by Wade Miller
Host gave Dixie a flashing look. “All right,” he said. “I forgot about it.”
“Huh!” sniffed the girl. Her blondined hair bounced slightly as she tossed her head.
“Well?” prompted Clapp.
Host looked at the floor. “I did have an argument with Solez tonight, but I still didn’t know him very well. He was snooping around the dressing rooms before the show and I’m kinda nervous anyway around that time. There wasn’t anything to it.”
Clapp nodded his head slowly. “Any witnesses?”
Host gave Dixie another venomous look. “I don’t know — I didn’t think so at the time.”
“You have an alibi for the time of the murder?”
“When was that?”
“Somewhere around the last strip number.”
Host said, with only a momentary hesitation, “Sure — sure, I gotta alibi. I was backstage waiting for the finale.”
A cool voice said from across the stage, “While you’re having a heart to heart talk, why don’t you tell the lieutenant everything?”
As one, they turned and looked at Shasta Lynn.
4. Sunday, September 24, 12:40 A.M.
THE BLONDE DANCER didn’t move from her position at the rear of the stage near the curtains. She stood there, easily, gracefully, with one hand held lightly against her hip. With the other she held a lighted cigarette. She was fully dressed in a clinging black dress, street length, with gold accessories that matched her hair. A small black hat with a short veil completed the costume.
“Isn’t she ever natural?” Laura Gilbert whispered in Walter James’s ear.
Shasta Lynn moved forward toward them, walking with a sleek grace. Walter James again felt the wrongness about her. He squeezed Laura Gilbert’s arm gently. “Does she seem odd to you?” The girl looked puzzled.
Clapp said, “You’re Miss Lynn.”
She didn’t smile at him. Her actions seemed to have no trace of coquettishness. “That’s right.”
“Maybe you’d better explain that remark of yours.”
Dixie took Clapp by the arm, tugging at the sleeve. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, Lieutenant — ”
“Let me be the judge,” Clapp said and removed Dixie’s hand from his arm.
Danny Host made an impatient gesture with his arms and let out his breath explosively. “Hell’s bells!” he said. “I’ll come clean, Lieutenant.”
“Come all the way this time,” suggested the big man.
“There isn’t much to tell. I was backstage like I said, except that I stepped out into the alley to have a cigarette.”
“When was this?” asked Clapp sharply.
“Oh, a few minutes before her strip.”
“How long were you there?”
The comedian frowned. “I don’t know. I didn’t look at my watch. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes.”
Clapp said gently, “That’s a long cigarette.” Host shrugged and looked away. Clapp considered him thoughtfully.
Dixie said suddenly, spitefully, “You might ask Miss High and Mighty just why she’s been so chummy with Ferdy.”
Shasta Lynn turned her head slowly and looked at the chubby dancer. Dixie involuntarily moved back a pace.
Clapp said, “I was getting around to that. Solez thought pretty highly of you, Miss Lynn.”
“Yes,” said Shasta Lynn evenly, “we were good friends.”
“Uh-huh, that’s very nice,” the big man continued. “But just why, Miss Lynn? You’ve got the reputation of being pretty standoffish. You don’t mix very well. The girl here called you Miss High and Mighty just a minute ago. It doesn’t seem right that you should be friendly with a little Filipino doorman.”
Shasta Lynn’s eyes behind the veil were impenetrable. “There isn’t a law about where you choose your friends, is there, Lieutenant?”
“No, I can’t say there is. But — was he only a friend, Miss Lynn?”
Silence vibrated across the stage. Walter James watched the dancer’s hand at her side curl into a claw. Her mouth twisted. She spat at the big detective, “Keep your dirty mind to yourself!” Her hand was coming up like a striking tiger paw when a small girl in a nondescript brown and white polka-dot dress materialized beside them. She put her pale face and enormous eyes between the two.
“You leave her alone!” Her voice was high-pitched, off-key. Clapp, unmoved by the tableau, cocked an inquiring eyebrow at Felix. The plump detective shrugged his shoulders. “She’s not even one of the cast. Just another of Shasta’s friends.”
