Blood on the Boards

by Gault, William Campbell

  She turned on the davenport to face him. “All of this is a theory, isn’t it? You haven’t any proof.”

  “I have your fingerprints on that cardboard. I know how to take fingerprints, Sharon. We can have you identified by the proprietor of the novelty store. He remembers a redheaded woman who bought one of these delayed action gimmicks. You aren’t a girl who is easily forgotten, Sharon.”

  Her face was rigid. “What is your purpose in telling me all this? If you don’t intend to give it to the police, why tell me about it?”

  “Because I’m not going to tell the police if you can convince me the murders were justified.”

  “I don’t believe that. This is a trap, isn’t it? Someone is listening. You’re trying to frighten a confession from me.”

  Joe walked over to the phone. “I’ll get the police, then. I’ve enough for them, I think.”

  She watched him lift the phone from the cradle and start to dial. Then she said hoarsely, “Wait—”

  Joe came over to sit in the armless chair again.

  Sharon leaned forward to put her cigarette out. When she straightened again, she faced him calmly. “Motive I’ll admit, but not the deed. I’ll tell you my motives and then you can determine if the act of killing, itself, is important or not. Bruce did have a film of me. And it was the kind they show at stags, but not stags where anybody even resembling a human being would go. It was that—degraded. He did have a record that Nystrom had accumulated for him, including the two years with Lonnie. Bruce would have ruined me if I’d gone ahead and married Alan. And I meant to, before this big chance came up, at Monarch. I meant to marry Alan right up to the moment I got this contract at Monarch.”

  “And Alan staged that little scene in the study?”

  She nodded. “He threatened me with exposure unless I admitted to the police that I had killed his uncle. I told him he was crazy, and left.”

  “And came back?”

  “You can believe what you want about that. I’m only saying I had reason enough to kill both of them. It’s motive you were looking for, isn’t it? It was motive you were going to judge me on, not the act.”

  “As long as you’ve admitted as much as you have, what prevents you from admitting the act?”

  She put her cigarette out in an ash tray on the long coffee table in front of the davenport. She looked at him candidly. “What I’ve admitted can probably be proved. But nobody saw either of them die.”

  “And the gun?” Joe asked. “Did you get rid of that?”

  “What gun? Joe, I’ve told you all I mean to about the Dysarts. I’ll tell you one more thing now. If you help me stay clear, you’ll never regret it. I’m solid now, and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to stay that way. I’m worth it, too. You could find that out.”

  Joe stood up and faced the bedroom. “Get it,’ Ernie? Get it all?”

  From the shadows at the far end of the room, Krivick said, “I got it. Joe. Every word. Though we really didn’t need it. We found the gun.”

  From his luggage compartment, Joe took the wire and the can and handed them to Krivick. He said, “Ernie, if I live to be a thousand years old, I’ll never forget that look Sharon gave me when she heard your voice.”

  Krivick shrugged. “So, I was a schtunk. We found the gun in a padded clip way up under the cowl of her car. The clip was riveted to the rear end of the glove compartment. You see, that was Lonnie’s old car. He gave it to her when he left her. And it was probably one of Lonnie’s guns, though it wasn’t registered, naturally.”

  “And the gun matches, and her fingerprints were on it?”

  “Right. And speaking of fingerprints, we got another fine set off that window you found open. Young Dysart’s. He was really trying to play detective, wasn’t he? Even suspected you.”

  Joe studied the sergeant. “One question, please. Why in hell, if you knew she was guilty, did you let me go through that damned farce I just finished in her apartment?”

  Krivick smiled. “Oh, we knew she wasn’t armed. And I’ve learned what a ham you are and I didn’t want to cut your lines when you had such a fat part. I enjoyed every second of it, Joe.”

  It had started to sprinkle and Joe got into the car. “It’s going to pour in a minute, Ernie. Better get back to your car.”

  “Sure. Luck, Joe. Be seeing you in the papers.”

