<code> 1

They say time will tell, and on Mrs. Gladys Jellicoe it had spilled everything. She was about fifty years old and quite well preserved: she looked like a mummy. Her eyes were the color of coffee with the grounds still in it, and her hair was the same interesting shade as her eyes; she had a face to unwind cuckoo clocks and a shape like an old girdle.

She didn’t exactly turn me on, since it is my habit to dally whenever possible in the company of lasses crammed with zip and sizzle, gals with flashing eyes and flaming hair, lovelies who pooch and pout and sway and wiggle. Among other things.

So what was I — healthy, hot-blooded Shell Scott — doing here in the Hollywood Hills with my hot blood cooling, conversing with Mrs. Jellicoe, becoming slightly nauseous with Mrs. Jellicoe?

Well, it was business.

No, I am not a mortician. Or the world’s most optimistic beautician. I’m a private detective.

The business is Sheldon Scott, Investigations — office up one floor in the Hamilton Building on Broadway in downtown LA — and the investigations are of burglary, robbery, blackmail, murder, missing persons, assault, battery, you name it. I’ve handled half the crimes listed in the California Penal Code, including 578 P.C. (Issuing Fictitious Warehouse Receipts) and 653 P.C. (Tattooing of a Minor), and nine times out of ten, merely by considering the way a case begins — from its opening notes, so to speak: notes sweet or sour, dulcet or discordant — I can tell what the rest of the case will be like, how it will develop, how it will end.

This time, I presumed, after further nausea and excruciating pain, I would get crushed to death between two garbage trucks. If, of course, I took the case. Which didn’t seem likely — unless it was something very, very simple, that is. This time I had no intention of becoming involved with the hoodlums and thieves and killers that ordinarily seem to be my lot.

There were three reasons for this very sensible attitude. First, on the previous evening I had been with a gorgeous blonde until 4 a.m., and had thus managed to get less than three hours of sleep. Second, my last case had been simply lousy with hoods and thugs and various bad eggs, most of them members of the so-called Jimmy Violet Gang. True, there was no longer any Jimmy Violet Gang, but I had not escaped unscathed. In fact, I’d wound up in the clink myself. Third, there seemed to be trouble of a more than mild nature beginning between two of LA’s remaining collections of thugs and heavies.

The two most significant such groups now active in the area were headed, in one case, by a cold-eyed creep named Eddy Lash, and, in the other, by a more pleasant-looking but no less cold-blooded killer named Mac Kiffer. And only yesterday, Sunday, somebody had sent three slugs whistling past Mac Kiffer’s head. The wire — that is, the underworld “wireless,” which is almost as speedy and sometimes as accurate as Western Union — had it that one of Eddy Lash’s torpedoes had tossed the pills at Mac.

With such shenanigans commencing, and the feel in my bones of much more soon to come, I felt I would be content for a while to concentrate on nothing more wearing than, say, 578 P.C. or 653 P.C.

Mrs. Gladys Jellicoe had phoned me at my apartment, in Hollywood’s Spartan Apartment Hotel, just before I left for the office at 8 a.m. on this already warm September morning. She had asked me to come to her home on Spring Oak Drive up in the hills north of Hollywood, and her voice, which was faintly reminiscent of a toothless musical saw, was the first small warning that, perhaps, this case might not turn out to be one of those real fun ones.

The second hint of jollity undone occurred when I parked my robin’s-egg-blue Cad convertible on Spring Oak, climbed out and headed for the two-story white house. As I walked toward the front door I noticed the ripple of green curtains as someone inside peered out at me. The someone was Mrs. Jellicoe, for before I rang she flung the door open and gawked at me like Dracula’s mother taking her first peek into the crib.

Well, I am six feet, two inches tall and weigh two hundred and five pounds, and often people who know nothing of my years in the service have been able to guess, correctly, that I am an ex-Marine. Some have even guessed, incorrectly, that I was hit in the face by a dud mortar shell.

While it is true that my nose has been slightly fractured a couple of times and made good as new once, I have through the years come to feel merely that it has more character than most noses. Also, there is a fine scar over my right eye, and a little bit of a piece gone from the tip of my left ear, and a few hardly noticeable indentations and lines of character upon my face, but they are practically invisible in a dim light.

Of course, I was standing in the glare of the morning sun, which undoubtedly caused my short-cropped springing-into-the-air hair and up-and-down-slanting brows to appear even more startlingly white against the deep tan of my face than they would have in a less unflattering light, like moonlight.

Possibly germane, upon arising, and while still asleep, I had chosen to dress in one of my favorite outfits: bright-blue blazer with the interesting silver-nugget buttons, pale-pink silk shirt and pink socks to match, sky-blue trousers the color of my Cadillac, and dandy white Italian shoes, which all but completed the dashing cavalier air I hoped to convey. The final touch was a tie, rather bright, with red seahorses embroidered upon it.

While it is not an ensemble I’d choose to wear should I be tailing a keen-eyed crook, for a warm summer morning after a hot summer night it had struck me as just the thing.

It seemed not to strike Mrs. Jellicoe thus. Whatever the reason, she gazed upon me with apparent dismay. I was scrutinizing her rather closely myself.

Finally she said, “Are you … ?”

“I’m Shell Scott. You’re Mrs. Jellicoe?”

“Yes. Ah.”

I waited.

“You’re … the detective?”

“Well, I’m a detective. I’m the one you called. Not more than half an hour ago, remember?”

“Are you … successful?”

What a dumb question, I thought. Then I ran a hand over my face, pinched my nose, fondled my ear, thinking back. “Well, you win a few, you lose a few,” I said. “But on the whole I’ve a pretty good record.”

After a while I said, “Did you want to see me about anything in particular?”

“Oh, do forgive me. Please come in, Mr. Scott.”

She led me through the house, toward the back, and on the way mumbled a partial explanation of why she’d called me. I gathered that Mrs. Jellicoe’s problem was her husband. It figured. Or, rather, her ex-husband. It figured. As she led me outside and behind the house into what she called the “garden” — about forty square feet of crabgrass bordered by a few despairing peonies — she said that he “seemed to be” missing, and she was vastly concerned about him. Then she looked around at the peonies and a couple of scraggly rosebushes and mumbled, “I don’t know why it is, but I just can’t seem to get flowers to grow for me.”

I knew why. Flowers are little people. And she horrified them. I know lots of things I usually don’t even mention. We sat in low wicker chairs, which brought my knees up to just a fraction of an inch under my chin, and I said, “Missing?”

“Yes. At least, I haven’t heard from Jelly in well over a month. He must be dead. He never fails to write me at least once a month. He has to write me at least once a month.”

I cocked my head on one side. “Jelly?”

“My ex. My former husband.”

She stopped. So I said, “Well, that — ah — I don’t suppose that’s his, full name?”

She gave me a dull look. “Of course not. His full name is Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe. Jelly is just what I always called him. It was a — you know — a pet name.”

He must have loved it, I thought. “You say he has to write you?”

“Yes. Every month. That’s when he sends me my check. You see, we’ve been divorced for over a year, and in accordance with the judgment of the court Jelly must mail me a check for three thousand dollars on or before the first day of every month.”

“Alimony?”

“Well … I don’t like the word, but yes. It’s merely what he owes me.”

Mrs. Jellicoe waved a hand, on which a diamond of at least five carats glittered like an idol’s eye. “You see, Mr. Scott, this is already the fourth of September, and I’ve not received the monthly letter. Nor did I receive my letter last month. I discussed the matter with Jelly by phone on the first of August. He told me he had suffered financial reverses, but would send both checks to me, without fail, by the first of September. He has not done so.”

Light was dawning. “I presume you want me to run Mr. Jellicoe down and shake the six G’s out of him — “

“Not exactly,” she replied with some chill, her eyes momentarily glittering like the ring. “I’m quite concerned about him. He has been living at the Cavendish House in Hollywood. I have phoned there every day since the first of this month, but have not been able to reach him. He hasn’t checked out; he just hasn’t been seen there since Friday.”

“His key’s at the desk?”

“Yes.”

“Have you checked with the police, hospitals, morgue?”

I watched her closely when I mentioned hospitals and the morgue, but she didn’t clutch at her heart, or get pale and sticky. She merely replied, “No. I thought perhaps you could do that if it becomes necessary.”

“Uh-huh. Well, do you have any reason to suspect foul play? That is, do you know of anyone who might have wished him harm, might have injured him?”

She smiled. “Hurt Jelly? Why would anybody want to do that?”

“Beats me.”

“Jelly simply isn’t the type to make enemies. He’s very mee — easygoing. Quiet, retiring, very conservative.” She smiled again, not quite so happily. “Unless he’s changed during the last year. I’ve seen him only twice since the divorce.”

“Where does he work, Mrs. Jellicoe? Have you tried there?”

“For many years Jelly was an assistant to Mr. Gideon Cheim. Perhaps he still is, but I don’t know what he’s been doing for the past year. And, of course, Mr. Cheim has been so ill I haven’t been able to get in touch with him.”

I nodded. The reason for Mrs. Jellicoe’s “of course” was that all of Hollywood — half the world, for that matter — knew who Gideon Cheim was, and that he had recently come close to kicking the bucket. One of the old-timers of the movie industry, Cheim had been a major figure in the business long before television became a dirty word among producers; he’d made a score of moneymaking films and a couple of Oscar winners, later produced a few films for TV and put together a couple of now defunct television series.

But he was sixty-odd years old now and no longer very active in the business. A couple of years back he’d been maneuvered out of his position as production head of Premiere Studios in Culver City. Since then, as an independent producer, he had put together a couple of second-rate spy-in-the-cold-war type films and was now producing a Western, his former forte; but little else had been heard of him. In his day, however — which had lasted until very recently — Cheim had been one of the most powerful, and feared, men in Hollywood.

“I did try to phone Mr. Cheim at the hospital,” she went on. “That was two — three days ago. But he was still recovering from his heart attack and they wouldn’t let me talk to him.”

I lowered my chin a quarter of an inch, to my knees, thinking. It appeared that what Mrs. Jellicoe wanted was not so much a detective as a bill collector. And I’m not a bill collector. I didn’t tell Mrs. Jellicoe that, however, for fear she might turn into a bat and bite my neck. Still, it certainly appeared to be a simple, straightforward job.

So I said, “Well, I could nose around and see if I can locate Mr. Jellicoe — if you want me to try, that is. But merely his absence from the hotel where he’s been living doesn’t mean much. Especially if his boss is in the hospital.”

“Oh, there’s something else,” she said.

I raised my head a little. A small pain darted over my lower vertebrae. These chairs were a bit too cute for a guy my size. “What else?”

“I received a strange phone call early Friday morning. From some kind of nightclub, or restaurant, called the Panther Room. Have you heard of it?”

“Yeah. I’ve been there a couple times.”

“Indeed. Well, I received a call from a bartender there. He said he had a wallet belonging to Mr. Jellicoe — Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe — which had apparently been lost there the night before. The bartender had been unable to locate him, and this address, my address, was still shown on Jelly’s driver’s license. So the man phoned me.”

“Uh-huh. So you know Mr. Jellicoe was OK Thursday night, then.”

“No, no; someone must have stolen Jelly’s wallet. That’s another reason I’m so worried. Jelly wouldn’t have gone to a place like that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s — Why, they have waitresses and cigarette girls, that sort of thing, who go around practically naked.”

“Yeah, it’s a swell place.”

“It’s one of those topless — ” She gave me another, of those dull looks. Then she went on, “I know what it’s like. I’ve made inquiries. The Panther Room is one of those clubs frequented by … riffraff, low types, who go there and drink, and inflame their animal natures.”

I nodded. I guessed that was true, all right.

“Jelly would never have gone to a place like that.”

“He hasn’t got an … animal nature?”

“He wouldn’t think, of … Besides, it’s inconceivable that he’d get drunk and lose his wallet, with almost a thousand dollars in it.”

I whistled. “Good thing that’s an honest bartender.”

“There is another factor,” Mrs. Jellicoe continued. “The bartender remembered the man who lost the wallet. He became quite drunk, was extremely lavish with his money, and was escorting a notorious actress. My husband never became drunk, and he was very sensible about money. So it simply couldn’t have been Jelly.”

“Actress?”

“Yes, this television actress, Sylvia Ardent. Why, it’s ridiculous even to think Jelly could have been with her….”

She went on for a bit longer, but I wasn’t concentrating on her words. Before my eyes rose a vision of Sylvia Ardent. And in my language — or in any other man’s language — she was a vision; because as far as the feminine face and figure were concerned, she was a kind of aphrodisiacal Esperanto.

Sylvia, or Miss Ardent, or the ardent Miss Ardent, as she was variously spoken of, was the super-shapely star of TV’s currently number-three series, Girls’ Dorm, which was out-Nielsened only by the popular game show Free! and the top-ranked educational-Americana series The Wild West — Like It Really Was.

I had watched Girls’ Dorm myself more than once, and the sight of Sylvia — I thought of her as Sylvia — in a pink baby doll swatting another “coed” with a feather pillow was not a hard pillow to swallow. Sylvia was a gal of creamy skin and emerald-green eyes, of jungle-lush red hair, of voluptuous —

“Mr. Scott?”

“Yes?”

“Were you listening to me?”

“Go on. This is fascinating.”

“At any rate, you can see why I’m so concerned about Jelly.”

“I sure can.”

“It isn’t just the money — though six thousand dollars isn’t something a woman in my position can simply ignore. But you can take my word for it, if Jelly were able to pay me what he owes me, he’d do it.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Do you think you can find him, then?”

“Sure. If he’s findable, I can do it. Am I hired?”

“What do you charge?”

“A hundred a day, and I pay my own expenses unless something very unusual comes up. Of course, I should warn you that something unusual generally does — “

“A hundred dollars? A day?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But isn’t that rather … expensive?”

I smiled. I like to think I earn every penny I get. Merely being clunked on the head with the butt of a .45-caliber automatic, which is a very heavy pistol, should be worth more than a hundred bucks. Of course, this wasn’t one of those cases, thank heaven. But I was also smiling because it was exactly the amount she was charging her ex, Mr. Jellicoe.

Finally she said, “Well, all right. But I do hope it doesn’t take you long.”

“Me, too.”

“Is there anything else you want?”

“A little more information about Mr. Jellicoe. And a clear fairly recent photograph of him if you have one.”

She found a two-year-old four-by-five studio photograph for me, and I asked her the routine questions, the answers to none of which were of any immediate help. But the photo might be enough all by itself; there wouldn’t be many guys on the loose who looked like Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe.

In the photo he was standing, leaning against the mantel of a prop fireplace, and he looked as relaxed and comfortable as if a taxidermist had just stuffed him alive without making an incision. A cigarette jutted from between two rigid fingers, and his lips were held apart as if he were saying, “Smile!”

Tall and thin, dressed in black, he had the sparkle and dash of a disinherited undertaker at his daddy’s funeral. The face was somber, sorrowful, drawn and drained. All the lines slanted downward — from the corners of his eyes, from his nose, at the edges of his mouth. He looked like a man going down for the third time in despair.

I put the picture in my coat pocket, looked at Mrs. Jellicoe. We gazed at each other. Soon I’d had enough of that, and leaned forward, got my feet under me, then put a hand at the base of my spine and slowly straightened up.

“Cute little chairs you’ve got here in the garden,” I said.

“I’m glad you like them, Mr. Scott.”

</code>

<code> 2

Before driving away from Mrs. jellicoe’s home, I used the car phone to ring the Cavendish House on Western.

The Motorola MTS (Mobile Telephone System) Car Telephone — or simply phone, as I usually call the thing — rests parallel to the floorboards in a snap-in cradle on the control unit fitted under the dash. Ordinarily, calls to my home or office would be transferred to my car phone, but since I do not wish everybody and his cousin to be calling me in the car — in which I am sometimes accompanied by pretty girls — and thus interrupting possibly vital philosophic discussions, I have arranged that only those in possession of my Mobile phone number can reach me. People like police officers, certain informants and a limited number of others, including a few extremely pretty girls.

I merely keep down the button for my home channel, assigned me by the Coleman Communications Company, which also gave me my special Mobile number, pick up the phone, give the operator the number I want and let the Coleman people worry about how it works.

When I got no answer to my call to Jellicoe’s suite, and learned from the desk that he still had not picked up his key, I headed back downtown. On the way I placed several other calls. I put some lines out among a few selected informants, then checked with the LAPD. The police had nothing on him; Jellicoe wasn’t in jail or the morgue. Newspaper stories had said Gideon Cheim was in a hospital called the Weston-Macey, in Pasadena. I called there, figuring that if anybody could tell me where Wilfred Jellicoe was it would be his long-time employer; but I did not get through to Gideon Cheim.

No. He was still recuperating. No, absolutely not, the sharp-voiced gal at the desk told me. Yes, he was off the critical list, but he was not to be disturbed. Absolutely not.

Just before parking near the Cavendish House I completed a much more pleasant call, to a much more fun gal, Hazel, the cute and peppery little sweetie on the switchboard in the Hamilton Building, at the end of the hall outside my office.

She handles all incoming and outgoing calls at the Hamilton, but to me she’s virtually a private assistant, girl Friday, second in command — and a doll, a living doll. When I put the handset back in its cradle for the last time, she knew the case I was working on, what I wanted to know, and would take it from there.

The hotel detective was a thick-hipped man named Horter. He unlocked the door, on the knob of which hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign, and stepped inside after me.

I stood in the suite’s living room, looking around, while Horter walked to a door in the far wall and opened it.

“Wheeoo,” he said, stepping inside, “Lookit this, will you?”

I went over and stood next to him in a bedroom that looked as if gale-force winds had hit it. The spread and sheets were off the bed, both pillows were on the floor, the mattress was askew. The top three drawers of a four-drawer bureau were open and dress shirts, sport shirts, handkerchiefs, socks were scattered on the burnt-orange carpet.

“Somebody sure tossed the place,” I said.

“And in a hurry.”

I walked to the bureau and opened the bottom drawer. It was filled with shorts, plus three bright ascots, one gold, one red and one white. A leather bag filled with cuff links was in the left front corner.

The drawer above was empty except for a pair of swim trunks and three clean but crumpled T-shirts. Something small and green caught my eye, and I picked it up. The thing looked like a little pebble about half the size of a pea. One side of it was smooth, curved and shiny, the other jagged as if it had been broken from a larger piece.

The bathroom was in order, apparently untouched. In Jellicoe’s closet, along with a couple of brown sport coats and matching slacks, were seven suits, well made and freshly pressed, but none very jazzy in color. All the garments were “off the rack” and conservatively cut. But those three ascots hinted at a dash of daring, or at least Walter Mitty, somewhere in the missing Wilfred.

I said to Horter, “Last time Jellicoe was around was Friday a.m. sometime? He hasn’t been back since then?”

“Far as I know,” he said glumly.

“What kind of a guy was he?” I smiled slightly and corrected myself. “I mean, is he.” There was certainly no reason to think of him as dead. At least, not yet.

“Nice enough. Quiet, sort of retiring. Forty-five years old, maybe older. About six feet, thin.” He squinted, “Hard to remember much about him. Not the kind of guy to make much of a fuss.”

“If he hasn’t been here since Friday — and, presumably, the rooms could have been looking like this since around then — how come the maid didn’t walk in and let out a yelp?”

“The ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign’s been on the door since Friday. Sometimes guests don’t want maid service over weekends. Too early for the maid to get to this room today.”

I nodded. “How long has Jellicoe been staying here?”

“About a year. Well, I better go tell the manager what the hell.”

“I’ll look around some more, OK?”

“Sure,” Horter said. He went out.

In the next five minutes I looked at or into everything visible in the suite, then walked back to the bed carrying three photographs I’d found, sat down and lit a cigarette.

Two of the three photos were glossy eight-by-ten stills, the standard shots given out by studio publicity departments, and both were of sparkling-eyed, effervescent, swinging Sylvia Ardent. The photos were not new, but appeared to have been aged by more than time, as though held often in hot fingers, perhaps packed and unpacked, gazed upon, dreamed upon.

The first was a close-up, a head-and-shoulders shot of Sylvia, smiling like a gal being salaciously tickled by a goose feather just out of camera range, her big green eyes open wide as she stared, with unconcealed lust, at something exceedingly desirable off to her left somewhere. In the second picture she was reclining on a white bear rug, clad in a pale-gray negligee which concealed her justly celebrated voluptuousness about the way smog hides the Hollywood Hills on weekends, and she was looking, with unconcealed lust in her eyes, at something exceedingly desirable off to her right somewhere.

Sylvia was also in the third picture, but it was a nightclub photo, the kind pretty gals with long legs take for a couple bucks and as many dollars as you feel like tipping them. Luscious Miss Ardent was wearing a black cocktail dress cut so low in front that I assumed the V was not decolletage, but a rip, and she was gazing dreamily across the table at … Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe, grinning hugely.

Cigarettes smoldered in a tray before them. In the table’s center rested a big wavy-bottomed clam shell, and extending outward from the liquor and hunks of pineapple and wilting flowers in it were two long straws, one held lightly in Sylvia’s fingers and the other pointing, toward Jellicoe’s very obvious teeth. My client had been certain her Jelly couldn’t possibly have been out with sex star Sylvia Ardent, and that he wouldn’t even have gone into such a place as the Panther Room.

I flipped back the cover enclosing the photo and read the name there again: Panther Room. Mrs. Jellicoe, it would appear, had been wrong about a lot of things.

I took the four-by-five photo that Gladys Jellicoe had given me out of my pocket and scrutinized it again. Then I looked back at the guy with Sylvia Ardent. The shots were barely recognizable as of the same man. But they were the same. At least, both were of Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe.

But one of them sure wasn’t Jelly.

</code>

<code> The bar was on my right and opposite it on a raised platform, a listless go-go dancer wearing only the bottom half of a spangled bikini executed waggly wiggles and uninspired bumps, her expression indicating no joy whatsoever in the daily grind. A mirrored wall behind her reflected a rear view of the action, for those who preferred that sort of thing.

I slid onto a stool at the empty end of the bar and waited for the gold-jacketed bartender to walk over.

I told him who I was and that I was working for Mrs. Gladys Jellicoe. “Somebody called her Friday morning about a wallet lost here the night before. Was it you?”

“No, that was George, the day man. I work nights Tuesdays through the weekend. But I found the wallet, left it with a note for George when I closed up Thursday night.”

I’d brought along the shot of Sylvia and Jellicoe drinking from the clam shell, and placed it on the bar top. While the bartender was looking at it I put the four-by-five my client had given me alongside it.

“That’s the guy the wallet belongs to. He the one who was in here Thursday night?”

“Yeah. Him and that — wow! — Sylvia Ardent.” The bartender glanced back at the Panther Room photo, then studied the four-by-five next to it. “This the same guy?”

“Same guy.”

“Picture must’ve been shot when he was sick.”

“I take it he didn’t look sick Thursday night.”

“Nope. He looked like the Sunset Strip Messiah. Gold jacket — almost like mine; I thought at first he was a waiter till he started throwing money around like it was counterfeit — copper-colored pants and shirt, white silk tie, dark glasses. Man, he looked healthy. But I’ll bet he was sick the next day. Must’ve had eight, ten highballs, then a Passion’s Punch.”

“Passion’s Punch?”

The bartender pointed to the giant clam shell in the photo. “One of them. It’s the house specialty, eight bucks, supposed to be for six people. They drank the whole thing themselves. I was watching them — her, mainly, for good reasons. But I noticed he drank most of it. Bent his straw at the end, so he picked up the whole damn clam shell and guzzled what was left like it was a pail of beer.”

I shook my head. “I think Mr. Jellicoe is a bud who only lately has blossomed. You say he was throwing money around? Literally? Like … through the air?”

“No, just handing it out. Gave me ten bucks. Just for nothing. Said, ‘Here, my good man, here is a little something for you.’ For ten bucks he can even call me his good man.”

“He was drunk by then, huh?”

“He had passed beyond drunkenness into another condition entirely. But he was a happy drunk.” He paused, smiling. “Of course, why would a man with that Ardent doll not be happy?”

It was a good question. And Sylvia was certainly a vital witness in this case, whom in the line of duty I would have to interrogate soon. In fact, as soon as possible.

Jellicoe and Sylvia came into the Panther Room about 8 p.m., drank, partook of a lavish dinner, drank some more, finished with the Passion’s Punch, and left. Jellicoe smiling and weaving, Sylvia Ardent apparently still sober, or at least comparatively so.

Jellicoe had tipped the maitre d’ a hundred dollars, the captain fifty dollars, the waiter twenty-five dollars, and practically everybody else in sight ten dollars. It could be assumed the evening here had cost him at least two hundred and fifty bucks. Yet, interestingly enough, there had still been — according to the bartender — nearly a thousand dollars in the wallet Jellicoe had lost, including six brand-new hundred-dollar bills.

“You still have the wallet?” I asked him.

“No, the guy picked it up Saturday morning. George gave it to him.” He grinned. “Note I left for George, I gave him the same line I told you, the guy looked like the Sunset Strip Messiah — well, George tells me it sure looked like God was dead, all right.” He laughed. “Man, them highballs and a Passion’s Punch, even angels would fall outa the trees…”

I barely noticed his last words — although he was laughing and pounding on the bar — because I was oddly surprised. It was a random, even foolish, thought, but I’d been wondering if maybe Jellicoe was dead. And it had sort of idly occurred to me that if he’d spent much more time with Sylvia Ardent, a frail, weak-looking guy like that, it was at least possible that she’d killed him. Not on purpose, of course, but —

I cut my thoughts off and said, “Jellicoe came back and picked up his wallet, huh? What time was that?”

“Early. About this time, I guess. Say a little after ten.” He paused. “Guy wasn’t feeling too good, but he did the right thing. Gave George fifty bucks. Which George split with me.”

I smiled, gave the bartender my card and asked him to contact me if he saw Jellicoe again, thanked him and took off. I left a bill on the counter. It wasn’t a fifty. It wasn’t even a ten-dollar bill.

But, then, I didn’t call him “My good man,” either.

</code>

<code> It took some fast talking, but I did learn that for approximately two weeks prior to this past Wednesday, the thirtieth of August, there had been slightly more than four dollars in Jellicoe’s savings account, and an even three hundred and twenty bucks in his checking account. But on Wednesday, Mr. Jellicoe had cashed a check — made out to him — in the amount of five thousand dollars, deposited four thousand in his checking account and kept ten crisp new hundred-dollar bills.

I said; “So he’s got forty-three-twenty in his checking account now?”

“Well, Friday, two days after making the deposit, he returned and withdrew the entire amount in his checking account. And he looked … ill.”

“What time of day was this?”

“As I recall, ten-thirty, eleven — certainly before noon.”

“That’s interesting. Incidentally, who was the check from? Who made out that five-thousand-dollar check to Mr. Jellicoe?”

Mr. Constance pursed his lips. “I’m sorry. I’ve told you — well — more than I should, really. And the identity of the person — or firm — which issued the check concerns someone other than Mr. Jellicoe.”

“It might, however, be of much help to me in — “

“No.” When Mr. Constance shook his head determinedly, he meant it. That was all he would tell me.

But, I thought, even that much was quite a lot.

</code>

<code> “Not a one. Apparently you haven’t found him yet, either.”

“Give me time. I’ve only had a couple hours. I already know he was alive and happy — very happy — Thursday night. And at least half alive Friday morning.”

“I can do a little better than that. He was alive and happy Friday afternoon, too. Alive, anyway.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well, you told me he works, or at least did work, for Gideon Cheim. And Mr. Cheim is producing another movie — starring Warren Barr again. A girl friend of mine has a part in the picture and I called her. They were shooting all day Friday, and she said this Wilfred Jellicoe was on the set during the afternoon, talking to Mr. Barr.”

“That might help, Hazel. If I don’t run the guy down fairly soon I’ll want to talk to anybody who saw him during the last few days. Look, I’ll be at Sylvia Ard — “

“There’s one thing this girl told me you might be interested in. You know what Mr. Barr is like, don’t you?”

Warren Barr: tall, broad, magnetic, hard-bodied and hard-eyed. It was alleged he gave women goose bumps in the most unlikely places. As well as the likely ones. He was a “man’s man,” too, quick with his fists — he’d been in half a dozen barroom brawls in the last three years — handy with a handgun, dead-eye with a rifle aimed at charging bear, fleeing elk, swift cheetah, soaring bird, or even scared rabbit if nothing more sporting was in range. He was one of that great company of alleged sportsmen who delight in killing animals for fun, knocking them over like tenpins in the hallowed name of Sport.

“Yeah,” I said, “I know what he’s like. Therefore, I shall be at Sylvia — “

“Jellicoe talked to him for five or ten minutes on the set, alone. Then he left, but after that Mr. Barr was very upset, according to my girl friend.”

“Upset how?”

“She wasn’t sure whether he was angry or frightened or what, but she said he flubbed his lines, just wasn’t himself. The way she put it, he almost fell off his horse.”

“Interesting. What’s this gal’s name?”

“Lucilla Mendez.”

“Where would I find her?”

“She’d be on the set again today. With Mr. Barr and the rest of the cast. They’re still doing retakes.”

Hazel told me where the company was shooting and I said, “Sounds worth a check, but I think first I’ll see Syl — ” I stopped. The juxtaposition of the names had rung a bell.

Sylvia Ardent was the kind of tomato never out of season — especially in Hollywoodland — and in the very nature of things, or you might say by the very nature of Nature, there were inevitably scores of hopeful males in constant pursuit of Sylvia Ardent. She’d been out on dates in town with a number of them, and occasionally she and some young, or even old, actor were reported in the columns as a “thing” — usually about the time publicity agents decided it was time for flackery about a hot romance.

What rang the bell was my recalling that for several months, beginning a year or so back, Sylvia Ardent and Warren Barr had been a Big Thing, drinking on the Strip, dinners along Restaurant Row, even hints of impending flights to Las Vegas, Reno or Mexico — where the Hollywood set often flies for quickie marriages. The trouble with Hollywood is that so much of it is phony you can rarely tell when a “thing” is promotion for a picture or TV series, buildup for a potentially hot property, or actually a month or two of undying love and eternal devotion.

I said, “OK, I’m on my way to see rugged Warren Barr, mighty hunter of outlaws and rabbits. And, Hazel, you’ve been such a good girl I’ll get you his own handwrote autograph.”

“How sweet.”

“In the meantime, check for me and find out if Sylvia Ardent is working today, will you? And dig up her home address and phone number if you can.”

“Sylvia Ardent. Hmm. This is business?”

“What else?”

“Whatever it is, it’s going to cost you a dinner at a terribly expensive restaurant.”

“I’ll buy you a hamburger,” I said, “with onions.”

I was in the Cadillac, top down and a warm late-morning breeze brushing my face, headed for the set — a few miles ahead, out in the rolling hills not far from Hollywood — of Stampede!, an earth and emotion-shaking drama of love and hate, fury, lust and rape, and probably some cattle, I supposed, produced by Gideon Cheim and starring Warren Barr.

When Cheim had been head of Premiere, Barr had worked for him during a ten-year period, and for three of those years he had been the studio’s number-one box-office draw. He was still one of the three or four top Western stars in the land.

This was the first time his name had been linked with Cheim’s since the former Power had gone into semiretirement, and a lot of people wondered why he was starring in a small-budget Western for Cheim when he could have demanded — and received — much larger loot from Premiere or almost any other major studio. Maybe he’d been guaranteed a fat chunk of the gross; maybe he was simply more loyal than I would have suspected.

There was also, of course, the possibility that I was wrong about Barr. I’d never met the man. Maybe in person he was as sweet as strawberry shortcake….

He wasn’t.

</code>

<code> 3

Warren barr was sitting in a canvas-backed chair smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper when I walked up.

Fifty feet away men were moving cameras, setting up reflectors, stepping over what looked like miles of electrical cables. A man in Bermuda shorts and a bright striped shirt was standing at the base of a huge camera boom, cursing with a richness of invective wonderful to hear.

The set was the familiar dusty main street of an Old West town, lined on both sides with wooden buildings — saloons, feed store, blacksmith’s shop, office of the town’s MD, who was called “Good Old Doc,” a rooming house, plus the combined booze house, gambling house and whorehouse, in which dusty men drank everything from redeye to sarsaparilla, lost deeds to their ranches and gold mines to slickers with black moustaches, and the girls energetically plied their trade, which — for movie purposes — was dancing energetically with the dusty men.

“How do you do, Mr. Barr?”

He looked up, failed to recognize me as anybody important, I guess, and turned to gaze at the activity on the set.

“I’m Shell Scott. I’d like a few words with you, if you don’t mind.”

“Yeah, I mind. Get lost.” Barr returned his gaze to his newspaper, and let me look at his hair.

It was worth looking at. He had the kind of hair that bald men can see from a distance of half a mile on a foggy day. It was thick, luxurious, healthily abundant, gently waving, a center of hirsute splendor which would have been noticeable even in a universe of hair, and it was a wig.

I hadn’t seen his teeth yet, but I knew they were expertly porcelain-capped. I also knew that when he rose to his full six-foot height he was standing on cowboy boots built up on the inside another two inches.

“I’d merely like to ask you a couple questions, Mr. Barr.”

Finally he said, “What about?”

“Wilfred Jellicoe,” I said.

It was a routine comment but it got a queer reaction out of Warren Barr. His hands jerked and he tore the newspaper about an inch down the crease at the top. Then he held still for a moment and said, “Willie? What about him?”

“I understand he talked to you here on the set Friday.”

Barr was still looking at his newspaper. He ran a hand over his stubbled — for his current role — chin and said, “Yeah, he talked to me. So?”

“He’s a friend of yours, Mr. Barr?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” He paused. “What in hell makes it any of your business?”

“I’m a private investigator. Jellicoe’s ex-wife hasn’t been able to get in touch with him for several days, so she hired me to find out what’s happened to him, if anything. I understand he saw you here on the set Friday, and I hoped you might be able to tell me where he is now.”

Barr glanced up at me again. Then he rose to his feet. Maybe it was my imagination but I got the impression that he was suddenly more relaxed. Still, he seemed pale beneath his deep tan, the skin appearing oddly washed out, faded.

He was a wide-shouldered, thick-armed man with a square muscular-looking face, brilliant blue eyes, a dashing cleft in his heavy chin. Rubbing his stubbled chin again, he said, “Far as I know he’s at his hotel. Last I saw of him was Friday.”

“He seem normal? I mean, anything special on his mind? Any indication he might be leaving town, taking a trip?”

Barr shook his head. “You couldn’t prove it by me. Reason he was here, he works for Cheim. Cheim’s producing this epic of Americana. I’m the star of this epic. We’re a little over budget and schedule, trying to finish up in the next couple days. Willie’s an old maid. He frets. He just came out here to try speeding things up, and complain a little.”

I gave him my card and asked him to call me if he saw Jellicoe again.

“Is that all?” he said, not very pleasantly. “I’ve got to beat the hell out of three dangerous outlaws in about another minute.”

I grinned. “Three? All at once?”

He didn’t grin. “I always beat up three or four at once. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair to my fans. I’m the star.”

I said, “There is one other thing, Mr. Barr. What kind of shape was Jellicoe in Friday afternoon? I know he was out on the town with Miss Ardent Thursday night, and got a bit stoned at the Panther — “

“Miss who?”

“Ardent. Sylvia Ardent.”

He was standing facing me, hands on his hips, head slightly lowered, and with one eyebrow raised. He didn’t do anything at all. He simply stood there like a stone statue for at least five long seconds.

Then he said, barely parting his lips, “Sylvia Ardent? And Willie? Little Willie?”

“Yeah. They were at the Panther Room Thursday night, and I guess Jellicoe kind of lived it up — “

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

I was still carrying the Panther Room photo, out of its cardboard frame so it would fit into my coat pocket. I showed it to Barr. “That’s Sylvia Ardent,” I said. “And I’m reasonably certain the exceedingly euphoric fellow is Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe.”

Barr moved finally. He thrust out an arm, gripped the photo and held it before his staring eyes. Both brows were raised now, way up.

“Why, the sonofabitch,” he said. “The sonofabitch.” He appeared to have forgotten I was there, even though I was standing no more than a foot and a half from him. An expression of great perplexity grew upon his wide, well-muscled face. “But how? How could it be? Why would she — “

He stopped. And then another of those queer reactions took place somewhere within Warren Barr. His expression changed from that of a man vastly confounded to that of one gazing upon a bright and excruciatingly painful light. He shoved his teeth together, breathed out violently through flaring nostrils. His jaw muscles bulged alarmingly.

This was a significant moment, I felt pretty sure. But its significance wasn’t entirely clear to me. So, probing, I encouraged Barr. “Yes? Kind of surprised you, huh?”

It didn’t encourage him. He handed the photo back to me, relaxed his jaws, wiggled them a moment and said, “Sorry I can’t help you, Scott. Now run along, I’m busy.”

“Well, I’m a little curious — “

“Beat it.” He was standing with his hands on his hips again. “I’ve got to go slug the hell out of three or four guys.” He paused, then added — significantly, I thought — “Or five.”

I grinned. “Five? I hope you don’t mean what that sounds like you mean. You’re not a sacred cowboy to me, Barr. And up till now I’ve been a jolly fellow, right?” Probably I should have kept my mouth shut. But my forbearance wears a bit thin at times. Truly, I don’t go around asking for trouble. But occasionally, when it calls, I answer.

Barr said, “Yeah, you’re a jolly fellow. Just get lost. Guys come around bugging me, it destroys my mood. You wouldn’t understand, but I got to keep the right mood between scenes.”

“You’ve got to get in the right mood to slug the hell out of three or four guys? Or five?”

He let me see his jaw muscles bulge alarmingly again. “Just don’t come around bugging me anymore, Scott. Or I’ll make it clear what I mean.”

“Thanks for your time,” I said. “See you in the movies.”

He looked at me for a second longer, then walked away.

The assistant director was yelling for everybody to be quiet, quiet, and then there were the calls of, “Roll ‘em … Speed … Action!” before I found Lucilla Mendez. She wouldn’t be needed before the cameras for another hour or so, when they filmed her big scene — she was going to get raped by two bandits, which would probably take all the rest of the morning and half the afternoon — and was sitting at a long table under a canvas shade, drinking coffee.

Lucilla was a soft-mouthed little Mexican sweetie with eyes like burning coals and black hair with the gleam of ebony in the reflected sunlight. I told her who I was and that Hazel had given me her name, and she said, “Ah, Hazel, yes. She has told me much of you, Mr. Scott.”

“Much? Then … call me Shell, huh?”

She flashed her white teeth and winked.

“Uh … about this meeting between Jellicoe and Warren Barr. Hazel said you told her Barr seemed disturbed after the talk.”

“Plenty. They talked away from the others, then Mr. Jellicoe left. Mr. Barr, he just stood there awhile. When he came back where the rest of us were, he seemed like he was thinking about something he didn’t enjoy much, frowning, missing his cues, like that. And he blew some of his lines, for maybe a half hour. Everybody could tell he was real upset.”

“Would you have an idea what they talked about?”

She shook her head. “They were off by themselves.”

“Barr didn’t say anything about it?”

“No.”

“He and Jellicoe didn’t have any obvious trouble?”

“Just talk. Mr. Barr — you know he’s a kind of rough one.” I nodded. “He acted like he was going to get rough with Mr. Jellicoe for a little bit. You know, balled up his hands and made fists, like that. But nothing happened.” She was silent for a few moments. “He did hit him once, though.”

“Barr slugged Jellicoe?”

“Knocked him cold for half an hour. Cold as a mackerel.”

“Friday?”

