The Paul Cain Omnibus

by Cain, Paul

  We had a few drinks and tried to figure out who would want to knock off both Fritz and me, and why, but we didn’t get very far. When we left it was about a quarter of five. The newsboys were yelling their heads off at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevard; we bought a paper and there it was in three-inch headlines: ACTRESS ARRESTED IN KIERNAN MURDER.

  They’d picked up Myra and her maid, and the maid had evidently talked enough to last any five ordinary women the rest of their lives. They were holding Myra incommunicado charged with practically everything in the book.

  Amante got a great spread as the hero of the occasion, the man who had solved the great Bel-Air Murder Mystery; the story was a little lean on exactly what his “solution” was, exactly what had happened, but it said he “broadly hinted” a complete case with all the details and “sensational developments” within a few hours.

  Harry read the story to me as we rolled on down Wilshire—I was driving as fast as I could without taking chances on a pinch—and after he’d finished he was quiet for a minute and then he croaked: “That guy Amante hates publicity, don’t he?”

  Amante wasn’t in his office; I located Moore and he said he guessed Amante was still working on the Reid woman. I said I wanted to help him work on her and Moore said it couldn’t be done but when I indicated in a few well chosen words how invaluable my services would be he had a sudden attack of smartness and got me a pass.

  I told Harry to wait. He looked around at all the Law and asked wistfully if I minded if he waited in the pool hall across the street and I said it was all right and went up to the jail.

  Myra’s face lit up like a Christmas tree when she looked up and saw me grinning at her through the bars. The grin was about ninety percent phoney but she didn’t know that. The maid’s story made it impossible for her to keep up the clam act—she’d have to talk.

  Amante didn’t act so gay about the interruption at first but when the screw unlocked the cell door and I went in and sat down on the cot beside Myra and said, “Okay, baby—Now that we’re all here you can tell Mister Amante what really happened,” he entered into the spirit of the thing and got just as happy as a lark. I guess he’d been giving her the works without getting a word out of her; he didn’t ask how or why or how many, it was enough for him that somebody could make her open up.

  I said: “First, before Miss Reid begins—I told her not to talk if she was picked up because I’m convinced she had nothing to do with the murders and I want her to get a break.”

  Amante and the big copper with him glanced at each other but didn’t say anything.

  I smiled at Myra, went on to Amante: “Are you willing to forget your theory for a minute and listen to her side of it and give her all you can?”

  The big fella grunted something about “obstructing justice”—I don’t think he was very fond of me—but Amante grinned and whinnied: “Sure… . sure… .”

  I leaned forward, smiled my sweetest smile and finished like a Dutch Uncle: “Fritz Kiernan was my partner and one of my best friends. I intend to find out who really killed him. This kid,” I nodded at Myra, “is gummed up enough without hanging a rap that won’t stand up on her because it fits in with a theory. Give me a little time and I’ll hand over the parties that killed Fritz, and Raymond, and tried to kill me this afternoon.”

  Amante said, “Sure—sure,” again.

  I gave Myra the office and she went into her version of Friday night. She told it just about the way she’d told it to me. It didn’t sound quite so good with Amante and the big lug giving her the fishy eye all the time but it still sounded like the truth—to me.

  When she got to the part about coming out to the Kiernan house after she came to, and about me telling her to duck, Amante looked at me as if I’d betrayed him and all his family and then finished by stealing his rollerskates.

  He gurgled in a voice practically trembling with heartbreak: “What did you want to do that to me for?”

  I kept from laughing in his face by a hair, shook my head. “I didn’t want to do anything to you—I wanted to give an innocent girl the only chance she had to avoid getting tied up with this.”

  Myra went on with her story and when she finished, Amante sat staring at her with a dead pan for a minute or two and then got up and he and his boyfriend and I went back down to his office. I winked at Myra and patted her shoulder and she gave me a big smile before we left.