  Joe nodded and cut down the slope to Channel. He headed toward the ocean, toward Norah’s, the big tires murmuring on the wet blacktop, making small, whimpering sounds in the dark night.

  If you liked Blood on the Boards check out:

  End of a Call Girl

  ONE

  SHE WAS all of forty, but remarkably well-preserved, a shapely imitation blonde with an artfully made-up face, wearing a mink stole and an expensively tailored suit.

  She sat in my office peevishly explaining the perils of her trade. Her trade was call girls, the hundred-dollar-and-up kind. She was no longer personally active but ran a list and would occasionally fill a date if the mood was on her and the customer tolerant. At least, that’s what she told me.

  “The studio trade isn’t what it used to be,” she said sadly, “but we get a lot of visiting Texans. They can be rough on the girls, though, those Texans.”

  I leaned back in my chair, doodling on a pad, and wondered why she was telling me all this. She was finishing a joke about a Texan with a big belt buckle when I asked her.

  I asked, “Why are you telling me all this?”

  She stopped talking to frown at me. Finally, “I wanted to be honest with you. Frank told me that was the way to be.”

  “Frank—? Frank who?”

  “Frank Perini. Didn’t I tell you he had recommended you to me?”

  “No, you didn’t, Mrs. Diggert. Did he also tell you I work only within the law?”

  She shook her head, her gaze slightly belligerent.

  “He should have,” I said. “And your—business is outside the law, isn’t it?”

  She shook her head again. “My girls are listed as models and entertainers. You could say I run a—lonely hearts service.”

  “An ultimate service,” I added.

  Her voice was sharp. “Frank’s outside the law. Frank’s a gambler. And you worked for him.”

  “What I did for Frank Perini had nothing to do with his trade. I merely found his son for him.”

  “So? And all I want you to do for me is find a friend of mine.”

  “That’s different,” I agreed. “Who is the friend?”

  “A girl named Jean Talsman. She was to meet a man at the Beverly Canyon Motel yesterday. She never kept the appointment and I haven’t been able to get in touch with her since.”

  I asked quietly. “A friend? Or one of your girls, Mrs. Diggert?”

  “As far as you need be concerned, Mr. Puma, the girl is simply a friend.”

  “In that case, couldn’t you go to the police with your story?”

  She glared at me, saying nothing.

  “I hope that doesn’t sound too moral,” I apologised. “I’m not exactly Galahad, but I do have to stay in business and that means I must be careful. Now, tell me honestly, why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “Because,” Mrs. Diggert said, “the man she was supposed to meet is a married man. Now, trot out your morality, Mr. Puma. Is there anything moral about ruining the respectable name of a husband and father?”

  “It was a risk the man himself was taking.”

  “So? That was his morality he was risking. Ruining his name would be on my conscience.”

  I smiled and said nothing.

  “And I’ll make it clearer, as long as we’re on the subject. My girls get from a hundred dollars a night—an evening, up. They are permitted to—choose their company. They could have landed in a less respectable end of this ancient profession where they sold a piece of their souls ten times a night at three dollars a piece. My girls promise nobody anything.”

  I still said nothing.


  “I could have gone to a dozen other investigators in this town who aren’t concerned with ethics.” “You didn’t. You still can.”

  “I don’t want to. Listen, Puma, how many commandments are there?” “Ten.”

  “Then why,” she asked, “when a woman is called an ‘immoral woman’ does it mean only one of the commandments has been violated. Nobody ever imagines it could be one of the other nine.”

  “We have a Puritan tradition in this country,” I explained.

  “Who actually lives it?”

  I doodled some more.

  “Say no if you’re going to, Mr. Puma. I won’t beg any more.”

  “I get a hundred a day and expenses,” I explained.

  She chuckled. “My girls don’t get expenses.” She lifted a huge black purse from her lap. “Are you accepting my business?”

  I nodded. “And all you are really concerned with is finding the girl? That’s the unvarnished truth?” She stared. “What else?”

  “I’m not supposed to drag her back, or anything?”