She opened the dark eyes wider. “No, a long time ago. Maybe three years, almost.”

“You saw it happen?”

“Me and like a hundred other people. It was when we were making Loves of Jesse James for Premiere — when Mr. Cheim was still boss there. Mr. Barr was the hero, Jesse James. There was a whole bunch of us standing around while Mr. Jellicoe was telling Mr. Barr off.”

“You mean bawling him out?”

“Like that. Mr. Barr — well, he drinks sometimes. A few times he came on the set — oh — pretty happy. Mr. Jellicoe was telling him it just couldn’t be tolerated, they were spending three million dollars on the picture, that kind of thing. A little severe. Mr. Barr kept getting madder. Anyway, he just pow, hit him. Then he walked off the set.”

“What did Jellicoe do?”

“He just lay there, cold as a mackerel.”

“I mean, what happened when he came to?”’

“He got up, and held his face for a while. Then he looked around at the ones of us still on the set and left.”

Well, this little Lucilla Mendez was lots of fun, but I had work to do. Had to get the old nose to the grindstone. Had to get cracking. Had to see Sylvia Ardent.

I stood up. “Thanks, Lucilla. You’ve been a big help.”

She smiled. And I got cracking.

</code>

<code> Home was one of the six-room, fifteen-hundred-dollar-a-month “lodges” on the grounds of the world-famous Indian Ranch, a hundred yards from poetically named Tanglewood Lane, just north of a line drawn between the heart of Beverly Hills and Bel Air. Each “lodge” had an individual name — Iroquois, Mohawk, Apache, Sioux and similar dandies — and in the main hotel building were such marvels as the Sitting Bull Dining Room and Custer’s Last Stand Bar. They were cute as a baby’s scalp at Indian Ranch.

Shortly after noon on this hot, bright Monday I was standing before the Cree Lodge, pushing on the black iron arrowhead, which I presumed was a bell, and which I had managed to find in something under a minute and a half.

While waiting to see if anything exciting would happen, I mentally ran over the few things I knew about Miss Ardent. I understood she’d started out as a model, but I myself recalled with some vividness when she had come to the delighted attention of citizens, at least male citizens, at large.

She had posed for an unprecedented six-page foldout in one of the most popular of the slick men’s magazines, which immediately became even more popular. She’d been caught by the camera in a shaded spot beneath an apple tree, wearing only a skin-tight pair of faded blue jeans rolled up over her shapely calves, on tiptoe and reaching high over her head for a juicy-looking red apple, a delicate pattern of light and shadow on her youthfully blooming face and seminude body, and with a single strong shaft of sunlight falling full on one startling, and startlingly white, bare breast.

The comparison with Eve was inevitable, and was made time and time again, both in speech and in print, and undoubtedly in numberless fevered imaginations, because that shot sure stirred up the old Adam. Shortly afterward she was in Hollywood, where she’d appeared in two or three films, the last one a big moneymaker in which Sylvia had starred and which received favorable attention even from the critics. Then television. Girls’ Dorm and the top of the TV heap.

The door opened. I hadn’t heard any buzzer buzz or bell ring inside the low L-shaped lodge, but suddenly there she stood, and then the bells rang and buzzers buzzed, or so it seemed. There she was, the baby-doll babe of TV, the gal with too much too-much, Sylvia Ardent in the flesh.

Well, not exactly flesh.

She wore a pale-yellow knitted sweater and skirt, and — all in a darker shade of yellow — a chiffon kerchief tied about her neck, a narrow belt and high-heeled pumps. The sweater was one of those very fuzzy items and her narrow belt was cinched tight, the combination making her alleged dimensions, which appeared exaggerated in print, seem conservative in fact.

She stood framed in the doorway and smiled at me. “Hello,” she said.

“Hello.” Possibly I put a bit too much oomph into the word. It came out more like “Hello!” But a guy does not often gaze suddenly upon such as Sylvia Ardent. She was everything Sylvia was on color television, only everything was better, including the color: creamy white skin, eyes the shade of melted emeralds, golden-red hair, lips that would spook a bull.

A faint crease appeared between her smooth eyebrows. “Do I — do we know each other?”

“Not … yet.” I smiled. “Of course, I know you, Miss Ardent.” Who didn’t? I was thinking.

She moistened those muleta-red lips and smiled again. “Did you want to see me about something?”

“Yes. Yes, indeed.”

I was remembering those two studio photos I’d found in Jellicoe’s room, in one of them Sylvia looking to her left with unconcealed lust in her eyes, in the other Sylvia looking to her right with unconcealed lust in her eyes. She was looking straight at me now, but I couldn’t see any kind of lust in her eyes.

“Well, what is it? What do you want to see me about?”

I knew that what had started out to be a friendly smile was becoming a perhaps too-friendly grin — at least, too-soon too-friendly — but it had been difficult not to remember that six-page foldout which had introduced us, and consequently I’d been thinking of the new Eve and that old apple, and of my previous musings about the at-least-possible death of Wilfred Jellicoe, gloriously assassinated.

But the edge of sharpness in Sylvia’s tone brought me back to the here and now. Then I couldn’t remember what she’d asked me. I thought for a while. “What do you want to see me about?” Sure, that’s what it had been.

So I wiped the smile off my face and replied soberly, all business, “Wilfred Jellicoe. I know about — “

I stopped in midsentence because Sylvia had taken a deep breath and was holding it, and those previously startling dimensions became you-wouldn’t-believe-it.

But I tried. ” — Thursday night,” I managed. “You and Wilfred at the Panther Room. And then…” It ended in a kind of mumble. She was just going to have to let her breath out.

She did, finally. Let it out in a long sigh and then said, “Wilfred? You’re here because of Wilfred?”

“Yes. Wilfred Jellicoe.” I tried to sum it up in one brisk sentence without any mumbles. “You see, I know you were with him at the Panther Room Thursday night. And I’m very interested in what happened there, and after you left — “

She’d stopped me again. But not with a deep breath. This time one might say of Sylvia’s smile not only that it had died but that rigor mortis had set in. Her eyes ceased looking like liquid emeralds and appeared to become green stones. She gazed at me stonily. Then she said, “Did he send you here?”

“He didn’t send me. I have simply been investigating his recent activities, checking up on him. I am attempting to follow in his footsteps, so to speak — “

“In his footsteps. Ha! That’s an interesting way to put it.”

I cocked my head on one side. At least half of this conversation was escaping me. “Maybe I’m not making myself clear,” I said, choosing my words with care. “I know you and Wilfred Jellicoe were together Thursday night. I simply want to talk to you about what he said and did at the Panther Room, and what happened to him after that — “

“All right, all right!” she cried. “You don’t have to go into details about it!”

I cocked my head on the other side. “Miss Ardent, do you mind if we step into your lodge? I would like to pursue this further, but, especially at the rate we’re going, I’d prefer not to do it standing here in your doorway.”

She smiled oddly. “Well, I should hope not!”

I rolled that one around, then walked into her lodge as she stepped aside. Sylvia shut the door behind me — and, for some reason, locked it — then walked over thick-napped white carpet to a massive dove-gray couch on which were scattered half a dozen fluffy bright pillows, and sank down upon it.

As I followed her I noticed other spots of color, abstract paintings on one wall, a rustic wooden bar with four stools before it on my right. Then I sat at the other end of the couch and looked at Sylvia appraisingly, wondering where our conversation had gone astray.

“Perhaps I’d better tell you exactly what I’m after,” I said.

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“But I want to talk about it. That’s why I’m here. What the hell — “

“Please don’t swear at me.”

“I’m not swearing at you. I’m just … swearing, getting a bit frustrated, that’s all.”

“You men! You’re all alike, aren’t you?” She leaned toward me, fixed the big green eyes on my face, and said, “You really do know about it, don’t you?”

Know what about it? I wondered. I really was getting frustrated with this babe. “What about it?” I asked her. I pounded a fist gently against my forehead. “What about it?”

She sighed. “All right.”

“All right?” I asked, puzzled. Her replies seemed to be answers to questions I wasn’t asking. For a moment I wondered if she might be as mentally retarded as she was physically advanced. Maybe she heard voices….

“I said I would, didn’t I?” Sylvia paused, looking at me intently. “Maybe I’m wrong. But — well — you don’t want money from me, do you?”

“Money? From you? Of course I don’t want any money from you.”

“I didn’t think so. Wilfred didn’t want any money, either — the little monster. But of course you know that, don’t you? You big monster.”

Well, one thing was clear. It was clear this tomato and I had got off on the wrong conversational foot from the first instant, and were simply going to have to start all over.

But before I could think of anything to say that might clarify the situation, she asked me, “What’s your name?”

“Shell Scott.”

“I’d like to at least know your name first.”

First? While I pondered that, Sylvia rose from the couch with a sudden but graceful movement and took the yellow kerchief from around her neck. Then she unbuckled the belt and dropped both items to the carpet. Staring steadily at me, she crossed her arms before her slim waist, gripped opposite sides of her yellow sweater, and in one smooth — and extraordinarily stimulating — movement, pulled the sweater up over her head and threw it also to the carpet.

I still had not the faintest idea what had gotten into Sylvia Ardent nor what was behind her perplexing words and actions, but I’ll tell you the truth: it was becoming a question of supreme indifference to me.

Sylvia Ardent in pale-yellow skirt and fuzzy sweater had been as exciting as those erotic statues carved on Indian temples at Konarak, Belur and Khajuraho, but standing only three feet from me, wearing a pale-yellow skirt below, and above only a hopelessly inadequate — inadequate if it was meant to conceal anything vital — lacy yellow half-bra, she was telepathic testosterone, a hormonic transfusion, a new incarnation of the Moslems’ transcendental Loolooeh — Loolooeh, sliding down the zipper of her skirt.

“Syl — Sylvia!” I cried, disconcerted.

“You don’t have to make such a noisy celebration about it,” she said. Then, with some heat, “I didn’t really think Wilfred would kiss and tell. But I suppose you do, too.”

“Do what, too?”

“Kiss and tell.”

“Ma’am, I don’t do anything and tell.”

“Ha! That’s what they all say. That’s what Wilfred said. But he told you, didn’t he?”

I stood up. “Miss Ardent,” I said severely, “I think we have, through some marvelous process of cumulative confusion, failed to reach an absolute meeting of minds…”

But by then the skirt was sliding down. Down, slowly, over firm, well-rounded hips, long white thighs, shapely calves, slim ankles. She stepped from the bunched yellow cloth and gave it a little kick to the side.

“Ah…” I said. “Well, if you don’t want to listen to reason,” I said. I sat down again. “Umm — well — you can’t say I didn’t try, didn’t I?” I wasn’t quite saying what I meant to, but it was by this time difficult to formulate lucid sentences.

It was difficult because Sylvia now stood facing me, weight on her left foot, right leg relaxed, one hand resting on the outthrust ultrafemininity of her rounded hip, swelling breasts thrusting at what little there was of the lacy half-bra. And those ample hips were clad in another wisp of lacy yellow about the size and shape of a baby’s bikini bottom.

Sylvia’s left hand was still resting on her hip but with her right she had reached behind her back and was fiddling with something there. I had a hunch I knew what she was fiddling with, a hunch confirmed when hooks came unhooked and the wispy brassiere drooped, almost fell. Almost, not quite. The yellow cloth dropped from one high, heavy breast, slid over its smooth roundness, baring it, but clung — precariously — to the other white mound.

She stood quite still for a moment, looking at me. “I should have stayed a call girl,” she said with more than a little heat. “At least it was more honest than this.”

She shrugged her shoulders. The bra slid down her white arms and fell to lie, a small spot of yellow, at her feet.

Sylvia’s lovely face — when I managed a quick peek at it — was flushed with anger. At least, I assumed it was anger because as she continued to speak her voice rose, became more shrill.

“First Gideon!” she cried. “Then Wilfred. Now you! Who’ll be next?”

“I think you’re cuckoo,” I said. “What’s all this about Gideon and — “

“I might as well still be a call girl!” she cried. “What’s the difference? Except now I’m extorted into it. Gideon! Wilfred! You! I suppose now you’ll hold it over my head like the Sore of Damocles!”

“Wait a minute! Extorted? Gideon? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

But Sylvia was beyond listening, beyond even hearing, by this time. She hooked her thumbs in the sides of her bikini pants and started to slide them down, then stopped and stepped even closer to me. Only inches from her, I could feel the heat of her bare body, smell the delicate scent of feminine lotions and oils and perfumes.

Her voice was less strident when she spoke. “Shell Scott, is it? Well, you don’t look like the type, Shell Scott. No, you don’t. Different circumstances, I might have gone for this like it was my own idea, instead of being extorted into it.”

Then she slid her hands down her thighs, thumbs dragging the triangle of yellow cloth.

It was now or never, I thought. This was the moment of truth. I moved like lightning. That is, I moved one hand like lightning. I shot it out and grabbed her wrist. Barely in time.

“Hold it,” I said.

“What?” She appeared perplexed.

“Just hold it a second. I mean, don’t take your pants off.”

“What?”

“Don’t take your pants off.”

“I’m certainly not going to keep them on.”

“Oh, yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not!”

Down she shoved her hands again, but I got as much muscle as I could into the effort to keep one of her wrists up, then got her other wrist in my still free hand. Even then it was quite a struggle. Gad, she was strong. Of course, I was in an awkward position, seated and leaning way forward, while she had the advantage of being on her feet and shoving down on her pants with a kind of maniacal fixity of purpose.

For a few seconds it wasn’t clear whether I was winning or losing. It was, actually, quite embarrassing. I certainly didn’t want to lose to a girl. …

Right then a singular thought flitted into my mind, like a moth fluttering toward a flame. Here I was with one of the shapeliest, sexiest, most gorgeous tomatoes on the planet, a tomato determined to overpower me and get her pants off, and … well, the thought that fluttered into my mind was: What am I doing?

</code>

<code> 4

What am I doing? I thought.

But then I said grimly, “Listen, baby, we’ve got to get something straight here. Just keep those damned pants on!”

“Are you cracked?” she yelped. “You some kind of nut?”

“Sylvia, you said something which vastly intrigued me. I’ve got to think about it.”

“You’ve got to think about it? You’ve got to think?”

This was simply no time for rational argument, that was clear. First I had to subdue her, and then maybe we could argue rationally. I braced myself, leaned back and yanked. Pulled off balance, she fell against me, squirming. Her right breast got me a good smack in the left eye, and as I let go of her wrists and tried to reach around her she got an elbow free and smacked me on the other eye with it. That elbow hurt. But I managed to get both arms around hers and my hands clamped behind her back. I thought I had her then.

But Sylvia was not a woman easily subdued. She was a gal who didn’t know the meaning of defeat. She was going to get those pants off one way or another. Even in the heat of battle, I had to admire her determination.

She got a foot planted against the couch and shoved, trying to pull me back with her. She didn’t manage that, but she did kick hard enough to send the couch sliding out from beneath me, and down both of us went. But that was, for all practical purposes, the end of the struggle. I landed half on top of her, got her wrists in my hands, squeezed and waited.

Ten seconds, fifteen, then she relaxed suddenly.

“OK,” she said. “You win. So what do we do now?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, talk.”

“You want to talk,” she said slowly. She looked past me, up at the ceiling. Her arched brow furrowed. “What … about?”

“Wilfred Jellicoe,” I said.

We were right back where we’d started. Well, almost.

“Just talk?”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t want to…”

“No.”

“You really don’t want to?”

“No.”

She sighed. She squirmed slightly against me. Then she sighed again, and squirmed a bit again. And then she smiled that slow, wise, infuriatingly self-satisfied smile which is inherent in every female, the age-old smile of victorious surrender and triumphant defeat, and she said softly, “The hell you don’t.”

“Well, I’m not,” I said.

“What are we doing on the floor, then?”

“Well, I’m resting.”

“Why do you want to talk about Wilfred?”

“I’m a detective. And — “

“A detective? A policeman? Ye gods!”

“No, no — a private investigator. Just a … citizen. I’m not going to arrest you or anything.”

“Or anything?”

“I already told you.”

“I know. I didn’t believe you.”

“I gathered that.”

“So you’re a detective. Then why are you here? You really didn’t come here to rape me?”

“Rape you? Rape? Are you out of your mind? I never raped a woman in my life. I’m no sex fiend. At least, I — ah — ” I paused and added, perhaps a bit stuffily, “What sort of man do you think I am?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. You mean you really didn’t know Wilfred raped me? Well, kind of raped me. And he didn’t tell you about it?”

“No, he did not tell me about it.” I paused again, pondering a semantic problem. “How do you kind of rape somebody?”

She didn’t answer. Instead she moistened her flaming lips and said, “Move a little, will you? You’re awfully heavy.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon, Sylvia.” I shifted to a more comfortable position. More comfortable for her, anyway, I supposed. “All right?”

“That’s a lot better. For talking. You were squashing the breath out of me.”

“OK, let’s talk. I think I should make it clear that the only thing I’m trying to do is find Wilfred Jellicoe. He’s not staying at his hotel. I know he was alive and apparently normal Friday afternoon. I presume he’s in no real trouble, but the thought crossed my mind that it was at least possible he was no longer among the living. Even that somebody might have killed him. My only other lead to him is the fact that he was with you Thursday night.”

“Thursday night, and part of Friday morning.”

“Anyhow, I know he was gadding about Friday afternoon, so that lets you out. At least, you couldn’t have killed him.”

She smiled slightly. “Not quite. I think that’s when he started living.”

“Ah … yes. But … have you seen him since Thursday night, or heard from him since then?”

“No. Should I have? That one night was the bargain. Of course, you really can’t trust extorters, I suppose, can you?”

I said, “Sylvia, during the past few minutes you’ve mentioned extortion two or three times. You said something about having been a call girl, I think. And you mentioned Wilfred — and Gideon. I presume the Gideon was Gideon Cheim?”

“Yes. The old creep. I’d like to drop his carcass in shark-infected waters.” She paused. “Shell?”

“Yeah?”

“My leg’s going to sleep.”

“Sorry.” I moved a bit more to the side. “Now, Wilfred — uh — extorted you? How? What did he have on you?”

She closed the smooth, silken lids over her eyes, let her head fall easily to one side. “Well, I was a call girl once — I thought you already knew when I mentioned it. That was quite a while ago. And until Thursday I didn’t think anybody here in Hollywood knew about it, about my … scarlet past, except Gideon. I worked for him when he was head of Premiere, you know; that was when I made my three pictures — those two bombs and then the big one, the good one.”

“Uh-huh. And Jellicoe?”

“He knew all about it, too. I’m pretty sure Gideon’s the only other one who knew, so he must have told Wilfred.” She pressed her lips together. “It was only for about six months, years and years ago. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it, either. Not really. I was young, and hungry, and broke, but — well — attractive. And I’m pretty dumb, anyway.”

“You could have fooled me.”

I saw the lids slide up as she turned her head slowly to look at me. “Well, you’re not so smart yourself,” she said.

It was truly a lovely face. Skin clear and creamy-smooth, emerald eyes liquid and deep, a moist and almost luminous green. Lips soft and full, gleaming, slightly parted. Fantastic breasts, truly remarkable. And the very slightly rounded abdomen, generous hips with only that wisp of yellow….

“Ah…” I said. “Why don’t we get up and sit on the couch?”

“If you want to.”

I scrambled up and got planted on the cushions while Sylvia, taking more time about it, rose easily to her feet and stretched, rubbing one hand against her back. Then she sat on the couch next to me.

“Ah…” I said. “You might as well put your clothes back on, what?”

“Wouldn’t that be a little silly? Now, I mean. It’s not like as if I was still a big mystery to you. After all, you can’t put the chicken back in the egg, can you?”

Whatever that meant. “Well,” I said, “you will keep your pants on, won’t you?”

She laughed. “You’ve really got a big thing about pants, haven’t you?”

She did move a foot or so farther away from me, however, and that helped a little. Not a lot. After a moment she went on, “Anyway, if it got told around, about my — my scarlet past, well, maybe it wouldn’t matter too much to some. But there’d be plenty of others who’d fix it so I probably couldn’t even stay in town. Anyhow, it for sure would be good-bye career. And I really enjoy Girls’ Dorm. They write such nice words for me to say. And all the pretty clothes…”

She got up from the couch and began pacing back and forth, as one will often do when thinking. But Sylvia was clad only in those yellow bikini-type pants and high-heeled shoes, and never had I seen even a genius doing more interesting thinking.

Her first sentence or two failed to make any impression on me at all, but then I heard her saying, “So Wilfred knew the story, all right. The part of a year when I was making a living that way, the city where I was then, even where I was staying. Maybe not every little thing, but enough.”

“And he threatened to spill? Spread the story around?”

“You know it. He told me either I did what he wanted or he’d plant the story — plus enough details so it could be checked if anybody cared that much — where it would do the most good. Ruin me the most, that is. Producers, gossip columnists, newspapers, the trades, all that.”

She stopped in the middle of the room, lifted her right hand and gently caressed her left breast.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

She appeared not to have heard me. “Wilfred knew I couldn’t afford to let that happen. I told him I’d pay him, almost any amount, if he’d just please not spread the story around.” She dropped her hand to her side, began pacing again. “He didn’t want money, though. Not any money at all. Just … me.”

“When did Jellicoe first talk to you about this?”

“Last Thursday. Early in the afternoon.”

“Just a little while before you went out with him Thursday night, then.”

“Yes. That was part of the deal. Out on the town … first. Big night. Big night for him, maybe. The creep. He got pretty drunk. But so did I, a little.” She paused. “Well, then we came here.”

“And you haven’t seen him or even heard from him since?”

She shook her head, turned and walked across the room, swung around and started back, a pensive expression on her face.

“Sylvia,” I said sternly, “please go stand in the corner, or else come over and sit on the couch. Just stop moving, will you?”

She laughed, but walked to the couch and sat at its end, as far as she could get from me. She picked up a pillow covered with satin of the shade called hot pink, fluffed it in her hands, then put it behind her head and leaned back, sinking slowly onto other brightly colored pillows already there.

“Better?” she asked.

She knew it wasn’t. So I looked away. Then, thinking, I scowled and turned back toward her.

“Why, you must have thought — you thought I was trying to pull the same thing Jellicoe…. But that’s ridiculous!”

“Not to me, it wasn’t. It had just happened to me, remember. Whenever I think of that creep Wilfred it’s all I can think about.”

“But, Sylvia, you couldn’t possibly have thought that I — “

“Why not? I didn’t know anything about you. You were just a big hulk of a brute standing there looking at me like you were going to take my clothes off before we even got inside — “

“What rot!”

“I said ‘Hello,’ and you said ‘Hello’ like it was something else. When I asked if we knew each other you told me we didn’t. ‘Not yet,’ you said, but you knew me, all right…”

“I was merely commenting that of course I, like everybody else, know who Sylvia Ardent — “

She went right on. “The main thing was you didn’t say what you wanted, just looked at me like — oh, I couldn’t describe it. You were grinning fiendishly, and your eyes were glittering — “

“Sylvia, please! This is ridic — “

“But then, when I asked you again what it was you wanted to see me about, you stopped smiling and sort of stared at me, looking very fierce, and said, like it was the secret word, ‘Wilfred Jellicoe!’ You sounded like Fu Manchu — “

“Ah, come on — “

“Well, you sounded awfully funny to me, daddy. And after the way you’d been looking at me, and acting — and what had just happened to me with Wilfred, and his threats to tell people about me — what was I supposed to think? Besides, you said you knew about Wilfred and me, and you were trying to follow in his footsteps, and even that you’d prefer not to do it right there in the doorway — “

“Stop! That’s enough. I won’t listen to any more — “

“Well, you can understand why I thought — “

“Stop!”

“And just like Wilfred, you said you didn’t want any money, so naturally I thought — “

“Sylvia Ardent, goddammit, if you don’t shut your dumb mouth I will do something terrible to you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind so much, now I know you’re not a dirty extorter — “

“That is not what I meant,” I said icily.

Then I noticed that the corners of her full lips were curving upward, and that her eyes twinkled. I flipped my hands into the air, looked at the ceiling, the wall, the furniture. Then back at the far end of the couch. And Sylvia.

She had crossed her legs, and the upper curve of one white thigh almost hid the fragile strip of yellow. She still lay back on the pillows against the arm of the couch, one hand behind her neck and the other resting palm up at her side, fingers curling. The big green eyes were half closed as she looked almost sleepily at me.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

The smooth lids slid up a bit. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Well, quit it. Look, earlier you were talking about Gideon, Wilfred and me — when you were still suffering from that stupid delusion about my motives — and you said, or at least intimated, that it all started with Gideon. Would you mind explaining that?”

She sat up suddenly, uncrossing her long legs and folding both arms over her breasts. Then she waggled her head and said, “I might as well tell you all the secrets there is, daddy. Pretty soon I won’t have any secrets from you, will I?”

“Gideon?”

“I made those pictures for him — the first two I mentioned. Bombs. Oh, they made money, but they were from starvation. I was awful. And I was tied up in a long contract, nickels and dimes. Gideon was always calling me into his big office for one thing and another. We’d just talk, and he was always real kind, almost fatherly, but I could tell he was trying to worm his way into my good gracious.”

“Your what?”

“One day he gave me a script. A real script. It was a marvelous part. Too good for me, really; I’m not that good an actress.”

“If you ask me — “

“Let me finish.” She wiggled over the couch and stopped next to me, put a hand on my shoulder. “He had a new offer for me. I’d make a hundred thousand dollars for doing the part — ten times what I got from the others. Plus a better contract. And the part could almost make me a star, it was so good. But there was a catch.”

“I think I know what’s coming.”

“Sure, you do. Wilfred all over again, only before Wilfred. History repeating itself before it happened.” She stopped for a second or two. “That wasn’t all of it. If I didn’t — didn’t make the picture, there were lots of things he could do to me, he said. He was still about the most powerful thing in Hollywood then.” She paused. “Well, anyway, I made the stinking picture.”

I didn’t say anything, just sat there waiting for her to go on. Or maybe that was all of it. But after looking steadily at me for several seconds she said, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you going to give me the missionary bit? Like what a bad girl I’ve been, the wages of sin is death and all that?”

“Baby, if the wages of sin is death I’ve been trying to kill myself for years.”

“I knew I could trust you. Do you think I’d have told you all this if I didn’t think I could trust you?”

“I suppose not. But, frankly, how do you know I won’t blab this salacious intelligence all over town?”

“You just wouldn’t. I can trust you. After all, you had a chance to rape me, and you didn’t.”

“Sylvia, how many times must I repeat, I do not rape — “

“Don’t shout at me, daddy.” She shrugged. “Well, you had your chance. I’ll bet you hate yourself in the morning.”

“I hate myself already. Listen, we have carefully plumbed the depths of your depravity — if nothing else — but I still don’t understand how Cheim got the dope on your background.”

“Oh, that. Well, I was all set to do the big picture, you know, but there was still that condition — the arrangement — to take care of. So — well — we arranged, um, the arrangement.” She sighed. “I kept my end of the bargain, but all that time before then he’d been like a father to me. I felt like I was committing insect.”

“He bugged you, huh?”

“Daddy, I’ll tell you, it was an experience I’ll never remember if I can forget it. If he hadn’t been so sennilee — “

“So what?”

“What do you mean, so what? Maybe it’s not important to you, but it meant a lot to me, daddy.”

“I mean, what was it you said he was?”

“So sennilee — real ancient. Old, practically dying.”

“Senile?”

“What’s that?”

“Skip it. You were saying?”

“That’s why it made me feel like — you do know what committing insect is, don’t you?”

“Putting bugs in the bughouse, I suppose. If killing them is insecticide — “

“You’re making that up.”

“Uh-huh. I thought I’d go along with — “

“Incidentally, why do they call it insane when you’re crazy? Shouldn’t it be outsane?”

“Frankly, I never thought about it. Not even once.”

“Anyway, like I was saying, for weeks after he kept winking at me and pinching me hither and yon, and acting like God’s gift to poor working girls. One day when he was pinching and crowing at me like a rooster I got fed up and really let him have it.”

“Again?”

“I told him not to be such a swell head, and to quit acting like he was the first man in my life and all. That’s when I told him I’d been a call girl for six months once and it wasn’t like he was number one with me but more like maybe one million. I just made that up to make him mad, of course.”

“I rather hoped you were exaggerating a little.”

“I really said some sharp things to him, and he got cold and mean and like he was going to have a bunch of strokes. That must be when he had some investigating done — I think he hired some detectives. I know he hired lots of detectives when he was head of the studio. They must have checked back to when I was a call girl. That’s the only way anybody would have known about it; I sure wouldn’t have mentioned it to him except he got on my nerve so much.”

I was trying to absorb all that when Sylvia jumped up. “I don’t care what you say,” she said. “I’ve got to move.”

She walked over to the door and back, then to the rustic wooden bar in the corner, and sat facing me on a stool there, arms pushed straight down before her, hands between her thighs and curled around the arc of wood on which she was perched.

“Something I still don’t get,” I said. “Why would Cheim have told Jellicoe all that info about you?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Wilfred didn’t tell me how he knew. But he knew. That was enough.”

“If Cheim had detectives check up on you, I suppose it’s possible Jellicoe got a look at their reports to his boss. Either that or Cheim told him.” I paused. “Do you suppose Jellicoe also knew about Cheim and you? The — ah — arrangement?”

“I think he did. I can’t be sure, but he was so close to everything, contracts and the goings on. And he acted a little funny around me, after. I’d take a bet he did know.”

“How long ago was that? The deal with Cheim, I mean.”

“Four and a half years. When I got the TV offer, the picture was a big hit, and I managed to get out of the movie contract. No trouble — Gideon didn’t try to keep me.”

“I was just wondering if maybe Jellicoe had been sort of eating his heart out for four and a half years. He had a couple of pictures of you in his suite.”

“No kidding? I didn’t know that.” She slid off the stool. “Well, that’s how it happened, daddy. There it is, the story of my life, if you can call it living.”

“Why do you keep calling me daddy?”

“It’s not like father, you dummy. I don’t know … when I like a fellow real well, I just call him daddy.”

“Oh?”

She walked across the room toward me. “You don’t look so fierce when you smile like that,” she said. “You look real good to me. But I’ll call you Shell if you want. Daddy — that’s just a pet name. Like if you had a pet name for me, what would it be?”

“Well … Mammae?”

“What’s it mean?”

“Look it up.”

“No more questions?”

“I guess not.”

“I suppose you have to leave.”

“Pretty quick. I’m going to conduct a little session with Gideon Cheim, one way or another.”

“Don’t tell him I told you — “

“I won’t.”

“I can trust you?”

“You can trust me.”

“I wonder. Maybe you don’t mean everything you say.”

“Now what are you getting at?”

“Well, I know you’re not a dirty old blackmailer now.”

“Yeah? So what does that mean?”

She didn’t answer. Not at first.

Instead she took one more long gliding step toward me and stopped only inches away. Her arms were hanging at her sides, palms of her hands pressed against the smooth, firm thighs. Then she slid her hands up slowly, to the roundness of her hips, up a little more.

“Well,” she said, smiling down at me, “you say I can trust you. You’re not a blackmailer. Or even a missionary. You say you’re not a mad rapist or anything.”

“I didn’t say or anything.”

She hooked her thumbs in the top of that narrow band of yellow, still smiling. And as she moved her hands down again, down slowly, very slowly, in the tone of one utterly rejected, abandoned, the woman scorned and alone — she was an actress, after all — she said, “I guess it’s true. You’re really not going to rape me, after all.”

I smiled at Sylvia Ardent.

“Well,” I said, “not … exactly.”

</code>

<code> 5

Gideon Cheim had suffered two heart attacks, the first a couple of years back and the second only recently, the last one being a massive coronary occlusion that nearly put an end to Gideon Cheim. He had, however, undergone open-heart surgery about a week ago and was still alive and kicking.

After leaving Sylvia Ardent’s lodge, I had done some research on Cheim, most of it checking clips from recent newspapers. He was recuperating in the Weston-Macey Hospital, a small private institution on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. It was not only small but exclusive, the prime requirements for admission being an ounce of illness and a ton of money.

He’d had a very close call. Cheim had been admitted to Weston-Macey on Sunday, August 27, and was operated on the following day. The day after that, Tuesday the twenty-ninth, he was dying — at least to judge by the virtual obituaries in the stories I’d read. Wednesday was a repeat of Tuesday, more of the same. But on Thursday, the last day of August, he’d begun to improve, and then practically sprang out of the casket. He was taken off the critical list that night, rapidly gained strength and relative vigor, and by Friday afternoon was sitting up in bed. Sometimes it’s like that.

I reached under the dash for the phone and called my office number. Hazel, at the Hamilton’s switchboard, came on: “Sheldon Scott, Investigations.” She was also “Barton and Blaine, Attorneys at Law,” “Tracers, Inc.,” “Universal Novelties” and half a dozen other companies.

“Let me speak,” I said, “to that scourge of evildoers, that rugged, industrious, sober — “

“You must mean Shell Scott himself,” she said.

“Why, how did you know?”

“Oh, I just knew. But I fear you cannot speak to Mr. Scott, sir. He is lying drunk in his office, with his head in the spittoon. No Jellicoe at any of the hospitals, Shell, and I haven’t got anything new on him. Three calls for you in the last hour but they were all from the same man. He seemed extremely anxious to talk to you.”

“He leave his name?”

“Yes. It was Mr. Gideon Cheim. He also left his number — “

“I’ll be damned.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, except that I’m on my way to try seeing the guy right now. He say what he wanted?”

“No. Only that it was most urgent, exceptionally urgent, and he wants to see you in person — he’s in a hospital.”

“I know. Thanks, Hazel. I’ll buy you a strawberry milkshake to go with that hamburger.”

“You’ll buy me champagne and a ruinously expensive dinner at Scandia.”

Shortly after two o’clock, when I was halfway to Pasadena on the Freeway, I began wondering if there was a tail on my Cad. I noticed the dark-blue Lincoln because it stayed one or two cars back, and once, when a sleek Cougar pulled out and went past, thus putting the Lincoln directly behind me, the driver had seemed deliberately to slow until another car passed him and fell in behind my Cad.

I was rolling along at sixty miles an hour, but I slowed gradually to fifty, and finally forty-five. A red Mercury was following me, the Lincoln behind it. The Mercury passed me with a roar and cut in sharply, presumably to evidence the driver’s ire at the slowpoke on a freeway. Not so the Linc. I thought the guy was going to stop entirely, and when I resumed normal speed there were two cars between that dark-blue sedan and me.

When I reached the end of the Freeway I kept going on the Arroyo Parkway to Colorado Boulevard, turned right and poked along for a few blocks, then pulled into the sizable parking lot at Macfadden Square, a large shopping center. I parked in a slot before a supermarket, cut the engine and turned to watch as the Lincoln swung into the lot and slowed to a stop only a few yards in from the street, a good fifty yards from me. I could see figures in the front seat but not clearly enough to recognize them. Nobody got out of the car.

In the Cad’s glove compartment I keep a little three-inch-high Bushnell 7x26 Custom Compact binocular. I grabbed it and walked into the supermarket. Standing behind stacked boxes of detergent and looking out through the store’s window I could still see the Lincoln. When I raised the binocular to my eyes and focused it, a couple of customers pushing half-loaded carts gawked at me with blank expressions.

As the blurred image sharpened I could see two men in the car, both in the front seat. They appeared to be only a few feet from me, and I was glad they only appeared to be that close. Because the name of one guy was Mac Kiffer — whom I have already mentioned briefly — and the other was Putrid Stanley, but both of them were spelled Trouble.

Putrid, seated on the driver’s right, was a tall, lean and lanky guy with a long bald phallic head and a beard nearly tough enough to scratch diamonds. He could shave at eight in the morning and have five-o’clock shadow by 9 a.m. His name was Wallace Stanley, and his unique handle had not been bestowed upon him because he bathed only on George Washington’s birthday, or failed to use bug-killer under his armpits, but because several years back another hood had taken a few slices at him with a spring-blade sticker.

One of the slices got Stanley on the forearm and another wreaked havoc on and about his nose, with the result that his beak and flaring nostrils were perpetually twisted into a kind of nasal grimace which, combined with his small round mouth, made him appear constantly to be smelling something which filled him with vast unease. Wallace got even with his assailant — by pumping six slugs from a .45-caliber heater into his back — but from that day to this he had been called Putrid.

His companion — and boss — the guy behind the wheel, was equally lovable. Mac Kiffer had done two years at San Quentin, for bribery and suborning perjury, but had escaped stir time for several cases of aggravated assault and at least two murders that I knew about. He was tall, maybe six two, with lean hips and wide shoulders, smooth black hair and sleepy-looking brown eyes, just an average man-in-the-street sort of guy. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and had a weak chin — and, so it was rumored, was weak in the guts department as well — and might have been an accountant or a clerk in a bookstore.

Both of those mugs were unpleasant characters, dangerous and deadly when a foul mood was upon them, which was a large percentage of the time. But I’d never had trouble with either of them, or with any of Kiffer’s half-dozen other boys — not any serious trouble, at least. So why would the two slobs be on my tail?

It gave me a queer feeling to recall that only a few hours ago I had been gazing upon Mrs. Gladys Jellicoe with at least mild apprehension, and thinking idly about Mac Kiffer — and the slugs singing past his black-haired skull yesterday. Slugs, according to the rumble, aimed Mac’s way by one of the heavies working for Eddy Lash, probably our town’s top hood. Whether at the top or merely close to it. Lash was without doubt a very successful “businessman” and lived in a ridiculously expensive — but beautifully designed and furnished — penthouse suite atop one of twin buildings on Wilshire Boulevard called the Ghian Apartments.

I say Lash’s penthouse was beautifully designed not because I’d been in it — for which I could probably thank my lucky stars — but because I had attended a swinging cocktail party, some months back, in a penthouse suite adjacent to Lash’s twin.

I suppose the sight of Mac Kiffer had set me to thinking about Lash not merely because of yesterday’s attempt to hit Kiffer in the head, but because it wouldn’t have surprised me nearly so much if it had been Eddy Lash or one of his five or six “employees” on my tail — even though it had been nearly two years since Lash and I had tangled. Lash, however, was not a man of short memory, nor one at all absentminded about people in whom he would like to produce a condition of deadness; and I had no doubt be would greatly enjoy producing that condition in me — but that’s another story.

I lowered the glasses, got out my notebook and jotted down the license number: HFZ440. The car was Mac Kiffer’s own, undoubtedly. He bought a new Lincoln each and every year, always the same color, dark blue. Then I strolled back to the Cad and drove on out of the lot. When I turned left at the first traffic signal the blue Lincoln was still tagging along. So I lost them.

I hit a couple of lights just before they turned red, went down an alley or two, then when I was sure I’d shaken my unwelcome companions I headed for the Weston-Macey.

</code>

<code> I went inside, closed the door behind me.

It was a spacious room, off-white draperies open before a wide window that looked out on green lawn and massed banks of flowers. In the room were cut flowers in three vases, new-looking furniture, a TV set.

Gideon Cheim sat erect in the wide hospital bed, pillows propped behind him, wearing a short-sleeved blue pajama top, and with the covers drawn up to his waist.

“Mr. Scott?” he said.

I’d phoned the hospital before getting here, so he’d been expecting me. “That’s right. You wanted to see me?”

“Yes. I understand you are looking for Wilfred Jellicoe. I am vitally interested in his whereabouts. And welfare. Tell me what you’ve learned.”

Just like that. I knew the type.