  There were five or six reporters in the corridor outside the office. They ganged around Amante when we got out of the elevator and he said he’d have something for them in a few minutes.

  He mumbled, “Sit down, Mister Finn,” when we went into the office and waved at a chair, and he sat down at his desk and rifled through some papers and scribbled a few notes. Then he looked up at the big copper and said, “Let those boys in.”

  The reporters draped themselves around the room and Amante leaned back and smiled at them like an alderman the night before election.

  “Well, boys,” he cooed tenderly, “here it is… . The Reid woman owed Kiernan and Finn nearly four thousand dollars and couldn’t pay off. She liked Kiernan pretty well so she figured she might as well combine business and pleasure and last night she called him to make a date. His wife had gone out of town so he told her to come on out to the house… .”

  Amante leaned forward and opened a drawer and took a thick yellow cigar out of a box. He stuck it in the corner of his mouth and squinted across the end of it at me for a fraction of a second, went on:

  “She was all set to leave for Kiernan’s around nine-thirty when Raymond, who’s been running around with her for several months, dropped in unexpectedly. She’s been up to the neck with Raymond for some time—they’ve battled practically every time he’s been at the house for the past two weeks. Her maid will testify to that.”

  He glanced at me again and slid the cigar to the other corner of his mouth.

  “She told Raymond where she was going and he objected and she got mad and they went round and round. They were still at it at twenty after ten when the maid left to go home. Finally Raymond, crazy with jealousy, ran out of the house and jumped in his car and started for Kiernan’s. She followed him in her car. He had a big Duesenberg—we found it this afternoon parked on the highway below Kiernan’s house—and he beat her there by a few minutes… .”

  Amante stopped to light his cigar. He didn’t look at me any more but went on to the reporters:

  “Kiernan was out on the porch taking the air, or maybe Raymond called him out. Raymond stood in the driveway and shot at Kiernan twice; the first shot missed and the second nicked his leg. Kiernan ran into the house and called Mister Finn”—he waved his hand airily in my general direction—“and said, ‘Somebody took a shot at me.’ About that time Miss Reid arrived and Raymond had to make good; or maybe she got there after he’d followed Kiernan into the house. Anyway, Raymond dragged Kiernan away from the phone and beat him with the butt of the gun and then threw the gun down and finished by kicking his skull in. Miss Reid probably tried to stop him—I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt—and then she saw the gun and picked it up, and when Raymond started to go she shot him… .”

  Amante had turned to me again with an expression like a cat practically bloated with canaries.

  “But before she shot him she told him a few unprintable details about his ancestry and so forth, and …”—he paused to give it the proper melodramatic touch, finished slowly—“Mrs Bergliot, the housekeeper, overheard her… . This afternoon Mrs Bergliot positively identified her voice!”

  He let that sink in, then built up to his clincher in a hurry:

  “After she shot Raymond she tossed the gun under the table—she was wearing gloves so there weren’t any prints—and beat it quick. She drove around for a few minutes and finally parked on the highway near the entrance to the private road to figure out what to do. She
knew it was too late to frame an alibi and she knew Raymond would be traced to her and the maid would spill her guts… . And then Mister Finn showed up, like an angel from heaven. She recognized his car—a blind man could spot that sixteen cylinder calliope of his—and she thought to herself: ‘If I drive back up there and make Finn believe I just got here, that Raymond socked me at my house and I just came to, then I’ll have Finn on my side and as Kiernan’s partner he’ll carry a lot of weight.’ She’s a bright girl… .”

  He was leaning forward with his arms spread out on the desk, giving me the cat-full-of-canaries business for all it was worth.

  “It appealed to her instincts as an actress,” he went on, “and it worked out even better than she’d planned. Mister Finn not only went for her story hook, line, and sinker; he got so absolutely lousy with chivalry that he told her to go on home and go to bed and forget about the nasty old murders and he’d take care of everything!”