  She sighed wearily. “What in hell do you think I am? They’re free to quit me any time they want to. I’m not their keeper; I’m their—well, agent would be the word, I guess. Jean, Mr. Puma, is a very close personal friend of mine.”

  From the black purse she took out a four by five portrait of Jean Talsman which she handed me. I took down the rest of the pertinent information. Her home address was in Brentwood; her age was twenty-six; her linage was 36-22-38.

  Mrs. Dora Diggert said, “Two days should do it, don’t you think?” She put a pair of hundred dollar bills on my desk. “You can bill me for the expenses later.”

  “And your address?” I asked.

  “The phone number is all you’ll need,” she told me. “It’s an unlisted number. And here is all I know about the date Jean was supposed to have had.” She handed me a page of single-spaced information.

  Then she stood up. She stood well, shoulders back and chin high. There is something that gets me about attractive and successful women in any line; I admired her as she stood there.

  She smiled, studying me. “I’m not that attractive.”

  “Success always impresses me,” I explained. “I must have a lot of Rotary in me.”

  She continued to smile. “Well, if you ever get a hundred or two you don’t know what to do with—” She looked at the bills still on the desk.

  “I’m a poor man, Mrs. Diggert,” I said sadly. “I can only afford the amateurs.”

  She left and I sat there, studying the picture of Jean Talsman. It was a highly attractive face, sensitive, faintly defiant. If I were a girl, I wondered, would I sell out? If I were a girl, I would be a two hundred and nine pound girl and it was doubtful if I would find a buyer even if I did make the ultimate surrender.

  • • •

  It was now noon; I had lunch before driving over to the office of George Ryerson. Mr. Ryerson was a C.P.A. and had his own small but busy firm of accountants. It seemed unlikely that an accountant named George could be responsible for Miss Talsman’s disappearance, but it seemed more unlikely that he would have phoned for a call girl in the first place. And he had.

  The office was on Wilshire, on the second floor of a new building in a good district. The waiting room was conservatively and tastefully furnished and the red-headed receptionist a perfect example of brick-house Irish. This George was doing all right.

  The redhead wanted me to state my business. I told her it was personal.

  “Does Mr. Ryerson know you by name?”

  I shook my head. “Nor by sight. Just run in and tell him Mrs. Diggert sent me.”

  She frowned. “Mrs. Diggert—? I’m not familiar with that name.”

  “I’m glad. But maybe Mr. Ryerson is? Why don’t you trot in and ask him?”

  She picked up the phone on her desk, threw a key, and said, “Mr. Ryerson, a Mr. Puma is here, sent here by a Mrs. Diggert. I have no record of any appointment for him.”

  Silence for a second and then, “Yes, sir, I’ll send him right in.”

  She looked at me blandly and explained it was the office at the end of the hall and went back to her own concerns.

  The office at the end of the hall was the big one, naturally, and George had furnished it in masculine leather and masculine Bellows prints and a masculine portable bar. I would think a man in his business would get some female trade out here but the room didn’t look like he expected any.

  He was a tall, faintly beefy man with thinning hair and excellent tailoring. He got up to shake my hand and seat me and then went back to sit behind his desk.

  From there, he asked, “How can I help you, Mr. Puma?”

  “By telling me what happened to Jean Talsman.”

  He frowned. “Jean—Talsman—? Is she one of Dora’s girls?”

  “She’s the one you ordered,” I said, “two nights ago.”

  He shook his head empathically. “I asked for no girl by name. Has something happened to Miss Talsman?”

  “Mrs. Diggert specifically stated that you asked for Jean by name. And asked her to come to the Beverly Canyon Motel. Didn’t you tell Mrs. Diggert that the girl didn’t show up?”

  He nodded. “I told her that, yes. But I didn’t mention any name.”

  “According to Mrs. Diggert, you never asked for Jean Talsman or any other girl before. Where did you learn about her?”

  “Mr. Puma,” he said patiently, “I don’t like to contradict Mrs. Diggert, but I didn’t ask for any Jean Talsman. I said I’d take any girl.” He was blushing now.