Even stuck in a hospital bed, climbing back from the six-foot pit, he gave the impression of bulk, solidity, strength. The flesh of his arms was a little stringy, and his face seemed to sag just a bit, but for a man of sixty-three only a week past tricky heart surgery, he appeared to be in very good shape. He was a large man, big-boned, with a great head dominated by a fleshy, wide nose and thick lips. His eyes were almost black, the skin puckered around them; there were deep creases above the bridge of his nose, and he didn’t have much hair left. He’d been a rip-snorter in his day, however, and he apparently wasn’t through snorting yet.

“Well?”

He barked the word. Abrupt, loud and impatient. The tone of command, I guessed. “How did you know I was looking for Mr. Jellicoe?” I asked.

He scowled. His black-and-gray eyebrows were thick and bushy and grew together in the middle, slanting down like wings to mingle on the bridge of his nose. They looked like one long double-arched brow, or a small hairy bird in flight.

Scowling ferociously at me, he bellowed, “That does not concern you. What concerns you is the fact that I do know, and am quite concerned to learn what you have discovered. Don’t worry, I shall pay you well. Very well, indeed.”.

“No, you won’t.”

“What?”

“You won’t pay me anything, Mr. Cheim. I already have a client — “

“You’re an impertinent sonofabitch.”

“As I was saying, I already have a client, and any report I make I’ll make to that client.”

“Goddammit,” he roared. “I insist that you tell me if you know where Wilfred Jellicoe is!”

“I take it, then, that you don’t have any idea where he is yourself?”

“Will you quit answering my questions with damnfool questions? Goddammit, you…” He went on for a few seconds, making some highly uncomplimentary remarks about me.

When he finished, I said gently, “Mr. Cheim, I do not ordinarily hit weak old men lying on their deathbeds, but you will have a better chance of living to an even riper state of cantankerous senility if you will kindly quit swearing at me.”

He opened his wide mouth and got ready to squeeze another bellow out of it, then shut his mouth with a click. He pushed his lips together and forward, pulled that one long shaggy brow down over his eyes.

While he was still quiet I said, “Actually, the main reason I came out here was to ask you some questions. To repeat the first one, I do have a client who hired me to look for Jellicoe, but how did you know it?”

There seemed to be a struggle going on inside Gideon Cheim. Finally he said, in a voice still loud but not bellowing, “I did not even know you had a client. However, there are in this city individuals who eagerly convey to me information about anything in which they believe I might be interested. They know Mr. Jellicoe has for years been my most trusted and valued associate. So far, five separate individuals have conveyed to me the intelligence that Shell Scott has been in contact with his sources, with the police, with hospitals — including this hospital — and that he is looking for Mr. Jellicoe. And when they conveyed this intelligence, you may accept it as indisputable that they were not so goddamned impertinent — “

“OK. I am indeed looking for Jellicoe. I don’t know where he is. Not yet. Obviously you don’t know, either.” I paused. “Is that the only reason you asked me to come out here on a matter of unbelievable urgency?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, lifted his arms, closed the big hands into fists and swatted the covers. After a while he opened one eye, then the other, and said, “Does it annoy you that I would be pleased to know where my old friend and associate is? Or that, should you discover his whereabouts, I would be overjoyed if you would be generous enough to tell me? Or even give me a hint? Does it astonish you that I actually prefer this course to getting out of bed and looking for him myself, staggering through the streets clutching my macerated heart in one hand and my aching butt in the other?”

“Relax,” I said. “You’ll tear out your stitches. My obligation to my client is merely to locate Jellicoe, if I can. You want the same thing.” I paused. “If you’ll answer a few questions, it might even help me find him.”

He took a deep breath, let it out. “Well?”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Only a few hours before I entered the hospital.”

“Sunday, August twenty-seventh,” I said. He pushed his lips out a little, staring at me, but didn’t say anything. I asked, “Have you heard from him since then?”

“I spoke to him by phone last Friday morning.”

“Mind telling me what that was about?”

He hesitated. “Yes, I do mind. It does not concern you.”

“OK, Mr. Cheim. You asked that I drop everything and come to see you. I have come. I have seen you. Goodbye.”

“Ah…” he said, “one moment. There is … one other thing.”

I kept my expression noncommittal. “Yes?”

He hesitated again. Then, as if he’d come to a decision, he went on, “I am primarily interested in the welfare of Mr. Jellicoe. There is another matter, minor by comparison, but of importance to me. For the last two years I have been putting into manuscript form the story of my life. My autobiography, which I call I! I think you will agree with me that the life story of Gideon Cheim would be a document of great value.”

He waited expectantly for me to comment. I didn’t.

But he was right. Cheim was as much a part of the movie industry’s history as any other man alive. Moreover, he undoubtedly knew some tales about Hollywood’s stars and superstars, its leaders and phonies, and even frauds and hushed-up scandals that few other men, if any, knew. He had been, after all, in one of the seats of real power for more than three decades. His autobiography would unquestionably be a historically valuable document, and perhaps even readable. It would also be an automatic best seller.

Cheim stopped waiting expectantly. “When I entered the hospital, I knew I was facing an operation which might prove fatal. I therefore entrusted the completed manuscript to Mr. Jellicoe, with instructions that, in the event of my death, he deliver it to a publisher with whom I have already made appropriate arrangements for the book’s posthumous publication.” He placed a hand over his heart. “When I am gone, the book will at least stand as a monument to my life.”

He paused once more, expectantly. Once more, presumably, he was disappointed in me.

Cheim finally took his hand off his heart. “If I survived the necessary surgery, Mr. Jellicoe was to return the manuscript to me. Four days after my operation I had recovered sufficiently to speak with him by phone, and told him to bring the manuscript to me on the following day.”

“So that’s the call you mentioned making Friday morning,” I said. “You also told me you hadn’t seen Jellicoe since the twenty-seventh. So your old friend and associate didn’t show up the next day — that is, Saturday, day before yesterday.”

“He did not. And there is no other, only my own copy. Mr. Jellicoe appreciates its value, and I am certain would have returned the manuscript to me had it been possible for him to do so. I am therefore deeply concerned. About him — and the manuscript.”

“You’ve several times mentioned the manuscript’s value. You don’t suppose Jellicoe figured he had his hands on a good thing, and deliberately failed to return it…”

That didn’t bother Cheim a bit. He even smiled a little, much as a rabid wolf might on preparing to bite. “No, Mr. Scott. I assume you do not know Mr. Jellicoe. I do. He is not an individual capable of such an act. Fear would destroy him.” Cheim paused. “To be blunt, he knows very well what I would do to him should he in any way incur my displeasure. He is — I have made him — cognizant of my power, and the lengths to which I will go to ensure that justice is visited upon anyone who would attempt to injure me.”

“OK,” I said, “we’ll agree you’re a rough one and Jellicoe knows it. Let’s also agree that not only you but half the population realized there was a good chance you’d kick the bucket right here in the Weston-Macey — and, in fact, very nearly did. Jellicoe wouldn’t worry about your visiting horrible justice upon him if you were dead.”

“You are overlooking the fact, Mr. Scott, that he knows I am not dead. I personally spoke to him by phone on Friday when I instructed him to return the manuscript to me.”

“Sure. Friday morning he knew you were alive and still full of the old beans. But not on the previous Tuesday or Wednesday, probably not even on Thursday.”

He got a queer expression on his face.

“How early Friday morning did you phone him, Mr. Cheim?”

“Why, it was…” He seemed still abstracted, his thoughts elsewhere. “Quite early. About seven in the morning.”

“Uh-huh.” I knew Jellicoe had been with Sylvia Ardent until the small hours of Friday morning. “How did he sound? Wide awake and alert? Or perhaps a little dopey?”

“He sounded a bit fuzzy. I awakened him with my call.”

“Perhaps half-awake he failed to understand your instructions, went back to sleep and — “

Cheim was shaking his big head. “No, he understood. I made it quite clear. You may take my word on that.”

“This is very interesting, Mr. Cheim,” I said. “But why tell me all this?”

“I intend to employ you to find that manuscript and return it to me. Since you are already looking for Mr. Jellicoe — “

“Maybe you. don’t get it. I’ve got a client, and a job to do for that client. I take them on one at a time.”

He snorted. “All right. You are employed to find Mr. Jellicoe. Do it, if you can, for your client. But for me, endeavor to find and return the manuscript. It need not interfere with your primary objective; it is a parallel objective. And if you are successful in returning the manuscript to me I will pay you any reasonable fee.”

“Like what?”

“Name your price, Mr. Scott.”

“How about ten thousand dollars?”

I expected a bellow. I didn’t get it. Cheim sat quietly staring at me. Then he said, “All right.”

I leaned on the foot of his bed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cheim, I wasn’t serious. I guess I was merely curious to know how anxious you are to get that manuscript back.”

Well, I got an idea then of just how implacable, how inflexible and even dangerous this old boy could be if he wanted to. I knew he’d swung plenty of weight around in the past, and had landed it on numerous people, much to their discomfort; but I had not before seen anger burning in his eyes the way it burned now. It was as though previously banked fires swelled in their blackness. You couldn’t really see any red, but it was as though flames did flicker in there. And the mouth changed a little. A slight twist, a bit more. firmness, and it became very hard, and cruel.

“Am I to understand you will not aid me in any way?”

I shrugged. “No, not exactly. I’ll keep an eye open for the manuscript — now that I know about it. But I’m not going to let that interfere with my job until I know where Jellicoe is, or what happened to him.”

He didn’t say anything, but he nodded slightly.

I said, “Maybe you’d better tell me what to look for. Is it just a stack of paper? Typed, handwritten?”

“A sensible question. It is written in my own hand, but you will not look for a manuscript as such. I placed the papers in a steel case and locked the case.” He held his hands apart to indicate its size — a foot or so long, eight or ten inches wide, and maybe six inches deep. “I then melted sealing wax over the lock and in the wax made an impression of this ring.” He held up his right hand, showing me the large signet ring on one of his fingers.

I smiled. “You really trust old Jellicoe, don’t you? And the rest of the world. Just like a prince of old, with sealing wax and the royal crest…”

I stopped. “Sealing wax? Was it green?”

“Yes. I then wrapped the case in heavy brown paper and also sealed it with gree — “

Cheim was suddenly silent. And he just as suddenly began getting a stricken look. “How did you know it was green wax?”

I said, “All sealing wax could do for you would be to let you know if somebody did get into the case. But it wouldn’t prevent any reasonably determined individual from opening it.”

“Had the case been unsealed and unlocked, Wilfred might, out of consuming curiosity, have opened it for a — a peek. But he would not dare — “

“He would. He did. Clearly Wilfred has been undergoing a startling metamorphosis, even rapid rejuvenation — “

“What? What’s that? What?” He sounded a bit panicky.

“Jellicoe hasn’t been in his suite in the Cavendish House since early Friday morning — which is to say, since shortly after you phoned him. The place has been thoroughly tossed — searched. While rummaging around, I found in a dresser drawer a small hunk of … well, I thought it was a piece of pebble, or semiprecious stone. It was surely, however, a wee bit of that sealing wax of yours. So it would appear that your old buddy did indeed dig off the wax, force open the case and — “

Gideon Cheim’s mouth was opening and closing. His lids drooped. He got a very peculiar color, sort of a pale greenish-beige. He flopped back onto the pillows. His tongue slid between his lips like a piece of cooked liver. Breath sighed around his tongue and past his lips, flapping them gently.

I got the distinct impression that the old boy was kicking the bucket.

</code>

<code> 6

I jumped to the side of the bed, but Cheim was already pulling his tongue back into his mouth and, while gasping, fumbling in the pocket of his pajama top. “Water,” he croaked, as he took a small vial from his pocket, thumbed off the cap and popped a little tablet into his mouth.

I spotted a pitcher, poured sloppily, handed him the brimming glass. He gulped at it, spilling water over his chin and down onto his pajamas. I looked for the buzzer, saw the cord dangling at the side of his bed and grabbed it.

“No,” he said, “that won’t be necessary.” He didn’t sound so croaky this time. “I’ll be all right in a moment. Do not ring. Just one moment.” He drank some more water.

In a few seconds he handed me the glass. “Thank you. I’m all right. It was the … shock. I cannot believe — it is beyond my comprehension that Wilfred would dare to — to disobey me. It is impossible.”

“Think about it,” I said. “You gave Jellicoe the manuscript when you entered Weston-Macey. You were operated on the next day. On Tuesday and Wednesday every paper in town reported that you were dying. The TV news had pictures of you, in dying color. On Thursday morning the world was still waving good-bye. It wasn’t until some time later that day that it was clear you’d passed the crisis, were on the mend.”

“Are you making any kind of point at all, Mr. Scott?”

“Try this: Most people believe what they want to believe, and it’s at least possible that Jellicoe may, for years, have been hoping you’d kick the bucket. OK. Last week he thought you were dying and, enamored of that thought, believed it. To him you weren’t dying, you were dead. So he opened the case, and to hell with the sealing wax — why worry? Who would know? Gideon Cheim was dead, kaput, deceased — “

“Will you stop harping on that?”

“Jellicoe began to blossom, to bloom — in more ways than you know. Anyhow, he opened the case, perused the pages, realized he could make himself a nice piece of change by selling Gideon Cheim’s authentic, handwritten manuscript — “

“Impossible!”

” — and did just that. He sold it.”

“Are you mad?”

“In fact, I’d say he sold it for five thousand dollars. That seems pretty cheap, but he got five G’s somewhere — “

I stopped. It was happening again. I sprang to the water pitcher, poured another glass. But this time Cheim didn’t need it. He gasped a little and made some highly unsanitary noises, but after about a minute was talking again. Still shaken, but not dying. He was a hard one to kill, all right.

“Five thousand dollars? Why do you say that? How could you know about my five thousand dollars?”

“Your five thousand?”

“Of course, you idiot. I placed in the case not merely the manuscript but a check for that amount.”

“Why?”

“When I entrusted the case to Jellicoe, I told him there was included a check for him, which would be turned over to him by the publisher upon completion of his assignment. The money was to compensate him for his trouble — should, of course, it become necessary for Mr. Jellicoe to take any action at all.”

“So he did know there was a check for him in the case?”

“Yes. I did not, however, inform him of the amount.”

“Yeah, but the amount was five G’s. And five G’s is what Jellicoe got.”

“Perhaps he received that money in cash, for certain services, as a gift, anything — “

“He cashed a check for that amount at his bank.”

“Oh, a check,” he said glumly. “Was it my check?”

“I don’t know. The bank wouldn’t give me the information. But under the circumstances I naturally assume — “

“Ah, you assume.”

I stepped to the phone next to Cheim’s bed and placed a call to the Continental Bank. I got Mr. Constance again, identified myself and told him I was in Mr. Gideon Cheim’s hospital room. I asked him to call the hospital and ask for Mr. Cheim, and — if the five-G check deposited by Wilfred Jellicoe had in fact been drawn upon Mr. Cheim’s account — to inform Mr. Cheim, if he would be so kind.

Then I hung up and waited. When the phone rang, Cheim picked it up. “Yes?” He scowled for a few seconds and then bellowed, “Yes, of course I am Gideon Cheim, goddammit! Now tell me — ” He was listening intently.

“What?” he said. “What? What?”

That told me all I really needed to know, but when he dropped the phone — actually, he let out a great barking sound and then dropped the phone — I picked it up.

“What was that horrid noise?” Mr. Constance asked.

“Would you repeat that information?” He did. It had been Cheim’s five-G check, all right. I thanked Mr. Constance and hung up.

“Aaah, my God, it’s true!” Cheim was having another small attack. But they didn’t bother me much anymore. I was getting hardened to them. “The sonofabitch!” Cheim bellowed. “He did it! He stole it. I’m ruined! How could he? What happened?”

“What happened is, as I seem continually to be saying, he thought of you as dead, as the late Gideon Cheim. He wasn’t terrified by the thought of you anymore.” I paused. “You do get the salient point here, don’t you? Since we can now logically prove that Jellicoe opened the case and found the manuscript and check, that was when he still thought of you as dead, or as good as dead, which was the next best thing.”

“Will you quit — “

“But then, while at the peak of his euphoria — zowie! — who calls him, big as life? Gideon Cheim. It must have been like getting a collect call from the cemetery. ‘Hello?’ he says, happy as a bird, and what does he hear? ‘Jellicoe? Gideon! Get your butt over here, bring the manuscript, bring the check — ’”

“Mr. Scott.”

“Yeah. Well, even if he greatly desired to wrap everything up again in a wax-sealed package so you’d never know what he’d done, that was impossible — he had already cashed the check. There was no way he could keep you from finding out about that. He would have been in a bit of a sweat, what?”

“Indeed … he … would.”

“Thus Jellicoe, almost surely, has flown the coop, and will continue hiding out from his nemesis, Gideon Cheim. Especially if he’s already managed to sell the manuscript…. Uh.”

For a few seconds I stood quietly, trying to concentrate.

And suddenly the darkness disappeared.

So I smiled, not too sweetly, at Gideon Cheim and said, “We’ve accounted for the five thousand clams, and know Jellicoe didn’t have to sell the script.” I paused. “But he could have. And for a lot more than five thousand. Right?”

Cheim’s face was grim. He didn’t say anything.

“Right?” I repeated. “Well, you do want the damned thing back, don’t you? If he hasn’t peddled it already, he sure as hell could still sell it. Couldn’t he?”

Cheim finally answered. “To any number of people.”

I continued smiling. “Name some of that number for me.”

“Um…” He thought for a while. But then he plunged right into it. “The autobiography is the true story of my life. In addition, it challenges the slanders and lies directed against me during my life and especially this past decade. To effectively accomplish this it was necessary for me to reveal much about other individuals which, unfortunately, might in some cases prove embarrassing to those individuals.”

“Including names and dates and places and such?”

“True names in some cases. In others, the identities and events disguised. There are laws of libel to consider.”

Sure, I thought. And to circumvent when possible. But a man like Cheim could skirt pretty near the edge — especially when he expected to be dead and buried before publication.

In Hollywood there are always rumors floating around, stories about Miss A or Mr. X, this married couple or that fascinating orgy, this startling indiscretion or even, sometimes, that major crime — items rarely even suspected by the public at large, but whispered or laughed about by the “in” crowd, at parties or in barrooms or bedrooms. Usually they remain merely in the category of juicy rumors, though someone, somewhere, always knows the truth behind the rumor — which on occasion is even more juicy or shocking than the rumor itself.

Undoubtedly Gideon Cheim was, in the case of many of those rumors, the “someone, somewhere” who held truth by the tail. And apparently in his autobiography he had let it go — in the interest, of course, of “justice.” Even where false names and invented times and places were used, the stories could have been made sufficiently recognizable that the “in” crowd would know, automatically, who were the real individuals involved. Cheim could have made sure of that — and, I thought, would have.

“Go on,” I said. “Get a little more specific, please.”

I pulled a chair over near Cheim’s bed, found an ashtray, sat down. When he started talking in generalities I said, “It won’t do, Mr. Cheim. That manuscript is a bomb, and you know it. It’s ticking under a lot of derrieres right now. And Jellicoe may be lighting some fuses.”

“I can’t accept — “

“Just a minute. We agree on the meat, let’s get down to the bone: Consider Wilfred Jellicoe. He has read your manuscript. He is interested, even shocked, by the revelations therein. And soon he has a splendid — if, to Jelly, somewhat frightening — idea. So again, with greater care and, I imagine, growing excitement, he pores over your revealing autobiography, but this time to pick from it the people named, or almost named, who would on the basis of information revealed in the manuscript be most susceptible to blackmail.”

“Blackmail? Impossible. This is preposterous! Goddamn you, there is not any blackmail information — “

“Don’t give me that jazz. I happen to know Jellicoe did use info from the manuscript for blackmail. At least, I’ll give ten to one he got the dirt from a few paragraphs of your autobiography — in which paragraphs, I’ll wager, you came out smelling like a field of violets.”

He didn’t get griped at my language. Something else was more important. His black eyes shifted around the room. “You know he did attempt to blackmail someone?”

“Yes. And succeeded.”

“Who?”

“That’s privileged information. In other words, I’m not going to tell you.”

“But … it was Jellicoe? You’re sure of that?”

“Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe. And I’m positive.”

He thought a moment. “But you said his rooms were searched, in great disarray. Perhaps — “

“Look, when Jellicoe started out on his great adventure be thought you were — I hate to remind you again — dead, or at least dying. He was already in the soup when you so speedily and shockingly recovered, the die was cast, he’d burned his bridges — what could he do but skip? It could be he tossed his own rooms to make it look as if he’d been robbed, kidnapped, killed, anything, then simply flew the coop.” I paused. “All I’ve got to do is find the coop he flew to. And you’re the guy — maybe the only guy — who can help me do it.”

Cheim’s black eyes shifted again. “Mr. Scott, I cannot agree that in my autobiography there is anything which — “

“Wait till I’m through before you tell me how sweet you are. You can take my word for it, Wilfred has already — and successfully — put the bite on one citizen. Therefore, it is not unlikely that he plans to blackmail one or more other citizens. That is, if he hasn’t already tried it. Since it is undeniable that this metamorphosis in Wilfred Jellicoe occurred simultaneously with his discovery of I!, the autobiography of Gideon Cheim, it would to me be a coincidence of stunning dimensions should there be no connection between the two events. Does this appeal to your logic, Mr. Cheim?”

He remained silent. But the skin was more puckered around his narrowed eyes, and he was wiggling his lips while playing with his nose. He seemed pretty excited.

“So,” I went on, “it’s reasonable to conclude that Jellicoe would pick for his victims not those who’d merely be embarrassed, but the ones who’d be ruined or greatly damaged by whatever revelations he could make about them, and from among those individuals the ones who could and would pay cold cash to keep his mouth shut.”

Cheim didn’t say anything, but he was listening intently.

“If that’s true,” I continued, “and if I can get to those people before Jellicoe does, or even soon after he hits them, then obviously I’ll have a good chance of getting my hooks, on the guy — and very likely on your autobiography as well. You know who they’d be, the people Jellicoe would be most likely to hit — hell, you wrote the damned book. And I think, Mr. Cheim, you’d be wise to tell me who they are.”

He told me.

When he fell silent I stubbed out my fourth cigarette and stared at him with something approaching wonder. “You’re a sweet one, all right,” I said. “You must have tried to get even with everybody who ever looked cross-eyed at you. I appreciate the pain you must have experienced in telling me about some of them. But there must be more, hey?”

“More?”

I didn’t say anything, just waited.

“Well … naturally I can’t, in a few minutes, relive for you every fleeting moment of my life, Mr. Scott. However — “

I interrupted him. “I mean more, about others you’ve been intimately associated with. I thought you just might have left out people like…” and I rattled off half a dozen names, including Sylvia Ardent and Warren Barr.

It undoubtedly helped that Cheim was well aware that I knew Jellicoe had already blackmailed one person, but was not aware of which person it had been, and there was always a chance it was somebody he’d not yet included in his tales to me. Perhaps because of that he gave me a little more dirt about two of that half dozen I’d named, two others mentioned in his apparently crammed-full autobiography.

The two: Sylvia Ardent and Warren Barr.

As for Sylvia, he told me she’d been a call girl, the time and the place, intimate details. He’d even dug up — Cheim admitted employing a large private-detective agency at considerable expense — names of hotels, private homes, even spicy quotes from a few apparently hugely satisfied individuals.

But, oddly, not a word about Sylvia and Gideon Cheim.

So, since he’d left out quite a bit about Sylvia, possibly he had done the same in telling me what his investigators had dug up about Warren Barr. But he did at least go into quite specific detail about Barr. Enough, at least, so that I figured I could squeeze Barr a little myself, if I felt like it.

I wasn’t sure I would. But I was pretty sure — now — that Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe had.

Following Cheim’s hesitant admission of episodes he had included in I!, I asked him casually, “Do you happen to know a guy named Mac Kiffer? Or Putrid Stanley?”

Cheim shook his head. Then he glanced sharply at me. “Putrid? Do you mean you know someone named Putrid?”

“I’m asking if you do. His real name’s Wallace Stanley.”

He shook his head again. “No, who are they?”

I described both men, but that rang no bells for Cheim, either. “They’re a couple of hoods,” I told him, “either one of whom would carve the gizzard out of a crippled old blind lady for a hundred bucks.”

“You can’t possibly be serious.”

“I can’t possibly be anything else. Forget the names. Would you have any idea why a couple of hoods would have been on my tail this afternoon, Mr. Cheim? Following me?”

Cheim was becoming less subdued than he’d been for the last fifteen minutes or so. I imagined fifteen minutes was about his limit. “Why, you impertinent sonofabitch,” he said, with apparent sincerity. “I don’t even know any … hoods. How could their following you possibly have anything to do with me?”

I smiled. “Maybe you don’t know any hoods. But let’s be frank, shall we? You are not quite as pure as the driven snow, are you? Not Gideon Cheim, the author of I!”

He balled his hands into fists once more, lifted them up and banged them down on the covers. His eyes looked as if they were going to develop blisters. But finally he said, and again with apparently complete sincerity, “Mr. Scott, it is not important what you think of my personality, my character or my actions. I did, in writing my autobiography, reveal much which could cause great suffering to many. Many who caused me to suffer grievously. I did it deliberately. But now I am appalled that I should have done so.”

He was silent for several seconds. Then he said quietly, “I was very close to death, Mr. Scott, for the first time in my life. An experience like that changes a man. It has changed me.”

I thought that was all. Rather a nice spot for my exit. But then he added, “You must get the manuscript back for me. You must. So I can destroy it.”

“Oh? Well, if I’m lucky enough to find the thing, why don’t I just save you the trouble and burn it — “

“My God, no! The … other, the parts about me — that mustn’t be lost. I meant so I could destroy the rest of it.”

I looked at him for a while, thoughts rolling around in my head. Then I said, “I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Cheim.”

His lips moved around and his shaggy black-and-gray brows waggled. He seemed still quite shaken when I walked out of his room. I pulled the door shut, started to step to my left and very nearly collided physically with Eddy Lash.

Think of the devil, I thought.

Eddy Lash. Himself. In the flesh. Or, more accurately, in the flesh and bone. He looked as cadaverous and creepy — and deadly — as he had the last time I’d seen him.

Which is to say, the last time he’d shot me.

</code>

<code> 7

That’s right. Shot me.

Two years ago I’d been after one of Eddy Lash’s men, a hype named Casey, who had burgled the mansion of my client, an eighty-year-old millionaire.

I’d managed to find out from one of my informants that Casey would be dropping by a certain address in west Los Angeles, late at night, to make a heroin connection. When he showed up for the H, I was waiting for him, cleverly eyeing the old frame house from the dimness of an alley across the street.

Unfortunately, Casey not only arrived in the company of Eddy Lash, but they chose to approach their destination by way of the alley across the street from the old frame house which I was so cleverly eyeing from the alley.

Even a dummy could have figured out that this put me in a precarious position, not only because they were behind me, but also because I had on a previous occasion severely but not quite mortally damaged a couple of the lowbrows in the employ of Eddy Lash, who therefore was eager to shoot me on sight.

I figured it out when I heard them behind me.

It was dimness in the alley, not darkness. There was enough illumination for me to recognize them when I spun around, grabbing under my coat for the Colt .38 Special in its clam-shell holster. Only, not surprisingly, they had seen me first. While I was still turning, Lash was aiming his gun at me. Before I could get off a shot he fired, and hit me.

The slug went through my shoulder muscle and didn’t hit bone. But Lash’s gun was a .357 Magnum, and when you get hit even superficially by a 158-gram slug traveling over 1,400 feet a second, it is going to knock you on your can.

It knocked me on my can.

I landed half on my back and half on my right side, but the slug had hit my left shoulder and I managed to keep a grip on my gun. I also managed to roll over and, while still on my back, empty the Colt at the dimly visible figures of the two men not more than a dozen feet from me.

I didn’t know until later that Lash fired twice more, and Casey once — he was very slow on the draw, I deduced — and that all three shots had missed me. But I hit Casey in the head, the heart and his right shinbone. That is not very accurate shooting, I’ll admit. But you do not have to group your shots closely when you manage to nick the head and the heart. I was lucky to hit him at all. I was lucky I didn’t shoot my feet off. I was, in all truth, just plain lucky.

Because, while I hit Casey with all three shots I fired at him, I missed Lash with one slug; but I put the other two pills into Eddy’s gut and gave him indigestion that lasted for three months. Casey went to the morgue. Lash to the Emergency Receiving Hospital. I went to the hospital, too, but only overnight.

There was an investigation. Nobody was jailed or even indicted. Lash insisted he was merely accompanying an acquaintance on a stroll — why an alley? why not an alley? — when I started shooting at them. I told the truth.

Well, at least I wasn’t sent to Folsom myself. And Lash did spend three months in a hospital. I heard rumors that he’d vowed, if ever he ran into me again, he would joyously shoot me on the instant. But I hadn’t seen the sonofabitch since.

Not until this instant.

It was a bit of a shock, coming face to face with him thus unaware. It was doubly shocking because, at the moment when I came through the door of Gideon Cheim’s hospital room. Lash’s right arm was extended, his hand open, reaching for the knob of that very same door.

Eddy Lash? Calling on Gideon Cheim? Who didn’t know any hoods?

“Hello, Eddy,” I said.

He didn’t speak. We stood barely a foot apart, looking at each other. He was six one, only an inch under my height, but I had a good fifty pounds on him, possibly more than that.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” I said cheerfully. “Shall I inform Mr. Cheim that Edward Lash awaits, without?”

I paused, looking at his appalling pale-blue eyes. “You here on business? I mean, you here to shoot him?”

He had not yet said a single word.

I’d never found him a great conversationalist, but now he simply stared back at me, looking extraordinarily unappetizing. And when Eddy Lash stared unblinking at a man with, as now, an expression of pure malevolence on his face it was, even for me, a somewhat chilling experience.

This guy wasn’t just a bad guy, he was one of the worst of the worst of the bad guys. If ever there was a creepy cat, a spook incarnate, it was this weirdo. He looked like the late Eddy Lash; he looked as if he’d been inexpertly embalmed; he looked like a ghost with a fatal disease. He was tall and thin with the general outlines of a skeleton, bony, angular, cold outside and inside. He was sick-looking, pasty-faced, bloodless, so anemic that when his eyes got bloodshot they turned white.

“Eddy,” I told him, “you don’t look so hot. Why don’t you drink a couple gallons of blood, then go lie down in your coffin and rest till the next lunar eclipse?”

Still nothing from Lash. Except the stare.

I suppose he stared silently at me for not more than ten seconds. But it seemed longer, because Eddy Lash actually looked as if he had frostbitten eyes. Man, those orbs were cold. He could have lain at noonday staring at the summer sun and those icy glimmers wouldn’t have warmed up before 2 p.m. Deep-set, dull, pale blue, in that chill pasty face they were little open graves in the plains of a bony Siberia.

“Well,” I said, “it’s been fun. Great to chat with you again. Eddy. But I really must be on my way.”

I started to walk around him, and only then noticed that Lash had Vic with him. He usually did. Victor Pine was a few feet farther down the corridor, leaning against the wall and looking at us. At me, actually. That was part of his job: to keep his eye on anybody keeping an eye on Lash.

Fellow hood, buddy, for ten years second in command, he was basically the boss’s bodyguard and trigger man. A gunman, a torpedo, heavy on the muscle and with the heat, a man as tough, murderous and deadly as Eddy Lash looked. Of course, so was Eddy Lash, and Eddy was the brighter of the two.

Upon seeing Vic Pine I shivered a little, felt a ripple of cold wiggling fine hairs on my spine. I suppose part of it was the splendid time I’d just had with Eddy, and looking at his face, his eyes; but part of it was because I’d remembered that Victor Pine and Warren Barr were buddies. Close. Jolly good pals. Barr … and Vic Pine.

I didn’t have much time to wonder about it.

As my eyes fell on Vic, Eddy Lash clamped a thin-fingered but surprisingly strong hand on my arm and yanked me around to face him. Well, not quite to face him; I’m not very easy to yank around, unless I’m in the mood, which I wasn’t.

But he did give my arm a good grab and a pull, turning me slightly toward him, and — finally — said something. “What the hell are you doing here, you punk?”

I stood quite still. “Eddy, I’m going to tell you just once. Keep your hands off me, take those hooks off me right now and keep them off from now on.”

His eyes didn’t warm up even one-tenth of a degree, and neither did he loosen his grip. If anything, he squeezed my biceps more tightly. Well, we all have our little idiosyncrasies, I suppose. Mine — one of them, anyway — is that I do not like guys laying their paws upon me even in a convivial gesture, as when drunken conventioneers fling their arms passionately about you, and slobber in your ear; but when a guy, particularly one such as Eddy Lash, starts getting physically antagonistic, grabbing or yanking me, it prods a sensitive, perhaps too sensitive, nerve.

So I grabbed his little finger and bent it back enough so that his hand was pulled from my arm. To be candid, I bent it a bit more than that, and his pasty features twisted with sudden pain before. I let go of the finger.

“Why, you sap-headed sonofabitch,” he said, eyes narrowed and lips tight. “You dumb whack — “

“Chop it. Eddy. I’ve taken all the buckwheats I care to take today, and I’m sure as hell not going to take any more from you. So just hang up, and we’ll fade out.”

My words, plainly, were making no impression on him at all. Even his face was not so pale as usual but becoming flushed with a kind of purplish pink, as though gangrenous blood were beginning to pound inside his skull.

He went on. “Who the hell you think you’re talking to, some no-muscle booster? Nobody tells me what to do.”

I had turned to face him by then.

That put Vic behind me, but it couldn’t be helped. The course of true wisdom was never to let Vic get behind you, but I was considering Eddy Lash almost entirely and the course of true wisdom not at all. I did not at any moment, however, completely forget that Vic Pine was behind me.

Eddy Lash was being even dumber than I was. He surely knew I had already taken more from him than I would take even from a pretty girl, and he should have known that the corridor of a hospital was a most convenient place for what was about to happen to him. But, uncaring or unaware, he continued, with his voice rising to shrillness and little flecks of saliva foamy at the corners of his mouth. “Let me tell you something, you half-assed bastard — “

“That’s unkind,” I said pleasantly. And I popped him. I mean, I really popped him.

While he’d been ranting and swearing at me I’d had plenty of time to get set the way I wanted to, and when I launched the right fist it was with lovely timing and accuracy and with the shifting weight of my two hundred and five pounds behind it. I aimed at his mouth, and when my fist landed on his lips they felt like teeth, but not for long; then they felt like gums. Skin split over my knuckles as Eddy’s chin snapped downward. It felt as if my hand had been clawed by a hungry tiger, but I don’t believe Eddy Lash felt a thing.

He would, though. When he came to. His head jerked away from me as though trying to leave his neck, but his body followed it immediately, first at an angle, falling, and then flat on the floor. Even then he skidded for at least three feet over its highly polished surface.

But I did not watch him skidding. I didn’t even see him land. After slugging him I was bent far forward but not off balance, right foot planted almost parallel to the left and my back to the wall. Before I started straightening up I flipped my right hand to the Colt in its holster, sliding my left foot around so that I was turned to face Vic Pine.

I could have taken more time about it. Not a hell of a lot more, but a little. Because Vic’s mouth was hanging open, on his thick and muscular face was a popeyed expression of disbelief, and his right hand was only about three-quarters of the way toward his left shoulder.

But three-quarters of the way leaves only one little quarter to go, and that was close enough for me. I truly didn’t believe Vic would shoot me right here in the hospital corridor, right here in a very public place. I knew, surely, he would not if he stopped to think about it. But I was a little worried that maybe he wouldn’t stop to think about it.

That was the trouble with Vic — one of the troubles. Often he acted, and sometimes violently, apparently without any cogitation whatsoever. If Lash hadn’t been such a weirdo himself, it was doubtful he would have had such a near-psycho as Vic Pine working for him. Not that Vic looked like a dingaling. On the contrary. Nor was he constantly mentally atilt. It was simply that he went through periods, or cycles, at the nadirs of which rationality departed from him almost entirely. The rest of the time he was reasonably normal.

Presumably this was one of his reasonably normal times.

At least, he held his right hand steady, just touching the fabric of his dark jacket. He didn’t say anything.

I did. “Vic,” I said, “if you want to move your hand now, it’s all right with me. Either way you want to move it.”

He let his hand fall to his side. Not fast, not slow, casually. And he grinned. Vic wasn’t much of a worrier. Vic was a hard-boiled boy, authentically hard-boiled, even tougher and more competent — on his good days — than Lash. He just wasn’t as creepy as Lash. Nobody was as creepy as Lash.

To tell the truth, Victor Pine was a very good-looking man. Not prettily handsome, but rugged, well built, with a pleasantly he-mannish appearance. And he dressed very well. Maybe too well. Hoods in the dough are sometimes quite ostentatious, but not the really big-time boys, the Mafia dons and such. They’ve learned; they know better. Usually they dress conservatively, live in expensive — but not too expensive — homes in the “best” section of town, contribute to charities, various civic enterprises, and occasionally to such individuals as police officers, councilmen, state legislators, sometimes even a mayor or governor. Everything smooth, however, nothing flashy or obvious.

But Victor Pine was not of that breed. He flashed and sparkled. He wore three-hundred-dollar suits, custom-made shirts with his monogram over the left breast in block letters half an inch high, handmade and exceptionally expensive shoes, and for all I knew, custom-designed jockey shorts. And jewelry, too. In particular, a twelve-hundred-dollar watch, and a twelve-thousand-dollar diamond ring of which he was inordinately proud, worn on the little finger of his left hand.

I saw the glitter of diamonds on the watch and ring after I said to him, “OK, take the gun out, Vic,” because he did it — wisely — with his left hand.

Smiling slightly, he said, “You adding it to your collection, Scott?”

“Nope. Just toss it down the hall a ways.”

He bent over and skidded the gun about fifty feet; along the corridor. Right then a nurse coming from an intersecting corridor turned the corner and walked rapidly toward us.

She saw the strange object skittering along the floor, and fixed her gaze upon it. She gazed curiously at first. But then as it slid past her she recognized the object for what it was and let out a little “Ah!,” continuing to follow the gun with her eyes until it stopped a few yards past her. For a second or two she remained in that position, then snapped her head around, saw Vic, saw me, saw Eddy Lash prone on the floor, and let out another “Ah!”

Only this one was at the decibel level barely beneath that which permanently damages eardrums, more like: “Aaaaahhhhh!”

And that tore it.

I’d wanted to ask Eddy and Vic a couple questions. Eddy wouldn’t be answering any questions at the moment. Even later he would answer with some difficulty, if at all. As for Vic, I would have perhaps ten seconds with him before we were surrounded by nurses, doctors, interns and possibly doddering patients attracted by the sound of someone presumably being operated upon without anesthesia.

So I walked toward Vic, made sure he had no more guns on him, then put my Colt away. “What’s Eddy doing here at Cheim’s room?” I asked him. “He and Cheim old buddies?”

He grinned. “Speak a little louder. I can’t hear you.”

I shrugged and said, “So forget it,” and then asked him casually, “Did I hear it right? Lash is once again chummy with Kiffer and his boys?”

“Are you nuts? When Mac damn near got hit — “

He chopped the words off. I think they’d just popped out of him. Or else he was a better actor than I’d ever had reason to believe him to be. It was only a wild half-hunch that made me ask the question anyway. An idea that maybe — unlikely as it seemed on the surface — Kiffer and Putrid had been put on my tail by Lash. If not, why was I suddenly running into so many of the most miserable crooks in town?

The sound of movement, voices, apparently speedily scurrying feet reached my ears. Over the hospital’s PA system a feminine voice said flatly, “Dr. Villenstorp is wanted in surgery.” I figured it was time to go, before she started calling for Shell Scott, or cops.

