Gat Heat

by Richard S. Prather

  “Well, come along inside, Mr. Scott,” she said. She sounded like a Southern gal. It wasn’t accent so much as the easy, drawly way she talked.

  I went along inside, and we got seated in the living room, she on an emerald-green couch and me on a big greenish-blue ottoman near it.

  I asked her if she knew about Mr. Halstead, and she said, “Yes, isn’t it a terrible thing? He was the sweetest man.” She shook her head. “I just can’t conceive of anybody wanting to kill him like that.”

  “I was hoping maybe you could, Mrs. Riley. I mean, that you might know of someone he’d had trouble with, friction, business problems. Anything that might help explain why he was killed.”

  She shook her head some more.

  I went on, “That’s the trouble. So far, I get the picture of a man everybody liked, a man with no real enemies.”

  “That’s the way he was.”

  “Yeah. Only somebody, obviously, failed to share the general opinion of Mr. Halstead.”

  “Are you working for the police, Mr. Scott?”

  I’d showed her my wallet card at the door, but I said, “I’m a private investigator. Mrs. Halstead hired me last night while I was at her home. By the way, what time were you and Mr. Riley out there last night?”

  “Last night?” Her eyes widened. “Why, we weren’t there at all. We haven’t even seen George and Ann for—oh, for weeks now.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “What’s so funny about it?” she asked, just a little snappish.

  “I heard you’d dropped out there, that’s all. You and another couple, the Whists.”

  “Well, you certainly heard wrong … The Whists?”

  “Yeah.”

  She gave me a very funny look. “What did you mean by that?” she asked finally.

  “Nothing stupendous. A guy simply told me you’d been at the Halsteads’, that’s all. I think. Granted, he was about eleven sheets to the wind and changed his mind very speedily. In fact, he said he must have been thinking of some other time.”

  “Who was it? Who said that?”

  “One of the guests.”

  “Who?”

  “One of the guests,” I repeated.

  “I’ll bet it was Gregor.”

  Gregor was Mr. Bersudian. I didn’t tell her it hadn’t been Gregor. Instead I asked, “Why him?”

  “He drinks like a fish. Like a whale. It was him, wasn’t it?”

  “What difference does it make? Apparently the guy was full of beans as well as booze. Look, I’m not accusing you of anything, Mrs. Riley. I’m simply trying to determine the facts. If you and Mr. Riley were at the Halsteads’ place last night, fine. If not, also fine. Just tell me—”

  “We were not there.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  “Maybe the Whists were, but we weren’t. I wouldn’t know about them.” There was something a bit snappish in her tone again.

  “O.K.,” I said. “That settles that. I’d also like to ask the Whists, however. Can you tell me where I might find them?”

  “They live at the Norvue.”

  “Not any more, they don’t.”

  There she went again, giving me that glittery eye. “They don’t? They’ve moved?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where to?”

  “Beats me. They didn’t leave a forwarding address. I’m not even certain they’ve moved. All I know is they’re not at the Norvue now.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me.” Her lips curled a bit. “No, it doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “Never mind. It’s not important.”

  Here we go, I thought. She seemed to withdraw, sort of retreat inside herself. It was that bats-in-the-moonlight bit again. And it was beginning to sour on me.

  I stood up. “Look, Mrs. Riley. Maybe it’s not important. I’m not here bothering you just for fun, but because George Halstead got slammed in the head and died suddenly of scrambled brains. We’re talking about a murder.”

  She winced slightly when I said “scrambled brains,” and then looked at me as she bit on her lower lip.

  I went on, “If you truly don’t know a thing I might be interested in hearing, O.K. I’ll get out of here. But if you do, if you even think maybe you do—”

  She interrupted me. “It’s just that … well, I don’t think their name is Whist. That’s all.”

  “It might be plenty. What makes you think that?”

  “Well, I’m not really sure. And if I’m wrong, I’d hate to—”

  And so on. I told her not to worry, that I’d check everything out, but it took another minute of coaxing and even getting a little red in the face before she finally gave voice to her suspicions.

