Deadly Weapon

by Wade Miller

  Kevin’s tones were so icily formal that Walter James grinned in spite of himself. “Well, it isn’t any more. We’re not married, you know. We’re not even engaged. I can go where I want to and with anyone I want to.”

  “Sure you can, Laura,” Newcomb agreed patiently, in the tone proper for reasoning with a small child. “But grow up a little bit, will you?”

  Walter James expected for a moment that the girl would stamp her foot in exasperation. Instead, she merely drew herself a little straighter. “Please find somebody else to worry about.” The light car rocked from the impact as she slammed the door. Walter James silently helped her into the Buick.

  As they rolled forward, he looked at her angry profile. “Relax.”

  She moved over on the seat and squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry, Walter — I never felt so much like an infant in my life!”

  “I thought your poise was wonderful,” he said gravely.

  “Oh, did you?” she said and considered this for a moment. Then she looked at his face in the half-light. “Oh, you’re laughing at me!” He confessed the crime. She sighed. “I don’t mind — it’s one way of making you pay attention to me.” She gave an anticipatory shiver. “Tell me all about what happened today. Did you see Shasta Lynn? What’s she like?”

  “Let’s just be a couple of people tonight. There’s a pretty good murder mystery on at the Fox.”

  She wrinkled her forehead and peered at his profile. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you? Walter, I’ve got to know!”

  He smiled forlornly. “Yes. I’m teasing you. I’m glad there isn’t much to tell.”

  Kevin looked disappointed.

  “And after that, can we be normal?” he asked.

  “I suppose so,” she said. “But I don’t feel like being normal when I’m with you, Walter.”

  “I went out to La Mesa about eleven. Both the women were there — Shasta and this Madeline Harms. They had refilled a cigarette box in a hurry while I was coming in. I let them watch me collect the tobacco scraps in the bottom of the box and intimated that I was going to turn it in to the police lab. They weren’t sure I was connected with the local cops or the government so they got a little excited. Particularly the Harms girl.”

  “What’s she really like?” asked Kevin.

  “She’s not so much — a little on the impressionable side. She spilled most of it. It was just the way we figured it. The Filipino was a go-between cutting a little out of each shipment to get in good with the big blonde.”

  “Had they kept marijuana cigarettes in the box?”

  “Clapp ran a test on it this afternoon. I haven’t seen him, so I don’t know how it turned out. But it’s going to turn out yes.”

  “How about my father?” the girl asked in a low voice.

  “No answer.”

  “There has to be an answer. I haven’t thought about anything else all day.”

  Walter James said, “Look. I tried to edge into the subject of your father from every direction. Believe me, I was as oblique as all hell. But no soap. They didn’t pick up their cues. All these women did was make me positive that your father has no possible chance of getting involved because of this killing. As far as I could see, he didn’t even enter Shasta Lynn’s mind all the time I was there.”

  Kevin looked at him soberly. “Then you didn’t get anywhere at all.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. With Shasta Lynn thinking that the law is on her pretty tail, she’s going to take a lot less interest in whatever might be going on between her and your father. And vice versa for your father.”

  She blinked and turned her head to one side. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Furthermore, think of this: we’re way ahead of the cops on this thing. We’re going to stay that way — know everything first and be able to take steps to keep your father out of this. Clapp hasn’t a thing on Shasta Lynn but the weed angle and he can’t possibly learn about your father through that. First, because I couldn’t and, second, because he doesn’t dare push things half as far as I did this morning.”

  He had one hand lying along his trouser leg as he steered down Park Boulevard. She slipped her hand under it. “You’re pretty clever,” she said gratefully.

  “It all follows. When your father learns that Shasta is a popular girl in the eyes of the law, he’ll cool off in a hurry. I’ll give you odds it’s all over.”

  “It seems so quick. Last night — big problem. Tonight — nothing.”

  “What do you mean, tonight — nothing? We’ve got a date.” She giggled.