So I said to Vic, “Tell the nurse — tell all the excited people — that Lash isn’t dead. Just say he hurt his mouth, which may require professional attention. No point in stirring up all kinds of investigations involving me — and you boys.”

“Yeah, sure. You hurt his mouth, all right. Which is good-bye for you, Scott.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Not from me.”

“From better than you, Victor.”

He grinned as I started to walk past him, and out into the freer air. “OK, so we don’t get fuzz all over us I tell the sawbones Eddy managed to do this all by himself. They’ll believe me? How did he hurt his mouth?”

“With his mouth,” I said, and felt I spoke truly.

</code>

<code> 8

In the hospital lot a black Cadillac limousine was parked a few slots from my Cad. I knew that was what Eddy Lash was driven around in, and when I spotted the guy behind the steering wheel I was sure the car was Eddy’s.

The guy’s name was Burper McGee — actually Francis McGee, but I hadn’t heard anybody call him Francis for years. Apparently this was my day to meet a majority of the queerest specimens of local hoodlumland, so I walked over to say hello, and gazed in through the open window at Burper.

Physically he was not at all prepossessing. But none could deny that he was an individual quite remarkable to see. Even sitting at ease behind the wheel of a Cadillac limousine he was a shock, but the full effect could be realized only when one could see Burper standing, and in profile.

He was about five feet, ten inches tall, but he would have tipped the scales at between two eighty and three hundred. Much of that weight was in his unusually large and capacious stomach, the bloated and protuberant appearance of which might lead one to conclude that he ate like a hippopotamus. One would conclude correctly. Into that cavernous gut McGee shoveled, three or four — or five — times a day, what would to the normal glutton appear to be unbelievable quantities of edibles, bread and meat and vegetables, salts and peppers and spices, solids and liquids and gasses — ah, especially gasses.

Many hoodlums have bestowed upon them monikers or nicknames for reasons which, to the uninitiated, are extremely obscure. But in the case of Francis “Burper” McGee, his moniker had been bestowed — as you’ve perhaps guessed — for a reason not obscure in the least. He burped. He burped a lot. He burped and belched, and sometimes whistled and whooped like a calliope.

He chewed antacid pills, swallowed thick and gooey concoctions, took laxatives and possibly prayed; none of it helped. The gas continued to form, as in the bottom of a well, to rise, and then to sally forth into the outside world. Though “sally” is a very weak word to describe the way it actually came gurgling or shrieking or thundering out of Burper McGee.

I looked in at McGee’s chops. He had a red face, thick lips, bulbous nose and protruding eyes. He made me think of a flesh balloon with the gas inside him expanding, swelling his round belly, the prominent eyes about to pop from the growing pressure inside his head.

“Hi, Burper,” I said.

“McGee to you.”

“You visiting a sick friend you put in the hospital?”

He didn’t answer. But I could hear the gasses rumbling inside him already. It was probably normal, but it was undeniably true, that McGee had more trouble with his particular type of indisposition when excited or upset, when filled with undue emotion. Probably he was thinking lots of negative thoughts at the moment. He didn’t like me a bit, Burper didn’t. I wasn’t his kind of fellow. I wasn’t even a crook.

“That was a joke,” I said. “When did Cheim call Eddy?”

“Did he? I never knowed he called him.”

“Well, Lash is with him now. Or soon will be, I suppose. I just — uh — talked to Eddy. What’s he want with Cheim?”

“How would I know? He don’t tell me nothing.”

The rumblings had been growing, swelling, gurgling in his middle. I really affected Burper adversely. And at last the flesh could no longer contain its putrid cargo. Up it came, up and out, hideously musical, approximating an old man’s death rattle combined with the cry of a wet infant. It was a marvel.

Burper didn’t even bother to put his hand in front of his mouth anymore. He’d been eating something, I deduced, which contained garlic, onions and fresh horse manure.

“Well, so long,” I said.

He disdained to say good-bye. He was popping some kind of tablet into his maw and chomping down on it. Even though he knew, and I knew — everybody knew — it wasn’t going to help.

</code>

<code> Cheim had spilled to me a dozen tales, complete with true names and sometimes provable, sometimes not provable, specifics about both the great and the small of the Hollywood movie-and-TV scene. And, in addition, two or three tales concerning individuals in no way connected with the theater, the screen or the tube.

Only half a dozen of them, though, fell into the category of potential blackmail victims — not only with plenty to lose but possessed of plenty with which to pay. Of those, I had selected three as the most likely prospects, the cream — to a blackmailer — of the pluckable crop. More importantly, they were also the three whom I felt Wilfred Jellicoe himself would have been most likely to concentrate upon. Perhaps not the most likely for Jelly, but surely for the new, gaudier, apparently more daring Mr. Jellicoe.

Of my three choices. Barr was obvious. Among other reasons, as one of the top Western stars for many years he’d been able to stash away large piles of after-tax loot. I also recalled the tale Lucilla Mendez had told me: the public popping and humiliation of Jellicoe, brought about at the hands of, or rather the fist of Warren Barr. Besides, handsome Warren had often dated Sylvia Ardent, a fact possibly worthy of note.

Skipping Cheim’s additional dozen, the other two were G. Lawrence Martin and Zena Tabur.

G. Lawrence Martin: attorney at law, member of the ultrarespectable Beverly Hills firm Martin, Reade and Weiss.

It appeared incontestable that this same G. Lawrence Martin, years prior to establishing residence and office in Beverly Hills, had been a committee chairman in the legislature of another state. A number of individuals of astonishingly dubious character desired to build a dog-racing track near the capital city, on a hundred acres of land where not even bingo was then permitted. A group of legislators including George L. Martin — as he then called himself — overcame the opposition, zoning restrictions and legal prohibitions by the simple expedient of pushing through the legislature a set of lovely new laws and amendments to old laws — lovely for the characters of dubious character — thus eliminating all obstacles in one fell swap, so to speak.

For, although a group of legislators including George Martin were swept out of office in the next election, a surprisingly large number of them wound up owning stock in the newly legal venture, which in time became a large and magnificently landscaped one-mile sport-of-kings track, upon which raced not dogs but horses, this happy development thus not only increasing revenues to the State Treasury, but helping to “improve the breed” — at least, of horses.

George Martin’s shares of stock, valuable even before he became an ex-legislator, were currently worth at a conservative estimate two and a half million dollars. He’d done very well since those days, too, and had a net worth somewhere above ten million. The entire operation was one not without precedent, and unlikely to send Martin to the slammer, but it was certainly something he wouldn’t be overjoyed to have noised widely about. Not when he was senior member of Martin, Reade and Weiss, had within recent memory been voted Man of the Year for his contributions to civic betterment, and — so it was rumored — was giving serious thought to running for office again. In the Big Legislature this time, the one in Washington, D.C.

Or, such was the situation if Cheim’s facts were accurate.

Besides, a junior member of the firm of Martin, Reade and Weiss had represented Mrs. Gladys Jellicoe when she’d won her divorce suit, though that struck me as unlikely to have engendered any really maniacal resentment in Wilfred’s heart. On the other hand, while he might not have cut his wrists because he could no longer lovingly eye Gladys’ chops over his morning coffee, it was doubtful that Jellicoe enjoyed forking over those three thousand little bills a month.

Last of the three: Zena Tabur.

You’ve all heard of these apparently unending contests to choose: The Girl I’d Most Like to Bake a Cake With; or The Girl I’d Most Like to Ski in the Alps With; or The Girl I’d Most Like to Take a Screen Test With; and so on and on. Well, Zena Tabur was the gal chosen by a vast majority of male moviegoers as The Girl I’d Most Like to With.

The producers of the contest did not phrase the proposition with quite that lack of delicacy. But any boy approaching puberty could have read the meaning between the lines. And Zena Tabur won easily, outdistancing her nearest rival — an exceptionally beauteous and glandular tomato herself — by more than a million votes.

Not tall, she made up in other dimensions than height for her lack of statuesque lissomeness, a lack to which nobody I’d ever heard of had yet objected, or even commented upon. She looked much like what you might expect of a gal with the name Zena Tabur: dark skin, slanted green-gray eyes, torchy lips, thick black hair that tumbled and waved all the way down to her derriere, which unquestionably belonged in the forefront of any collection of memorable behinds.

She was Turkish or Egyptian or Italian or Spanish, or something else, from Istanbul or Tangier or Israel or Singapore — nobody seemed to know for sure. So it was said. But she looked like, and her voice sounded like, a potpourri of all that plus the best hours and houris of the Arabian Nights.

She’d shot her husband. Shot him dead.

Again, so it was said; it was only a rumor. Nobody really knew about that for sure, either. Well, a few people did. Cheim. Undoubtedly Jellicoe. And me.

So that was it. Barr, Martin, Tabur. True, I knew of no relationship between Wilfred and Zena. But there was that lead of over a million votes, and I’d have given ten to one — particularly in the light of what I’d been told by Sylvia — that one of those votes had been Jellicoe’s.

Warren Barr was just finishing one of the last scenes of the day when I reached the set. I stopped far enough away so that I wouldn’t interfere with the shooting, and watched the action. Apparently Barr had already wrapped up the scene in which he “beat up three or four dangerous outlaws,” because this time he was indulging not in heroics, but in what passed in Stampede for romance. I suppose, though, it could have been called heroic romance.

He and a not-too-slim girl in tight blue Levi’s and a bulging white shirt stood facing each other before the rolling cameras. I couldn’t hear clearly what the girl was saying, but she was doing all the talking.

Barr just looked down at her, strong, silent, unmoving.

Wham, the girl slapped him: Barr moved. He folded his arms across his chest and stared, strong, silent, again unmoving, down at the girl.

She turned and walked rapidly away from him. Then her steps slowed. It was easy to see she simply couldn’t tear herself away from her man, not that far away. She stopped. She turned. “Oh, Bart!” she cried in a kind of cracked voice — Barr was Bart Steele in the film — and, flinging out her arms, ran lickety-split toward him.

Barr, or Bart, just stood there. Strong, silent, unmoving.

She grabbed him and latched on like a gal about to climb a tree. She wrapped her arms around his neck, lifted herself up, and somehow got her lips planted on his stern chops.

Bart moved.

He put his arms around her. He held her there, legs dangling. They kissed, like an irresistible farce meeting an unmoving object.

It was pretty awful.

“Cut!” the director yelled.

Bart stood there a while longer, strong, silent and presumably unmoving.

“Cut, goddammit!” the director yelled, and — when they finally did cut it — continued, “Beautiful! Baby, that was it! Print that one! Baby, sweetheart, that was what we’ve been after! Just gorgeous.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking to the boy or the girl; but that’s the way it is in Hollywood.

Warren Barr said something to the gal, then swaggered off the set, in my direction. But when he lamped me he stopped swaggering and merely stood stock still, looking at me. Then he stepped rapidly toward me. I could see the hair rippling, cleft chin, expression like a visible growl. Man, I would have been in real trouble — if the cameras had been on me.

But I felt, too, a small pain. Approximately where I sit down. Hoods tailing me. Cheim yelling at me. Lash snarling and trying to freeze me with his eyes. Burper burping. And now this goddamned hero was coming at me with the air of one about to commence the charge at Balaklava.

He stopped close in front of me. “What the hell do you want this time, buster?”

“Scott’s the name. Shell Scott. I’d appreciate a few more words with you, Mr. Barr, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind. Don’t you remember? So beat it.”

“It will only take a minute of your time, Mr. Barr.”

“No, it won’t. I told you, beat it, buster.”

I shook my head sadly. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t do that. Or, rather, won’t. And — in case you didn’t hear me before, friend — the name is Scott.”

I believe I’ve mentioned that he had a square, muscular face. It seemed to get more square, and certainly more muscular. He tightened his jaws, bunched his lips at the corners a bit, knit his brows and attempted to deepen the cleft in his chin. It was quite dramatic. As if he had just bunched a hand into a fist. Which, I happened to note, he also did.

“Don’t make me knock your hair off,” I said. “If you force me to, Mr. Barr, I’ll try not to mark up your famous face, but I will certainly damage you internally, break your collarbone, possibly rupture your spleen, and then take off your high heels and hide them.”

He had his right hand down at his side, balled into that big — and scarred — fist, but he held it there for a moment longer. “What’s with the big mouth?”

“That’s the way I talk to big-mouths. Who started this tough-man bit?”

He shrugged. “I did. So I guess I’ll have to finish it.”

Barr stepped back just a little, shifted his feet, and — I felt reasonably certain — prepared to hit me.

“I know what Jellicoe talked to you about Friday,” I said. He hadn’t swung yet, so I went right on. “But if you take a poke at me, friend, I won’t report you to the fuzz, I’ll report you to the nearest hospital.”

It was happening again. Much as it had happened this morning. His face became, not a lethal instrument, merely a face. But a face rapidly paling beneath the tan, giving his features the same sickly cast they’d worn for a while during our previous chat, that washed-out, faded look. It seemed even more pronounced, but maybe that was because he was now clean-shaven — for the heroically romantic scene, no doubt.

“What do you mean” — he stopped and thought for a few seconds — “you’ll report me to the fuzz?”

“Well, if you’d slugged me, that would have been a felony, wouldn’t it? You could do some time — some more time.” I gave him the date, the city, the state and the sentence. “You fought under the name Tiger Yates. You were good. Not as big as you are now — not as wide, I mean. You’ve put on more muscle. But you were good outside the ring, too. The first two or three amateurs you knocked around didn’t file complaints. A pro who clobbers an amateur in effect commits ADW — assault with a deadly weapon — but I guess you know.”

He folded his thick arms over his chest. “Go on.”

“The next time, though, or one of the next times, the guy you muscled happened to be the husband of the gal you were buying drinks for at the time, and he didn’t say let’s let bygones be bygones. In short, you got stuck, and fell for it. You did more than a year in the state pen. Then the ex-con came to Hollywood, to fame and fortune.” I paused. “Only you’ve popped a few out here, too, haven’t you?”

There was a silence. Finally he said again, “Go on.”

“That’s it. But it’s what Jellicoe hit you with Friday, isn’t it?”

He was quiet for several more seconds, looking at me oddly. “You mean, I didn’t snatch any old ladies’ purses or steal candy from kids?”

“Don’t start the big-mouth again, Barr.” I added a little more. “I happen to know Jellicoe has embarked on a career of blackmail. Well … at least, he’s got his hands on a manuscript with a lot of dirt in it, dirt he can undoubtedly use for extortion should he be so inclined. And he’s taken the first step, of what I figure will turn out to be several steps. You being step number two, or maybe three.”

There was another long silence. Then, “Willie the blackmailer, huh? And you think he tried — with what you’ve just told me — to put the bite on me.”

“You don’t deny the information’s true, do you?”

Barr shook his head. “No, you got it too close to the way it happened. Sure, I did the time.” He was quiet again, briefly. “I’m trying to figure out what you’re after, Scott. You want to retire in Bermuda?”

“Don’t be a sap, Barr. I don’t want anything from you but info about Jellicoe.”

“Well, I can’t help you. I told you that this morning.”

“You gave me a song and dance this morning, too. Are you going to tell me Jellicoe didn’t throw your ex-pug, ex-con past at you Friday?”

Barr stared at me for a while. Finally he said, “Well, I guess he did. But if that was a blackmail try, he better find himself another profession.”

“Come again?”

“Like I told you this morning, this guy frets. He’s an old maid, see?”

I got a queer feeling. A feeling or “I’ve been here before.” Because, once again, instead of being tight as a drum, Barr appeared completely relaxed. All the tension seemed to have drained out of him.

“Willie is just one of those guys gets under my skin. He was giving me the captain-to-the-private bit, like he was maybe head of the studio, and I flipped a little. I was about ready to smack him one.”

“So?”

“So he throws up his hands and squeaks, I’ll send you to prison, I know all about you.’ Like that.”

“That was all?”

“No, he told me the rest of it — same thing you just got through telling me. But if that was blackmail, he didn’t get anything out of it. Except I didn’t break his jaw for him.”

“That’s the only reason you didn’t break his jaw?”

Barr looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“You knocked him on his tail once before, didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. So I knocked him; he griped me. How’d you happen to hear about that?”

“A lot of people know about it. Man, aren’t you worried at all about getting sent back to the slammer?”

“Well, yeah. But sometimes I forget myself. And, hell, I didn’t think anybody out here knew about that stretch except — “

He stopped.

“Except?” I asked gently.

He chewed on his lip. “It’s not important.”

“It is to me, Barr.”

He chewed his lip some more. “Well … Gideon.”

It all fit. I knew it was Cheim who’d spotted Barr while he was doing extra roles, bit parts, that he’d seen something in the man, magnetism, presence, sex appeal — nobody ever claimed Cheim couldn’t pick them — and given him his start. Of course, as Cheim had admitted to me earlier today, he had then run a routine check on his new find, again employing that detective agency, which I figured he must have paid a huge yearly retainer, and discovered the info about Barr’s time in the ring, and the rest of it. It seemed evident he’d been able to keep the story sealed up, however — until Jellicoe entered the picture.

I said, “Aren’t you afraid Jellicoe might go to the law with his tale?”

Barr grinned. “Willie? Not unless I hit him. Which I shall try very hard not to do.” Suddenly he frowned. “Hey, you’re not going to spread this around town, are you? It could — “

“No; if you’ve been leveling with me you can quit worrying. All I want to do is find Jellicoe.” I sighed. “OK, thanks for the dope. If not the hospitality. If you spot your Willie, let me know.”

Barr had been getting his color back for some time; in fact, he looked perfectly normal now, and his voice was actually friendly as he said, “Look, Scott, I don’t just pop guys for the hell of it, understand? But some of these slobs want to be like the guy shot Jesse James. Maybe they got a babe with ‘em, want to show off so they can make out like a hero home from the wars. I’m supposed to hang out my chin for them?”

I knew what he meant. And he had a valid point. But other stars had the same problem. It was generally Warren Barr who solved it the hard way, however. Maybe he wanted to prove he was really six feet tall. Maybe he liked popping guys. And maybe he’d been conning the hell out of me for these past fifteen minutes.

I did not tell him that, though. I merely said, “No, I guess not. But you’re not the sweetest darling in the whole world, are you?”

He grinned. “Well … not in the whole world.”

</code>

<code> 9

The offices of Martin, Reade and Weiss were at the very top of the Abel Towers, which all by itself made the place reek of money, but the carpets and furnishings in the outer — and inner — offices looked rich and expensive, too.

When I walked into the office of G. Lawrence Martin he glanced up from some typed pages, flicked sharp eyes over me and laid the pages flat on his desk. “Mr. Scott?”

He was a big man. And I mean big. An inch or so taller than I, he had shoulders on him that weighed more than some people, and they were not merely padding in a coat. His coat was draped on a dark wood valet in the corner of his office. He sat behind an unpainted brushed-steel desk wearing a white dress shirt open at the throat and with the cuffs rolled up over thick, brown, hairy wrists. He looked about fifty years old and as solid as the desk before him.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Thanks for letting me bust in without an appointment, Mr. Martin.”

I stopped in front of the desk and shook his extended hand, then sat down in a comfortable chair — one big enough, for a change — upholstered in nubby linen.

“What did you want to see me about, Mr. Scott?”

He glanced at his watch. Not obviously, but giving enough attention to it so I couldn’t miss the meaning: this was a very busy man; his time was valuable.

Well, so is mine. “Blackmail,” I said.

He blinked. “You’re being blackmailed?”

“No. I thought maybe you were.”

He got a half-amused look on his face. “Well, I’m not,” he said pleasantly. “Never have been — yet.” He kept looking at me and continued, “Why would you assume I might be?”

I sighed. Wasn’t doing so well today, I thought. Not with the men, anyhow. “I’m attempting to locate a man named Wilfred Jellicoe,” I said. “The name mean anything to you?”

“No.” He frowned slightly. “I think I may have heard the name, that’s all.”

“You may have heard it — if not since then — when your firm represented a Mrs. Gladys Jellicoe in a divorce suit. About a year ago.”

He nodded. “Probably. That would have been handled by one of the junior members of the firm, however.”

True enough. That much I already knew. Martin glanced at his watch again. A bit more obviously this time.

So I started in and gave it to him straight — the out-of-state legislature, the dog track that became a horse-racing track, stock “payoffs,” and the rest of it. I, finished by explaining my conclusion — with which I was beginning to approach hesitant disagreement — that Jellicoe, with such information, might have approached him and attempted extortion, particularly because of Martin’s prominence, wealth and the possibility he was considering running for Congress.

During the whole spiel Martin sat quietly. When I finished he said, “Is that all?”

I nodded, and he continued briskly. “One. I do not know your Mr. Jellicoe, to my knowledge have never met him, and” — here he smiled slightly — “trust that I never shall. Two. Consequently he has not spoken to me or attempted to blackmail me — nor has anybody else, for I would throw any such individual through that window, beneath which is a very solid sidewalk, sixteen floors down.”

With a thumb he casually indicated draped windows behind him.

“Three. I do recall having heard, at some time not now clear to me, the story of a dog track, or race track — what was it?” He smiled. He knew the story, all right. “However, the individual there involved was a George Martin, or George L. Martin. I am G. Lawrence Martin, an entirely different individual. There is no relationship. Four. Even this George Martin committed no crime which could possibly cause him any legal difficulties, nor even sufficient embarrassment to allow him to submit — of this I am certain — to an attempt to practice extortion upon him. Five. Therefore, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with me. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Six. If I have to look at my watch again, I shall throw you through that window, beneath which is — “

“Yeah, I know. A very solid sidewalk, sixteen floors down.”

He smiled at me, I smiled at him, and I left.

</code>

<code> I knew that Miss Tabur was between pictures. Thus I assumed, or at least hoped, she would be at home, home being a small — for Bel Air — and somewhat unusually shaped house centered in a beautifully landscaped two acres of that ultrarespectable and expensive retreat of the rich only two or three miles northwest of downtown Beverly Hills.

The house was low, angular, with slanting wings, and planted around it I recognized dozens of silk oaks, jacarandas, willows, Senegal date palms and banana trees, huge-leafed philodendron, elephant ears, plus numerous trees and shrubs and flowers I couldn’t identify. Narrow footpaths wound among the plantings. It was beautiful.

Zena Tabur was home — things were looking up at last — and when she opened the door I simply stood there staring, probably obviously, even rudely staring. She, too, was beautiful. More than beautiful. This was the first time I had seen her other than on the screen, the first time in person and close to her, and I simply stood there like an unplugged robot.

Make no mistake: I have gazed upon a lot of them, all shapes and sizes and varieties of them, but I was reminded of what that bartender had told me in speaking of Wilfred Jellicoe: that he had passed beyond drunkenness into another condition entirely. And so, in a different way, with Zena Tabur; it was as though she had merely begun with beauty and grown beyond it into a warm loveliness, a sweet sensuality, a blend of fire and coolness and femininity indefinable.

She glanced at me, then past me to the magnificently flaming skies, then looked at me again. And looked. At my white stand-up hair and inverted-V eyebrows; my big, but not too big, dandy-white-shoe-clad feet; at my colorful garb; then again, intently, at my face.

“Holy mowkerel,” she said in her weirdly kookie but ear-pleasing accent, “who in hell are you? You look like you came out of a zawzer.”

I felt a keen pang. I felt the keen pang when I realized that wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped she might say when first we met. For a moment I also wondered what she’d meant.

But then I pulled myself together and said, smiling, “I am Shell Scott. And you are Zena Tabur, I presume. Actually, there isn’t any doubt in my mind — “

“She is me,” Zena said. “You got the right place.”

She kind of buzzed most of her s’s, letting her lips stiffen and curl a bit, but not at all unattractively — quite the contrary. When she said, “She is me,” it came out, “Zhee iz me.”

The voice was cute, but as I have already indicated, she was fantastic. Her head didn’t even come up to the top of my shoulder, but it was a head a guy would like to keep in that general area for a long time. Those slanted green-gray eyes were more liquidly luminous and even bigger and wilder than they looked on the screen, and the societies to Stamp Out Sex could have held a whole meeting about her lips.

Sometimes she wore that thick black hair up, in sworls and artfully bunched masses on the top of her head, but it was down now, falling forward over her shoulder and covering one breast — which, by the way, required a lot of hair. She was wearing jeweled leather sandals, white stretch pants, and a man’s white shirt open at the throat, and she looked as much like a man as I look like Little Bopeep.

“How do you do. Miss Tabur,” I said. “I’d like — “

“I’ll bet you wear red zhorts.”

“Zhorts? What are zhorts?”

“You don’ know?”

Then I got it. “Ha-ha, no, I … Are you really interested?”

“Not yet, I’m not. What do you zay you are? Zhell Zcott?”

“That’s close enough. I — “

I stopped, thinking back. If I was Zhell Zcott, then it struck me as probable that zawzer was saucer.

“Miss Tabur,” I said severely, “I hope you were not earlier hinting that I look like something that fell out of a saucer. A UFO — a flying saucer?”

“Zure I was. Except you’re about a thousand times bigger than I expected. I thought they were little green men. Boy, you’re zure no little green man, are you?”

I didn’t answer that. It did not, I felt, deserve a reply. Stiffly I said, “I would like to talk with you, Miss Tabur, on a matter of some importance.”

“To you or me?”

“Well … possibly to both of us. It … May I come inside?

She sort of shrugged her shoulders and her expressive features at the same time. “I’ll take a chance.”

I snorted a little air through my nostrils. “You are perfectly safe with me, Miss Tabur. No matter what ridiculous idea may be flitting through your … pretty head — “

“Oh, zhut up and come on in.”

We went inside.

I was a bit disgruntled. My rugged edifice of deductions concerning Wilfred Jellicoe was becoming a bit rickety. I hadn’t done too well with Warren Barr, and G. Lawrence Martin had been a complete bust. Zena Tabur had been my last, best hope, but the interview wasn’t even beginning very hopefully.

My disgruntlement began fading, however, merely because I was becoming conscious of the inside of Zena Tabur’s small house, its rugs and chairs and divans, pillows and paintings, mainly the total impression of the place. The effect was that of walking into a room where all the furniture was having an orgy.

I liked it.

The room in which we stood looked like a choice hunk of the Far East, with some Middle East and a bit of the Mohammedan Heaven thrown in: hanging lamps made of brass with triangular and oddly shaped holes cut in the metal; a huge splashy abstract painting on one wall, a brightly colored rug on another wall; low ceiling; thick, long-napped carpet in an odd shade like blue with frost on it; ancient-looking idols, figures with fantastic heads and others with half a dozen arms. In fact, one four-foot-high idol in the corner was of a six-armed Hindu character dancing, poised on one bare foot, in each hand a long, thick — Oh, my goodness, I thought.

We sat down on a divan at least eighteen feet long, low, filled with soft down I sank deeply into. In front of the divan was a dark, carved-wood table, beyond it two square hassock-like affairs, shocking pink on brass rollers.

This was a place it would take awhile to get used to. And it would be fun getting used to it. But the sun was sinking in the west, and I was far from home. Any way you looked at it.

So I simply laid it out for her, the way I’d got it from Cheim. Hard and fast, no mincing of words. And this one, too, was another smashing success for me.

When I got through she said, “Yeah, I zhot him. Zo?”

“You mean … Aren’t you all shook up?”

“Zhook up for what?”

“Well … suppose I was about to blackmail you right now. Yeah, suppose that. How about that? Doesn’t that grab you — “

“Ha, boy,” she laughed. “Go ahead. Try it. How?”

“What?”

“How?”

“How what?”

“I don’ know. But you were talking about blackmail.”

“That’s right. OK, I’m blackmailing you.”

“The hell you are.”

“Listen, I — I — Well, I’m not a professional, of course. But I know a lot about it. And, believe me, it’s not supposed to go like this. I know that much.”

“How?”

“Damn it, here we go again.”

“How you gonna blackmail me?”

“Oh, that’s what you mean? Well … beats me. If you don’t want to be blackmailed I guess I can’t force you. But, well, look. You’re some kind of foreigner, aren’t you? Maybe I’d better explain. Subject: Blackmail. I get something on you, see? That is, I find out something about you that you want kept a big secret. Then I threaten to tell people — lots of them, everybody — about your dark, criminal secret, unless you pay me huge sums of money. That’s how I make my living.”

“You must hate yourself.”

“I don’t mean I really do it. I’m a detective. I don’t really do it. I — Ah, the hell with it.”

“What’s the big zecret you got on me?”

“You shot your husband. You killed him. He’s dead, dead, dead.”

“Yeah, I zhot him. Zo?”

I stood up. “Goodbye, Miss Tabur.”

“Wait a minute. You think it’s a zecret I zhot him? That I want it a zecret?”

“Of course. Why else would I be here?”

“Ha, boy, go on and do it. Print it, hand it out, go on television.”

“But — “

“Let me ask you, what else do you know about what I did to my husband?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” I said. “Only about your shooting him.”

“Exactly how did I do it?”

“Well … all I know is you shot him. Killed him. There were police, scandal, crime, murder, a big mess. I suppose people covered up for you, bribery, that sort of thing, powerful friends, lusting for your … drooling…”

“I better tell you what I did to my husband.”

“I don’t want to pry, Miss Tabur. All I’m concerned about is the shooting.”

“That’s what I’m gonna tell you. Like this. He was a zlob. I was pretty young when I married him.” She paused, tossed a slant-eyed look at me. “I’m ztill pretty young.”

“Yeah.”

“He used to get drunk. He beat me. Couple times he put a gun at me but didn’t zhoot. One night he went like he was crazy and did zhoot at me. Mizzed me. I had a little gun of my own by then. In a drawer. I ran and got it. He zhot at me again. Mizzed me again. Zo I zhot him. Got him right in between the ears.”

“Eyes?”

“Ears.”

“Anyhow, you got him.”

“I got him.”

“Good for you.”

“That’s what I think.”

“That’s all there was to it, huh?”

“It was enough, I thought. Thought it was plenty.”

“Yeah, of course. I mean, nobody could blackmail you with that information.”

“What do you think? How’d you do?”

I stared glumly at the wall. Finally I said, “Then nobody has tried to blackmail you?”

“Only you. If they’re all like you, they can try it any day.”

I stared at the wall some more, thinking. Then I tried a different tack.

“Maybe I’ve confused you, Miss Tabur, by talking about a blackmailer forcing his victim to fork over huge masses of money. Suppose he’s got all this hideous extortion info on you and says, ‘I don’t want money. I want you. I lust for your wild body. I hunger for your … your … ’”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“And how you’ve — I mean, say the blackmailer, instead of demanding money, makes you pay with … by … by…”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Well?”

“You trying to blackmail me?”

“No, I’m explaining…” I stopped and pressed a hot palm against my forehead. “Well, we’ll let that go. One last question. Do you know anybody named Wilfred Jellicoe?”

“I know who he is. But I never met him.”

“Never met him? Never talked to him — even on the phone?”

“No.”

“OK.” I paused, thinking some more. “You know, I’ve been on a lot of different cases, and some of them were … peculiar. But this … well, I really don’t know one bean about what’s going on, when you come right down to it. And here I thought I had it all figured out…. Other cases, shucks, often I have them all wrapped up by this time.”

“You’re pretty good, huh?”

“Well, they just seemed to work out. In … the old days.”

“You look like you could do it.”

“Do what?”

“The blackmail. For one thing.”

“What’s the other thing?”

“Let’s ztick to the blackmail.” She paused, eyed me for a while. “Maybe not. Maybe we ought to talk about the other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You got to go zomewhere? I mean, like in the next hour?”

“I probably should. Though I don’t know quite where it would be. My well-laid plans have sort of … and I’ve got this dull throbbing in my head…”

“Then ztay with me here for a while. We’ll get acquainted.”

“Well…”

“I think I like you. I’m not zure yet. At least you’re … different. I got to figure it out.”

“How do you do that?”

“I got a way.”

“Mind if I use your phone?”

“Go ahead.” Zena paused. “I have to leave, myself, in an hour, about. To meet a friend.” After a moment she smiled and added, “A girl friend.”

“Swell. In an hour, huh?”

“Well … maybe an hour and a half.”

“OK, I just want to call my office, make sure nothing’s come up. Then, as long as I can’t think of anything constructive to do, I won’t feel guilty staying here.”

“How do you know yet?”

Hmm, I thought. “Where’s the phone?”

“Under the helmet.” She pointed.

It wasn’t just a helmet. It was a metal helmet with a head under it. A head with a face like the guy was realizing his head had just been chopped off.

I approached it gingerly.

“Chinese,” she said. “Doesn’t look like much fun, does he?”

“What is it, a pay phone? You drop dimes in his mouth or something?”

“Just lift it off. It’s free.”

I lifted the helmet and head off, and found the phone, which had been hidden underneath it. Very cleverly hidden, I thought, if you wanted to hide a phone. Nobody would ever think of looking for it there.

Still putting in overtime at the PBX, Hazel, like a silken-voiced sound of reality, brought me back to the real world. No, nothing new, no calls, everything was under control.

I hung up, put the helmet and head back on the phone, thinking again. Actually, this was a good idea, I was thinking. Turn the whole thing over to the subconscious. Usually it helps to get your conscious mind off the problem for a while; often something then falls into place, an idea, a clue, a missing link. That was the ticket. Push the problems clear out of the conscious mind. Let the old subconscious take over.

And I couldn’t think of anything better equipped to take my mind off problems than Zena.

Maybe I’d been wrong about a lot of things; but I was right about that.

The delightful accent of Zena Tabur was like a hot breath off the Sahara in my ear. It was a bit difficult to decipher at first, but in these last minutes her message had become clearer and clearer.

So when she said, “Gizz me, Zhell, gizz me,” I knew exactly what she meant.

So, you guessed it, I gizzed her.

</code>

<code> “What was that?” I said.

“It’s the phone in the head,” Zena said.

“You’ve got one in there, too?”

She walked to the helmet, saying, “I zleep pretty good, pretty zound. Zo I need a loud bell. When I want to be zure nothing bothers me, I plug up my ears and take off the head, and I’m like I’m dead. Makes a racket, didn’t it?”

She answered the phone and there was approximately a one-minute conversation. The usual girl talk, I gathered. Some gal calling — apparently the one Zena had said she was supposed to meet later. Well, it was now later.

It was, as the depressing phrase goes, later than I thought.

Because the last thing Zena said before hanging up the phone was, “All right, half an hour, Zylvia. Uh-huh, you bet you. ‘Bye, Zylvia.”

Zylvia? That would be, in Zena’s language, Sylvia.

Sylvia. No, it couldn’t be. But I felt a cold chill sweep over me, anyhow. Not — No, it simply could not be.

As Zena turned and walked back toward me, I, while being quite active, said:

“Darling, I — ah — have a little question to ask you.”

</code>

<code> 10

I had two socks and one shoe on by the time Zena stopped before me.

“Who — who was that?” I asked innocently.

“Zylvia.”

“I know that. But Zylvia who?”

“Zylvia Ardent. You know, the ztar — “

I dropped my other shoe.

” — of Girls’ Dorm. We’re old friends; I guess zhe’s about my bezt — ” She paused. “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Why, you let out a funny noise and jerked and zlammed your zhoe down on the floor.”

“I didn’t either jerk. Why would I jerk? And I did not zlam — slam my shoe on the floor. It just … slipped out of my fingers.”

I busied myself getting my shoe from where it had bounced, and then sat down again and prepared to put it on, thinking very rapidly. After that I said casually, “Sylvia Ardent, hey? Jesus. You know each other, huh?”

“Zhe’s juzt about my bezt friend in the whole world.”

“She was? Is? She is? That’s nice. She’s a nice girl.” I paused, reminding myself to stay calm: Just don’t get rattled, Scott; that’s the ticket. “She just called to say hello, huh? Please? I mean, she’s not the girl you’re supposed to see tonight, is she?”

“We get together every Monday night, almozt. Go out, maybe zee a movie, zometimes juzt talk about things.”

“Things? What do you mean by that?”

“What do you mean? You zound funny.”

“No, I don’t. You — uh — go to a movie, like that, huh? And talk about things? You don’t — don’t talk about … fellows, do you?”

Better watch it, I told myself. Better be careful or you’ll give yourself away. Damn near did it right then.

Fortunately Zena was bending over and looking at my feet, the dumb broad.

“You got one zhoe on without a zock,” she said.

“What’re you trying to do, make me think I’m losing my mind?” I said irritably. “I distinctly remember putting both socks on.”

“Then you put ‘em both on one foot.”

“Don’t be ridic — Well, how about that?” I paused. “Wouldn’t happen again in a million years.” I paused. “Someday — someday we’ll laugh about this, I’ll bet.” I paused. I stayed paused. My mind was completely stuck.

“Zometimes Zylvia comes here,” Zena was going on, “zometimes I go there. We take turns.”

“You … take turns, huh?”

“Yes. And tonight’s my turn to go there. But I’m a little late.” She laughed.

Very funny.

She reached out and played with my earlobe. In a voice that was soft, intimate, warm — probably the last time, I thought dismally, I’d hear it even remotely like that — she said, “I’m late, because you lied to me, Zhell.”

“Lied? Why, what — what — what in the world do you mean?”

Zena smiled impishly. “You zaid I was zafe with you.”

I looked up at her. “Baby, you might as well hear it from me. Nobody’s zafe when I’m around.”

She laughed. “You zay the craziest things.”

“Yeah, crazy.”

Then with my shoes and socks on correctly — I had double-checked, to be sure — I stood up, looked Zena straight in the eyes, and said sincerely, “I meant, you might as well hear it from me first.”

At the door, I turned to Zena Tabur and said, “Goodbye.”

“Not good-bye, zweet. Hasta la vista.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” I said.

Then I nodded dumbly, turned and walked out.

It was minutes before sunset and the sky was aflame with most of heaven’s colors. But I felt as if I were walking into the cold, black night.

</code>

<code> I had discovered another truth of vast dimension: The sudden appearance of a larger problem can instantly diminish to manageable proportions a smaller — though previously apparently gigantic — problem. Thus my awareness that Sylvia Ardent and Zena Tabur were now or soon would be together, perhaps not at a movie but instead chatting merrily about — well — things made the Jellicoe-Cheim-Lash-Kiffer-hoodlums and possible-death-and-destruction problem one which I now felt equipped to handle.

I stubbed out my cigarette butt, used the car phone to call Mac Kiffer.

There was no answer at his home. It took me four more calls, but I got him at Antonio’s, in LA, an Italian restaurant where Kiffer and some of his boys often spent the evening consuming vast quantities of beer and oddments of pasta. Antonio’s was only four blocks from the LA Police Building, which perhaps gave the boys a feeling of adventure.

When he answered the phone I said, “Kiffer, I want thirty seconds on the phone with you, then you can decide if you feel like continuing the conversation. OK?”

“Who’s this?”

“Shell Scott.”

A three or four-second silence. Then, “Where you at?”

“Come on. I should tell you where, so you can send Putrid to blow some holes in my head?”

“Don’t be a dumb crud, Scott. We got nothing against you.”

“So why were you and Putrid on my can this afternoon?”

“Uh. I guess you seen us.”

“I guess I did. If you’ve got nothing against me, why were you tailing me?”

“Well, we just — we was just curious about something.”

“Uh-huh. I don’t suppose you want to tell me what.”

“Nope.”

“You feel like telling me why Eddy Lash went to see Gideon Cheim this afternoon?”

“He went to see Cheim? I’ll be goddamned. Then why the hell — ” He chopped it.

I said, “Maybe you’re as curious as I am about why Eddy made that visit.”