  They had met the Whists—“if that’s their real name”—four or five months ago. They went out together several times, then one afternoon the Rileys had picked them up at the Norvue to take them to lunch.

  “We went to the Beverly Hills Hotel,” she said. “For some reason, they didn’t want to go there. But we’d reserved a table and had a special lunch prepared and all. So we went anyway.”

  “How do you know they didn’t want to go there?”

  “They said so. Said they’d rather go somewhere else.”

  I nodded.

  “While we were having lunch, a Mr. Edward Walles was paged. That’s Walles—W-a-l-l-e-s—Edward Walles,” she said.

  “Hold it a minute. This was over the p.a. system?”

  “One of those cute bellboys walked around saying there was a phone call for him.”

  “Well, either way, how could you tell the spelling of the name—particularly an odd one like that—just from hearing it pronounced?”

  “Oh. I must have left something out.”

  “I’ll bet you did.”

  “Two or three weeks before then, my husband and I were over at their place for dinner. At the Norvue, I mean. We, well, we were playing bridge. I was dummy and went to the bathroom. And I happened to see a stack of mail, two or three letters on the dresser. They were addressed to Mr. Edward Whist—only one of them wasn’t. It was addressed to Mr. Edward Walles.”

  “Uh-huh. So maybe it was delivered by mistake. It happens. I’ve got mail meant for people named Wangler and even Barshfergenweis. Occasionally the post office—”

  “But the letter had been opened. He wouldn’t open it if it wasn’t for him, would he?”

  “Not if he’s a nice fellow. But if it revealed some dark secret, I wouldn’t think he’d leave the thing lying out in plain sight.”

  “But it wasn’t. The letters were in the bedroom.”

  She stopped.

  I waited.

  Finally I said, “In the bedroom, huh?”

  She gazed at something depressing in the corner of the room. I looked, but couldn’t see it myself.

  In a moment she went on, “Did I say bedroom? Well, that’s because … because the letters were there. On the dresser. You see, the prettiest bathroom is just off the master bedroom. You have to go through it to get to the bathroom. Does it matter?”

  “Not to me, it doesn’t.”

  “There’s more than one bedroom. And I just happened to see the letters. My eyes just happened to fall on them.” She paused. “I wouldn’t want you to think I was an old snoop.”

  “Perish the thought. What else about the letters?”

  “That’s all. I’m explaining how I knew the spelling of the name when I heard Mr. Walles paged.”

  “Got it. O.K., go on.”

  “After they paged Mr. Edward Walles—we’re back at the Beverly Hills Hotel now, all right?”

  “Swell. Incidentally, when was this?”

  “Oh, about two months. Yes, almost exactly two months now.”

  “O.K. You’re ready for lunch.”

  “Yes. Well, when they paged this Walles, Ed and Marcelle looked at each other. You know.”

  “I’m not certain I do. You mean, that … told you something?�
��

  “It was the way they looked. Like they weren’t really looking at each other.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She was disappointed in me, I think.

  She eyed me for a second or two, then said, “It was—oh, goodness. A woman would know. The important thing is right after that Ed excused himself and left the dining room.”

  “Maybe he had to go to the, ah, the master bath?”

  “No, he didn’t. I had to go myself, and on the way I saw Ed picking up one of the house phones. So he was taking that call for Edward Walles.”

  “It’s certainly a possibility. One of approximately three-point-two thousand possibilities.”

  “It’s what he was doing, you can bet. After all, there was that letter to him at the Norvue.”

  “Yes, you’ve got a point there.”

  She did at that.

  I mulled it over, then looked at Mrs. Riley. “O.K. You make a pretty fair case. So why, if their name is Whist, would they claim to be named Walles?”

  She shrugged.

  I said, “Or it could be the other way around. Why, if their real name is Walles, would they tell you it was Whist?”

  She shrugged again. “For all I know, their real name may be Bargenshwaffer … or whatever you said.”