Clapp turned back to the small girl. Her hair was mouse-colored and unattractively arranged. “What’s your name, miss?”
Greissinger said nervously, “She’s Madeline Harms.”
“Let her tell it.”
Shasta Lynn said, “I’m all right, Madeline.” She seemed to have recovered her poise. She stroked the smaller girl’s arm soothingly. Madeline looked at her uncertainly. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. But I don’t like to have people say things like that. Madeline’s a friend of mine. She gets upset easily.”
“He doesn’t have any right talking to you like that, Shasta,” said Madeline. Her eyes remained fixed on the dancer’s face.
Greissinger said nervously, “No one’s fighting.”
“If I’m wrong, I apologize,” said Clapp. “But I’m investigating a murder and it’s starting out like one hell of a job. I haven’t the time to go easy on people’s feelings. Do you have an alibi for the time just before your number, Miss Lynn?”
Greissinger’s voice was high-pitched. “What’s all this talk about alibis for my people, Lieutenant? Ferdy was killed in the audience, not on the stage.”
Clapp raised his voice. “You might as well all hear this. Solez was killed while the show was going on.” He indicated the girl by Walter James’s side. “Miss Gilbert here has the idea that someone came in and sat down by the dead man toward the end of the show and then got up and left. It was probably the murderer.”
“How does that tie us in?” Danny Host asked him.
Clapp looked around slowly. “The murderer knew Solez’ habits pretty well. That’s obvious. That doesn’t necessarily mean somebody who works here, but it might. And there are passages on both sides of the stage that lead into the house. It wouldn’t have been too hard to duck out after a number, plant a knife in Solez and come back in time for the next spot.”
An excited murmur broke out at this. Clapp turned again to Shasta Lynn. “So what’s your alibi, Miss Lynn?”
“I have to powder my body before my number.” The dancer gave him an icy smile. “It takes about ten minutes.”
“Any witnesses?”
“Madeline always helps me.” Madeline nodded her head vigorously. She clung to Shasta’s arm with both hands.
“Very neat,” said Clapp. “You clear each other that way.” He shrugged. “Well, we’ll see. Felix, did you get the names and addresses?” The dapper detective nodded. “Then let’s go home.” He turned toward the empty house.
Greissinger padded after him. “Lieutenant,” he wheezed anxiously, “the newspapers — if they get this, it’s gonna be tough on me — ”
Clapp rubbed the back of his neck and squinted his gray eyes wearily. “Okay,” he said, “it won’t be the Grand Theater. It won’t even be a burlesque joint — just a downtown musical showhouse. That’ll go on just as long as you play ball with me.”
The oily manager smiled his gratitude. “Thanks a million, Lieutenant. I won’t forget it. I’ll give you all the help I can. You can count on me.”
“All right, all right,” said Clapp heavily and went down the wooden steps into the theater. Walter James guided Laura Gilbert after him.
“Okay,” Felix said in back of them as they started down the steps. “That’s all for tonight. Don’t anybody leave town until you hear from us.” The voices rose again in chorus. The iron stage door banged open.
“Tired?” Walter James asked the girl.
She
gave him a weary smile. “Can I sit down for a minute?” She sank into a seat in the front row. She sighed. “Those terrible people!”
Walter James shrugged. “You can’t expect the four hundred in a place like this.” He glanced around at the empty theater. The blue curtain rose tiredly. The last of the cast were filing out the stage door. An old fellow in blue denim overalls came out on the edge of the stage and sat down. He swung his legs a little as he began pulling limp sandwiches from a paper bag.
Clapp came back down the aisle to them. “I’d like to see you both in the morning. Say about eleven. What’s your address, Miss Gilbert?”
“Address?” She rattled it off. “It’s at the corner of El Cajon and 45th Street, right behind Gilbert Realty.”
“That your father?”
“Yes — he’s J. A. Gilbert.”
“Mother?”
“No. Mom’s been dead for quite a while.”
“And you go to State?”
She nodded. Clapp looked at her steadily. “I know that some of the sorority girls like to do some slumming here, but they don’t usually come alone.”