“Maybe.”

“I’d like to set up a meet with you. What do you say?”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Maybe nothing. What I want is info from you. Maybe you’ll pick up a bit or two from me that’ll do you some good, maybe not. But there just might be info we can trade. We won’t know till we give it a try.”

“Well … yeah. I’ll level with you, Scott. I got troubles you wouldn’t believe.”

“Maybe I can help.”

“It ain’t likely.”

“Hell, it can’t hurt to talk about it, can it?”

“Guess not. Yeah, OK. But I pick the place. I ain’t going into no dark corners for no reason.”

That didn’t surprise me. “Well,” I said, “you’re at Antonio’s now. How about there? It’s public enough.”

“OK. Yeah, you come here, then. Only not for, say, an hour or so. There’s friends with me now.”

“What say we make it nine p.m.?”

“That’s about right. I’ll fix it so we got the back room, the one with the poker tables. You know the place?”

“I know where it is.”

“That way nobody can’t hear us. Or see us — my reputation would be ruint if I was to be seen with you.”

“Smart thinking,” I said. “See you at nine.”

</code>

<code> But his voice was just as vibrant — and loud — as before. “What the hell do you mean by phoning me and saying you want some straight answers? Goddammit, are you implying — “

“Knock it off.” I pulled a chair over close to the bed, sat down and leaned toward Gideon Cheim. “Why did Eddy Lash come to see you this afternoon?”

“I’ll not be cross-examined by you … or anybody else. There’ll be no goddamned third degree — “

“OK.” I stood up. “You play it cute, keep giving me this God Almighty Cheim act, and that’s it. You’ll get no help, no cooperation, from me — none. And I’m still more concerned about finding Jellicoe than your blasted manuscript, anyway. But if I do find it, I’ll probably wrap it in cement and drop it in a convenient ocean, just for meanness.”

“Hold on. I…” He stopped, and scowled at me. It was the scowl which assuredly had struck great apprehension and possibly systolics into the hearts of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his former employees.

“You have a goddamned irritating manner,” he said. I sat down again. “You’re a bit abrasive yourself. Why did Lash come to see you this afternoon?”

“Well, I — I’m not sure.”

“Dammit, Cheim — “

“It’s the truth. I barely know the man. But he is aware that Mr. Jellicoe works for me, and for some reason he wanted to know if I could tell him where Wilfred is.”

“For some reason. You don’t know what the reason was?”

“No, how could I? I said I barely know the man.”

“Yeah. And in our first delightful dialogue you told me you didn’t know any hoods.”

“I don’t — didn’t. I mean, I met Mr. Lash only briefly, some years ago. He wanted to invest in the industry — that is, in a film I was producing. I’d had some difficulty getting sufficient money from my bankers — that was right after my disastrous Gideon’s Knot, if you remember it.”

I remembered. It had been a bomb.

Thinking about it, Cheim assumed a forlorn expression, then continued. “I didn’t know then that he was a — a criminal. Fortunately, I had managed to complete arrangements for the additional financing needed shortly before Mr. Lash approached me.” He paused, shaking his great nearly bald head. “Otherwise, I daresay I would have accepted his offer, and his money. Which later, without doubt, I would greatly have regretted.”

“Uh-huh. And that’s the only contact you’ve ever had with Edward Lash?”

“Yes. Yes, I swear it.”

The bastard was lying to me … about something. I knew it. What I didn’t know was whether, of all he had so far told me, only ten percent, or possibly ninety-nine percent, had been the old baloney.

But I merely said, “You’ve no idea, then, why Lash wanted to locate Jellicoe?”

“No.” He cocked his head on one side. “In fact, I had some difficulty understanding Mr. Lash. His mouth — “

“I know. I did that to him.”

“You? He didn’t say anything about — “

“He wouldn’t have. I met him outside your room. Which is how it just happened I knew he was coming to see you.”

“You did that to him, eh?” Cheim said reflectively.

I asked him, “Was there anything in your autobiography about Lash?”

“No. Ah — well — a bare paragraph, hardly worth mentioning.”

“Mention it.”

“Only what I’ve already told you, Mr. Scott. It was merely the matter of my financial difficulty, Mr. Lash’s offer and so on. And — ah — the fact that I later discovered he was a criminal.”

“Anything in that autobiography about any other crook, hood, thug, criminal? Members of Lash’s gang?”

He was shaking his head.

“Mac Kiffer? Putrid Stanley? Burper McGee?”

“No … no … no,” while continuing to shake his head.

“OK, I’ll buy that. For now. Fact: I know that over the years you’ve employed a lot of people who do the same kind of work I do. Investigators, a detective agency. We hit that lightly this morning, only I don’t think you indicated the unusual extent to which you’ve employed such investigators.”

“It was essential to know something of those who worked for me, Mr. Scott. A man in my position cannot afford — “

“We can save the motivation for later. Here’s the big question: Did that valuable wax-sealed case which you entrusted to Jellicoe actually contain a valid, completed autobiography? Or was it, conceivably, some of the dope those numerous detectives of yours dug up on half the characters in Hollywood? In short, did you truly write — and arrange to have published — a book, I!, the autobiography of Gideon Cheim?”

Those flames licked the insides of his eyes again. Every once in a while this guy could look fierce as hell. But he merely snorted through the cavernous nostrils of his fleshy nose and said sharply, “You’re goddamn right I did.”

“Who’s going to publish the book?”

I didn’t think he was going to answer for those first few seconds. He grew an even fiercer look on his face. But at length he said, “The publisher will be — if the goddamned book is ever published — The Satyr Press, owned by Mr. Regnor Phaidren. Does that satisfy you?”

“Not exactly. Call him. Get him on the phone.”

“Are you quite serious?”

“Quite.”

“But … at this hour?”

“It’s only a little after eight.”

“But it’s past eleven p.m. in New York. I can’t — “

“So it’s past eleven. Call him anyway. Is there any reason why you would prefer I didn’t talk to Mr. Phaidren?”

His wide chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath and let it out, glaring at me. “No, there is not,” be said flatly.

He reached for the phone.

“When you get him,” I said, “tell him I’d like a few words with him. Please.”

While Cheim placed a person-to-person call to New York, I thought a bit about The Satyr Press. It was a legitimate firm, not one of the giants but of respectable size and with all of its stock privately held, most of it by Regnor Phaidren. The firm published thirty to forty titles a year, a lot of erotica, a few avant-garde and extraordinarily incomprehensible novels, and an occasional “unauthorized” biography of some well-known figure — who usually sued them. Nine times out of ten the books were “that kind” of biography, lots of scandal and the “real inside dirt,” more about the heel than about Achilles. It made sense that Satyr would want to publish Cheim’s autobiography, if they could get it. And if there was one.

Cheim was saying, “Reg? It’s Gideon, Reg. Yes, still in the hospital but feeling great, just great. Be out of here in a few days. Yes, good to talk to you, too, Reg.”

I leaned over, so Cheim could see me smiling at him, and after a little more dialogue he handed the phone to me.

I talked to Regnor Phaidren for about two minutes. Yes, Satyr was planning to publish Mr. Cheim’s autobiography, just as soon as they could get it — Mr. Phaidren apologized for saying that, since the book was to be published posthumously, but he was sure I understood. I told him sure, I understood. Yes, they had selected a title, I! “Short and eye-catching, what?” He apologized for that, too.

He had, indeed, seen the manuscript. On the Coast last year, stayed with Gid, read the first half of the book or a bit more than, the rest was done but not in the shape Gid had wished it to be. But Mr. Phaidren had been enormously impressed. No, not a typed manuscript, all in longhand — Gid was a queer old duck, but they all just loved him. I ran out of questions, thanked Mr. Phaidren and hung up.

Cheim said icily, “That was fascinating. Why don’t you simply call me a goddamned liar and be done with it?”

“I’d reached the point where I wasn’t sure an autobiography really existed, and it was important that I be sure.”

“Would you very much mind telling me why?”

“It would take too long. And I’ve got an appointment. I’ll keep in touch.”

“Wait just a moment, please.”

Please? From Gideon Cheim? I waited.

“Whatever doubts you had concerning the existence of my autobiography should now have been eliminated. I want that manuscript. I will pay anything, do anything within my power, if you will concentrate your efforts on getting it back for me.”

“We’ve been over this. Too many times. When and if I locate Jellicoe we’ll talk about it.”

“Should you succeed in finding the autobiography — there are, by the way, some … supporting documents, material supporting anecdotes and tales in certain chapters — I assume you will refrain from reading the manuscript, examining the — ah — supporting documents.”

He waited a moment, then continued. “I intend, of course, to make drastic, very drastic changes in the manuscript. But until it is published, it is a very private possession. It is my property, my personal, private property. Ah … I am sure you are a man of honor, trustworthy, that you would not examine another person’s personal, private property?” It sounded like a question. “I may feel certain, may I not, that you would refrain from reading any of the manuscript, or the — ah — supporting material?” That was for sure a question.

“To repeat,” I said, “we can talk about all that when and if I locate Jellicoe. Anything else?”

This time it was Cheim who remained silent. He looked sort of irritated, angry, apprehensive, frustrated and unhappy.

But, then, so far as I knew, that was the way he always looked.

</code>

<code> 11

At twelve minutes before nine I parked a block and a half from Antonio’s, walked down an alley that ran behind the restaurant and, passing two foul-smelling garbage cans, entered the kitchen. A short plump cook, sweating profusely, glanced at me with total lack of interest, then continued stirring something in a ten-gallon iron pot. I could smell garlic, cheese, dough, spices, sweat and several unidentifiables.

When I stepped out of the kitchen, the swinging doors across the hallway, leading into the dining room and bar, were closed. I walked to the room on my left, turned the knob and stepped quickly inside. I was ready to shoot or run — even had my hand under my left lapel — but the only reaction I got was from Mac Kiffer, slouched in one of the chairs around the felt-topped poker table.

He eyed me sleepily through his horn-rimmed glasses and said in his lazy way, “You’re early, Scott.” Then, as I glanced around the room, made sure when I shut the door that nobody had been hidden behind it, and finally let my right hand fall to my side, he added, “You’re a trusting soul, ain’t you?”

He didn’t smile. Mac didn’t smile much. He didn’t move around much, either — though he could move pretty well when he wanted to. I’d heard he worked out with weights every day, kept himself in good physical condition. Except perhaps for his guts, the “intestinal fortitude” area, as I’ve mentioned.

That, in fact, was the main reason he’d split with Eddy Lash a couple of years back, or so I’d been told. There had often been friction between Eddy and Mac, even near violence on occasion, and the guy who always backed down was Mac Kiffer.

I said, “I’m a trusting soul, all right. When in the company of angels.”

“Ha-ha,” he said mirthlessly. “You know Putrid, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Putrid Stanley was seated across from Kiffer, looking, as always, as if he had his nose stuffed with small skunks. His long bald head glistened in light from the shaded bulb hanging above the poker table, and his brightly gleaming dome contrasted sharply with the black stubble of whiskers poking at, and through, the leathery skin of his chin and cheeks.

I walked to the far side of the poker table and pulled a chair out another foot so I could sit facing the door with the wall behind me.

“This ain’t gonna do no good, Scott,” Kiffer said.

“You never can tell. For openers, we could start slow and easy by your filling me in with what you know about those three pills which narrowly missed your valuable person yesterday. Like who maybe tossed them and such.”

“What for are you so interested about who shoots at me and misses? Or even don’t miss.”

“It’s just one small piece I hope to fit into a puzzle. Maybe it won’t even fit.”

“Well, we can let that lay there for a while. I got a better idea. This is your play, you called me. So let’s get it goin’ with you tellin’ me more about what you said on the phone. About Lash goin’ to see Cheim.”

I shrugged. “OK. When you and Putrid latched onto me I was on my way to the Weston-Macey Hospital to see Gideon Cheim, but before I headed out there he’d called my office three times himself, wanted to see me. After I shook you two, I went to the hospital. I talked to Cheim, and when I started to leave the room I damn near smacked into Lash, who was about to come in. We had a beef in the hallway, and the upshot was I kind of ruined his mouth. And I kind of left right then, before he came to.”

Kiffer’s usually sleepy-looking eyes became brighter as the lids lifted. “Eddy? You hammered him in the mush?”

“My best shot.”

“Well, gahdamn.” Kiffer smiled, revealing even teeth, perfectly white except for a small gold filling near the corner of his mouth. “That’s good news.”

Putrid spoke for the first time. “If you slammed Eddy cold and blew, how do you know if he seen Cheim or not?”

I was surprised. It was an intelligent question.

“Because I’ve been back to the hospital and talked to Cheim since then. I haven’t seen Lash, which is maybe just as well — “

“You better believe it,” Putrid broke in.

He was saying a lot of intelligent things tonight.

“So all I know is what Cheim told me,” I continued. “At least, what Cheim claims Eddy was after.”

“Well, don’t stop there.” That was Kiffer again. “What was he after?”

“Nothing very important, at least on the surface,” I said casually. But I was not casual about keeping my eyes on Kiffer, hoping I might catch a slight twitch of lip, lifted brow, twitch of finger. All of which proved to be, in this instance at least, entirely unnecessary.

“According to Cheim,” I said, “all Eddy Lash was trying to do was find a guy. Man named Wilfred Jellicoe.”

“The sonofabitch!” Kiffer yelled, raising his right hand and slamming it down, closed into a fist, onto the green felt of the poker table’s top. “Yeah, I knew it, the bastard. So that’s why the sonofabitch tried to blast me.” He raised his other fist, and with it also slammed the tabletop.

After a moment he told Putrid to wait outside.

Putrid got up and left the room.

Then Kiffer looked straight at me, his usually rather pleasant features contorted. “Yeah,” he growled, “he already tried once, and he’ll keep on tryin’ to kill me — unless I get lucky and knock off the bastard first.” He frowned, looking unhappy. “Which ain’t very damned likely,” he added morosely.

I said quietly, “So it was Eddy Lash tried to chill you, huh?”

“Who else? Maybe not him, but one of those fleepers what work for him.”

“Which one?”

“I ain’t certain. But the way it come to me, it was Luddy.”

Luddy. Clarence Ludlow. He hated the name Clarence. He hated damn near everything in the universe, for that matter. He was a large, bumbling oaf of enormous physical strength, but with very little juice flowing through his gray matter. In the three years he’d been working for Lash, the boss had often used him for such utilitarian projects as conk-crushing or arm-and-leg breaking, when such became in Eddy’s view desirable.

I’d talked to Luddy a couple of times myself, once in an interrogation room in the LA Police Building. And even though it was true enough that he had all that hate and consequent toxemia inside him, outwardly — when he wanted to — he could appear jolly, pleasant, even overflowing with something that approached happy-go-lucky exuberance. It was perhaps, after the muscle, his one talent.

That talent had made at least two juries feel he simply couldn’t have done the awful things of which he had been accused, and thus at least two juries had acquitted him. The first on the charge of breaking and entering — only it was breaking and entering a guy’s head, with the help of a ball-peen hammer — and the second of murder two. The latter charge, originally, had been murder one but it was reduced to second degree and jolly, pleasant, exuberant Luddy beat even that rap. He couldn’t have done it, said a jury of his peers.

Interestingly, he and Burper McGee, to whom I’d briefly talked early this afternoon, were well-nigh inseparable companions. From the time when McGee had joined up with Lash and Company a year and a half ago, he and Luddy had hit it off and started hanging around together. God only knows why. Maybe as some people are color blind, Luddy was odor immune. Maybe it was simply that guys like Luddy and Burper rarely make friends easily, and take what they can get.

I pulled my thoughts back to Antonio’s, and asked Kiffer, “What’s with Jellicoe? Why is Lash so hot to see him; for that matter, what makes it so damned important to you?”

He pressed both hands to his forehead, then ran them back over his thick, smoothly combed black hair, frowning in concentration. “Well … it ain’t easy to explain,” he said.

“Then do it the hard way.”

“Don’t know as I can. It gets kind of complicated.”

I took another tack. “You’ve been yelling your head off about Lash. Why would he want to kill you?”

“That’s easy. Well, easier. I know some things he don’t want me talkin’ about. There was a bunch of us knew the dope I got in mind, but one of ‘em got himself killed a coupla years back, and another one or two drifted off. Way I figure it, I’m the only one Eddy’s worried about. I guess he’s afraid I might spill. And I just might.”

That was encouraging. But I remained silent, just in case Kiffer felt like going on.

He looked at me, eyes half-lidded behind his glasses, and said, “It’s funny as hell. I thought Eddy maybe tried to get me hit yesterday thinking I’d finked and already had spilled the beans. But it sure don’t look that way now. I ain’t the only one knows about … what I mentioned, but the crumb is gonna try gettin’ me killed, anyways.”

“Who’re the others?”

He shook his head. “I ain’t naming no names — not yet. And don’t ask me what the dope is; I ain’t saying that, either. But Eddy, I can see he’ll make it a big point to get me killed, that’s for sure.” He paused, a frown on his face. “And when Eddy makes up his mind to get a guy killed, that guy don’t usually live a whole lot longer, you can take it from me.”

“You ought to know, Kiffer. You worked for the guy yourself for five years.”

He didn’t pay much attention to the remark. Kiffer was quiet for a while, thinking. Then he looked at me. “Like Eddy himself always said, a man’s got to take care of Number One. Scott, I’m going to tell you a tale. But I tell it so it don’t do you no good, unless I fill it in for you later, see?”

“I guess so. But I won’t know till I hear the tale.”

“I change it a little, leave out names and dates, like that. And the only way I fill it in is if you fix it so I can make me a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Let that go a minute. I’m going to make up a story for you now, see? With a lot of supposin’ in it. And maybe I throw in some things that ain’t true along with some that is, just to screw you up.”

“Tell it your way. Just tell it.”

“OK. Only I want one or two more things from you first.”

“Like what?”

“Like why’d Cheim want to see you in the first place?”

“Jellicoe’s been Cheim’s right-hand man for years, and Cheim heard I was looking for the guy. He wanted to know if I’d found him.”

“Did you? I mean, you know where Jellicoe is at?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. I know a lot of places where he isn’t, that’s all.”

“Cheim heard you was already looking for Jellicoe? Then he didn’t hire you to find him?”

“No. Jellicoe’s ex-wife hired me this morning. The main thing she’s flipping about, I gathered, was that she’s missed a couple months’ alimony.” I paused. “Incidentally, do you happen to know where Jellicoe is?”

“Not me. He could be in Africa for all I know.”

“I find something rather interesting. I’ve told you Eddy Lash is looking for Jellicoe, that Cheim wanted to know if I’d located him, that his ex-wife hired me to find him. Yet not at any time have you indicated the slightest surprise. For all you know he could be ‘in Africa.’ Obviously, you’ve known for a while that our lad has skipped.”

“Oh, hell yes. I knew you was looking for him, too. Word gets around — you know how it goes. Man, there’s lots of guys knows places where he ain’t.”

“That why you and Putrid were tailing me? See if I might lead you to him? Or was there another reason?”

“Chop the questions for now, huh? You want to hear this story of mine or don’t you?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I want to hear it.”

“Well, supposin’ a guy killed another guy, and there was another guy seen it happen. Then the first guy, the one what pounded the bejeezus out of the citizen in question, gets another guy to help him out. This other guy has some of his friends, and him, get rid of the killed guy, who nobody ever hears of no more, and then they wrap it all up by killing the guy who seen it happen. Clear so far?”

I wasn’t exactly sure. I went over it in my mind and said, “Like this? A kills B and C is the witness. A enlists the aid of D. D and friends dispose of B’s body and murder C.”

Kiffer frowned. “It don’t sound the same,” he said. “But it don’t matter. I’m making it all up. You can use numbers for ‘em if you want to. There’s some more goes with it. This guy with the friends what does the dirty work — who was he? C?”

“D.”

“OK, D. He’s putting the bite, heavy, on another guy.”

“Call him E.”

“Jesus. You got a thing for the alphabet, don’t you? What if we run out of letters?”

“There’s that many people messing around in this story you’re making up?”

“No. Only a few.” He paused, nodding. “I get how you’re doing it. Yeah, listen to this now. This guy D is the one has the friends help him bury the stiff and all that; well, these friends, they’re F, G, H, I — and that last one is me.”

“I is you?”

“I is me.”

“I got it.”

“So do I. I think. Jesus, let me think a minute.”

He scratched his black hair for a while, scowling. Then he said a foul four-letter word, after which he continued, “One of them other letters, not I — which is me, if I haven’t got it screwed to hell up — knows about all this, because he’s one of them in on it, one of them letters…” Kiffer spat out the foul word again.

Then he said, “The hell with it. One of them birds knows about the squeeze this guy is putting on the other dude, so he makes a deal with this dude — gives him proof of all that happened, what I just got through telling you — for a large pile of dough. He gets the dough, the dude gets the proof, and the dude having this proof, it makes him able to use it to stop the guy who’s squeezing him from doing any more squeezing — he gets unsquoze. It’s a standoff. You got it?”

I nodded. It was a bit difficult to follow Kiffer’s story line, but I thought I understood. “It would help a lot,” I told him, “if you’d be just a little more specific.”

“I ain’t going to be that. Not unless I get a deal worked out first.” He held up two fingers. “I know you’re like that with the fuzz, and especially Samson. Which is one reason I told you OK, come on out and we’ll talk. Because I figure you got more chance of making your buddy take it easy on me, especially with what I got to give him, than anybody else.”

Kiffer referred to Phil Samson, who happens to be not only my best friend in LA but also the Captain of Central Homicide. Sam is a tough, hard-working career cop, as honest a man as you’ll find, and he didn’t often “make a deal.” But if the DA felt he could put half a dozen hoods in prison for a long time, and Kiffer in the can for even a short time, something could possibly be worked out.

“I’ll talk to Sam,” I said. “But I can’t promise a damn thing — and I doubt that he will, either. But I’ll find out how all this sounds to him and the DA. I’ll let you know.”

“Get on it fast, will you? I’ll level: what happened yesterday was too close already, and it’s likely to happen again damned soon, closer than that. I know some of them fleepers is trying to get close enough to hit me. If you don’t move like a rabbit I might not be around to tell you no more.”

“I’ll go straight to the LAPD when I leave here, Kiffer. And I promise I’ll do my best to get some kind of deal worked out.” I shook my head, looking serious. “But it may not be easy,” I said soberly. “You’re talking about two murders, aren’t you? And both about the same time? Or were they the same day? It could make a difference.”

“First guy got it one afternoon, the other one was plugged the next morning. What’s the difference?”

What I’d meant, though naturally I did not mention it to Kiffer, was that it could make a difference to me. I said, “The point is there were two murders — and you’re involved in both of them, at least as an accessory. If this was a simple heist it would also be simpler to cop out to a lesser charge. But cold-blooded, premeditated murders, and two of them at that…”

Kiffer was looking just a little worried. “I can still come out OK if you do your stuff right. And it ain’t as bad as you make it sound, Scott. About them murders, one of them wasn’t supposed to be; I mean, it didn’t start out with the guy meaning to kill the guy. So you can’t call that one premedicated. And, hell, I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that, none of us … letters did. It was only the second one it was planned on hitting. And I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that, either, it’s the God’s truth. Hell, all I did was help lug off the first stiff, help dig a hole in the ground.”

I nodded encouragingly. “That could be your story, anyway. It does make you sound innocent as a babe. But you’re at least accessory before the fact of murder, if you knew in advance that this egg was going to be shot in the morning.”

His eyes rolled right and left. Suddenly he nodded and said, “Man, I didn’t know nothin’ about that. It come as a complete surprise to me when I heard about it.”

“Yeah. Well, if the DA would accept — mind you, I don’t say he would, or that he’d even consider it — a plea to the effect that you merely kept quiet about a homicide or two which you knew to have been committed…”

I felt I was, perhaps, being a little unfair. And I felt a little twinge of conscience when Kiffer seized on my words almost gratefully, crying, “Yeah, that’s it, all I did was keep my trap shut about it. What’s so illegal? I should be a rat?”

“I have to tell you it might be a lot worse than the way you see it now, Kiffer. A lot worse.”

“Well, you get the hell busy, Scott, and either you get me a deal or all you got’s a handful of letters that don’t spell nothin’. But if it works out, I’ll fill in the names, dates, the whole bit. And your Captain Sam will have Eddy Lash for one, and a few more. Only I get off easy, I get to cop a soft plea.”

I smiled. “And Eddy Lash won’t be so available to knock you off, will he?”

Kiffer shrugged. “I admit that entered into my mind. But like I said, a guy’s got to look out for Number One, don’t he?”

“I guess a guy does. But the story I tell Sam has to hang together, Kiffer. I mean, it’s got to make sense — even if it’s as sketchy as what you’ve told me.”

“Well, it makes sense, don’t it?”

“I’ll give you an example. This guy you claim sold the story of this night and morning of crime to the blackmail victim — that part doesn’t fit, doesn’t hold up.”

“How come?”

“As soon as the victim used the info to — to get unsquoze, the guy who’d been doing the squeezing would know positively there’d been a leak. And he’d know the leak had to come from one of a handful of his men. The guy who sold out would know that would happen, too, even if he had only half a brain. Therefore, knowing in advance he would inevitably be exposed — and hit in the head for selling out — he wouldn’t have sold out. The logic there doesn’t hold up.”

“Say that again. A little slower.”

I said it again, phrasing it a bit differently, and Kiffer’s face brightened.

“Sure, I get it. He had noodles enough to know he’d be found out eventual, and get hit in the head? That’s the way it’s got logic? Well, hell, that’s me way it was. He knew, you damn well bet he knew. So he took off.”

“Come again?”

“Look, the guy knew he had to skip. He had the hots for a burleycue stripper, which is what he wanted the money for in the first place. Soon as he gets the loot, he grabs his babe and they lam together. To where? Nobody knows from nothing. Neither hide nor hair of them since.”

I smiled, nodding. “Well, now it makes sense. That helps — and it helps that I can at least give the fuzz Eddy Lash’s name, right? I mean, he’s one of those — those letters, and there’ll be evidence sufficient to assure his arrest and trial?”

“That’s it exact.”

“You’d better be sure, Kiffer. All this is nothing — it’s zero — unless there’s proof. Admissible evidence, real proof.”

“There is.”

“What kind of proof?”

He shook his head. “That you don’t get.”

“Where is this alleged proof?”

“That you don’t get, neither.”

“When and if the law wants a look at … whatever it is, can you put your hands on it? That I’m certain they’ll want to know. And no monkey business about it.”

“Well … I can’t actually put my hands on it. But with what I can tell the fuzz they ought to be able to get it. Hell, I can tell them so much they might not even need it.”

“You’d probably have to testify against your co — against the other guys, in court.”

“That I’ll buy. Now will you get to hell on it? I got a feeling my time’s about up. I got a feeling…”

“I’m on my way to the Police Building right now. In ten minutes I’ll be talking to Sam.” I got to my feet, walked to the door. There I turned and said, “I could sound more convincing, especially to Samson — who, I can predict, isn’t going to be overcome with happiness when I tell him this goofy story — if I had more fact, a little more detail. Anything else you want to tell me?”

He shook his head, the overhead light glinting on his glasses. “No chance, Scott. No chance.” He paused. “I got a feeling I told you too much already.”

As a matter of fact, he had.

</code>

<code> 12

Headquarters of the LAPD’s Central Homicide Division is on the third floor of the Police Building, a block east of the City Hall in downtown LA. When I walked into room 314, the Homicide squad room, a couple of detectives were sitting at a wooden table going over some kind of report.

The door of Samson’s adjacent office was open and as I went in he looked up and nodded slightly.

I’d dropped in only two days ago, but Sam probably would have reacted with approximately the same wild enthusiasm if I’d just returned from a year on one of the outer planets. We’d been friends for many years, and I knew well that beneath the rough and forbidding exterior of Phil Samson, terror of Central Homicide — terror understandably, since he was big, broad, burly and tough, with a jaw as solid and heavy as several pounds of cast iron, and could growl like the MGM lion when merely asking the time of day — beat a heart as calloused and cold as a toasted marshmallow.

“Hi, Sam,” I said as I walked in, turned a wooden chair around and straddled it. “Why don’t you bring your long-suffering wife down here and give her a cot in the hall? Only way the poor girl’s ever going to get to see you.”

Sam leaned back in his swivel chair, a look of utter boredom on his pink clean-shaven — somehow always clean-shaven — face, and rubbed the knuckles of one thick-fingered hand against the fringe of gray above his temple.

“She can’t sleep in drafts,” he said. “I’d have to move her every time you come in here and start gassing.”

“Ah,” I said, “the Captain’s in a jolly mood again. The Captain has been drinking on the job again. The Cap — “

“When you phoned, you did say you had something important to tell me, didn’t you?”

I nodded, sketched in the day’s activities, from Gladys Jellicoe until now — now being 9:20 p.m. — then covered the high points of my recently concluded meeting with Mac Kiffer. “The thing is, he wants to make a deal. And I think, even though he tried to be cute with me, it could turn out to be a good deal for our side.”

Sam scowled. “Kiffer’s a mean one. I’d hate to see a hood like him walk away clean. What’s he got to trade?”

“He’ll cop out, go into court and puke on his erstwhile pals. He’ll name names, dates and such, filling in the story he told me, which did not include such specifics.”

“So tell me the story.”

“You may not be overwhelmed with it as evidence, Sam. We wound up using letters instead of people’s names. Actually, it’s the only way the thing came out even half clear.”

“Letters?”

“Yeah, like A, B, C — you know, A for Joe Smith, B for Bill Brown, like that.”

He sighed, wearily. “All right, let’s have it.”

“Here’s the way it came from Kiffer. Don’t let it throw you until I add a few bits — Kiffer told me more than he thought. Here goes: A kills B. C witnesses the homicide. A prevails upon D to help him. D and four of his friends — hoods, we’ll say, and we’ll call them F, G, H and I — dispose of B’s body that night, and the next morning kill C. In the meantime this same D has been blackmailing another citizen, E. One of the four hoods knows about this blackmail squeeze, and the identity of E. He approaches E, makes a deal, sells him the whole story of the double killing, complete with names and dates and such, and E’s possession of this info — which naturally can put the heat on a number of people — enables him to force D to back off and end his extortion. With the loot from this sellout, our man, either F or G, skips town in the company of a burlesque dancer for whom he has the unscratchable itch.”

Sam studied me for a few seconds, then said to me exactly what Kiffer had at one point: “Say that again.”

The difference was that Samson had followed my words with a much livelier intelligence than Kiffer’s, and added, “This time let’s get it on tape.” He punched a button and I went over it again, knowing the words were being recorded.

After fifteen seconds of silence, during which Samson gently rubbed his big jaw with a bent forefinger, he asked, “You mention four hoods, F, G, H, I. But you say the one who skipped was either F or G. Why not H or I?”

“I is Mac Kiffer himself. He told me one of the others in on this action got knocked off a couple of years back. That one was probably Casey, the guy I plugged myself that night in the alley when I also put a couple into Lash. No matter; I simply crossed off H for him, which leaves only F and G.”

“All right. What else did Kiffer tell you, either on purpose or by accident?”

“Well, D is Eddy Lash — “

“Kiffer told you that?”

“Not exactly. But he said, if he gets a soft deal you’ll be able to put Eddy Lash, among others, away. F, G, H and I are all hoods, they work for the boss, D. I is Kiffer, who when he did work for another man worked for Eddy. Thus D, the boss, is Eddy Lash.”

“Two homicides, not many hours apart. That right?”

“Right. Number one in the afternoon or evening, not premeditated, according to Kiffer. Either lead-piped, sapped or beaten to death; at least that’s the impression I got. But number two was planned, and was shot to death the next morning — plugged, to use Kiffer’s word.”

Samson left the room for two or three minutes, then came back and sat down again. He pulled out a desk drawer, fiddled — rewinding the tape — then clamped his strong teeth on one of his foul black cigars while listening to the replay. After my last comment “…plugged, to use Kiffer’s word,” Sam reached into the drawer and I knew we were recording again.

“OK,” he said, speaking around the already well-chewed cigar. “What’s this evidence Kiffer tried to sell you?”

“Beats me. He claims it’s solid, but we’ve got only his word. He can’t put his hands on it, not right now at least. But he insists it’s available. He also insists it will for sure put Eddy Lash away, and presumably others.”

“Why’d he spill this to you? Even in his idiotic code.”

“I put it in code. Captain Samson, sir,” I said, hurt to the quick. “In order that it would make at least a little sense.”

“Why’d he spill it?”

“Mainly to keep from getting hit in the biscuit, he says. Actually, the reason’s twofold: Put Lash and chums in the slammer for big time, and stay alive himself. Even if he has to take a soft fall.”

“He’ll take a fall, all right. Even if every bit of this is straight, which isn’t likely from a guy as crooked as Kiffer.” Samson shifted the cigar to the other corner of his mouth. “He thinks Lash is the one trying to kill him, huh?”

“Kiffer’s certain of it, and the word he picked up is that the trigger man was Luddy. Clarence Ludlow.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Could be. What else you got?”

“Kiffer’s scared, no doubt about that. If Eddy Lash figures Kiffer knows too much — especially info that could hurt Lash himself — and even might spill that info, then Eddy would without any hesitation try to knock him off. And, as Kiffer himself indicated, when Eddy wants a fellow killed, the fellow rarely if ever dies of pneumonia. Which makes it seem all the more likely that Kiffer’s leveling. He’ll spill his guts if he can cop a reasonable plea.”

“We’ll see about that. But I’ll talk to the Chief and the DA personally — unless the Chief wants to see the DA himself.”

“Nobody could ask for more. Here’s another item. I told Kiffer Lash visited Gideon Cheim in his hospital room today, and Mac got all goose-pimply with excitement to know why. When I told him Cheim claimed Lash was looking for Wilfred Jellicoe — the missing chap I told you about — it kind of turned him on. It seemed, in some strange way, to reinforce his conviction that Lash was the boy trying to knock him off — but not for the reason Kiffer figured it was at first.”

“You haven’t had any luck getting next to this Jellicoe?”

“Not yet.”

“How come, if you’re on a simple missing-person job, you’re spending so much time lollygagging with the likes of Kiffer and Eddy Lash?”

“Lollygagging? You make it sound as if I’ve been on a picnic at Shangri-la. Sam, old buddy, I have actually been doing your work for you, and one would think you’d have more — “

“How come?” he repeated patiently.

“Because that’s the way it’s happened. Besides which, the way I see it, Jellicoe’s got to be in this up to his ears. He assuredly has possession of Cheim’s stinking life story, or Revealing Chapters Concerning Hollywood’s Backside, whatever it is. There’s blackmail material in those pages, unquestionably. I figure Jellicoe’s simply lying low for now, hiding out for a while. Consider the sequence of events, and all the sudden sweat, Sam. Jellicoe pops out of his rooms sometime early Friday. Sunday afternoon Luddy — or whoever — makes a good try at knocking off Kiffer. Today I’m hired by Jellicoe’s ex, get tailed by Kiffer and Putrid, go around and around with Cheim, run into Lash and have to push his mouth in, and among other things experience the rare dialogue with Kiffer which I’ve just related. It starts simply enough with his ex-wife wanting me to find Jellicoe, but then it turns out Cheim wants me to find him. Lash is looking for him, Kiffer is also among those eager to know where our boy is, and half a dozen people appear to be having fits.” I paused. “This is merely a boy avoiding payment of alimony?”

“Wouldn’t seem so,” Sam remarked oddly. He was also gazing upon me oddly. “I believe I heard you say you had to push Lash’s mouth in. Was that it?”

I winced. “Now, Sam, don’t get your bowels in a ferment. I know you don’t — ah — appreciate it when I lower the boom on these chaps. But some of these chaps are not nice chaps, and they seem to have a way of getting my back up…”

I let it trail off. Then I said briskly, “But, Sam, we’re overlooking the really important things — the vital clues, so to speak. One moment, and I shall delight you by recounting the opportunities which lie before us.”

I got up, pulled an ashtray over to the corner of Sam’s desk, straddled my chair again and lit a cigarette. Puffing away, I said, “We can now pin down several of the items Mac Kiffer mentioned, items which tell us more than he meant them to tell. We know Kiffer hasn’t worked for Lash during the past two years; thus the twin homicides must have occurred prior to two years ago. Further, the first man killed, in the afternoon of an as yet unknown day, was hauled off that night and buried by several hoodlum gravediggers. Thus, to wife, children, relatives, he would at first be only a missing person — and undoubtedly would have been so reported. The premedicated — that’s Kiffer’s word; maybe they doped the victim — murder was a shooting, occurring on the very next morning and is undoubtedly of record. All you need do is run through the files and find two “open” cases — a missing person not yet found, and a murdered man whose killer has not been apprehended. If the dates check — What’s the matter?”

Samson was smiling, almost sadly, and shaking his head.

But he didn’t speak, so I went on, with enthusiasm. “Even more exciting, Sam, in addition to closing those two cases, we’ll know the dates of the crimes. And those dates can, with a little cagey detective work, help to pin down which one of Lash’s boys skipped with — “

I stopped.

A detective sergeant had just come into Sam’s office and deposited some brown envelopes, folders and papers, in three separate piles on his desk. “That’s the first run-through, Captain,” he said. “More coming up from R and I, but this is everything you asked to see first.” He started out.

But Sam said, “Hold it.” He was examining the contents of the top envelope, or “package,” in the left-hand stack. He handed it to the sergeant, saying, “This one was only with Lash a month, then took off for Florida. I Division says he’s in town again. If it was him, he wouldn’t have come back.”

The sergeant took the package and left.

Samson continued studying the brown envelopes, and the folders, and said, “Hmm,” completely ignoring me.

When I started becoming bored — which was almost instantly — I said, “That’s what you were doing when you left for a few minutes, huh?”

“Hmm,” he said again, looking at a typed sheet of paper.

In less than five more minutes he had selected one item from each of the three stacks before him, pushing all the rest across the desk toward me.

While I sat there like a dummy, Sam made several phone calls to other departments within the Police Building. To the last individual, whom he had instructed to contact a man named Zinger, he said, “If he isn’t home, try his office. He might still be there. And get right back to me with it.”

I happened to know that an Oscar Zinger owned a theater called the Dionysia. I stubbed out one cigarette, lit another and said sweetly, “Ahead of me on the burlesque cutey, too, hey. General?”

Sam tapped the three items he’d stacked in front of him and said, “I think it’s here. I think we’ve got it.”

“We? Why, all I did was give you a little bit of the alphabet, Sam.”

“Don’t sulk,” he said agreeably. Actually, he seemed almost happy. “Shell,” he continued gently, “we of the Los Angeles Police Department do appreciate your unending efforts on our behalf. But it hurts when you assume we cannot function without the aid of your peculiar talents.”

“Ah, you’re just still sore at me because I wiped out the whole Jimmy Violet Gang in that fun sex-club case. And — well — maybe because I killed and mangled so many of them, and burned up the garage and those four cars, and … you know. But, hell, you put me in jail, didn’t you? Won’t anything satisfy you? Do I have to — Sam, I’ll shut up.”

Samson had reached into the middle drawer of his desk where he kept his long wooden kitchen matches, the kind that used to come in big boxes — where he got them I have never been able to discover. He took out one of the matches and lit it.

“Not a peep, Sam.”

I don’t think it was merely the gagging odor that filled the room when Sam smoked one of those black monstrosities. That was foul enough, of course, but I had a hunch there was something in the smoke to which I was truly allergic, an acid which gnawed at my nostrils, a poison which clawed my throat, a gaseous cirrhosis which headed straight for my liver. It was Sam’s ultimate weapon: When he lit one, I left. Especially when — as he almost invariably did — he blew enormous, boiling clouds of the faintly green smoke at me.

