cynically, “what does Joe Puma do?”

  Some of his blush was gone but his voice was timid. “Well, this idea of Devine contributing to the Pension Fund was your idea, not mine. I didn’t even voice it to Devine.”

  “One of your lackeys did,” I said, “or Devine wouldn’t be down here, drowned in flash bulbs. Carry on, Sergeant.”

  Macrae took a deep breath. “Devine heard about your fight with Petalious. It’s some kind of an obsession with him, the way he feels about Petalious, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Mike broke his arm, once.”

  “Some time ago. Devine thinks he’s better now. He’s almost pathological about how much better he is. If you’ll go against him, he says, he’ll contribute five hundred to the Pension Fund, just for trying him out, Joe. And in the one-in-a-million chance that you might win, he’ll up his donation to one thousand dollars.”

  I smiled, enjoying the discomfiture of dour Sergeant Macrae. I said. “Devine isn’t better than he was; he’s worse. Ever since he left college and got into the fraudulent end of this game, he’s got into bad habits. Real wrestlers never leave their feet, Sergeant. They don’t have these flying blocks or tackles, these running head butts. They stay solid and use their leverage and their skill. This Devine is off his feet too much and that would make him vulnerable.”

  “How, Joe?”

  “The same way a bull is. That’s all he is, a golden-headed bull.”

  Macrae said hopefully. “It would be quite a test, a bull against a stud. It would be interesting to watch.”

  “I wouldn’t be a stud against Devine,” I said. “I’d be a bull fighter. We adjust to the ground and the enemy, Sergeant. But there is no ground to defend, is there? This is a pipe dream. Where would we fight?”

  Macrae looked past me, hope now stronger than the embarrassment in his face. “The boys thought we could use the pistol range. It’s well lighted.” He coughed. “After the reporters have gone, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, “or you’d be back to driving a truck for a living. Most of those pistol ranges are well timbered, pretty solid. How about this one?”

  “Two walls of solid four-by-fours, Joe. You’ll do it?”

  “For Deborah Huntington and the Pension Fund,” I said profoundly, “for a theory I have about the idiocy to which a great college sport has been degraded and for the continuance of the myth and legend of Joe Puma, I will do this.”

  “After the reporters have gone, of course,” he said.

  “Of course, Sergeant,” I said gently.

  The lights were good and two of the walls were thick. One of the other walls filled with baled straw and the wall where the shooters stood was occupied by a waist-high counter.

  Adonis wore his wrestling tights. I had taken off my shoes and jacket and shirt. He smiled confidently at me and around at the half dozen officers who stood behind the counter. He was confident he had learned all the tricks since leaving college. He had learned the tricks, I was sure, but he had forgotten how to wrestle. The tricks were not wrestling tricks, they were theatrical tricks designed to titillate an ignorant audience.

  He seemed bathed in a golden glow, his muscle bulging, his light hair a halo, his arms swinging freely and eagerly. Catc
h as catch can and I would be permitted to do everything but bite and scratch.

  Somebody hit a pan, and he came for me, lightly, carefully, his eyes on my face but missing nothing. I thought of the night he cried and hoped I could once again bring him to that adolescent emotional state. My best hope was to frustrate him enough to make him wild, to bring him to the moment of truth I planned for him.

  When he was four feet away, still out of the reach of an arm, he paused, and I feinted, pretending to go around him to the right.

  He rushed and he rushed toward the way I feinted. I stepped quickly to the left as he rushed and I kept my ring hand rigid and open as I chopped down savagely as the back of his neck.

  It was no neck, it was a muscled pillar of steel, and my hand bounced off harmlessly and I tried to spin with him, but he had turned quickly and he had my right hand in his, and he swung me.

  He threw me, all two hundred and twenty pounds of me, and I rolled on the hard floor and as I reached my back, I saw him dive.

  That could have been the end, right here. But my knee went up automatically and it caught him in the groin as he dove, and he grunted and fell to the right, reaching for my arm again.

  I didn’t let him have the arm, but I gave him the hand. I gave it to him balled into a fist and I gave it to him in the teeth. I felt a tooth go and his cry was hoarse as I tried to scramble to my feet.

  He must have been wearing a cup or that knee would have taken his strength. It hadn’t taken any strength. His big hand had my ankle before I could completely gain my feet, and I went sprawling and he scampered along the floor with one fist raised.

  I moved my head enough to miss the full fury of the blow, but it caught me on the cheek and the cheekbone was chipped, I felt sure. I didn’t try to look good; my strategy had gone awry, and I threw my left hand out wildly to ward him off as I rolled for clearance in undignified retreat.

  He came scrambling after me as our audience watched, silent as mutes. This was no wrestling audience and I hoped it wouldn’t make Adonis realize different tactics must be employed in a match of this kind, away from the television cameras.

  I prayed that the ham in him would remain constant. I needed his need for the theatrical.