  “That might be it—I just made it up. Well, I’ll check on this, Mrs. Riley. Who knows, it might be very important.” I paused. “You don’t like the Whists much, do you?”

  She frowned, and I thought she wasn’t going to answer. But then she said, “Oh, Marcelle’s nice. I liked her. But I never did really like Ed. He’s pleasant and certainly good looking enough. But there was … oh, just something about him. Something I felt.”

  “Uh-huh. By the way, do you happen to have a picture of them?”

  She sure gave me a lot of twangy looks, this one. “Why did you say that?” she asked me.

  “Well, I know roughly what he and his wife look like, but a photo might help me find them. As the Chinese say, one picture worth ten thousand word.”

  “Do the Chinese say that?”

  “Ah—somebody, who cares? I just want to make things as easy on myself as I possibly can, since there is something very twitchy in the air … Never mind. I thought, perhaps you and the Whists, or Walleses, or Fergenbashers, or whoever they are, while getting snockered in a nightclub might have paid one of those leggy camera girls to preserve for all time the memory—”

  “Oh, no. We never did that. I don’t have any pictures of them. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. Can you think of anything else about them—or other friends of the Halsteads, for that matter—that perhaps I should know?”

  She couldn’t.

  On the Pasadena Freeway, heading back toward L.A., I reached under the Cad’s dash and grabbed the mobile phone, checked with information for a phone in the name of Edward Walles. There wasn’t any listed, so I put a call through to my own number in the Hamilton Building.

  Hazel, the cute and bouncy little gal on the switchboard down the hall from my office, answered, “Sheldon Scott, Investigations.”

  “Oh, it is not,” I said. “It’s Hazel, down at the end of the hall.”

  “I’m surprised you remember my name,” she said. “It’s been so long since I saw you here at work, I thought you’d died.”

  “You poor kid. How you must have suffered—”

  “Actually, it was kind of a relief. What do you want, Shell?”

  “You, You, you, you! Don’t I keep telling you? Hazel! I—”

  “Shell, it’s time I told you the truth. I’m still a virgin.”

  “O.K., I’m trying to find a guy named Walles.” I spelled the name, adding, “Edward Walles, wife’s name Marcelle. Maybe. These might be people who use half a dozen names.”

  “Are they in Los Angeles?”

  “You’ve got me. I’m hoping they’re still in the L.A. or Hollywood area. Last-known address the Norvue, registered as Mr. and Mrs. Whist. Left there about four weeks ago, present address unknown.”

  “All right. Hospitals and morgues?”

  “Might check the morgue. Don’t waste time on the hospitals for now.”

  “It’s an unusual name. That might help. Where will you be, Shell, if you’re not in the car?”

  “I’m not sure at the moment. Keep trying the Cad—I’ll call again if I’m going to be gone for a while.” I paused. “Hazel, you must be kidding.”

  She pulled the plug.

  It took her half an hour.

  During that time I stopped at the Norvue, but didn’t learn anything more. None of the people I talked to had an address for the Whists, and the name Walles didn’t mean a thing to any of them. From there I drove on out Sunset to Beverly Hills and the Beverly Hills Hotel. I didn’t find my quarry, but I did at least pick up the scent.

  Mr. and Mrs. Edward Walles had occupied a suite at the hotel for five months, and had checked out two months previously. More precisely, three days less than two months.

  Clearly, just about the time of the Rileys’ luncheon there with the “Whists.”

  It was becoming interesting.

  Especially since—if the Whists were also the Walleses—they’d been paying for a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel even while living, at least part of the time, in the Norvue.

  When the attendant brought my car I climbed in and let it roll down the curving drive to its end, stopped and waited to swing into the traffic on Sunset.

  I’d noticed the guy standing at the right edge of the drive, lighting a cigarette. But what the hell, he was just a guy lighting a cigarette. At least he was then. But not when, as I gawked to my left eyeing the traffic stream, he opened the Cad’s door and slipped onto the seat.