But this time he let the match burn, appeared to be making a decision, then blew the match out. “You are ready, then, for a short lesson on police procedure, Sheldon?”

“I’m all ears, Captain, sir. I wait, silently, to be blinded by your brilliance. Hey, how about that? I wait, all ears, to be blinded — “

I thought he was going to get another match, but instead he said, “It isn’t brilliance, Shell. Sometimes, sure. Even a cop gets brilliant sometimes. But ordinarily it’s simple, routine police procedure. Look, you told your tale as spilled to you by Kiffer and arranged, in probably even less comprehensible order, by you. All right, I started with the assumption that, despite the damned alphabet, the facts were basically true. And — though I hate to admit it — you do, sometimes, draw a correct conclusion from assembled facts.”

I nodded — silently — in agreement.

“But you, Shell, suggested that we run through the files and find two unsolved cases — a missing person still missing, a murder unsolved, and so forth. That would be doing it the hard way. To the police mind, the logical, the routine procedure would be to begin with the relevant factor most easily checked. Namely, the member of Eddy Lash’s shirting collection of heavies and thieves who left suddenly and of whom no more has since been heard.”

I began nodding slowly as Sam continued. “They are limited in number. We have records on every man who has in recent years been associated with Lash. We eliminate those still with him. We eliminate those who are dead or in prison.”

“OK,” I said a bit sourly, “I get the point. And you’re right, dammit.”

“During the five-year period beginning seven years ago and ending two years ago — the period during which Kiffer worked for Lash — all could be eliminated except six men.” He tapped the stack of thick envelopes on his left, the “packages” nearest me. Only four were there now, since Sam had given one back to the sergeant, and had one in front of him.

“Interestingly,” he went on, “in the package of one Henny Augrest is a notation to the effect that Henny had been seen on a number of occasions with a lady named — professionally — Scarlett O’Harem — “

“You’re kidding.”

“If you’d prefer her given name, it is Meribelle Webster. The Intelligence Division has a couple of pages on her, too, since, as the featured dancer at the Dionysia, one of our local burlesque houses, she met numerous unsavory characters. As well, I suppose, as some savory ones. Probably including you.” He paused. “You. remember Henny Augrest?”

“Yeah. They called him Ogre, but he wasn’t all that bad-looking. And I suppose on the date of the Ogre’s egress from LA, Miss Scarlett O’Harem — really?”

“Really.”

” — also failed to appear and joyously fling off her clothing at the Dionysia.”

Sam nodded. “Looks that way. We’re making sure of that now. But it’ll merely be confirmation.” He pointed to the middle stack. “Homicides. Victims shot. All DOA’s, earlier than noon, and killed on a date within three days of the filing of a missing-person report which is still open.” He pointed to the right-hand stack. “Missing-person reports.”

“Pretty good, Sam. So it’s Henny?”

“We lost him in August, four years ago. Exact date unknown, but we’ve nothing on him since that month. Nothing since on Miss Webster, either. What looks like the clincher is this.” He picked up the missing-person report in front of him and said, “Here’s a young guy name of Roger David, semipro baseball player. Turned up missing in August four years ago, no trace of him since.”

“What’s the date when the report was filed? And who filed it?”

“David’s wife. She called the department on August twelfth, came in the next day and filled out the report. That was Tuesday, the thirteenth. But she said her husband went out somewhere Sunday and didn’t come home Sunday night at all. So if he’s the one, he’s been dead since then.”

“Uh-huh. Dead — and buried Sunday night. Let’s see if I can guess the rest of it. Sunday night would have been … August eleventh. So the homicide victim, a guy shot to death, case unsolved, still open, no known motive — which I presume you have before you — was a DOA reported on the morning of Monday, August twelfth.”

“True. There is hope for you yet. Shell. Only it was a woman. Anne Ericson, or Mrs. Curtis Ericson, thirty-one years old, shot four times by a person or persons unknown, as she was leaving her home for work as a dentist’s assistant. Call to the complaint board received at seven-o-two a.m. Monday, August twelfth. Same day Mrs. David phoned in about her hubby. Which would seem to hit it on the button.”

Sam’s phone rang. He grabbed it, made a couple notes on a pad, then said, “OK, tell him the entire department apologizes to him for the inconvenience, and convey any expressions of gratitude which come to mind.” He listened a bit longer, said, “By the way, good work, Johnny,” and hung up.

I raised an eyebrow. “Scarlett? That is, Miss Webster?”

“Yeah. Did her shows as usual at the Dionysia on Thursday, but didn’t show up at all the next day. Which was Friday, of the same August, date the sixteenth.”

“All in a week, less than a week. Give Henny — cross off G for Augrest — a couple days to make up his mind, a couple more to sell his stuff to Mr. E, and it fits top to bottom, both ends and in the middle.”

Sam played the tape back again. While listening, either Sam or I would speak, substituting a name for a letter. It made quite a bit more sense this time. After the tape ended I said, “One of those hoods has to be Vic Pine. He’s been with Lash for the seven years you checked up on, and more. Luddy’s only been with Eddy about three years, Burper less than that. Besides, Vic is Eddy’s nearly constant companion. A hundred to one Vic was in on the whole thing.”

“Agreed,” Sam said. He chewed on his cigar. “Maybe we better pick Kiffer up, bring him in.”

“On what charge?”

“True. There aren’t many left for a cop to use.”

“Besides, Kiffer sees fuzz coming at him, he might change his mind entirely. If he’s going to come in under his own steam, there’d better be something in it for that boy. Something better than a ten-to-life, too.”

Sam said, “I won’t be able to see the DA or the Chief until morning. But I’ll have a talk with them then.”

“Yeah. Well, tomorrow’s another day. And I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night.” I stood up and stretched so hard I heard something pop in my back.

“Well, Sam, old buddy,” I said cheerfully, “now that I’ve practically solved two murders for you, revealed the existence of numerous heinous crimes and the criminous bounders who heinously committed them, provided you with a joker who will blab his guts out in the interests of justice and survival, and have even demonstrated that the Ogre skipped away with Scarlett O’Harem — doesn’t that have a lovely sound? — I believe I shall go home and fall into a coma.”

Sam grinned. “Well, if I’ve got to be honest, you did help. A little.”

“Gosh,” I said gratefully. Then I left and went down in the elevator, out to the lot and into my Cad.

Then, just a bit wearily, I tooled the Caddy toward Hollywood and home, the Spartan Apartment Hotel, looking forward to a good, long, refreshing sleep.

Which, of course, I didn’t get.

</code>

<code> 13

I was dreaming of a redheaded american indian tomato who was doing a striptease. Just for me.

When there was nothing further she could accomplish in that direction, she walked slowly toward me — she looked, I noted, like a combination of Sylvia and Zena and an Indian nudist I’d once met at a Sunshine Camp — and, stopping inches from me, gazing at me with unconcealed lust in her eyes, she said, “You look very brave,” and I said, “You look very squaw,” and she said, “We go tee-pee,” and I said, “Crazy,” and she said, “When I stamp my feet in dance, the bells tinkle,” and damned if she didn’t stamp her feet, and sure enough there were bells tinkling.

It was the phone in the living room. The listed one.

The illuminated dial of the clock by my bed told me it was 10:50 p.m. I’d slept a whole twenty minutes.

I got a light on, stumbled into the front room, grabbed the phone. “Yeah?” It wasn’t a very jolly sound, even to me.

Neither was what came back. “Scott? Jesus, I’m in trouble, I mean trouble. I got to see you.”

I thought it was Kiffer, but I wasn’t certain. The man’s voice was quavering, shaking. “Yeah, this is Scott,” I said. “But I’m not sure I know who you are.”

“It’s Mac. Kiffer, dammit. Listen, I spotted a couple of them bastards on my tail, but I think I shook ‘em. Hell, I’m not even sure of that, calling from a pay phone, got the door open so there’s no light — “

“Slow down. What do you want me to do?”

“Come out here — not here, someplace else. I … maybe we can make an easier deal. I can maybe soften my end of it a little. I’ve got to leave my heap. They spot that again and I’m dead. I tell you, those bastards are going to kill me.”

“Mac, calm down. And slow down. You want me to meet you? Why don’t you come here to the Spartan — “

“Man, you don’t get it. When I drove to my house I seen a car parked across the street, couple guys in it. I couldn’t make them right off, but I was pretty sure they was Eddy’s boys — they was, all right. I swung over so the headlights hit ‘em and, goddamn, it was Luddy and Burper. I kept goin’ like it was Indianapolis, but I seen them wheel around and come after me.”

He stopped, breathing heavily. “I lost the cruds. I thought. Then they show up behind me. Twice I shook ‘em, and twice they got back on my butt. I think maybe they tagged the car earlier, bugged it, you know — “

“I know what you mean.”

“So the bastards could be just tunin’ in on me, wherever I’m at. Anyhow, there’s no goddamn time to be crawling under the car and lookin’ around for I don’t know what. I’m parked here in a gas station, way the hell out on Cypress Road. Station’s closed, but there’s a pay phone, I’m in it now.”

He was still almost incoherent, and I wasn’t quite sure what he wanted. So, again, I asked him about that.

“Look, Scott, for crissakes just come out here and pick me up, will you? Not here; I’ll hotfoot down the road half a mile, place there we can meet. I can’t stay here with my heap…” He spat out his four-letter word again, adding, “I got to get outa here!”

“OK, I’ll meet you. What then? Drive around? Go to the Police Building, let you sleep in a safe cell?”

“Well … maybe we can go to the LAPD. Mainly I’m tryin’ to stay alive. Look, I’m no good to you and the fuzz if I ain’t alive, am I?”

“That’s the truth. Where do I pick you up?”

He told me, in short sentences punctuated by heavy breathing. It was a lonely area, a quiet — and, at night, dark — tree-lined road not much used since the landscape had become plastered with freeways.

I said, “Mac, just so I can be sure it is you, tell me what we talked about earlier.” He hit a couple of small items and I said, “Convince me this way, Mac. Who was the guy sold the dope to Mr. E, then skipped with the stripper?”

Silence.

“Sam and I already know,” I said. “It wasn’t too tough to figure out. But I’d be impressed if you’d tell me.”

More silence. But finally he said, “It was the Ogre.”

“And he skipped with Scarlett O’Harem.”

“Yeah.” He sounded startled. “You wasn’t kidding, was you?”

“No, I wasn’t. One more thing and I’ll be on my way.”

“Hell, it’s enough I — “

“You just might have been pulling my leg a little earlier this evening. And Captain Samson is most concerned about this bit. The evidence, Mac. The proof of your story. Without that everything’s zero. So what is it?”

“I can’t spill that, Scott — “

“Hurry it up. Unless you’ve got all the time in the world.”

More silence.

Then, the four-letter word. Twice. But after that he said rapidly, “Ogre wrote the whole thing down in his own writing. Names, who it was, what he done himself, everything — me included. My name’s on the damn paper, too. Which is why I got to get a deal fixed. He names Eddy and — well — the whole works. On account of putting his own name in it, that was another reason he had to lam out, see?”

“Uh-huh. Even that might not be good enough. It’s just a piece of paper with a story on it. And the guy who wrote it — or allegedly wrote it — has skipped to nobody knows where. Maybe the thing’s faked.”

“Don’t kid yourself. The dude he sold it to wasn’t no dumb crud. He made Ogre write it in his own writing with his prints on top of some of the writing — and besides that put his fingerprint on the bottom and sign his signature over his print. It’s absolute cold. It even says where — where the guy’s at we buried. Hell, you got Henny’s prints — even his writing — downtown. There’s plenty to check out.”

“Sounds better. Who’s Mr. E? Who did Ogre sell his info to?”

“No, goddammit, no. No! I give you any more and I’m up the creek, I got nothing left to bargain with. No.”

“All right, Mac. I’m on my way.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said softly.

“Give me five minutes to dress, twenty-five, maybe twenty minutes to get there, pushing it a little. That makes it … eleven-thirty p.m. at the latest.”

I waited for him to say something, like “Make it eleven-twenty,” anything. But he didn’t.

“Mac?”

Nothing.

Then — not before, while I was talking to Kiffer, or a man I felt pretty sure was Kiffer — the phone was hung up.

It wasn’t hung up with a click. The connection simply ended, as though a finger had gently pressed down the receiver.

I looked at the phone in my hand for a moment, dropped it into the cradle. But then I moved. In three minutes I’d dressed, a bit sloppily but complete with gun harness and Colt. Then I hustled down the stairs, and headed the Cad for Cypress Road.

And — I hoped — Mac Kiffer.

</code>

<code> On the way here I’d phoned Homicide and filled Samson in on Kiffer’s call. He had asked me the same question that was in my mind — whether I was sure I’d been talking to Kiffer. I told him I’d let him know when I got back. He cheered me with his closing comment: “Don’t you mean if?”

It was his closing comment because I hung up on him. But the word stayed with me, that miserable little “if.”

The dark shapes of trees on both sides of the road loomed in the beam of my headlights, rushed toward me and then brushed past, whispering, falling rapidly behind. I passed the gas station from which Kiffer said he was phoning. It was a black night — this was the first night of the new moon — and the station’s lights were out. But I could dimly see the rectangular shape of a phone booth, a sedan parked beyond it. That would be Mac Kiffer’s Lincoln.

So far it checked. So far.

Kiffer had said I’d be able to recognize the spot where he would wait for me by the snapped-off trunks of half a dozen small trees and, beyond them, the scarred two-foot-thick trunk of a tall eucalyptus which had been hit a few months back by a hopped-up sports car, in which a young guy and his girl had been racing, presumably happily, toward sudden death.

The incident was of no real importance to me at the moment, except as a way to identify the spot chosen for the meet. But the brief thought of what had happened there in a jarring, deadly second or two crept into my mind, lingered.

I spotted the small tree stumps on my right, snapped off close to the ground, and the mangled surface of the eucalyptus beyond them, deep scars of near white still slashing the bark. I kept driving. I didn’t see Kiffer, but he’d told me he for sure wouldn’t be standing out in plain sight but back behind the scarred tree. A mile farther on I doused the Cad’s headlights, U-turned and drove back, shifting into neutral and coasting to within a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty, yards of the meeting place.

I didn’t open the car door and climb out — the inside lights go on automatically when the door opens. Instead I got a flashlight from the glove compartment, then hoisted my bulk through an open window, crossed the street, and in the earth alongside the asphalt walked as quietly as I could toward the spot where those two young lovers had died.

Death was in my mind, but not only because of that remembered crash. There was the way Kiffer had sounded; the possibility that his panic had been an act to get me out here; and, aside from that, merely the thought of two names: Luddy and Burper. Clarence Ludlow and Francis McGee. When you thought of those two you quite naturally thought of death.

A good twenty yards from the scarred tree I angled away from the road, walking slowly, placing my feet carefully. A cricket chirped not far away, and in the distance a frog croaked at regular intervals. The Colt, hammer thumbed back, was in my right hand, flashlight in my left.

Every few feet I stopped, listening. The last time I was only about six feet from the tree, and a dry twig snapped under my foot with a crack in the near silence like a small firecracker going off.

Instantly the cricket stopped chirping. But I heard something else. On my left. Close on my left. It was the most incongruous of sounds, a sound which — at another time and place — might have struck me as humorous, even hilarious.

It was a burp.

That’s not quite correct. It was more than merely a burp, much more. It was a remarkable rumbling and churning, soft at first, as though from agonized innards far off in the distance, innards in which tainted turbulence was slowly swelling and rising, and then — as though coming nearer, ever nearer, getting louder, ever louder — a fluttering, a muffled booming…. Well, it was simply not accurate to call it a burp.

It would be more accurate to describe it as a symphony of incompatible gasses, or a Homeric hymn to indigestion, even an entire Black Mass to Gas. It was a whole concert of squeakings and hissings and boomings and bubblings which were themselves merely the overture to a gaseous explosion of such prodigious volume, resonance and duration as to be unique in the entire history of heartburn.

Who else but Burper McGee? Who else in the whole world could have produced such a previously unheard of sound? And why would Burper McGee be out here in the woods perfuming the pre-midnight air? This was a moment of great stress for McGee. Assuredly he had for long been standing here under the new moon, taut, tense, twitching, nerves tingling in anticipation, gas preparing to rise, as he awaited … me.

I have mentioned that when suffering undue emotion Burper became — well — more truly Burper. And I’d never had a calming effect upon him even when merely waving “Hi” from across the street. It was thus clear that he must have been for some time all aflutter in anticipation of the increasingly imminent opportunity to kill me. And, now that the golden opportunity was at hand, he had — well, whatever it was he had done. It was probably, under the circumstances, an inevitable happening, a consequence as certain as the sunrise.

You should not assume that all those squeakings and such had consumed, say, a minute and a half. No, a second and a half would be more like it. Maybe even less. Because as that at least superburp began its tortuous route from Burper’s cavernous gut up toward his esophagus and beyond, I started moving.

Even before that final explosion I had whirled toward him, squatting low, flicking on the flashlight held at arm’s length away from my body and leveling the gun toward the spot from which I thought the sound had come.

And, incidentally, was still coming.

But Burper was ready, too. He had been ready for quite a while, ready for me, and he fired before I did.

But as he fired and the blast slammed my ears I got a glimpse of him in the edge of light from my flash — eyes wide and shiny in the glow, mouth open, round belly protruding, gleam from the gun held before him. Simultaneously I felt a blow against my left hand, the light went out, the flashlight spun through the air, thudded against a tree.

He’d fired at the sudden beam of light and hit the flash or my hand. I didn’t know which and I didn’t worry about it then. I knew where he’d been standing. And I fired at that spot four times, as fast as I could pull the Colt’s trigger.

I heard all four slugs hit him. It was a sound like a meat ax slamming four times into a thick sirloin steak. And I heard Burper grunt, groan and fall. So I fired again, at the spot where I thought he had fallen.

I waited. Maybe ten seconds. Then I moved forward. He was still alive; I could hear him breathing, hear his bubbling breath. I fumbled in my pocket, brought out my cigarette lighter, flipped it on — gun ready, one last cartridge still ready, too, in its chamber.

But that last one wouldn’t be needed.

Burper lay on his back with one leg caught beneath his fat body, the other angled out and bent sharply at the knee. One of my slugs had ripped open his cheek. The rest were in his body somewhere. His .45 automatic was a couple of feet from his angled leg and an unused flashlight lay on the ground almost touching his left hand.

He died within three or four seconds after I snapped on the lighter. In the illumination from the flame, held close to his face, I could see the last movement of his lips, hear the last little purping sound that was pressed between them.

Then all his muscles relaxed, his head tipped a little farther to the side. His popeyes still stared. I left the corpse of Burper McGee where it lay, picked up his gun and flashlight, and started walking back to my Cad.

I started walking — but very soon I was running.

Because I could hear the whine of a car’s engine rising in the scale and getting louder. Lights flashed suddenly on my left, the headlights of a car already traveling close to fifty miles an hour. It roared past me, still rapidly accelerating, as my feet hit the dirt edging the asphalt. I thumbed on Burper’s flashlight, but even then, in the darkness behind the car’s headlights all I could see was one figure — or possibly two — in the front seat of the sedan.

I was moving pretty speedily myself by the time I reached the road, but I thought I saw somebody behind the wheel and another form on the driver’s right side, either falling forward or ducking out of sight. I didn’t slow down. I made it to the Cad in fifteen or twenty seconds, sprinting. Inside, I dug the keys from my pocket, got them in the ignition, started the engine. I put the Cad in gear, whipped the wheel left — then changed my mind and straightened out.

Before I’d be able to get up any real speed that car would be nearly a mile ahead of me. And less than a mile down the road was an intersection at Coral Drive. I wouldn’t know if the driver had turned left or right on Coral or gone straight ahead on Cypress. I gunned the Cad toward the gas station I’d passed earlier, reaching under the dash for the Mobile phone. My left hand was a little numb, but not cut or bleeding; Burper’s slug hadn’t hit it.

I put a call in to the LAPD complaint board and asked the officer to hot-shot it. I told him I was Shell Scott, sketched in the situation, said, “Dark sedan traveling west on Cypress Road, close to the intersection of Cypress and Coral Drive right now. Driver probably Clarence Ludlow, known as Luddy. Possibly in the car is Mac Kiffer, maybe alive, maybe dead. Hold on, I’ll be back in ten seconds.”

While talking I’d swung into the gas station and started skidding to a stop. The car I’d earlier noted parked near the phone booth was gone. But I let the Cad roll past the station building and behind it — where it would have been hidden from me when I drove by earlier — was another car, a two-year-old Chrysler.

I dropped the phone on the seat, slammed the Cad’s door open and trotted to the Chrysler carrying Burper’s flashlight. I leaned in the open left-hand window. I couldn’t read the registration slip, reached for it, grabbed it and yanked it out. The car was registered in the name of Francis M. McGee. I swept the flashlight’s beam around the car’s interior but it was empty.

I jumped back to the Cad and grabbed the phone. “Shell Scott again. That sedan is a new four-door Lincoln, dark blue, registered in the name of Mac Kiffer.” I spelled the name, mentioned the possibility that a radio transmitter was attached to the car, as I fumbled in my coat pocket and got my notebook, flipped it open, then read from its last entry. “Registration on the Lincoln is HFZ440. That’s it.”

I broke off, waited a few seconds, placed another call to the Police Building. This time I got Homicide, but had to hold half a minute before Samson came on the line.

“Shell, Sam.” I told him of my call to the complaint board and went on, “If Kiffer was in on this, he’s jamming with Luddy. If not, Luddy’s driving Kiffer’s car and Kiffer’s either beat to hell or dead. And I’d say dead.”

“You didn’t meet Kiffer?”

“No. Kiffer wasn’t waiting for me. Burper was. Burper’s dead, by the way. But the important thing is to spot that car of Kiffer’s before Luddy can ditch it, or there’s nothing but my word to say he was ever out of downtown LA.”

“How do you know it’s Kiffer’s car?”

“I’m going along with what he told me on the phone. He parked his heap near the booth he called me from. The car was there a few minutes ago, but it’s not now. A car registered to Francis McGee is here, though. While tailing Kiffer, Burper and Luddy were in the same car, obviously McGee’s. So the only buggy left for them to be in is the one Kiffer drove out here.”

“We’ll send an ambulance for McGee. Where’s he at? Better start at the beginning and tell it all.”

As I began talking a police cruiser went by, heading west. Code Three, red light flashing and siren wailing. It didn’t take long to tell my story, but by the time I’d finished, an event of considerable import had occurred.

Sam was agreeing that the most likely explanation was my assumption that Luddy and Burper had caught up with Kiffer while he was in the phone booth. The last words I’d heard from Kiffer, the soft, “Oh, Jesus,” could well have been the moment when he’d seen Luddy and Burper looking in at him, smiling, over their Colt .45 automatics. I’d thought it was simply an expression of relief, a sigh of release.

But I wasn’t sure — not for another ten seconds.

Because Samson broke off briefly and, when he came back on, said, “Team in a radio car was on Cypress when you called in. They didn’t spot the car, but they’ve got Kiffer.”

“Got him?”

“What’s left of him. His body was at the side of the road. Must’ve been shoved from a car traveling seventy, eighty miles an hour. He’s torn up, but identifiable, and with his license, credit cards and such on him. You coming in to make a report?”

“Yeah, pretty quick. See you later, Sam.”

I lit a cigarette and had a few puffs before driving west on Cypress until I saw the flashing red light atop the police car. A second car was at the scene by then.

I don’t really know why, but I wanted to take a look at Kiffer’s body. I did. Then I wished I hadn’t. You wouldn’t believe a man could leave such a lot of blood on asphalt and dirt and still have so much thick redness smearing his own body. Half his face was scraped away, white bone showing.

It was Mac Kiffer, though. At least, it had been.

</code>

<code> 14

I was back on the freeway, headed toward downtown LA, when the phone buzzed. I checked the dash clock, noting it was a couple minutes after midnight, wondering who would be calling me at this hour.

It was Gideon Cheim.

“What the hell do you want?” I barked at him.

I was not in a good mood. I’d just shot Burper McGee, and had also just come from looking at Mac Kiffer’s bloody corpse. There was also the incidental fact that Kiffer could not now finish the tale he’d started to tell. I was certainly in no mood for such a charmer as Gideon Cheim.

“You’ve got to come out here!” he shouted.

“Quit bellowing at the top of your lungs, dammit. Come out for what?”

“I can’t tell you. Not on the phone. But you must come.”

“Must, hell! I’m on my way to Homicide to dictate a report, and I’ve got at least nine other things to do. All of which I would prefer to seeing you again.”

“Please, Mr. Scott. This is of immense importance. I have to talk to you. Something has come up.”

“Like what?”

“I’m … well. I’ll say this. It concerns Mr. Jellicoe. Now will you come to the hospital?”

I said an unpleasant word. The late Mac Kiffer’s favorite. But Jellicoe was, after all, my prime objective in this now screwed-up case. I asked Cheim, “Do you know where he is?”

“No, but … this concerns him.”

I was only a few blocks from the Pasadena turnoff, so I said, “I’ll be there in fifteen or twenty minutes. But this had sure as hell better be as important as you say it is.”

“It is. Please hurry!”

When I walked into room 16 everything was almost the same as on my two previous visits. But not quite. Cheim must have gyrated about in bed a bit, for the covers were twisted and tangled, and in the corner of the room was a water glass broken into approximately a hundred pieces. Cheim was sitting straight up in bed, jaws clenched, wing-like brow pulled down so far it was almost hiding his eyeballs. He was rubbing his hands together nervously.

“Well,” I said, “it’s good to see you so relaxed. What horrendous development has occurred?”

“I’m being blackmailed.”

He had captured my interest, I must admit. “No kidding?” I said. “By whom?”

“Why, hell, by Wilfred Jellicoe. Who else?”

“Possibly any number of people. Why do you say it was Jellicoe?”

“He called me on the phone. Demanded a hundred thousand dollars. A hundred thousand dollars!”

“When are you supposed to dig up this hundred G’s — and what’s the setup for delivery?”

“I’ve two days to get the cash. No arrangement for payment yet. Jellicoe will call me again in two days, the little bastard. The stinking, ungrateful — “

“Hold it. You keep saying Jellicoe. Did your caller tell you he was Jellicoe?”

“Of course not. The voice was muffled, but … who else could it have been? He’s the only one who’s had access to — “

He stopped.

I smiled. “I see. I think. Jellicoe what?”

“He knew — knows — several things I … that mustn’t be made public. The kind of things that, well, if I have to I’ll pay him the money.” He swore. “And probably keep paying. Unless you can get the sonofabitch off my back.”

I kept smiling. “How did he find out these horrible things about you, Mr. Cheim?”

“Hell, goddammit, it has to be from the manuscript. Which is another reason I’m sure it’s got to be Wilfred — “

“You refer to I!, the autobiography of Gideon Cheim?”

“Of course. What else — “

“And what you’ve referred to as ‘supporting documents’?”

“Yes, dammit. But that’s incidental. Primarily what he’s using are items from the manuscript itself, from my autobiography.”

“That’s very funny.”

“Don’t you understand, you idiot? The manuscript was to be published posthumously. It wasn’t supposed to be read by anyone, certainly not the public, until I was dead.”

He kind of gasped, put a hand over his heart.

“Which may be any minute now,” I said pleasantly. “If you don’t cool it a bit. So … gently, Mr. Cheim. Go on.”

“I had to include items, incidents involving me — things I do not want known — in order that people would accept the rest of it as true.”

“The rest of it. The unflattering, shall we say, revelations about other people. Guys you wanted to get even with. Gals you wanted to squeeze. People you wanted to ruin. Even if you had to reach out from the grave to do it.”

He didn’t speak. Not with his mouth. But those now familiar flames flickered redly in his black eyes. The wrinkles around his eyes were drawn inward, bunched, as if the wrinkles themselves were wrinkling.

“Boy, you really are a sweetheart,” I said. “Being close to death changes a man, right? Makes a man realize where he went wrong. Makes him want to take back every mean, bad thing he ever did or said — or wrote.”

I chopped it off. “OK, you’re now a victim of extortion. Any trouble about getting the money?”

“No. I’ve that much in my vault at home.”

“So far all we have is a voice on the phone. Maybe it was Wilfred, maybe not. Hell, by this time he might be dead — “

Cheim shook so suddenly and violently that I continued in an almost jolly tone. ” — but that’s merely a wild assumption. Probably he’s healthier than he’s ever been. The point is, we don’t know who called you. Right?”

“That’s … true. It was just a soft, muffled voice.”

“Did the caller give you evidence that he does possess material of such importance that you would submit to blackmail rather than have that information made public?”

“He did. There were several incidents he mentioned, yes.”

“When did the call reach you?”

Cheim looked at a watch on his thick wrist. “It’s twenty-five minutes after twelve now. I phoned you immediately after receiving the call. Roughly half an hour ago.”

“Say midnight. Your call reached me a couple minutes after twelve. Any idea why the odd hour?”

“None.”

“If it was not Wilfred Jellicoe, do you have any idea who it might have been?”

He shook his head. “No. None at all.”

“Have you ever been blackmailed before?”

“Have I ever — Good Lord, no!”

“Anything unique about the call? Sounds in the background. Music, people talking. Was it local or long distance? Any odd noises, beeps, humming, fading of power on the line, bad reception?”

“Nothing. Not long distance, so far as I know. A perfectly normal call in every way. Every other way.”

“It was a man’s voice?”

“Of that I am quite certain.”

“All right. You’ve dragged me out here again. This time because you’ve been hit for a hundred O’s. What, precisely, do you expect me to do about it?”

“Get this goddamned blackmailer off my back. And, of course, recover the manuscript … and those — uh — supporting documents.”

“Nothing has really changed between us since I came in here this morning, Mr. Cheim. You’re a damned difficult man to convince. The job for my initial client — simply locating Jellicoe — is still primary, still first.”

He started to protest, his face flushing a bit, but I went on, “However, I am going to do my level best to get my hands on your stinking autobiography. And if I find Jellicoe, I’ll let you know as soon as possible. And I will then, if nothing has changed your mind, accept you as a client, and do my damndest for you.”

“That is sufficient.” He didn’t sound too happy.

“Maybe the two things are one — if I find Jellicoe, I solve your problem, too. Maybe not. But — and this is still an assumption — if circumstances change and I take you on, and successfully complete the job, what’s in it for me?”

I didn’t, truthfully, give much of a damn. But I did want to know what Cheim would say.

And what he said, as it turned out, was perhaps more important than it then appeared to be: “Anything. Anything I possess. Whatever you want. That is, whatever you want that I can provide. I’m not a damned billionaire.”

“OK,” I said. “I’ll keep my end of the bargain — if you’re leveling with me. If not. God help you.”

</code>

<code> While I straddled my wooden, chair Sam said to me, “Kiffer’s in the morgue. Not posted yet, but the top of his head’s knocked in. Maybe from that last slide he took, but could be he was clobbered first. Main thing, Luddy’s on his way here.”

“You caught up with him?”

Sam nodded.

“In the car?”

“Not exactly. Kelly and his partner were rolling up Coral Drive when they spotted Luddy. He wasn’t actually in the car, he was just getting out of it, and then he started walking fast along Coral. They stopped him anyway — and you know what it’s like these days if you stop a citizen without seven angels standing by swearing he committed a mass murder.”

I nodded.

“Well,” Sam continued dryly, “the car was Kiffer’s, all right. Blue Linc, HFZ440. Would you like to hear what Luddy told the officers?”

“I can’t wait.”

“He was taking a walk. Realized he’d been putting on a few extra pounds — which, true, he’s got plenty of — and was taking, as he put it, a constitutional.”

“I didn’t know he could even pronounce ‘constitution.’”

“He can’t. He called it a constipational. Well, here he’s getting his exercise and he sees this car, and it looks just like his old friend Mac Kiffer’s car. He took a gander inside, just out of curiosity, and sure enough, it was good old Mac’s. It worried him, because what would Mac’s car be doing parked there in that funny place without Mac in it?”

“A good question. He will, I’ll wager, have some more good ones ready by the time he gets here.”

“Which will be any minute now,” Sam said. “And we’ll need a few pretty good questions for him, too. What made you so sure it was Luddy in the car — or both Luddy and Kiffer, with Kiffer beaten or dead — before we found Kiffer or picked up Luddy?”

“Simple enough, Sam. When Kiffer called me he named Luddy and Burper as the guys tailing him. He even thought maybe they’d stuck some kind of beeper under his heap.”

“Check. We’ve brought the Lincoln in; SID’s going over it for prints, bloodstains now. There was a small magnetic transmitter under the frame. No receiver in the car, though, or in McGee’s, either.”

“Luddy would have thrown that away. Like he threw Mac away. Anyhow, when Burper showed up in the woods — “

Sam’s phone rang. He answered, hung up, then pressed big index fingers into both eyes and wiggled them around. “We can finish this later,” he said. “Clarence Ludlow awaits. He’s in an I room now with Rawlins and Lloyd. His attorney will be along pretty quick, if he’s not here already.” After a big half-hidden yawn Sam leveled his brown eyes on me and said, “Well, you tagged the car, and Ludlow. And you were right about Kiffer. You got any sly questions for Clarence?”

“Maybe a couple.”

“OK, you were there when it all happened. Maybe I’ll let you toss some of it at him. Anyway, you might as well come along and watch the fun.”

Rawlins was one of the best in the Division at interrogation. But when we walked in, merely the glance he flicked at Sam and me said he wasn’t getting anything, except perhaps a gripe.

I leaned against a wall. Luddy sat, at ease, in a chair before a long table. Rawlins was opposite him, standing, while Lloyd sat to Rawlins’ left. After another minute or so Samson took over the questioning.

“Mr. Ludlow, are you certain you have been informed of your rights, including the right to counsel, and — “

“Yeah, yeah, Captain. They told me all that a couple tunes — I knowed it already anyways. I don’t have to answer no questions, nothin’. But I feel a innocent citizen should corporate with the farces of law and order, so that’s me all over.”

I had a hunch one of those mispronunciations was not an accident. That’s the way it is these days.

Nothing was being developed that I didn’t know already, so I spent most of my time simply watching Luddy. I’ve indicated that he was a large, bumbling oaf, about as far removed from genius as it is possible to get without turning into a mineral. But he did have a certain native slyness ingrained in him, a kind of criminal instinct which usually kept him from straying too far into a labyrinth of lies or contradicting himself.

Then, too, there was that peculiarly pleasant aura of crude charm which he could, when he felt like it, exude. Inside, as I have also mentioned, be must have been filled with enough poisonous wastes and arterial venom to stun instantly a full-grown buffalo, should Luddy bite him. But from those foul innards oozed something that became, on the surface of Clarence Ludlow, a kind of rough charm, a doltish humor which combined with that forced appearance of easygoing and even exuberant jollity to make him almost likable.

Luddy was laughing and slapping the top of the table at the moment. Samson had once again told him — or tried to tell him — that we knew he had pushed Mac Kiffer from his own automobile, and all he wanted to know was whether Kiffer had been dead or alive when he hit the street. Sam didn’t phrase it quite as bluntly as that, but it was enough to set Luddy off, anyhow.

“Gawdamn,” Luddy chuckled, “if you wasn’t fuzz I think you and me could be buddies. I know you don’t think so. Captain, but honest to gawd I do. You got the gawdamndest sense of yumer I ever heered, and if all this wasn’t so serious seeming, I’d say this was one of the most ‘joyable nights of my life.”

Samson tried a little longer. Only a little.

It may not be necessary to repeat this, but for full understanding of Luddy’s attitude and words it should again be mentioned glancingly that today’s pro hoods, and even many of the nonpros, know that nine times out of ten they can get away with anything short of goosing a Supreme Court Justice. This, you might assume, gives them a somewhat freer attitude toward the law than might otherwise be the case, and you would assume correctly.

After another big laugh Luddy said, “Jeest, I laft so hard I think I sprang something in my vertumbrays. You mind if I stand up and stretch?”

Nobody minded.

Luddy stood up — way up. He was a big joker, six four and maybe two eighty. Most of that weight was bone and muscle, but there was a layer of fat over it, too, especially around his middle and filling out his rhinocerous-like behind.

He stretched, grunted, said, “Ahhh,” then twisted back and forth a bit, as though working the kinks out of his vertumbrays. For a few seconds he was swinging his immense fanny energetically from side to side, and then out of the blue he burst raucously into: “Say-haint Loowee woman … and all her boom, barn, boom — “

Well, it probably doesn’t sound funny, but it was. The sight of that great, lard-butted animal swinging his hind end like a grotesque pendulum while bellowing forth a sound never before heard on land or sea damn near cracked us all up.

Even Samson permitted himself a thin smile. And then he jerked a thumb at me. “Wanna talk with your buddy, Shell? You’ve been a lot … closer to him than we have.”

I shrugged. What did Sam have to lose? What did anybody have to lose? As Sam moved aside I walked around and stood where he’d been, and looked down at Clarence Ludlow. Luddy had a fat, open, almost comical face. He also had large, square, horselike teeth which, when he smiled, made him look a little like a large, dumb, fat horse.

I said, “Hi, Luddy, buddy,” and he gave me a big dumb smile, showing me the large horselike teeth. He looked very harmless. “Do you swear,” I went on, “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and everything but the truth?”

He started to reply, then cocked his head on one side. “Hey, that’s good. Yeah, I’ll do it.” Then he assumed an expression of mock solemnity. “But I know my rights. I demand to be treated like a crook.”

I laughed. “I’ll bet we hear that one again. Look, Luddy, why don’t you confess the whole bit? What have you got to lose? Even if the case gets to trial, there are lots of judges who won’t convict a hood of any crime except suicide.”

He guffawed and pounded the table, and shook his big, fat head. “Gawdamn, Scott, I like the way you talk. I always did kind of like you, pally, you just never knowed it.”

“Uh-huh. Then you and Burper didn’t toss a coin to see who got to shoot me? He won, because you couldn’t bear to kill a guy you like so much?”

The dumb smile again.

“Luddy, I was out there, remember? I’m the guy who knows what happened. You in the car with Mac, Burper waiting for me, then you taking off with Kiffer in his Lincoln.”

“Man, you know more’n me, then. I know from nothin’.”

“Then allow me to fill you in. You and Burper caught up with Kiffer when he was phoning me, bent him around or beat on him till he puked all there was, including where he’d set up the meet with me. Proof of that is the fact Burper — not Kiffer — was waiting there for me.”

I paused, but he merely said, “I declare.”

“Somebody had to stay with Mac, who was probably still alive — until you were sure he’d spilled the straight goods, at least — and that somebody was you, Luddy.”

“This is sure interestin’. But you got me confused with a bunch of other ghees.”

“Nuts. I’ll even tell you why you took off like a rabbit in the Linc with Mac. When Mac spilled to you, he would naturally have included the info that he’d told me both Burper and you, Luddy, were on his tail. So once I spotted Burper, I knew you had to be somewhere nearby. And you knew I knew it, pal.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Not much, you don’t. No matter whether you waited in the gas station after you saw me roll by, or headed up Cypress getting ready to pick up Burper — according to plan, a Burper with gut at ease, soothed by his successful chilling of Shell Scott — here’s what you heard: One big blast from a .45, then four quick ones from a smaller piece, and a few seconds later one more shot from the smaller gun.”