The girl put a little “V” between her eyebrows. “It’s kind of hard to explain — to you. I was just downtown and — and — I wanted something to do. Something a little different. Life seems so slow sometimes.” She smiled at him. “I guess it sounds pretty silly.”
“No,” said Clapp. “Just let me tell you what I had to tell my youngster a while back. She’s a little older than you and she’s up at U. C. L. A. You can’t force excitement in life. You generally find out what excitement has been after it’s all over. You were lucky tonight — if sitting next to a dead Filipino was what you were looking for. But this Grand Theater business isn’t life. It’s all fake. You’d do better to sit back and wait for life to come to you. It’ll come along and it’ll probably be pretty good. Not that I really expect you or my girl to believe me and do just that. Have you got a way home?”
“Thank you,” she said softly. “My father wouldn’t have put it that way. And thanks for the ride, but Mr. James is going to run me out. He lives in my direction.”
Clapp quirked the corners of his mouth at the slight man and stood up, patting the sides of his gray-suited stomach wearily. “I’ll see you two tomorrow. God, I’m gonna hate to get up.”
Laura Gilbert smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt and joined Walter James in the aisle. Little half-moons were beginning to show beneath her eyes. “I feel a hundred years old,” she murmured.
“Would it help any to say that you don’t look it?” Walter James asked her. She smiled at him. He took her arm as they went up the aisle and into the lobby.
A black sedan and a black and white prowl car were double-parked on Market Street. Clapp moved toward the sedan where Felix was a dark shadow at the wheel.
Walter James took a firmer grip on the girl’s tweed elbow. “My car’s up this way.”
Across Market Street, from between two looming store fronts came a low “poom” and a brief blur of flame. Behind Walter James and the girl, the glass covering a full-length display of Shasta Lynn’s charms tinkled merrily to the sidewalk.
Walter James yanked the redhead to shelter behind a parked Chevrolet with one hand and clawed under his left lapel with the other. “Get down!” he yelled.
Clapp was shouting, “Get that block covered in a hurry!” Felix rocketed the sedan straight ahead for Fifth Avenue. The prowl car spun to the opposite curb. Gun first, a black-shirted cop leaped for the plateglass store front and edged along it toward the darkness between the two buildings. Reaching the dark slot, he waved his hand at the prowl car and plunged in. The driver of the black and white car watched the opening for an anxious second, then roared his vehicle around the Sixth Avenue corner.
Clapp appeared suddenly beside Walter James and the girl. “Hit you?”
Walter James took his handkerchief away from the girl’s head. The blood on it was brighter than her hair.
“Tipped her ear.”
“I’m all right,” Laura Gilbert said shakily. “I’m all right. It doesn’t even hurt.”
Clapp stated heavily, “One of you has plenty to tell me. And we’d better go down to headquarters and talk it over.”
He looked up at the full-length picture of the undraped Shasta Lynn. Where her navel had been was a small round hole.
“Got her dead center,” he said.
5. Sunday, September 24, 1:10 A.M.
CLAPP TOOK three cans of beer out of a small icebox. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s too darn late to consider this on duty time. Besides, we all need it.”
“I can’t think of anything I’d like more right now,” said the girl. She sat by Walter James in front of Clapp’s desk with her mirror propped against her purse; she was diligently combing her coppery-red hair over her left ear to hide the bright white bandage.
Clapp broke into the beer cans with a little grunting. “You like beer?” he asked. “So does my Sheila — but she always says she has to watch her figure.” He lowered himself into a creaky swivel chair and lifted his beer can in a toast. “What’ll it be?”
Walter James’s hand shook a little. “Confusion to our enemies,” he said soberly. Clapp glanced quickly at him; the spare little office was silent for a space as three people drank deeply. The room came to life again with Clapp’s satisfied “Ah!” Laura Gilbert peered into her mirror, inspecting her mouth. She turned her head from side to side, trying to decide about her hair.
“I’ve always had trouble with my ears,” she explained when she felt the four male eyes on her, “trying to make them look smaller than they really are. The bandage is the last straw. It’s like a flag.”