  They were just another couple going into the Fox. Walter James thought: maybe we even look happier than most. He bought three loge seats at the box office. He left one ticket with the glass-caged girl, instructing her to present it to the first heavy-set man who tried to pay admission.

  Kevin laughed at that. “You’re sweet,” she said. “I hope he hasn’t seen the picture.”

  “Cops can’t have everything,” he told her.

  They held hands for two hours. The picture was about a lovable old doctor who with small-town shrewdness, geniality and homely philosophy brought a murderer to justice and two sweethearts to the point of matrimony. When the second feature came on, they tiptoed out.

  “Not much like you, was he?” Kevin commented in the lobby.

  “Not much,” said Walter James. “I look like hell in a cracker barrel.”

  “Where to now?”

  “Home. You’ve been staying out too late lately.”

  “Don’t throw it up to me, Walter. I couldn’t possibly sleep tonight.” She made her eyes pleading.

  “You’ll have every opportunity. I have to stand in good with your father. And don’t pout at me, redhead — I’m wise to your tricks.” She stuck out her tongue at him.

  The lights in the front room were still burning when he braked the Buick at 45th Street and El Cajon.

  “This is the earliest I’ve come in for months,” Kevin pointed out. “Dad’s still up.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I like to make a good impression.”

  “I think you’d have the common decency to race me around the block. I’m just not tired,” Kevin wheedled.

  “Race at my age!” He laughed like the old doctor in the movie. “You forget, miss, I’m not as spry as I used to be.”

  “You’re young, Walter,” she said solemnly. “In a couple of ways, you’re younger than I am.”

  He grinned. “Women always pull that one on their men.”

  She was sitting very erect, facing him. Her hands twisted nervously in her lap. The street-lighted portions of her face looked puzzled. In a small voice, she asked, “Are you my man, Walter?”

  He said, “God, I hope so.” She came to him. Their mouths were together but he wasn’t conscious of her lips. He was conscious of her fingers clutching the back of his coat, of her knees clumsily bumping his, of the enveloping warmth of her, of the fresh smell that rose from her skin, but he wasn’t conscious of her lips.

  When they broke, she buried her cheek against his necktie. “Cigarette,” she said shakily. He found the pack somehow and lit one for her. The smoke rose in nervous little puffs. He couldn’t see her face.

  Her voice was muffled. “Keep your hands on me, Walter. Please.” He stroked the curve of her back. She was trembling. His fingers investigated under the copper hair and discovered how two spearheads of soft down ran along the back muscles of her neck. His lips pressed the satiny top of her head.

  She raised her face and sat up close to him. “It’s never been like this,” she whispered. “I guess I can’t take it.”

  “I guess that’s the way I feel. I don’t know how I feel.” He pulled her body against his and kissed her again. After a moment, she sighed and let her head lean against the back of the seat. They sat for a long time without saying anything, his fingers gently tracing designs on her face.

  “You know what?” she murmured. He kissed her eyelids.

  “What, redhe
ad?”

  “I’ve lost my cigarette.”

  He found it with his foot and ground it out.

  She breathed out happily. “We could have burnt up and I’d never have found out about it.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “You’ll never be able to get rid of me now.”

  “I’ll never try.”

  She kissed the back of his hand and held it against her cheek. “Walter. Please don’t make me go in.”

  “I don’t want to. But your father’s still up and our friend’s across the street and this isn’t the place for us right now, anyway.”

  “We can go somewhere else.”

  He shook his head. She beamed and sighed. “This is a wonderful place!”

  “Come on,” he said. He helped her out of the Buick and she slipped her arm around him under his coat as they strolled up the flagstones. Before they came into the half-circle glow of the porch light, he stopped.

  “Kevin, darling. Did you tell your father I was going to see Shasta Lynn today?”

  She looked at him wonderingly. “Why, no! I haven’t told him much of anything about you. Except how sweet you are.”