I paused. Luddy didn’t say anything. But I noticed he was picking nervously at the skin of one index finger with his thumbnail. I went on, “There’s not any doubt that you can tell the difference between the sound of a .45-caliber automatic and a .38-caliber revolver, Luddy. That means you knew all five of those last shots were from my little Colt. Or, stated differently, Burper was dead, and Shell Scott wasn’t. Not only was your dear friend alive, but he’d killed McGee and knew a sweetheart named Clarence Ludlow was not far away. So you — wisely — decided to split.”

Luddy merely kept a vapid look on his face. But he seemed not quite so full of jolly good humor as he had a minute before.

“Luddy,” I said, half smiling at him, “right after I pumped those five into Burper I ran to the street — just as you were going by in Kiffer’s heap. With Kiffer. I saw Kiffer falling forward in the front seat, probably unconscious. And I saw you at the wheel, pally.”

“Not when it was so dark — ” He didn’t goof, not really. That “instinct” or long-exercised slyness saved him again. Without even a split-second break he went on, “You couldn’t see me is what I’d say if I’d been out there, wherever you’re supposed to of been at. Where, of course, I wasn’t at.”

It was the only slip, or near slip, he made, and we kept it going for another three or four minutes.

“Come on, Scott,” he said finally, “you’re makin’ it all up, ain’t you?”

“It is sheer coincidence, I presume, that you, Luddy — it is reliably reported — yesterday, or at least this past Sunday, took three near-lethal shots at Kiffer, employing for this frivolity a sawed-off elephant gun.”

“Reported? Who? Who’s reliable? You been talkin’ to Putrid Stanley, ain’t you?”

“Putrid?”

“Yeah, him. You can’t believe a word he says. He’d rather lie than breathe. In fack, he can’t breathe without lyin’. That’s one of the reasons it’s so hard for him to breathe at all. Anything he tells you, take the exack opposite and you got it nailed down.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t Putrid. Luddy, why don’t you simply admit you clunked Mac on his noodle and then eased him out the door of the heap while traveling on Cypress Road at approximately ninety-nine miles an hour?”

“Who, me? You’re nuts, Scott. Like I already said, I was strollin’ along, takin’ my constipational…”

I quit.

In about another minute his attorney showed up. At least, one of the attorneys on Lash’s payroll showed up. Samson and I left the interrogation room while the lawyer was still talking to Rawlins and Lloyd, and Luddy.

Back in Sam’s office we sat and looked at each other for a while.

Then he said, “We haven’t even got proof he stole the car.”

“I wonder,” I said, “if he’s as dumb as I think he is.”

“Sure he is,” said Samson. “You’re just dumber.”

“OK. But did you guys get any more out of him than I did?”

“We got less.”

Sam and I jawed a little longer. We’d been talking about Lash and his hoods, including Vic Pine, then I got on the subject of Wilfred Jellicoe, mentioning again that I knew he’d blackmailed Sylvia Ardent but wasn’t sure of any other victims he might have approached.

“Although,” I added, covering an item about which I’d already briefed Samson, “somebody’s putting the big bite on Gideon Cheim, who is about to tear out several internal stitches. So, considering the timing, either it’s Jellicoe — and I could hardly blame him after the life I imagine he led working for that old tyrant — or my client is due for some bad news, since — What’s the matter?”

Samson had suddenly reached for the phone and was calling the Auto Theft Division down the hall. In a moment he said, “Andy? Send in that report on the stolen Rolls-Royce, will you? One that mentions Victor Pine. Yeah, right away, thanks.”

As he hung up I said, “Don’t tell me Vic is going in for car heists. And did I hear you say a Rolls?”

Sam nodded. “Silver Shadow, twenty thousand bucks’ worth. Who’d steal a Silver Shadow? But Pine’s got nothing to do with it. It’s just your mentioning this busty TV gal again — what’s her name?”

“Sylvia Ardent?”

“Yeah, her. It rang a bell.”

When the typed report came in Samson ran a finger down the page. “Yeah, here it is.” He read a few lines silently, then leaned back in his chair.

“Somebody stole a Rolls in Beverly Hills a few hours ago, from a pretty important citizen, so the Beverly Hills police were all over the place. Team in one of their cars stopped a man walking along Tanglewood Lane at eleven-twenty-two p.m. You know how they are in the Hills…”

“Yeah, they picked me up twice.”

Sam lifted his still unlighted cigar from an ashtray, stuck it into his chops and spoke around it. “Far as Pine goes, he’s clean. But Captain Slattery over there knows we’re interested in any of Lash’s associates, which Pine sure as hell is, so he called us about it.”

“Tanglewood Lane?” I said. I was getting a funny feeling, Sam nodded and I asked him, “What was Vic doing out there?”

“When the officers stopped him, he wasn’t doing anything, just getting into a car. New white Cadillac, I think — not a Rolls, anyhow.”

“Isn’t Tanglewood the road that goes past Indian Ranch?”

“Right. The Cadillac was parked a couple blocks from there. Pine identified himself, proved the car was his own, and when asked why he was in that area said he’d been visiting a girl at Indian Ranch. Reason he’d parked where he did, he played around with a couple other gals who lived at the Ranch, and didn’t want them to see his car. Made sense, I guess.”

“And the girl he’d been visiting? Don’t tell me…”

“You got it. He’d been with this Sylvia Ardent.”

I stared at the wall beyond Sam, thinking.

“With her from around nine p.m. till just before the officers stopped him — say, till eleven-fifteen or so. Nothing suspicious, no reason to hold him, so they let him go on his way. Little later they did check with this Ardent woman, and she said he was with her, all right.” Samson took the cigar from his mouth. “So that’s all there is to it, but I thought you’d be interested.”

“Yeah, I am.” I kept staring at the wall.

Then I asked Sam if I could use his phone, and called Zena Tabur’s number. After ten rings I hung up and got slowly to my feet. So far it was just a hunch, combined with a vague uneasiness, so I didn’t explain to Sam.

“Something I’ve got to check,” I told him. “Anything turns up, I’ll let you know. Unless you’re home in bed.”

He bit down on his cigar again. “Looks like I’ll be here another hour or two at least. Maybe the night.”

He lit his cigar. But this time it was all right with me. I was ready to leave.

And I was in a hurry.

</code>

<code> 15

By 2 a.m. I was talking to the pleasant clerk at the registration desk in the main building of Indian Ranch. He was a slim and erect guy about sixty years old, with a very handsome head of wavy gray hair.

I asked him, “Is a Wilfred Jellicoe registered here?”

“No, sir. But if you’d like for me to check the registration cards — “

I interrupted. “No, I’m almost certain he wouldn’t be using his own name.” I put my two very dissimilar photos of Wilfred on the desk. “That’s the man I’m looking for. If he registered here, it would have been Friday or over this past weekend. Possibly yesterday, Monday, but probably Friday night.”

The clerk looked at the photos for several seconds. Then he picked up the shot of Jellicoe disporting himself joyously with Sylvia Ardent and studied it. “I’m not really sure, sir,” he said. “But the gentleman I have in mind looked much more like the one in this picture. Dressed quite … well, almost gaudily, wearing a rather shocking ascot and large dark glasses. Looked … quite a rare bird, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I really can’t say it’s the same man. Let me think. Friday night … Excuse me one moment, please.”

He consulted a file of registration cards, selected one. “Yes, I thought so. Friday night. But this gentleman was, or at least registered as, Mr. Gordon W. Mannering. You see?”

He turned the card around so I could read it. I didn’t know what Jellicoe’s handwriting looked like, but whoever Mannering was, he’d been given the Iroquois Lodge.

“Would you do me a favor,” I asked the clerk, “and go with me to Mr. Mannering’s lodge — and bring a key to it? This is extremely important or I wouldn’t ask it of you.”

He considered the question at some length. “Now, that’s odd,” he said at one point,

“What’s odd?”

He shook his head. “Never mind. I was merely thinking aloud. Yes, I’ll be glad to accompany you, sir.”

The clerk got a ring of keys from beneath the desk, and I followed him, over the thick and spongy gold carpet, out through the swinging glass doors and along the lushly planted entrance walk. It was a little cooler now, the coolness that doesn’t chill but merely nips the cheeks, not unpleasantly.

We turned left, followed a winding path for fifty yards, passing two other cottages or lodges before reaching the Iroquois Lodge. In those fifty yards I caught the scents, either clear and distinct or mingled with others, of gardenias, orange blossoms, spicy carnations and jasmine, nature’s incense delicate in the cool night air.

The Iroquois Lodge was dark. The clerk pressed the little arrowhead that rang chimes inside the suite. We waited. Then I said, “Excuse me,” stepped to the door and banged on it hard enough to awaken anybody sleeping inside. It made almost enough noise to awaken heavy sleepers in the adjacent lodges, but here nothing stirred.

“It would seem Mr. Mannering is not in,” the clerk said.

“So it would seem. But I think we should make certain. That’s why I asked you to bring the key.”

He hesitated.

I said quietly, “I think we’d better go in and take a look,” and perhaps there was something about the way I said it, or else the dignified clerk had merely made up his mind. He inserted a key into the lock, opened the door and we went in.

He switched on the light and we blinked in the sudden brightness. The living room was similar to the one in Sylvia Ardent’s suite, except for the arrangement of furniture and a different color scheme. The room was neat and clean. But there was a barely noticeable smell of sourness in the air.

This time I walked ahead of the clerk, to the bedroom, found the light switch myself and flipped it on.

And there he was.

It didn’t surprise me. Perhaps there should have been some sense of mild shock, at least one small pulse of energy rippling through my nervous system. There was, strangely, nothing, no real emotion at that moment. None except perhaps a sense of sadness, and a quite natural revulsion.

I simply looked at Wilfred Jellicoe, for the first time in my life, at Wilfred Jellicoe dead, revoltingly dead, and said quietly, “Your Mr. Mannering is really Mr. Jellicoe, sir. This is the man I was looking for.”

Behind me the clerk, just entering the room, sucked in his breath sharply, the sound almost a squeak, and said, “Oh, my God, my God. Oh, my God, my God.”

Then silence, from both of us.

Jellicoe was seated in a pale-gray overstuffed chair. I walked over and stood next to his body. His hands were bound behind him. An electrical cord was wound around his chest, then carried behind the chair and firmly knotted, the wire holding him into the chair. His body was slumped and his head hung limply near his right shoulder, his face visible.

He had been badly beaten. A wadded cloth, wet and stained, lay on the carpet near his feet, which were clad in brand-new alligator shoes. The cloth had undoubtedly been used as a gag, and Jellicoe had obviously vomited at some time during the beating. The wet stickiness smeared his chin and part of his shirt and trousers, flecked the new shoes. There was a cut over his left eye, from which blood had dripped down over his cheekbone and nearly to the side of his chin, and his lips were puffed, one of them split.

He was wearing a loose V-necked white silk shirt and trousers of a shade, midway between pale green and yellow, and there were several smudges of blood on the shirt. I imagined most of the blows had been hammered into his body, at the stomach, solar plexus, over the heart. I felt for the pulse in his throat, but it was just habit. There was no doubt that Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe was dead.

But he hadn’t been dead very long. The sour stains on his shirt, even one thick clot of blood, were still moist and sticky when I touched my fingers to them. And that almost total absence of emotion in me started changing right then, at the moment when I touched Wilfred’s cold, sticky blood.

While the clerk stood mute and staring, I went quickly through the suite, looking for a box, a package, a metal case. I was reasonably thorough, but I spent little time on the job because I hadn’t expected to find anything and didn’t.

I asked the clerk to leave the door unlocked, then we walked back to the hotel. In the lobby the clerk said, “We’d better call the police.”

“Of course. First, I hope you’ll answer a question or two for me.” I showed him my pocket card as evidence that I was a private detective, licensed by the State of California. Then I said, “Did Mr. Jellicoe, calling himself Gordon Mannering, of course, have any kind of box or package” — I indicated its approximate size with my hands — “in his possession so far as you know? Probably it would have been in his luggage. But there’s a chance he left it in the hotel safe — “

The clerk interrupted me, showing some slight excitement. “That’s what I was thinking of when we first spoke, Mr. Scott. When I commented that something was odd, strange. I didn’t know, then, that you were a licensed investigator.”

“What was so odd?”

“Mr. Mannering — I mean, the gentleman who called himself Mr. Mannering — did leave such a package in the safe.”

“Is it there now?”

“No, that’s the odd thing. That you should ask about Mr. — about him so soon after another gentleman brought me a note from Mr. Mannering. At least, it was signed by Mr. Mannering.”

“What did the note say?”

“It was an instruction to give the package he’d checked to the bearer of the note. And it was signed by Mr. Mannering; I took care to compare the signatures. And the gentleman also had the numbered check, which we always issue to guests who leave valuables in our safe. I was rather busy at the time, I admit, but I had no idea, I sincerely — “

“Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known what was going on. Then you did give this guy the package?”

“Yes, sir.”

I asked him to describe the package. It was heavy, he told me, covered by white paper like that used by butchers for wrapping meat, twelve to fourteen inches long, perhaps ten inches wide and six inches deep.

It was, undoubtedly, Cheim’s original metal case. Almost surely with all that it had originally contained, too. I said, “Didn’t you check with this Mannering before giving the other man the package?”

“No, I — You see, I was on duty myself when he registered Friday night, when he checked the package. He said he would either pick it up himself or, possibly, send someone else for it, with a note from him.”

That puzzled me for a moment. But only for a moment.

I’d begun to understand that, while Jellicoe might not have known he’d bitten off more than he could chew, he surely realized he’d taken a big bite. And, looking ahead, he might also have realized it could become necessary for him to leave Indian Ranch, hide out somewhere else for a while. Probably he thought he was being very clever, preparing for any eventuality. But Wilfred had simply been clear the hell out of his league from the beginning.

Almost surely he had never before been worked over by an expert, been made to feel real, excruciating, sickening pain. Maybe “Gordon W. Mannering” had even thought he could stand such a beating — if it came to that — and keep his mouth shut. It was an awful way to find out he’d been wrong.

I said, “Do you still have the note?”

“Why, I — I don’t believe so. I can’t recall. As I mentioned, it just happened I was then very busy.”

“Tell me about the man. You ever see him before?”

“No, but he — I really can’t remember him well.” The clerk pressed his fingertips to his temples, closing his eyes. He seemed in almost physical pain. “A large group, guests, were leaving. It was — oh — eleven to eleven-fifteen, I’d say, only about three hours ago. These guests were all going to a party somewhere. They’d just been in the bar and were leaving keys with me, asking me to put notes in other guests’ boxes, laughing and — Well, you know how it is when a group has been drinking for some time. It was during this period that the gentleman gave me the note and the check, and took the package.”

“Can you describe him?”

“I think he was wearing a dark suit, black probably. He was wearing a hat. And … I’m sorry, that’s all I can remember.”

“As tall as I am? Taller, shorter? Heavier, slimmer?”

“I don’t believe he was as tall as you, no. And it’s my impression he was a bit less … heavy, perhaps weighed less. It’s all … very vague.”

I described Victor Pine in fairly complete detail. “Could that have been the man?”

“Truly, I can’t say. I suppose it could have been. I simply — It’s all so blurred, with the number of guests milling about. I’m really terribly sorry…”

“It’s OK. You’ve been very helpful. You’d better call the police yourself — it’s all right to tell them about me.” I paused. “There a pay phone here I can use?”

There was, just off the lobby in a hallway. I called the LA Police Building and once again talked to Samson. I told him where I was, what had happened, and that the desk clerk here was already notifying the Beverly Hills police.

“But I wanted to give you this bit myself, Sam. For one thing, I may not be here when the police arrive. And also, as I’m sure I needn’t tell you, so you can check that report on Pine again.” I paused. “By the way, what about Luddy?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

He didn’t need to give me three. Luddy was sprung, and — at least temporarily — free as a bird.

Samson said, “Clarence Ludlow walked out of here ten minutes ago, saying, ‘Gawdamn, if you wasn’t fuzz we could be buddies, Captain, sir,’ and grinning like those guys in fairs you throw baseballs at.” He sighed. “Well, hell, I’ll call Slattery in Beverly Hills again, see what he thinks about this mess, get a report on what they find.”

“Ask him to check whether the officers who interrogated Pine noticed if he was carrying a package, will you? Or if they saw one in the car.”

“Yeah. I kind of planned to do that.”

“Sorry, Captain. OK, call Slattery, fine, but aren’t you going to put out a local on Pine? And maybe an APB? The crumb might skip town.”

“Not quite yet, Shell. Even if we do put out a call on him it’ll take time to get a warrant issued — we don’t want any loopholes in the loopholes. And need I remind you, the scene of the crime is in Beverly Hills?”

“I know where I am, I’m in Beverly Hills. But, Sam — “

“Look, we’ll be on it. Go home and dream of girls. I realize Pine’s just as much aware of that on-the-street interrogation as we are, and if he did the job on Jellicoe he might try to skip town.”

“What do you mean, if he did it?

“I mean if.”

“Well, who the hell else could have — “

“Only one of maybe ten thousand guys. Shell, you may realize where you are, at this instant, but you do not yet seem aware that your gleaming intuition is not what we, here, consider infallible evidence, an impetus sufficient to set in motion several tons of legal machinery.”

“But, Sam — “

“As for Pine, well, we’ve got to check him out. Maybe he was with that TV babe, like he said.”

“That, I expect, quite soon, to know.”

“Shell, goddammit, you let the police handle — “

“Pleasant dreams,” I said, and hung up.

I made another call. To Gideon Cheim.

“Cheim, Shell Scott,” I said when he answered. “I’m working for you starting now. Assuming you still want me to.”

“Yes, I do. Of course I do. What — what’s happened?”

“Quite a lot. Same deal we talked over when I saw you? I get the blackmailer off your back, and recover from him your manuscript and the — ah — incidentals accompanying it — though of course I can’t promise to commit any felonies for you — and I can name my own price?”

A short silence, then, “Yes. Within … reason. What’s happened? Have you found Jellicoe?”

“Yeah. But you don’t have to worry about him anymore. He’s dead.”

Cheim let out a strange squawk. “Dead? Oh, God in heaven. Dead? Are you — “

“Yeah, dead. Murdered. Not long ago, either.”

“Murdered? This is terrible. God, what an awful thing. But the — my manuscript. Do you know — “

“Jellicoe had it. He doesn’t any longer. Whoever beat hell out of him, and killed him, has it now.”

Cheim started to kind of squawk and bleat and sputter, but I kept on. “Listen close, Cheim. I think Jellicoe may be dead right now because, from the beginning and in the middle, and clear up to here, you’ve been telling me some fancy fairy tales about that manuscript of yours. If so, I owe you nothing. To put it more bluntly. I think Jellicoe might still be alive if you’d told me the truth from the beginning.”

“That’s preposterous. Don’t be an ass.”

“Anything more to tell me now, Cheim? Any little bits you might have left out before?”

“Dammit, I’ve told you everything. There’s nothing more to tell.”

“OK,” I said, “I’ll do the job for you — if I can. But it’s going to cost you.”

“I do not care what it costs me. But I don’t understand. If it wasn’t Jellicoe who tried to blackmail me — “

I hung up. Let him worry about it. If he worried long enough, he might even try telling me the truth next time.

Of course, by now I knew the truth. At least, I thought I did. Enough of it, anyway.

For the second time I pressed the arrowhead at the Cree Lodge, then banged on the door itself. In a few seconds a light went on inside and I could hear footsteps padding softly over the carpet. Then Sylvia’s voice. “Who is it?”

“Shell Scott. Open up, I’m in a hurry.”

She opened the door partway and looked out at me.

I pushed on the door, not violently, but firmly, and she stepped back. I went inside, slammed the door shut.

Sylvia had obviously been asleep, and was blinking her eyes slowly. At any rate, she was dressed for bed, wearing the top half of a pair of pink pajamas. Thin pajamas. You could see through them. Well, almost. They weren’t transparent; nearly opaque would be a better phrase. Like, say, a quarter of an inch of strawberry Jell-O. I didn’t pay any attention to that, though. Not much, anyway. At least, I tried not to.

I looked at Sylvia’s half-lidded green eyes and said flatly, “Was Vic Pine here tonight?”

She kept blinking. “Why … yes. How did you know?”

“When was he here?”

“From — oh — about nine o’clock till a little after eleven last night. What time is it now?”

“Never mind that. Just don’t lie to me, Sylvia.”

“Shell, what an awful thing to say! It’s … true, he was here.” The words seemed to come out with some difficulty. “Why? What difference does it make to you?”

“I just don’t think he was here at all. At least, not when you say he was.”

She moistened her lips. “It’s funny, some policemen asked me the same thing. If Victor was here, I mean. Naturally, I told them yes — “

“Naturally, if that’s what he told you to tell them. How did you meet a crumb, a hood, like Vic Pine?”

“I met him one night when I was out with Warren.”

“Warren Barr?”

“Yes, we double-dated with Victor and another girl, a dance at some club. Anyway, Victor kept calling me after that, and I went out with him once. Just once.”

“Once was enough with that slob, huh?”

“It certainly was — ” She stopped.

“Until tonight, huh? Tonight of all nights.”

Sylvia seemed to be getting a bit angry. “What is this, Shell? You act like a damned bear just came out of hibernation. You didn’t act like this the last time we talked.”

“Put a coat on,” I said. “We’re going for a short walk. I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.” I shook my head. “I apologize in advance, Sylvia, if I’m wrong. But there just isn’t a lot of time to waste.”

She frowned, started to speak, but then turned and went into the bedroom, came back wearing an almost white mink coat with a hem that reached below her knees, and pink slippers. If a man didn’t know what was beneath the mink, she’d have looked ready for an expensive night on the town. That, of course, was a far cry from what she was going to get.

I took her hand, pulled her out the front door and headed for the Iroquois Lodge.

On the way I said, “If you’re telling the truth, you’re going to hate my guts. And with reason. But if Pine was not with you, dear, I’m going to show you where he really was, what he was doing — and why he wanted you to cover for him, alibi him. I’m going to complete your education about Victor.”

“Do you have to walk so fast? You’re hurting my arm.”

“Sorry about your arm. But I’m in a hurry.”

I was. It didn’t seem likely the police had arrived yet, but I could hear sirens. More than one, the rising and falling wail of one blending in eerie harmony, and then discordantly, with the other.

At the Iroquois I walked inside, pulling Sylvia along, then in the living room let go of her hand and went ahead of her to the bedroom, saying, “Follow me.”

By the time she stepped through the bedroom door I’d stopped by the chair in which Jellicoe’s battered and ugly body slumped limply.

Sylvia saw him and her mouth opened, her eyes opened wide. She made a little sound, as if she were trying to scream but had no breath in her lungs. She came almost to a stop, took one more slow step and stood very still.

I wound my fingers in Jellicoe’s hair and pulled his head up, turned it so his face was toward her.

“Unless Victor really was with you, sweetheart,” I said coldly, “this is where he was. And this is what he was doing. It’s my guess it took him quite a while.” I paused. “Now, do you still want to stick to that story — “

She fell like a rag doll.

</code>

<code> 16

Sylvia Ardent crumpled like a puppet with the strings cut. Her eyes rolled up and her face got very pale and she went straight down in a heap, rolled silently onto her back.

I let go of Jellicoe’s head and it flopped over, wiggled a little and was still. No more still than Sylvia — except that she was still breathing. I hadn’t meant to send her flat out into a sudden faint, but I had deliberately set out to shock her. It seemed clear I’d succeeded.

I picked her up, carried her back to her own suite, laid her on the bed. Before I got there she’d started to come out of it, mumbling something. In another minute she was able to sit up, but her eyes were still somewhat blank from shock.

I didn’t wait for them to get bright and normal again, either. I said, “OK, was Vic Pine here tonight or wasn’t he?”

She swung her head from side to side, very slowly. “No,” she said unsteadily. “He wasn’t here at all. I didn’t think it would be so awfully wrong if I just said…”

She closed her eyes for a few seconds. Her lips looked dry. But then she went on, her voice a little stronger. “I got a phone call from Victor about eleven-thirty, I think it was. Maybe a little later.” She glanced at the clock near the bed. It was a few minutes short of two-thirty in the morning now.

“About three hours ago,” she went on. “He said he’d been here at the Ranch with a married woman whose husband is out of town. When he left, the police stopped him — something about a stolen car. Victor laughed about it, said he felt ridiculous confessing his sins to me. But the husband already had an idea of what was going on, and Victor couldn’t afford to give the police her name. So he told the police he’d been with me. I’m not married, we’d dated that one time before, and we’d both be protecting the woman’s reputation…”

“I imagine he made his tale sound pretty slick.”

“He really did. I never doubted him for a second.” She sighed. “It’s true I went out with him that once, Shell. But I didn’t know who — what — he was then.”

“You mean, that he was a hood?”

“Yes. I didn’t find out about that until later.” She paused again, looked at my eyes. “Shell, do you really think he did … that to Wilfred?”

“I do. Incidentally, I’ve been hunting Jellicoe myself since early yesterday morning and never got a lead to him. Have you any idea how Pine found out he was here at the Ranch?”

She shook her head. “I certainly didn’t tell him.”

That rang a little oddly on my ears. I said slowly, “Would it be a logical conclusion that you knew Wilfred was here?”

“Well, I did and I didn’t. I mean, I thought maybe he was, but not until late yesterday afternoon — It was just an accident that I saw him then. If it was Wilfred … Well, now I know it must have been.”

It made sense to me as soon as she said it. Indian Ranch was isolated enough to be a quiet, reasonably safe hideout for Gordon Mannering, the Waltermittying Jellicoe, but also close to the LA-Hollywood hub of his current escapade. Perhaps important to him, too, he would have been close to Sylvia Ardent.

I got out a cigarette, lit it. “Tell me about that,” I said casually.

“It was about an hour before sunset, maybe six-thirty. I was coming back from dinner in the hotel and I saw — I mean, I thought I saw — Wilfred going into the Iroquois. I wasn’t sure, really; it was just a glimpse as he went inside. It looked like him, but I thought it was crazy. Why would Wilfred be staying here?”

“You didn’t tell Victor about, maybe, seeing Jellicoe.”

“No. Why should I?”

“Has Victor been here to see you in the last few days? Or has he asked you any questions about Jellicoe?”

“No, I haven’t seen Victor for months. And I haven’t even mentioned that damned Wilfred — ” She cut it off, undoubtedly remembering her last, recent view of Wilfred. “I haven’t talked about him to anyone except you.” She stopped suddenly, pressed her lips firmly together, a little frown furrow between her eyes. “That is, except to you and Warren.”

I said, very slowly, “By Warren, I assume you must mean Warren Barr?”

“Yes.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“Last night. About seven o’clock. I didn’t even know he was coming; he just rang the bell and I opened the door and there he was.”

“What did he want?”

“He asked me about that … date I had with Wilfred. He wasn’t happy about it. And Warren can get mighty unhappy.” She looked at me accusingly. “You told him, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. That was before we’d met, and I was curious to know what his reaction would be.”

I paused, thinking. But there were a number of things whirling around inside my skull, including a vague uneasiness I couldn’t pin down. It had something to do with Vic Pine, and Sylvia, and Vic’s alibi…. But it stayed nebulous, wouldn’t get solid.

“Did you tell Warren about seeing Jellicoe here at Indian Ranch last night?”

“Well, yes. That is, he asked me if I knew where Wilfred was, and I said I thought maybe I’d seen him, but wasn’t sure. I just hoped if he was around he wouldn’t try to bother me anymore.”

“Did you, by any chance, tell Barr about the rest of it?”

“Not the — not everything I told you yesterday. I just told Warren that Wilfred had learned something about me that I couldn’t afford to have told around, and he’d apparently had the hots for me for a long time, and threatened to really go ahead and spill it all over town unless I went out on the date with him, and … the rest of it.” She swallowed. “I didn’t think I was doing anything so terrible when I told him. I certainly didn’t imagine…” She let it trail off.

“Of course not,” I said. “You couldn’t have known what was going on. But I don’t suppose your telling Barr about Jellicoe’s winning ways made sweet Warren any happier.”

“No. But he wasn’t a whole bunch happy to start out with.”

“I’ll bet not. And he’s rather a violent man, isn’t he?”

Sylvia didn’t say anything to that.

“About that call from Pine,” I said. “Wasn’t Zena Tabur supposed to be here tonight? Was she with you when he called?”

“No.” That one word was sort of like a whole frigid paragraph, and her entire tone and expression seemed to become less … well, less. “She left around eleven, maybe half an hour before Victor phoned me.” Sylvia paused, gazing levelly at me. “I would suppose she went home then, wouldn’t you. Shell?”

“Me? How would I know? I haven’t the faintest idea where she went. Why would I — Listen, I just thought of something. You knew damn well I was killing myself looking for Jellicoe — “

“Killing yourself?” Two words, cold and sharp as icicles.

” — and, ah … I had it there for a minute. Yeah, I got it. If you thought you’d seen Jellicoe here, why in hell didn’t you get in touch with me, let me know? Yeah, how about that?”

“I simply couldn’t believe it was really Wilfred in the first place. It just didn’t make sense. But I tried to let you know anyway — right after Warren left I phoned you twice. But I couldn’t get you.”

I’d given the Mobile phone number to Gideon Cheim, but not to Sylvia. “Should have given you my car-phone number,” I mumbled. “Sort of overlooked it when I was here, somehow.”

She went right on, a bit cool, as though she had a tiny refrigerator packed in ice in her throat. “You weren’t in your office, and there wasn’t any answer at your apartment — “

“That’s fine, that’s a good girl. At least you tried — “

“Then just before eight Zena came over,” Sylvia went on determinedly, “and we had so much to talk about that — well — you just slipped my mind. And I didn’t even think of calling you anymore.”

“Well, you tried, I’ll say that for you. Good girl, goo — “

“Quit calling me a good girl.”

“Yes, ma’am. Well…”

I got up, thanked her, and we walked into the front room.

That vague uneasiness was still with me, but it wasn’t until the next minute that I pinned it, or at least part of it, down. I told Sylvia that undoubtedly police officers would soon be here to ask some of the same questions I had, and probably a lot more, so there was little point in her going back to bed for the moment.

And then it struck me.

“In fact, they will not only ask you some questions, Sylvia, one or two may want to stay here all night.”

She said, coolly, “Are you making a crack — “

“I mean, near here. Let me explain.”

“You’d better.”

“We know Vic Pine got you to cover for him in case the police called to check, which they did. But he was questioned merely about a stolen Rolls, and the alibi was just a stall.”

She looked puzzled. “Well, all right, now that I understand what’s happened, I’ll simply tell the police everything, the truth — just as I’ve told you.”

“You don’t get it. Look at this mess from Pine’s point of view. If we assume he killed Jellicoe, we also have to assume he expected to get away with it. He couldn’t have anticipated being stopped by the law, identified and placed so near Indian Ranch. Quite simply, he needed you alive and willing to support his story only so be could buy time. Even when questioned, he must have figured he’d have several hours’ grace, probably until a maid went into Jellicoe’s suite. From then on it’s not a missing Rolls but murder, and he doesn’t need you alive anymore — in fact, just the opposite — because you can blow his alibi all to hell. In which case Victor would have immense difficulty explaining what he was doing at Indian Ranch — “

The puzzled expression on her lovely features had been replaced by growing alarm. “You don’t mean — you can’t mean he’d kill me.”

“Vic is not a very bright lad — and he is more than a little nuts at times. Want me to take you back for a look at Wilfred again? If he did that, and a dozen other little jollies I could tell you about, do you believe he’d think twice about killing a gal who can prove he lied to the law?”

I thought the dear was going to faint again. But she didn’t.

I said, “Don’t worry about it — now. It won’t happen. I’ll make sure some officers keep an eye on your lodge, as well as several eyes out for Pine.”

I stepped closer to her and took her shoulders in my hands. “Sylvia, there’s no way Pine could know Jellicoe’s body has already been discovered. I doubt that he’s sweating any bucketfuls yet. But we do know about Jellicoe — and so, now, do the cops. They’ll know even more when I’ve finished filling them in. And they will make sure you’re not assaulted — attacked — I mean molested … ah, not endangered.”

She looked up at my face, her green eyes half-lidded again, though surely she was no longer sleepy. “I do understand now, Shell. And … thanks.”

“For nothing.”

“I mean, for worrying about me. I’m not even mad at you anymore.”

“Mad? At me? Why, that’s … madness.”

I was still hanging onto her soft, white, yielding, warm, yummy shoulders, and it was creeping up on me that this was not a good idea, since there was work to be done.

So I let go of her shoulders and said, “Just tell the fuzz — I mean the police officers — what you’ve told me. The truth, everything.”

As though her voice were half-lidded, like her eyes, she said, “Everything?”

“Well, everything pertinent.”

And out I went, with not even a backward look. Steely stuff, that’s what I’m made of. Yeah, sure. I stood outside the door for at least ten seconds, wondering if I should ring Sylvia’s bell again. But instead I strode ahead, through the incensed air of Indian Ranch, reached my Cadillac, climbed in, and once again grabbed the phone.

Last of this little lark coming up. Wouldn’t be long now. A piece of cake.

Maybe it takes me a while to learn my ABC’s, but I knew — or at least felt pretty sure I knew — the whole alphabet now.

</code>

<code> That’s where I was at three-fifteen of this Tuesday morning in September.

The so-called complex consisted of two identical and adjacent twelve-story units, joined only at the top by girders at the front and back. The Dual Ghians, somebody had dubbed them, and the name had stuck. They were separated by only forty feet, but that space of just over thirteen yards was landscaped with what appeared to be at least fifty yards of variegated and thickly massed planting.

The fact of importance, however, and my reason for being here, was that at the very peak of the westernmost twin of the Dual Ghian, in the better — and substantially more expensive — of the two penthouse suites, lived Eddy Lash. Also in the penthouse was a two-room cubbyhole wherein resided, in near-constant attendance upon the master, Victor Pine.

My intention was to drop in, or rather up, unannounced and see if Eddy and Vic were home, and try not to get myself killed in the process. Therefore, my contemplated visit required some planning. I had done some. Maybe not enough.

I had already passed on the pertinent info regarding my most recent visit to Indian Ranch — only not this time to Captain Samson, who, though my good friend, might nonetheless have become justifiably suspicious and instituted severe measures to contain me. Instead I had phoned his friend Slattery of the Beverly Hills PD, and told all, including the danger which might very possibly menace Sylvia Ardent.

He had thanked me warmly for my cooperation, and seemed especially keen on the idea that Sylvia Ardent required close and careful coverage. It was not mentioned, but I got the impression that Captain Slattery of the Beverly Hills PD, having long ogled Girls’ Dorm with avid eyes, would himself not be averse to giving Sylvia Ardent close and careful coverage.

At any rate, I was not any longer concerned for her safety. Still, I couldn’t get rid of the peculiar unease that had stuck with me, a malaise of the mind, that little snake of worry which kept wiggling occasionally.

I hunted for it, briefly, then shunted it aside. Or tried to. This was a time to focus all my attention on the problem of getting into Lash’s suite.

It was a problem primarily because anyone taking the elevator to the twelfth floor was exposed to the eye of a closed-circuit TV camera as soon as the elevator doors opened onto the hallway bisecting the penthouses, and thus would, if he hoped to escape detection, have to take certain elementary precautions such as becoming invisible. So the apparently easy way — taking the elevator up and ringing Eddy’s bell and saying, “Hi, there, Eddy!” — could well turn out to be the hard way, like me standing at Eddy’s door feeling very sick about the five or six slugs in my midsection.

Now, some might ask why in hell didn’t I just go home and sack out, and let the legally constituted authorities proceed in their legally constipated ways? That might, most of the time, have been a very good question. I just didn’t happen to think it was, in this particular case at this particular time.

Increasingly, the gears and pinions of the law’s machinery must be oiled with several different types and viscosities of technicality slickum before it can begin to move, and even then the ensuing movement often turns out to be wasted motion. That, however, did not apply to me, a private person. Or so I told myself. At any rate, I was ready to go ahead, and had done what I could in preparation, much like a man preparing to swim among sharks taking along an extra pair of swim trunks.

I had prevailed upon a girl friend named Pat to phone Lash’s number, ask alcoholically for Ray Stout, and then, giggling, confess she must have dialed a wrong number. But a man had answered the phone. So though I had no idea who the man had been, I knew somebody was up there in the suite. And that was enough for me.

As I mentioned awhile back, I had never been in Eddy Lash’s apartment. But I had, at that swinging party months ago, been in the exactly similar — except that all in it was reversed — penthouse of the eastern half of the Dual Ghian. Thus I could see, in my mind’s eye, everything in Eddy Lash’s apartment, even including the marble-tiled bathroom.

More, bridging the forty-foot gap between the twin halves of the Ghian Apartment complex, as though binding them into one, were those quite attractive painted-steel girders at both the front and rear of the buildings’ roofs, from which descended various vines and liana-like flora.

Therefore, I thought a man could, if he was able to reach the top of one building, merely walk over one of those girders from the eastern half of the Ghian to the roof of the western, or Eddy Lash, half. Which is what I intended to do.

Already I had steeled myself not to think of slipping, and plunging twelve stories, to end as a dull thud. And I had further prepared myself with the only item of equipment I thought I would require — in addition to the fully loaded Colt .38 Special snug in its shoulder clip — this being a fifty-foot length of thin but strong rope, knotted at every foot of its length.

So I simply started in. And it beats hell, but it did go like a lark. Well … almost. It sure started out with ease and a kind of gladsomeness. I walked through the entrance of the eastern half of the twin buildings, strode to the elevator, went in and punched the button labeled, modestly, penthouses in solid-gold letters set in ivory. Up I went, 9, 10, 11, 12. Out and into the hall. Under the eye of TV cameras, sure, but so what? Not under the eye of Eddy Lash.

A lean, bald-headed, hawk-nosed gentleman, who looked as if he’d lived approximately forty-five summers and ninety winters, opened a door on my right and looked out at me dully.

I stood there facing him, with the coil of rope looped over one arm, and smiled. I did not tell him I was a TV repairman. But I talked at some length about television antennas, and union troubles, and asked him how to get onto the roof.

His eyes were steady, but sort of leaden, upon mine. “There’s a TV antenna on the roof?”

“Haven’t you ever been up there?”

“No, come to think of it, I haven’t.”

“Well,” I said, “somebody must have been up there.”

“There’s a way,” the old duck said. “But I didn’t know anybody ever used it.”

“Where is it?”

He pointed toward the other end of the hall and said, “It’s, the little door down there that says ‘Danger!’ on it. I suppose that’s so people won’t walk out onto, like, maybe a little platform, and fall off the edge and go plummeting — “

“Don’t.”

” — down twelve — “

“Don’t. What’s there? Elevator? Ladder? Stairs?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been out there. Never even opened the door. When doors say ‘Danger!’ on them — “

“Well, thank you, sir, thank you indeed. Bless you. Sorry to have disturbed your rest.”

“I wasn’t resting,” he said irritably. “I was sleeping.”

I walked down the hall as the door was shut forcibly behind me, and went — cautiously — through the door marked “Danger!” Beyond it was a little room like a closet, but there wasn’t anything dangerous about it. A steel ladder was affixed to one wall. I suppose what the sign meant was that it might be dangerous to go up the ladder onto the roof, because if you went up there …

When I’d climbed to the ladder’s top it was necessary merely to push open a three-foot-square hinged door, step through, and I was on the roof. Even at this early-morning hour there was enough illumination from the city’s lights so that I could see where I was going, so I walked briskly toward the rear of the building. Less briskly the final ten feet. In fact, barely moving for the last couple. Then I was standing facing the girder that extended from this roof to the one opposite. It was about a foot wide. Plenty of width, I said to myself. Lots wider than my feet.