Walter James leaned back in his chair and laughed a wholehearted laugh. Laura Gilbert began to smile slowly and a moment later her tinkling laugh played an obbligato for the private detective’s harsher tones.
“Thanks,” she said softly. Her eyes met Walter James’s.
“My pleasure,” he said. “I was strung as tight as a violin string.”
Clapp said thoughtfully, “I never knew a girl yet who didn’t think that her ears were too big. My daughter’s the same way.”
The girl smiled, unconvinced. “But mine really are, Lieutenant.”
“Maybe it’s because anybody’s ears seem big if you look at them long enough,” said Walter James and brought out his cigarettes.
Clapp dug up his pipe, regarded it painfully and tucked it away in his desk drawer. “Been smoking too much lately,” he explained and leaned back. “Well, I never thought at eight o’clock Saturday morning that I’d still be here at one o’clock Sunday morning.”
Laura Gilbert laughed. “I never thought I’d be here at all.”
Clapp grinned engagingly across his desk. “And you, James — did you ever expect to be here?”
“I had considered the possibilities,” he admitted. “Right now I’m expecting us both to be arrested for keeping Miss Gilbert out so late.”
“You can forget that,” she said quickly. “I come and go as I please.”
“Nobody does that,” said Clapp, “and I’ve got a houseful of city guests back here as extreme examples. Nobody’s ever succeeded in being a completely free agent.”
“Keep an eye on me,” said Walter James.
“I will,” smiled Clapp agreeably.
The hall door, lettered AUSTIN CLAPP HOMICIDE, jolted open and Felix came into the office. He was still panting slightly.
“God, how I hate these cases with exercise,” he breathed.
“Have a beer and give us the word,” suggested Clapp. “We’re just getting settled for the night.”
Felix laid a pistol on the desk top and began rummaging in the icebox. “Here we are,” he announced. “Who’s got the opener?” Clapp produced it from the desk drawer. Felix jammed it into the can and took a long draught. “That’s better.”
Laura Gilbert leaned forward and pressed the edge of the desk with
both hands. “Well, tell us,” she insisted. “Did you catch anyone?”
“She’s taken over,” Clapp enlightened Felix with a grin.
“Oh,” said Felix. He sat on the edge of the desk. “Well, here’s my report. Nobody. Nobody seen or heard lurking around the neighborhood. Couple of footprints in the alleyway but they were scuffed up — might not have been fresh, anyway. There’s the gun — fancy job, .25 caliber, one shell fired. The slug we dug out of that picture’s — ah — tummy matches the rifling. No prints. Marks on the outside of the barrel indicate a silencer. We didn’t find any silencer. The gun hasn’t been cared for. Pretty grimy.” He stopped talking suddenly. “You people as tired as I am?”
Clapp picked up the gun, smelt it, inspected it closely. “Give it to the lab tomorrow. Maybe Larry can make something out of the junk in the boltheads.” He centered the pistol carefully on his blotter and watched the light reflections from its silvered surface as he talked.
“There are two possibilities, offhand. One is that whoever occupied that seat to the right of the Filipino boy began worrying about Miss Gilbert remembering something about him and hung around to take a potshot at her.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “Have you remembered that something yet, Miss Gilbert?”
“No — no, I’m not even sure there was anyone ever in that seat.”
“There had to be,” said Walter James. “You didn’t knife the man.”
“Why not?” said Clapp suddenly.
Two ivory cords stood out on the girl’s throat. “No,” she protested faintly. “I’ll try to remember. But I don’t think there’s anything to remember.”
Clapp stood up, a tower in the small office. “She had the opportunity, James. She has the strength. And she has the guts — look at the way she’s held up tonight.”
Walter James leaned on the desk with his elbows, his hands folded under his chin. The light blue eyes that looked up at Clapp were flat and icy.
“Quit acting like a dumb cop, Clapp. We’re both too old for that. You don’t have a case against the girl and you know it. You’re not after the girl and you know it. You’re after me.”