  “Well, just as insurance, just so he’ll be sure to find out, tell him when you go in that I was out to see her this morning. Do it casually, as though I were helping the cops on this marijuana case. I think that will finish everything for once and for all.”

  “All right, Walter. And thanks for doing all this for me. You’ve been a terrific help.”

  “I’m a born helpmeet,” he said.

  “Kiss me again. Then I’ll go in like a good little girl. Kiss me again to hold me over till tomorrow night.”

  They merged, a warm welcome in her body. Then they became two separate people again, whispering good night at the same instant. He watched her from outside the arc of porch light until the front door closed behind her.

  Walter James gunned the car noisily away from the curb, drove down El Cajon two blocks, and pulled sharply right into a side street. He left the car there and paced swiftly down a block, over two, up another block.

  The square whiteness of the house side facing 45th Street shone with street light. Carefully feeling his way along a row of bushes, he crossed in back of the house and circled the other side. This side was shadowed heavily. The window he wanted, the window nearest the telephone, was the first one from the front. He edged cautiously up to it and crouched by it at the foot of an oleander tree. The window was raised from the bottom about two inches. He sat on the backs of his ankles and watched the glow of the front windows on the lawn.

  Twenty minutes later the glow snapped off. A husky voice spoke behind him. “What’re you up to now, James?” It was the heavy-set plain-clothes man.

  “Come here,” whispered Walter James. The detective squatted down behind him. “Not so damn much noise! How’d you like the show?”

  “I asked what you were doing here,” whispered the heavy man doggedly.

  “Stick around and you’ll find out. How’d you like the show?”

  “Stunk. Why didn’t you go to the Spreckels?”

  “Thought you’d be interested in a murder mystery. Give you some pointers.”

  “We get along.”

  An orange-lit window at the rear of the house went black. “Probably the girl’s room,” murmured Walter James.

  “Oh.”

  The two men crouched motionless until their legs began to prickle. The heavy man whispered worriedly, “It’d be just my luck to have somebody steal the car. I left the keys — ”

  A small lamp broke the gloom of the window above them. Gilbert’s tall shadow appeared on the shade. It picked up the receiver. Walter James oozed his body closer to the window.

  Gilbert dialed once for the operator. His voice was low as he placed his call. The heavy man jerked Walter James’s coat. His lips spelled out, “I missed the number.”

  The slender man pointed to his ear and nodded reassuringly. Both men froze alertly against the side of the house as Gilbert began to speak. His voice, murmuring at first, became louder as he argued.

  “ — and I don’t care. I can’t get back to you over the radio, you know.”

  Silence as Gilbert listened.

  “Don’t ask me how I know. I just know. This end’s too hot right now to put in a new man. Shut it off for a while, Steve. That’s all. Shut it off.”

  He replaced the phone angrily. On the drawn shade, the two men could see the outline of his head peer around nervously as though he feared the receiver click had betrayed him. Then his shadow grew huge and the small lamp clicked out. They heard soft footfalls leaving the room.

  Walter James drew away, letting his breath out. With light steps he strode to the front of the house and out to the sidewalk. The heavy man was right behind him.

  “Okay. Now what did all that mean?”

  “Clapp will know,” said Walter James.

  “Yeah, but I’m not Clapp. I’m not in on everything. I’m just watching the girl.”

  “Did you catch everything he said?”

  “Most of it. As much as you did. Except the number. It was long distance, wasn’t it?”

  Walter James pulled a scrap of paper out of his wallet and scribbled on it. “Not so long. Here. Clapp will be interested in this, but don’t get him out of bed to tell him about it.”

  The detective held the paper up and squinted at it. “It’s a Tijuana number!”

  “That’s the answer. Have a good night’s rest.”

  “But what was that ‘shut it off, Steve, shut it off’ talk?”

  “Steve was playing his radio too loud.”

  “In Tijuana?” puzzled the heavy man, but Walter James had started off down the sidewalk.