  Then he was a small, thin-faced and thin-lipped guy with a history of youthful chicken pox mapped topographically on his young-old face and a heavy gun in his right fist—the usual gun, the big one, the cliché gun, a Colt .45 automatic. Cliché, maybe, but not comical. They can just about cut a man in two.

  And I knew Kestel—that was the creep’s name, Lester Kestel, commonly called Bingo for some reason I never took the trouble to discover—had cut up a few.

  He pulled the Cad’s door shut with his free hand, and I felt my breath stop as I waited for the moment to take him—or to try to take him.

  He saw my eyes flick from the automatic to his face, and said quietly, “You better look behind you, Scott.”

  6

  Something in Kestel’s tone carried conviction. Merely his gun carried conviction, but it wasn’t likely he’d have been standing there alone without a car nearby. A car and somebody at the wheel. Even before I looked I heard the soft swish of brakes being pressed and the faint sound of springs creaking.

  A heavy black sedan, a new Lincoln, had pulled up on my left in the driveway. A hook-nosed, meaty-faced man was at the wheel; another guy sat on the driver’s right, looking at me through the open window. I couldn’t see all of his gun, only about an inch of the barrel and the fat round doohickey screwed over the muzzle. It was a silenced heat, a dumb-gat.

  I looked back at Kestel. “Yeah, that big one of yours would make a lot of noise, wouldn’t it?”

  “Prob’ly hurt our ears,” he said.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Questions, questions,” he said. “Grab a left into Sunset.”

  I looked back at the Lincoln. I didn’t recognize the driver, but I knew the short, thick, square-faced sonofabitch smiling at me over his silenced pistol.

  “Hello, Stub,” I said. “I kind of hoped the worms had got you by now.”

  His smile didn’t change. But it hadn’t been much of a smile to begin with. He had an eyetooth out on the left of his smile. Stub Corey could afford to pay a dentist for repairs to his chops, too. I guess he was just a slob. Hell, I know he was a slob. Anyhow, that eyetooth had been missing, to my knowledge, for two years.

  That was how long it had been since I’d had anything
to do with these guys. More than that. Even then we hadn’t tangled head-on, hadn’t shot at each other or even pounded on each other. I’d tagged one of their friends on a grand larceny rap and he was, so far as I knew, still doing his bit at Q.

  He’d been a minor cog in the group to which Stub and Bingo belonged, not much loss, and there’d been no real friction generated. Just a lot of words, a few threats from the boys. Of course, it hadn’t made them love me more.

  I turned back to Kestel. “How’s Jimmy these days?”

  “Mr. Violet to you, Scott.”

  “Mr. Manure to me,” I said. That’s a loose translation of a most unpalatable comment, but when with hoods you talk the hoods’ lingo, the language they understand.

  He turned the gun’s muzzle away from me, and let me look at its flat side. “One more crack and you get it in the teeth, Scott.”

  Most likely he meant it. But if he swung that heater at me I was going to pop him. And very likely get shot in the back of the head. Nonetheless I was going to pop him.

  “Sunset,” he said.

  I put the car in gear, eased down on the gas pedal and took a left, rolling along close to the divider in the middle of the road.

  “Right lane for now,” Kestel said.

  It was O.K. with me. For the moment, at least. I wanted a little time to think. I eased into the right lane, wondering what the hell. Why were these creeps and musclemen hard-boiling me—after all this time?

  Also, how had they happened to pick me up here at the Beverly Hills Hotel? Tipped by somebody? Or on my tail for a while? I didn’t expect Bingo to tell me all of that, but maybe he’d tell me a little.

  “Nice morning for a drive,” I said. “Where we going?”

  “Questions, questions. But it ain’t no secret. Don’t worry. We ain’t gonna kill you.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Not unless you get jerky. But I like the way you’re taking it, Scott. Just tool along nice and easy like this, and we won’t kill you.”

  “Bag the bigmouth, Bingo. You should know by now it doesn’t impress me. If it’s no secret, tell me where the hell we’re going.”

  “Jimmy wants a little gab with you.”