  He leaned back and folded his arms. “If I didn’t believe Mister Finn acted in good faith—that he actually believed in Miss Reid’s innocence—there’d be a charge of withholding evidence, possibly even a charge of being accessory after the fact against him. However it has all worked out satisfactorily and I shall let these matters rest.”

  One of the reporters snickered. The big copper was sitting on the corner of the desk grinning merrily and Amante’s sneer was the kind people probably wear just before they get their throat cut by the sneeree.

  I sat and calculated my chances of suddenly diverting everyone’s attention by staring out the window or yelling “Fire!” or something and then hurdling the desk and pushing that sneer back where it came from, but they were too long; I couldn’t even have got past the big baboon. I sat still and wondered if it could get any worse.

  Amante snapped: “That’s all, boys.”

  The reporters dived for the door as a man. Amante wiggled his head at the baboon and he, after a last long withering look at me, followed them out and closed the door.

  I said: “That was capital fun.”

  He looked at me very seriously. “I’ve got to look out for my job,” he bellowed. “If you hadn’t sent Reid away last night I’d’ve had the whole case on ice this morning. I don’t intend to be head of a homicide squad all my life—I’m going places, and quick indictments and quick convictions are going to take me there—”

  I interrupted: “Do you mean you actually believe last night happened the way you told it?”

  “Absolutely.” He nodded slowly, was silent a moment, went on: “The newspapers are for me and that’s the way I want them. You acted out of turn and you’ve got to take the rap for it—with the newspapers.”

  I uh-huhd and got up and walked over to the window, stood there a minute; then I went over to the desk and said: “I thought you were an intelligent guy and you’ve turned out to be just as nutty as a bedbug.”

  He grinned with one side of his face.

  “And I’m going to show you how nutty,” I went on, warming up. “I’m going to make you acknowledge publicly—in your beloved newspapers—that you’re all wet on the Kiernan case. Christ knows I’ve got plenty of reasons to. Number one: I happen to want to know who really killed Kiernan—and Raymond—and tried to give me the business this afternoon—a fact which you seem to have left entirely out of your calculations. Number two: I promised my dying great-aunt that I’d never stand by and see somebody rail-roaded… .”

  I stopped for breath and to think up a few more reasons. Amante sat grinning through a cloud of smoke, chewing his cigar happily.

  “Number three,” I went on—“you’ve made me look like a prize sucker for the edification of a lot of yokels. And last but not least—you called my new car a calliope… .”

  We both laughed; he because he thought it was funny, and I because I thought it wasn’t.

  Then, having delivered myself of all that horrah about what I was going to do, and why, I walked out of the office wondering where the hell I was going to begin.

  I found Harry in the pool hall across the street and told him what had happened while we drove out Third Street. We got home a little before seven and I called Gene Curley and said I had a job for him and his brother and for them to come over to the apartment.

  The Curley boys used to have a two-by-four detective agency in Philadelphia; they’d been on the Coast several years working at whatever turned up. Gene had been a bouncer in a downtown crap joint until it was conclusively knocked over and Frank had alternated between an occasional job of divorce sleuthing and extra work in pictures.

  When they arrived I gave them a couple slugs of Scotch and began with Gene. I told him who Mrs Bergliot was and said I wanted him to tail her and keep a detailed report of everywhere she went, everything she did and everyone she saw.

  Then I told Frank he was on the payroll too, but I didn’t have anything better for him to do for a while than ride around and see how many dark blue Buick roadsters with cream-colored canvas tops and spare tire covers he could find, to check licenses and stolen car lists and things like that. I knew it was a million to one shot that he’d turn anything up but I figured I’d have more important work for him pretty soon.

  I gave them a century advance, sent them on their way rejoicing and called the desk for late editions of the evening papers. The Kiernan case stories were simply fine. They played me up as the smart young man from Broadway who turned out to be the great granddaddy chump—the one all the other chumps try to imitate. They made Amante’s struggle and triumph against the overwhelming odds of my stupidity look like St George giving the finger to the Dragon. When I tell you the subtlest crack they made was to call me “Sir Galahad Finn” it’ll give you a rough idea of what it was like when they really let themselves go.