  “How long did you wait for her?” I asked.

  He said stiffly, “I fail to see how that’s important.”

  I said, “The girl is missing. Let me decide what’s important.”

  His voice was cold. “Don’t be insolent, Mr. Puma. You’re not the police, you know. You have no official position.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “Perhaps it would be better if we went to the police with this.”

  He looked at his desk top. “That wouldn’t do Mrs. Diggert’s business any good, would it?”

  “It would hurt it less than it would hurt yours,” I pointed out. “Dora’s clientele aren’t real fussy about her reputation, but I’m sure your clients might be disturbed.”

  He said nothing.

  “Also,” I went on, “Dora’s divorced. You’re not, are you, Mr. Ryerson?”

  He glared at me. “Are you threatening me with disclosure?”

  “Not exactly. I’m simply trying to get some cooperation out of you.”

  “I have told Mrs. Diggert all I know.”

  “You mean you answered some questions she asked. She had to phone you to ask them, didn’t she? You never complained that the girl hadn’t shown up, not until Mrs. Diggert phoned. Why not?”

  “Because it wasn’t important.”

  “You’re a businessman, Mr. Ryerson. Do you mean to say you don’t put in a complaint when a supplier fails to deliver?”

  He expelled his breath and looked at me acidly. “You’re being absurd. This was after business hours. This had nothing to do with business.”

  I threw out a random shot on a hunch. “Perhaps you weren’t even waiting at the motel. Perhaps you ordered the girl for one of your clients?”

  His gaze was blank. “Perhaps.”

  “Who was the client?”

  “I said ‘perhaps.’ Mr. Puma, I’ve told you and Mrs. Diggert all I know. You’ll have to decide what to do with it.”

  I said honestly, “It’s not our decision to make. If we feel that she is actually missing and not of her own free will, we will automatically have to go to the police.” I stood up. “That is no threat, believe me. I don’t and can’t exist in opposition to the Police Department.”

  He said doubtfully, “Dora Diggert will never go running to the police. It would ruin her.”

  “I doubt it. But it would ruin me if I were given a missing persons case and did not notify them of it
eventually. If you want to ruin me, Mr. Ryerson, phone them and tell them what I just asked you.”

  He stood up. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help, Mr. Puma. Good day.”

  “Good afternoon,” I said. “I hope I don’t have to come back.”

  I went back down the hall and past the redhead in the reception room and out to my car. My next stop would be the motel, but I wasn’t thinking of that.

  I was thinking that George Ryerson had made quite an issue of an apparently unimportant incident. What importance could there be in the fact that he had asked for a specific girl? Why had he denied it?

  This was the first time he had used the services of Dora Diggert; so it was logical to assume he knew Jean through some other social medium. Had he met her recently or known her for a longer length of time?

  Of course there was always the possibility that he was telling the truth and Mrs. Diggert was lying. One fact seemed certain; one of them was lying. A lie must have a reason and reasons are often revealing.

  A third thought came to me. Perhaps George didn’t know Jean Talsman but his client did and George had ordered her by name for the client. Which could indicate that the girl wouldn’t have gone if she had known who the true customer was.

  In these days of saturation taxation, C.P.A.’s get a variety of accounts and not all of them are socially respectable. The Internal Revenue boys had picked up too many hoodlums that the F.B.I. had failed on. It was smart for racketeers these days to hire the best accounting brains they could find.

  But this was all speculation. Facts were my business.

  • • •

  At the Beverly Canyon Motel, I found the manager in his office. It was a luxury motel with an eighty foot pool, with a putting green and a first-rate restaurant attached. It was logical to expect that the manager of such a snooty spot would not be unduly cooperative with anything as plebian as a private investigator.

  He lived up to the pattern. He wouldn’t even tell me if a George Reimers had rented a unit two evenings back. That was the name Ryerson was supposed to have used at the motel.

  I said, “A woman who was supposed to have come here to meet Mr. Reimers is missing, sir. We’re not looking for scandal, only a missing woman.”