  15. Tuesday, September 26, 10:45 A.M.

  KEVIN WAVED TO HIM madly from where she stood in front of the college’s Moorish-type administration building. As she scrambled into the Buick, she asked, “Where we going?”

  “South of the border,” said Walter James. He wore a lightweight powder blue suit and a Panama hat. “I took your tip about the weather and got this yesterday afternoon.”

  “You look good,” she said critically. He spun the car around on the visitors’ parking area and headed away from the school out College Way.

  “At least I won’t feel like I’ve been jerking weights all day. I think Clapp believes I have a guilty conscience because of the beads of perspiration on my forehead. He doesn’t know it’s my East Coast wraparounds.”

  “I don’t know why I’m holding these in my lap!” Kevin said suddenly and tossed her books in the back seat. “But why are we going to Mexico? And why me along, Walter?”

  “You ask more questions than I do, redhead,” he observed.

  “I know. But why?”

  “I have to see a man in Tijuana. You have to get me there.”

  “Turn right on El Cajon and go down to Jackson Grammar School. Turn left there to National City. From there on we can’t miss. Now why am I really along?”

  “Maybe I just wanted to have you here.” She tucked her feet under her and pushed across the seat until she was close enough to put her arms around his elbow. With one ear on his shoulder pad, Kevin exhaled a long and artificial sigh. “And then again, maybe I need you to drive back.”

  The girl looked up at him. “Are you going to stay down there?”

  “I don’t intend to settle. But talking to your guardian angel last night, he told me about this big operator in Tijuana — a guy that knows pretty much about everything that goes on in both towns. I thought I’d drop in and see what he has to say.” He paused a moment. “He may not care for me.”

  “Ooh!” she murmured and wiggled excitedly. “Walter, darling.”

  “What?”

  “This is my first adventure.”

  Walter James laughed. “I was hoping you’d count last night.”

  She chuckled and squeezed his arm.

  It was high noon when he rolled the Bu
ick over the ram-shackled bridge that led into the sweltering border town. Waves of heat hula-ed up from the hard dirt streets. A few people sauntered along the porched sidewalks but only a few. Most of the souvenir shops were closed. One or two of the bigger nineteenth-century firms, pregnable sheet-glass fortresses, condescended to leave their doors propped open.

  “It looks like Tuesday isn’t the big day here,” said Walter James. “Know where the Devil’s Bar is?”

  “I think I’ve been there. Turn at the Foreign Club. It’s down that street, to the right. Oh, I hope you find out something, Walter!”

  “It’s about time,” he said flatly. “Hal will start thinking I’m a washout as a partner.”

  Kevin patted his wrist. “I keep forgetting that your two best friends have been killed,” she said softly. “I’ve never told you how sorry I am. I really am.”

  The slight detective pressed his lips together. “Ethel may not be completely lost — there are other answers. Amnesia. They may be holding her. She may be running away from them and not able to get in touch with me. She may have learned whatever Hal knew and is afraid to come out of hiding. She doesn’t have to be dead.”

  “There it is!” she pointed. “That blue and red sign!”

  Walter James spurted the car past the tan adobe front of the target. He slowed down again as he drove round the block, scanning the other buildings. Three quarters around, he wheeled the Buick into a parking place by an alley.

  “This must lead back of the place,” he murmured. He unstrapped his shoulder holster, locking it and the .32 in the glove compartment.

  “Mightn’t there be trouble?” asked Kevin innocently. “Please don’t let anything happen to you.”

  He smiled. “I think this is a spot where I’ll be welcomed without it.” He pushed a kiss against the end of her nose. “Kevin, tell me something. I’m going to mention Shasta Lynn in my interview here — just on the last mad chance she’s got a finger in this. I’ll need to know which nights your father was away from home. Then at least I’ll know which nights she was clear.”

  Kevin clamped her teeth on her lower lip.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” he added as he saw her jumbled expression. “Your father’s absolutely safe. It’s just that I have to know everything. Trust me.”