  I took a shower and shaved—I cut myself an even half-dozen times thinking about what a swell time Amante must be having reading the papers—and Harry and I went over to the Trocadero for dinner. I was pretty low and confined myself to a hearty meal of Scotch and soda. The place was packed and our table was smack in the center of the room on the edge of the dance floor. It didn’t particularly help my state of mind to have friends of mine stop at the table and give me the double talk “Hello,” and know what they were thinking.

  Charley Hollberg was giving a big dinner directly across the dance floor from us and I knew practically everyone in the party. Hollberg was the local slot machine magnate; his monthly rake-off was supposed to be around ninety grand. Between dances I got enough raised eyebrows to make a nice fright wig from that table alone.

  There was a tall good-looking Spick sitting next to Charley who looked over and nodded brightly a couple times. I couldn’t peg him until Harry reminded me that he’d been down to our Number One place a few times and I remembered he was the guy who’d made several big bets and had got chummy and asked Fritz and me a lot of questions about our take and running-nut and things like that. Fritz had told me something about him coming down one afternoon when I wasn’t there and saying he’d decided to locate in California and open a book and asking Fritz if we’d consider selling out. Fritz laughed it off.

  Monte Keith and his ex-wife were in Charley’s party, too; they sat down at our table after a dance and Monte was about to fall under the table and insisted on buying wine. Then I bought some wine and then Monte bought wine and it went on like that for some time. I got home around three-thirty and got to sleep as soon as the bed stopped going round like a merry-go-round and started rocking like a cradle.

  I got up about eleven. Harry was a pretty good cook and whipped up a swell breakfast. The late editions of the Sunday morning papers treated me a little better; there were only a couple dozen references to the “chivalrous Mr. Finn.”

  Then I called up Barbara to give her the inside on Amante and the piece of business with Myra Reid and got a delightful surprise. Maude answered the phone and put on the chill
for me. When I said I wanted to talk to Barbara she said she didn’t think Barbara wanted to talk to anyone who would try to cover up for Fritz’s murderers, and she didn’t think she wanted to talk to me either and hung up.

  Harry said: “What’s the matter?—you in the doghouse there, too?”

  I nodded and sat and thought about it a while and got sorer and sorer; when I got to the stage where I was about to pop Harry in the eye, just for luck, I dressed and we went out to the Kiernan house.

  No one answered the bell. We took turns pounding on the door and Barbara finally opened it and stood there glaring at us. She was a very beautiful woman—a natural blonde with big blue eyes and a lot of curves—but the last twenty-four hours had played hell with her; her eyes were dull and sunken and she looked like she’d been crying for a couple months.

  I was all set to read the riot act but when I saw her I calmed down and said: “Listen, Barbara—you and I have never been what you might call buddies, but you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers. The Reid girl didn’t have anything to do with it. Amante is making a grandstand play and I’m going to wrap it around his neck; I’m going to find out who really killed Fritz if it takes—”

  She interrupted: “I don’t care what you’re going to do.” Her voice was like little chunks of lead falling into a rain-barrel. “Please go away.”

  I said: “Barbara. I—”

  “Please go away.” She was standing very straight and tall and looking at a place about two feet back of my neck. “And I wish you wouldn’t come here anymore; I’ve asked Mister Gottler to get in touch with you about purchasing your share of the business. You’ll hear from him.”

  She stepped back and closed the door.

  One time when I was about six my mother spanked me in front of company and as I remember the way I felt it was about the same as I felt standing there on the Kiernan porch looking at the door. I looked at Harry and I think if he’d made the wrong crack or smiled it would have been the end; I would have strangled him, or tried to, and then committed hari-kiri with the foot scraper.