I would have liked to loop the rope under the girder, sort of as security if I should slip and … But those dangling vines and green curly things prevented my even attempting that, so … so I just stood there.

But not for long.

Not more than a minute or two.

Then I stepped onto the girder and walked straight across, every step sure, not once hesitating, just banging on ahead come what may … I guess. Really, I don’t remember. One moment I was stepping onto the girder’s end, and the next moment I was dropping to my knees on the roof that had been my destination.

From there on — for a while — it was easy. I found a metal pipe around which I could tie one end of my knotted line, and when I’d walked to the roof’s edge it was clear that I had more than enough line left to reach down to the bathroom window.

The bathroom window. That was and had from the start been my destination. But I was beginning to have another reason for wanting to get to that bathroom.

I looked over the edge of the roof, and said, “Ooohhh,” then lifted my eyes from the street and sidewalk below, looking for the window. I couldn’t see the window. I not only couldn’t see it but realized, a bit late, that because it was flush with the building’s flat and extremely perpendicular wall, I wasn’t going to be able to see it. Not unless I leaned way out in the air in order to reach the proper angle for viewing a window, should one be there. And I had not the slightest intention in the world of leaning way out into the air.

I thought back to that party, reviewed the pictures I’d let slide before my mind’s eye earlier. I knew where the master bathroom window should be: west side of the building, clear at the back corner.

My rope was already tied securely in approximately the right spot. I held it tightly in both hands, stood at the edge of the roof with my back facing emptiness, and slowly started letting myself down. It wasn’t really difficult. By hanging tightly, with both hands, to knots in the rope, and leaning out from the building, feet pressed against the wall, progress was slow and sure enough, if a bit precarious.

When I’d lowered myself about four yards I spotted the window. It was no more than two feet away, on my left. It took only a few seconds for me to inch over until the window — the bathroom window — was squarely in front of me.

Now, it is a curious fact, but a fact nonetheless, that people — even in houses in the city or country — are more likely to leave unlocked the bathroom window than any other window in the house. They may secure everything else, lock and padlock the doors, close and lock the other windows, but time after time, they will leave the window of the bathroom unlocked.

Now you understand why I’d chosen this spot, right? It wasn’t a mere whim, but a logically reasoned choice, right?

Why is it that people most often leave the bathroom window unlocked? Don’t ask me. I merely state it as a curiosity. They just do, that’s all.

Eddy Lash’s window was closed, but I reached confidently to its side and pushed, so it would slide open. I merely pushed….

Yeah.

</code>

<code> 17

Who would think Eddy Lash, way up in the air on the twelfth floor of the Ghian Apartments, would lock his goddamn bathroom window? And why? What for?

And, man, now more than at any previous time in my life I wanted into a bathroom. Not just Eddy Lash’s bathroom. Any goddamn bathroom. I would have settled for a wooden outhouse buried in snow and sleet if I could just have been able to enjoy it for a little while.

It took me maybe half a second to consider and eliminate the alternatives, and then I broke the glass of the window.

I used the butt of my Colt to do it, which meant I had to let go of the rope with my right hand, but I hung on well enough and in the few seconds following the crack and tinkle of the glass breaking — there was, fortunately, very little noise as the shards hit the floor, which must have been carpeted — I reached through the jagged hole, found the lock, turned it and shoved the window open. And climbed through.

With my eyes accustomed to darkness I could see all the fixtures: toilet, shower, basin, toilet, dressing table, toilet…. It may sound as if there were lots of toilets, but there was really only one. It was merely that I gave it an unusual amount of my attention. But there was no time even for that.

It’s hell when life gets so rushed, the pace so frantic, that a man can’t even stop to relax once in a while. But when one reaches the point where there isn’t even time —

“Hey, Luddy! That you, Luddy? What the crud you doin’?”

No, no time.

It was, for a moment, just a little difficult to remember why I was here. But with the instant recognition that the yelling voice was Eddy Lash’s, I not only remembered all I’d planned to do, but did it. At least, I started in to do it.

Still holding the Colt in my right hand, I yanked the bathroom door open with my left and, without hesitation, went through in a great bound. I wouldn’t do that again, either.

As I landed with a jarring thud, I heard a loud slam, as of a door slamming, somewhere on my left. The bright light half blinded me for a moment, but I had no trouble seeing a dressing table clear across the room, a table atop which was a heavy lamp close on my right, and beyond it a king-size bed, so I not only knew where I was but that in the middle of the room, maybe fifteen feet from me and gawking as though he felt his mind had come totally asunder, was Eddy Lash.

Eddy Lash, the master of this aerial manse. Which figured. For this was — as I had known it would be unless my calculations were tragically amiss — the master bedroom. Which was why I had planned to enter by way of the master bathroom.

But I couldn’t let my thoughts stray like that. Just couldn’t afford to think about bathrooms at all. That was the only safe way — if, that is, there was in this perilous situation any safe way whatever. Because two things came clearly and at once into my mind: Eddy had called for Luddy, thus Luddy was presumably close by, too close by; and Eddy was digging into the pocket of his suit coat for something which even the simplest logic said had to be a gun. Probably the Magnum with which he had previously shot me.

I already had my Colt gripped in my right hand, but I honestly didn’t want to shoot Eddy Lash. Well, I mean, I didn’t want to kill him. I did want to shoot him. But, primarily, I had intended — still did, if I could manage to do it — merely to hold my gun on Eddy, or Eddy and Luddy, or whoever happened to be here handy, and make them hand over to me the stolen manuscript and missing papers, or maybe even search for them myself and wrap everything up in a pink ribbon.

For some reason, however, the things I plan seldom work out exactly the way I plan them. But I couldn’t just stand here and let Eddy plug me in the bladder — not anywhere, for that matter — so I lifted my Colt and took aim.

Lash was digging at his coat pocket and staring at me, and even from fifteen feet away those cold eyes of his looked as if they could put frost on several square yards of sun-baked desert. Those eyes looked the same as when we’d met in the Weston-Macey’s hospital corridor. The eyes did, but not the mouth.

Some stitches had undoubtedly been taken in his upper lip, and a white bandage covered it like a bleached moustache, but he was peeling his lips apart and I could see the gap between his front teeth. That gap was, I suppose, part of the reason why he kept digging for his gun, even though by now I had my .38 pointed straight at him. He was simply so filled with hate that there was room for only one idea in his brain.

I heard, and in fact for a couple of seconds had been hearing, the sound of thudding, as of walking feet, from somewhere on my left. Luddy? Vic? Somebody else? From the heaviness of the thudding I guessed it was big Clarence Ludlow.

All of this, of course, happened in much less time than it takes to tell. It is, however, true that I’d come in here certain Victor Pine must have brought the manuscript and papers to Lash. And I knew that in those papers Lash would himself be named. Thus no matter what happened, or what I did to him, the papers would when examined by me and a lot of others prove that Lash had been guilty of numerous crimes — and I, thus, could not and would not be censured for merely combating crime, which is a thing much needed nowadays.

But for a moment I felt an icy little chill and, thinking, hesitated. I was thinking: Keerist, what if he doesn’t have the papers, what if I’m wrong? And I shoot the bastard, and kill him? What then? Well, then I am in the soup for sure.

Naturally all this thinking took some time, even though the stress of the moment put me mentally, I felt, at an unprecedented peak of braininess.

Despite that, Lash somehow had time to get out his gun and shoot at me.

And the thudding of big feet became instantly much speedier and thuddier.

But in all that thinking, when I thought of soup, the natural corollary was alphabet soup, and the flow of thought simply went, inevitably, sort of ABCDEFGHI, and I knew I wasn’t wrong.

All of this was before Lash, after having a little trouble getting his gun out of his coat pocket, where it stuck for a second or two, shot at me — and missed.

Well, let’s say for a while there I wasn’t sure whether he missed or not.

But as for me, now at last sure, and certain, too, that if I stood there like a dummy, thinking like lightning, any longer … well, Lash, at this range, couldn’t miss twice in a row.

But neither could I miss. Not even once in a row. And I didn’t. I put three into him, first one in the head, then two more into his chest for good measure, but those last two were probably unnecessary even as insurance because he must have died as soon as the first slug plowed through his brain.

At a moment like that you have to give all your concentration to the one thing that, first of all, has to be done. So I fired even as I heard those thudding feet so close I knew they were only yards or possibly inches away.

Inches was more like it. The third shot had barely cracked from my Colt when something large and solid — it felt like a charging mastodon, or possibly a falling building, but I had a hunch it was Luddy — slammed into me so hard that I literally left my feet and flew through the air.

I don’t know how far I flew, but I did know that when I stopped moving it was because after hitting some kind of table, which didn’t slow me down a bit, I slammed into a wall, and that hitting the wall addled me as much if not more than being crashed into by Luddy.

It was Luddy, all right; my hunch had been correct.

And I had another hunch: If I didn’t rise quickly from the posture in which I’d landed after sliding down the wall — sort of reclining on my right side, elbow holding my chest a foot off the carpet and my head sticking up even higher than that, as inviting a target as Luddy could hope for — then Clarence Ludlow was going to kill me.

Because after smashing into me on the run, he had kept coming toward me and was now preparing to swing his right foot forward and get me solidly in the middle of the face with it. In fact, he’d already started his leg swinging.

I dropped flat, pressed my face and spread-open hands against the carpet, and Luddy’s big foot swished through the air where my head had been, the shoe of his heel close enough to brush my short-cropped hair.

As his foot banged into the wall, I pushed myself up, got my feet beneath me and straightened, shoving with every bit of muscle in my thighs and calves, and caught his outstretched leg against my back, raising it high enough to send him stumbling and turning away from me. But he didn’t go down.

By the time he’d swung around, though, I was ready for him. As ready, at least, as I was likely to get for a while. My head had cracked into the wall hard enough so that I was still dazed, my reactions not nearly as sharp as they should have been. And I knew I wasn’t holding my Colt any longer.

But Luddy didn’t have a gun in his hand, either. Maybe he hadn’t been wearing one in the safety of Lash’s penthouse, or maybe he’d simply started running after hearing that first shot, and just kept on running into me. At the moment, Luddy looked as if he didn’t need a gun, anyway.

That big, six-four and two-eighty-pound clown didn’t look very clownish, either. The face I had thought rather comical now wore an expression that wasn’t even mildly amusing. The wide jaws were clamped together, lips tight, eyes narrowed, and he stepped toward me almost gracefully, feinting with his left and then letting fly a hard right hand at my head.

That fist appeared to be the size of a medium-large ham, and if it had landed my head would have been in much worse shape than it already was, and possibly of no further use to me at all. But I slipped beneath the blow and slammed a hard, a beautiful and solid and thunderous right into his gut.

He grunted. He went back maybe an inch and a half. Then he swung another right hand, which bounced along the side of my face and seemed to take my ear with it as it went on by.

Fat, I’d thought him. Yeah. There was a little fat over his midsection. Approximately one-eighth of an inch was my guess, and beneath it a layer of cement. Luddy was still turned partly away from me, the force of that last all-out swing pulling him off balance, and I aimed the next blow at the side of his neck beneath the jawbone.

Not with my fist this time. With my hand spread open, thumb jutting out and stretched back. He was too close for me to get all the force into the shot I wanted, but it was a pretty good shot nonetheless. The little-finger edge of my palm landed where I’d aimed and the blow staggered him. He took a half step away from me, bending slightly forward and pressing his right hand against the wall for support. He didn’t go down, but he wasn’t functioning well for a second or two there.

Which gave me time to pick up a ceramic lamp I spotted atilt but unbroken on the floor near me. Presumably it was the one that had been on the little table I’d flown into moments ago, but I didn’t care where it came from. I simply picked it up and cracked it against the back of Luddy’s head.

He went down. Finally. Onto his hands and knees, head hanging limply for half a second, then lifting slowly as he tightened the muscles in his neck. But by that time I’d moved next to him and was preparing to kick him as solidly as possible on the side of his skull. I got him quite squarely on the head just aft of his left eyebrow. He went all the way down this time, finally flat on the floor.

But I thought I detected slight movements, still. I found my gun, shoved it back into its holster, picked up Eddy Lash’s .357 Magnum from where it lay some feet from his corpse, and smacked Luddy’s skull with its butt, after which I detected no further movements.

Then I stood quietly for a while looking at the two prone bodies, one lifeless, and one presumably still living but giving no visible evidence of it, and contemplated my misgivings. There were a few to contemplate.

Where was Vic? Where was Cheim’s manuscript and the “supporting” documents he’d claimed were with the autobiography? If Vic hadn’t brought the package here, I was in a little bit of trouble. Another thing was that unease, like goose pimples on the brain, which I hadn’t been able to identify. Sometimes it seemed I would almost grab it, when thinking about Vic, or Sylvia, but it slipped away every time.

After a quick prowl of the master bedroom I walked, gun in hand, to Vic’s two rooms, his bedroom and sitting room. Both rooms were empty, at least as far as Victor Pine himself was concerned. But on his bed was a metal case — open — and papers were spread over half the bedspread.

I just looked at it all for a few seconds.

I knew, of course, that here, finally, was I!, the autobiography of Gideon Cheim, and I had a general idea of what the rest of the papers were. But for a short while I simply stared at them, and at the metal case, thinking that it was a little like Pandora’s Box, thinking of all the mess and misery, troubles and death that had flown from it once it was opened. And also thinking, a little bitterly, that Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe sure as hell hadn’t had any idea of what he was getting into when he’d opened it.

Then I stepped to the bed and went through the papers. Everything I’d expected to find was there — and more. The handwritten confession, just as described to me by Mac Kiffer, complete with fingerprints and Henny Augrest’s scrawled, fat signature. I read it through. No surprises; I’d had the “alphabet” figured, just as it turned out, in fact, to be. There were a few surprises among the other papers, several of them reports from the detective agency and various private investigators Cheim had hired over the years.

Some big names, some not so big, a bit of spice here, a juicy scandal there, evidence of serious crime, felonious misbehavior, in a few cases. Mostly it was dirt. So was Cheim’s manuscript, at least judging by my impression after a hurried scanning of some of its pages.

A more careful perusal could wait. I stuffed everything back into the metal case, wondering — again — where Vic was, why he hadn’t been here with Eddy and Luddy. Obviously he had been here; he’d brought the box, the manuscript.

I walked into Lash’s bedroom again, set Cheim’s metal case on the floor, and bound Luddy’s hands and feet together behind his back, using cord from the lamp with which I’d whacked him.

That accomplished, I stepped briskly toward the bathroom, thinking, At last! But also thinking still of Victor Pine, wondering about Sylvia, too, Vic’s alibi girl for a while. But Sylvia was safe. Police officers would guard her cottage during the early-A.M. hours and on through the day until —

And then I got it. Finally I got it.

I’d been worried about Sylvia because she was a danger to Vic and there was at least a chance a three-quarters-psycho hood might try to put her out of the way so she couldn’t yank his alibi from under him.

But there was another gal who could blow up that alibi, too. Zena Tabur.

That was what had been bugging me, the offbeat spark in my synapses, the goose bumps on my brain: During most of the time Vic had claimed to be with Sylvia, Zena had been with her.

I found Lash’s phone, dialed Sylvia’s number. She sounded wide awake when she answered.

“Shell Scott,” I said. “Sylvia, this is important. When Vic — Victor Pine — phoned you, did you mention that Zena had been with you for much of the evening?”

“Why … I’m not sure. I wasn’t really concentrating very — “

“Think, dammit! Did he ask if anyone was with you, or did you mention Zena to him?”

“Well, yes … Just a minute. Now I remember. He did ask me. He wanted me to say he’d been with me from about nine p.m. until a little after eleven, and I told him a girl friend had been with me from maybe eight o’clock until half an hour or so before he called.”

I groaned. “Sylvia, did you tell him who was with you? Did you mention Zena’s name?”

“Ye-es. He asked me, kind of casually, who the girl was. And I told him. I didn’t think it would make any difference if I said Zena was with me — “

“Get off the line,” I said. “Hang up.”

I wasn’t sweet-mouthing the words, and I heard the click as she hung up fast. I pressed down on the receiver, jiggled it, got the dial tone and rang Zena’s number. I let it ring ten times, then slammed the phone back on the receiver and ran out of Eddy Lash’s suite, stopping only to scoop up the steel box on the way.

Twice more, while driving at illegal speed toward Zena’s home in Bel Air, I used my under-the-dash phone to call her, and twice more there was no answer.

I felt quite cold. By the time I skidded to a stop at the curb in front of Zena’s small house there was sweat on my forehead and on my upper lip, but it was cold sweat. The house was dark; no lights showed inside.

I ran up the narrow path to her front door. It was locked, but I simply kicked it in and I must have put more force into that thrusting leg and foot than I knew I had in me, because the door sprang open as if made of balsa wood, sprang open and swung around to crash with a hell of a clatter against the wall inside.

But by then I was making a bit of a clatter myself. I was inside, running toward the bedroom, running with two thoughts in my mind at the same time: Either Vic hadn’t come near here, hadn’t yet come or didn’t even plan to come — or I was too late, too late by far, and there was no point in running.

Still, I ran. Into a chair — something, anyhow, which moved, tumbled, bounced, clattered a bit in the darkness. Ran … into a wall.

But, reeling slightly, I ran some more and found what I sincerely believed to be the open door to the bedroom and, Colt gripped in my right hand and feeling for the light switch with my left, wishing I’d taken a tremendous leak in Lash’s splendid marble-walled bathroom before doing all this driving and running and bumping into things, and prepared for anything, the best or worst, trying to hold my emotions — among other things — in check, steady and controlled, found myself clawing frantically at a completely bare wall as lights blazed blindingly.

I swung around, revolver aiming — aiming here, there, here again, there again. But I found nothing dangerous to aim at. Unless Zena Tabur was dangerous. Which, I suppose, in a number of ways she was.

Zena was sitting up in bed wearing huge black eyeshades which she had pulled down till they dangled beneath her chin, and some kind of plugs in her ears — and very little else, a fact I report merely in the interest of accuracy, since I had at that moment neither much time nor inclination for dwelling on that sort of thing. It was fortunate — for Zena — that she did have plugs in her ears, for of a sudden she let out a most piercing scream. It didn’t last long. It lasted only about three seconds, or four, a brief eternity. Yet it was one of the longest and loudest and highest and most God-awful shrieks I had ever heard,

Even after it ended I reached up and stuck my thumbs in both ears hoping they wouldn’t simply slide inside and meet in the middle, and rubbed, gently, my tortured aural orifices, the two-inch barrel of the Colt in my right hand incidentally scratching the right side of my skull. The scratching hurt, too, since it was the right side of my skull, which had clobbered the wall after Luddy picked me up and threw me at it, or whatever it was he’d done to me.

After that one incredible blast from her open mouth, Zena pulled the plugs from her ears. I saw her mouth moving.

I pulled my thumbs out of my head and said, “What? I couldn’t hear you.”

“I said, ‘What the hell you doing? You going to blow your brains out?’”

I thought she’d gone nuts for a moment. But then I got it. “Oh, you mean this?” I said, putting my thumbs in my ears and wiggling them as I had before, scratching my sore skull with the Colt’s muzzle. “Goodness, no. I was just … playing with my ears.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh?” And after a short pause, in the voice people use when speaking to little children, or maniacs, “You … like playing with your ears? Does it … do zomething for you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You screamed like the Jolly Green Giant — Maybe you didn’t hear it, but I heard it, and it pained my ears severely. I was — oh — just making sure they were still intact, I suppose.”

She looked relieved. “Thank goodness. I thought maybe you came here to zcare me to death and then blow your brains out. Like a zecret zuizide pact nobody but you knew about.”

“Blow my brains … Ho-ho. Such a negative thought never entered my — I came here to kill Vic, if you want the truth. I came here to save you from getting shot, strangled, to save your life, Zena.”

“Well, thanks. You got a kind of zilly way to do it.”

“Yeah, maybe, but things have been going on you don’t know about. This Victor … I don’t suppose you’ve seen Vic Pine tonight, have you? I had it all figured — “

I stopped. I could see now that it was a dumb question.

“Why are you zquirming around like that, Zhell?”

“Zquirming? I’m not, either. Am I?”

“You’ve been zquirming ever zince you got in here.”

“Well, I … how shall I say it? There is, in all truth, something long, long overdue…”

“You want to go to the bathroom?”

“You dear, you. You read my mind, didn’t you?”

“I read your zquirming.”

Suddenly she laughed, flopped back on the pillow behind her, and said, “Well, you know where everything is, don’t you?”

“Everything essential.”

Five — yes, five — minutes later I was a new man.

Yes, a new man, all right, brain clicking, confidence back, at ease, relaxed, flooded with a sense of sweet fulfillment and an absolute certainty that I had this case cracked, had it all wrapped up. Except, where was Vic? And maybe a couple other little things. But I was confident I could figure all that out easily now.

I very quickly explained to Zena what I had feared and why, stated that even though I had not been able to crash in here and save her life by shooting Victor Pine in the last half second before he did away with her forever — which is how, I suppose, I had kind of dreamed it — there was still at least a faint possibility that Victor might come skulking about.

“Besides all the logical reasons for thinking Pine might attempt to harm you — at least, while I was thinking them they struck me as logical — I phoned you at least four or five times without getting an answer.”

She lifted one of the earplugs. “I zleep a lot in the daytime. Zometimes I take the Chinese head off the phone, when I want to make zure I don’t get disturbed, put in the plugs and wear these” — she touched the black eyeshades — “to keep the zun out of my eyes when it comes up. Naturally I don’t hear the phone. I don’t want to hear the phone.”

“Well, I’d already figured that out — just now, believe it or not. But getting no answer when I called did — ah — concern me more than a little.”

She smiled. “You’re zweet. Zweet to worry about me.”

Zena was really wearing very damned little. Especially with the earplugs and eyeshades off.

Duty, I told myself. “Zena, may I use — “

“Again?”

“May I use your phone?”

“Go ahead.”

I got through to Samson once more.

Now that my mental processes were back to normal, I was able to explain not only that I was at Zena Tabur’s but why, in no more than fifteen seconds of succinct, rapid exposition.

I wound it up with, “So the only thing that worries me is the whereabouts of Victor Pine.”

The only thing, that is, of which I’d informed Samson. I had not yet told him what awaited the arms — and eyes — of the law in Eddy Lash’s penthouse. That I would tell Sam when I’d jollied him into a little better mood. He didn’t seem to be in a real good mood yet.

In fact, he hadn’t even said boo yet. I’d started right in quite rapidly, and I presume be hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise. Now that he had a chance, however, he still didn’t sneak a word in edgewise.

“Sam,” I said in a jollying tone, “you still there?”

“I am here, Sheldon.” The voice slow, deep, a little like the spooky voice of doom. And … not “Shell”?

Sheldon. Sometimes he called me that when we were cracking wise with each other. Sometimes when he was on the verge of doing something ghastly to me. In fact, it was what he’d called me the last time he’d clapped me in the jug.

“Well, anyhow,” I said cheerily, “I’ve got the case all wrapped up. Yes, sir. Isn’t that great, Sam? Tied up in a little pink ribbon.”

“That is marvelous. Simply marvelous, Sheldon.” A pause. “How many people did you kill, maim or dismember to accomplish your end this time?”

“Oh, Sam, I didn’t kill … Well, it’s not — not like last time, Sam. Old buddy.”

“That’s good. What was it like this time?”

“Well, you see, I had to shoot — in self-defense, you understand; don’t I always shoot in self-defense? — Eddy Lash. And I kind of fixed things with Luddy so he wound up unconscious. But he’s all tied hand and foot so he can’t get away. Just in case … he comes to.”

Silence.

“I knew you’d be glad to hear that,” I said. “So when you add it all up, the only one I killed was Eddy. Well, two, if you count Burper. But they sure had it coming to them, didn’t they?”

“You’ve got the case in a — what? A little pink ribbon?”

“You just bet your life. Except for a few incidentals. Like — ” I paused, thinking. “Sam, you didn’t sound very surprised when I told you about Eddy Lash.”

“Surprised? Why should I be surprised?”

“Why not?” I said, feeling less gay than I tried to sound.

“I suppose it had not occurred to you that the booming and banging of gunshots, in an area where gunshots are a quite unusual phenomenon, might induce nearby citizens to phone the police and report this unusual phenomenon?”

“Tell you the truth, it hadn’t. But it was only because I’ve been so busy, and because my damn bladder — “

He went right on. “Therefore, we have known for some time that Eddy Lash had been mur — that he was deceased, due to three bullets which found their way into Eddy Lash. And that Clarence Ludlow has a concussion of some kind and possible skull fracture, but, whatever he has, remains to this very moment in a state of profound unconsciousness.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. I see.”

“Further,” Sam went on, “a thorough search of the premises failed to uncover any evidence of the manuscript, or package, or steel box, which Victor Pine is alleged to have hauled away from Indian Ranch — “

“Oh, I’ve got that, Sam.”

“You? You’ve got it?” He sounded a little brighter.

“Yeah. I was going to tell you in another minute. I was … sort of saving it. You see, it’s all tied in with Eddy and Luddy — but you know about that now. Anyhow, the steel box, manuscript, the works, was in the penthouse — in Vic Pine’s rooms. Which, of course, is why I went there — in the face of enormous personal danger, I might add, Sam, so I could get it. Which I did.”

“You’ve got it right now? With you right now?”

“Sure thing — that is, it’s outside in my Caddy…”

“Good God,” Sam said dully. “You left it outside? In your car?”

“Who would swipe — Back in a minute, Sam.”

I laid down the phone, zipped out to the Cad, raced back, grabbed the phone.

“As I was saying, Sam, got it right here. Right here a couple inches from me. And it’ll sizzle your eyeballs — manuscript, investigators’ reports, the Ogre’s confession, the whole shebang and more.”

“Well, that does help. Yes, it does.” After a moment he continued, “You mentioned having the case in a pretty ribbon. Except for some incidentals. Like?”

“Well, there’s Vic for one. I told you about that, and why I raced like mad to Zena Tabur’s here. Hell, he may still show up — “

“No, he won’t.”

” — but if he does, I’ll be ready for him. Thing is, Sam, he’s the key to this whole mess right now. He’s the only link we’ve got between Jellicoe’s murder and Eddy Lash, who obviously ordered Vic — “

I stopped, thinking back a little. But then I went on, “See, here’s the way it had to be. Lash ordered Vic to get the Cheim info from Jellicoe. Vic did, killing Jellicoe in the process. He took the info straight to Lash — else how would it have been in Eddy’s penthouse suite? Pretty good logic, right? OK, so maybe Eddy’s dead and Ludlow is unconscious, but Vic is really the key to the works, so all we have to do is get our hands on him…”

I stopped again. “Sam?”

“Yes, Sheldon?”

“Didn’t you say something a little bit ago, like, ‘No, he won’t’?”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, he won’t, what?”

“He won’t be showing up at Zena Tabur’s tonight. Or anyplace else.”

“Say just a little more about that, will you, Sam?”

“He, Victor Pine, won’t be going anyplace. Or, more accurately, he has already gone. He is deceased.”

“That means dead, doesn’t it?”

“Pine is in the morgue.”

“He’s really … dead?”

“No, we just felt like putting him in the morgue because he looked a little pooped.”

Uh-uh, Sam wasn’t in that just-right mood yet.

Neither was I, not at first. For maybe five seconds I felt crushed, empty. It took only that long for my brain to begin working again — I really owed a lot to Zena, I figured.

“Then that almost wraps it up, Sam,” I said. “I understand now why he’s dead. Why he had to be killed. How’d he get it? Gunshot in the back of his head?”

“No. Apparent accident. Ran off the road in his car, slammed into a tree. Bashed the front of his head in, among other things.” Sam paused. “But here’s a little bit you might want to play with, an oddity. Kind of thing you like. Half the police in town know him on sight, but there wasn’t anything on him to identify him. No wallet, nothing, not even any change in his pockets. You must have an explanation for that.”

“Come on, Sam, lay off. I’m in enough trouble — Hey. Let me think a second.”

It was more like a minute and a half. But then I said, “Sam, this may be a little wild. But there’s one way, just one, that fits the rest of it. Officers have already carted Lash away, and presumably have examined Ludlow’s effects, right?”

“That’s right.”

“What did Luddy have on him?”

“Just a minute.” I imagined he was rummaging through papers on his desk. Then, “The usual. Wallet, comb, handkerchief, car keys and other keys. Three-eighty in bills, ninety-four cents in change. Watch, ring, address book. And — this is the odd one — another watch and ring in his coat pocket. Looked expensive.”

I smiled. “They were. A twelve-thousand-dollar ring and a twelve-hundred-dollar watch.”

“Come again?”

“I’ll come downtown instead, Sam. That’s the last of the little pink ribbon.”

</code>

<code> 18

I walked back into the bedroom. Maybe I had made a total shambles of my love life, but there was still a chance of putting the remnants of this case in good enough order so that Captain Samson would at least not airmail me to San Quentin.

And, too, I felt that I should tell Zena good night — or rather good morning — actually good-bye — like a gentleman.

Besides, I wanted one last look at what she was wearing.

I stood at the foot of the bed and said, “Goodbye.”

She didn’t say anything. She just lay there.

I said one last time, rather dramatically, I thought, “Goodbye!”

She didn’t say anything. She just lay there.

“Well, see you sometime,” I mumbled, then turned and walked from the house.

But as I was going out the front door I heard her call something softly after me. It sounded like, “…bientot.”

Yeah, I was pretty sure that was it. I’m not so hot on French. Actually, I’m not too tremendous on English. I did know Hasta la vista meant “Make haste till I see you,” or something like that, in Spanish. But it wasn’t what Zena had said this time. And “…bientot” slipped from my exceptionally loose grip on the French language.

From the sound, I supposed it meant, “I hope your toe is well.” Or maybe, “You have your toe” — we’d say foot here in America — “in your mouth.” Something like that.

But I put Zena and all that — or tried to put Zena and all that — out of my mind, and, carrying I!, the autobiography of Gideon Cheim, and all the rest of the junk in my little steel case, headed — for the last time this week, I hoped — for downtown LA, the Police Building, and the Central Homicide Division. And Sam.

</code>

<code> He had since been pronounced medically sound and whole except for a splitting headache — but not split head; I had not, after all, fractured that thick skull of his — and while I was in Samson’s office talking a blue streak, Luddy had been transferred to the LAPD, where he was now undergoing interrogation in the same I room where we had all talked before.

With him were two attorneys, a medical doctor, and — invisible, but nonetheless very much there — a majority of the members of the United States Supreme Court.

Who’s knocking it? I am merely telling you who was there to take care of his rights. Me? I hoped to help take care of some — a few — of his wrongs.

“Sam,” I continued, “maybe even a psycho like Vic should have known he couldn’t get away with knocking off big-time stars like Zena Tabur and/or Sylvia Ardent, but it’s very likely he didn’t, and he sure as hell knew that either of them could blow his alibi apart. Undoubtedly he told Lash about the alibi and that he felt he should get rid of the girls. Maybe we’ll never know for sure — not with both Vic and Eddy dead — but it doesn’t make any difference. All we’ve got to do is look at the situation from Lash’s point of view.”

Samson was playing with one of his cigars. “Yeah, I know what you’re going to say. But you might as well get it said.”

“Here’s Lash with exactly what he wanted — the Cheim manuscript, the rest of the papers and especially the Ogre’s confession, naming Lash himself and the others. Vic has just brought the whole package to Lash. But Lash knows his boy Vic was spotted near Indian Ranch, he knows the alibi is going to be blown sky high, probably in hours, and he knows there’s no way to keep the cops from getting to Vic — short of knocking off the two gals, Zena and Sylvia, which Lash was not about to do, or for that matter let Vic do. There was one way out. One way to keep Eddy Lash safe, to eliminate the link between Jellicoe and Lash, to avoid personal involvement even when the girls spilled. And for Eddy Lash that one way was also the easy way, the natural way.”

Sam stuck the cigar in his mouth, rubbed a hand over his iron-gray hair. “Uh-huh. Kill him.”

“Sure. Especially since Eddy already had a good reason for wanting Vic dead. When we did our ABC’s in here we agreed that the four hoods mentioned by Kiffer were Vic Pine, Henny Augrest, Casey and Kiffer himself — F, G, H and I — and now that we’ve seen Henny’s confession we know we were on the button.”

“So?”

“So the only hoods around who were in on that four-year-old kill and cover-up — aside from Lash himself — were Kiffer and Pine. Henny skipped after selling his written confession. Casey was dead. And as soon as Eddy knew Kiffer had been killed — after all, he’d been trying to get the guy knocked off since Sunday — Eddy also was aware that the only one of his boys left of those original four who might someday, like Kiffer, decide to spill, was Vic. Hell, he’d already decided to knock Vic off, so the alibi-girl bit just added one more reason.”

“Maybe. But the only thing we know for certain about Pine’s death is that he is no longer living. You say Luddy did the job on him, and you base that merely on the fact that he had an extra watch and ring on him?”

“Mainly — but not merely. We know Vic was questioned by the police at eleven-twenty-two p.m. on Tanglewood Lane. If he went straight from there to Lash’s penthouse he’d have gotten there in maybe twenty minutes, at most. Say by a quarter of twelve. Luddy was tied up — tailing Kiffer, planning with Burper to kill me, and being interrogated here — until he was sprung at two a.m. Give him half an hour to reach Eddy’s penthouse.”

“I’ll give him anything he wants if you’ll give me a hint of what you’re getting at.”

“Just this, Sam. A good hour and a half after Luddy was sprung, at close to three-thirty a.m., when I’d climbed in the window of Lash’s bathroom and then took a big leap into his bedroom, I heard a door slam on my left, then big feet thudding, also on my left. That was Luddy. Just getting in, Sam, not from the Police Building, from somewhere else — just coming back. Vic wasn’t around. Why? He’d just finished having his unfortunate accident, that’s why. When Luddy came in there at the penthouse, at that moment he had Vic’s watch and ring in his coat pocket.” I paused. “Fortunately, Sam, I didn’t give Luddy time — or vice versa — to take them out of his pocket.”

“Why is it every time you do some fool thing you wind up saying fortunately it happened like that?”

“Well, isn’t it fortunate Luddy still had the watch and ring on him, and that the body of very recently dead Victor Pine did not have them on him? Because they were the property of Vic Pine, and Luddy could only have taken them from him after he faked the convenient fatal accident ordered by his boss. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’d call that fortunate. Wouldn’t you?”

Sam had an odd, fierce expression on his chops. “You were in the wrong place, goddammit. You shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Keerist, breaking and entering, dancing along girders — “

“I didn’t dance, you can damn well bet — “

” — homicide, assault and battery. Even theft, if you want to be honest about it. Isn’t it true you stole that case and manuscript from the penthouse suite — “

“Sam, please! I merely recovered some stolen property. I was a concerned citizen, diligent in the exercise of — “

“The hell with it. Shall we see what, if anything, Clarence Ludlow has to say?”

“You mean I can come along?”

“You might as well. At least there I can keep an eye on you.” He added grudgingly, “I might even give you another crack at him. I know it’s unorthodox, but he seems … looser with you.”

Actually, I think, this time, and for perhaps the first and only time in his life, Luddy wanted to talk. I mean, wanted to spill the works. To puke, as the cons themselves sometimes put it, in their gentle argot.

It does happen that way on occasion. More frequently, perhaps, than the general public knows. A hood reaches a point — that point — and you don’t have to hunt around for religious conversions, or Freudian nutsiness or any kind of psychiatric mental doodle to explain it, though maybe part of the truth does lie somewhere therein — and he pukes.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s enough to know.

We went into the I room after Luddy had been repeatedly advised of his rights, not to mention having been cautioned endlessly to clam entirely by his mouthpieces. Luddy was trying to say something, but one of the attorneys interrupted to tell him he was not required to speak a word, and so on, and on.

Samson said to me, “OK. Take your crack at him, Sheldon.”

Still Sheldon.

I walked over and sat on the edge of the table. “Hi, Luddy, buddy,” I said.

The big, dumb, horselike and somewhat bruised face swung toward me. “Gawdamn, I thought I had you there for a second.”

“I thought you had me for longer than that. About a minute, I’d say. Which seemed like an hour.” I lit a cigarette, held the pack toward Luddy, but he shook his head.

“What in hell did you hit me with?” he asked me.

“Well, the real good one was when I got you from behind with a lamp. That’s the one that did it. Of course, right afterward I kicked you in the head.”

He gave me the pleasantly comic grin. “Yeah, I seen that comin’, out of the corner of my eye. But I didn’t give much of a mind about it at the time. It was mainly the lamp, huh?”

“Yeah, I really cracked you with it. Should have popped your head open like a pumpkin.”

“Not my head. I been hit some good ones.” He slowly shook the head. “Too gawdamn many good ones, too many times.”

He fell silent. I didn’t say anything.

Then he looked up at me. “Eddy’s dead, ain’t he?” He looked sad, like a clown doing an act. Only it wasn’t an act.

“He’s dead,” I said.

He spat out a foul four-letter word. Strangely, it didn’t sound foul right then. “I’ll take that cigarette,” he said.

I gave him one. And, right then, I felt he was going to talk. It was that time for Luddy. So after he lit up his smoke I said, “Eddy’s gone. So’s Burper — but you know what happened to your buddy. Most of the old boys. And Vic. You know about Victor, too, don’t you, Luddy?”

“Yeah, I know about Vic.”

Babble from attorneys. They knew — and presumed Luddy did not know — that there wasn’t supposed to be any way Luddy could be aware of Vic’s death, since nobody had informed him of it. No way, unless Luddy had killed him.

But Luddy looked at the attorneys, the defenders — and rightly so — of his rights, and said, not gently, “Chop it. You been givin’ me that crap so long I can give it back at you without missin’ a syllybal. Now bag your heads, huh?”

They bagged their heads. That is, they shut up.

Luddy said to me again, “Yeah, I know about Vic,” and added, “I ought to.”

“Let’s pretend I was right the last time we talked in here, Luddy. Try it again that way, what say?”

“Good-o. That’ll be a gas.” He scowled. “Forget I said gas, will you?”

“Done.” The gas used in the apple-green execution chamber at San Quentin is cyanide.

I told Luddy what we knew, what I’d told Sam, covered the bit about Vic’s watch and ring being found in Luddy’s pocket, then said, “Now let’s say you killed him.”

“OK, let’s say that. We’ll pretend it was just like I’m going to tell it. Well…” He paused for a moment, then went on, “Well, a few hours back. Vic comes into Eddy’s with the case, the papers and that junk there was such a sweat about. Gives it to Eddy. Obvious, I don’t know nothin’ about that till I get to Eddy’s myself, since while these events is goin’ on I’m out on the streets or being talked to by the fuzz, then sitting right here where I’m now at.”

He stopped briefly again, then went ahead. “When I get sprung I go straight to Eddy’s. Him and Vic is lookin’ through them papers. Right away Eddy takes me off in a room, where I fill him in on what events had been happening. Eddy, I guess he’d already made up his mind what was going to be done. Why? Don’t ask me. He tells me, I do it. Always did, anyways.”

He paused to suck in a long drag from his smoke, then gave me the horsy, big-toothed grin. “You really think these things give a guy cancer in the lungs?”

“Sure, almost like smog. But you were saying?”

“Yeah. I no more than finish telling Eddy the works, than he says I should take Vic out with me and kind of ambush his head. You know, cave it in, with a instrument I have for that purpose. I have Vic follow me in his car — he don’t know where we’re goin’, it’s nothin’ to him. We drive out there on the road where you found him, and we park, and I walk back and cave in his head.” He paused. “How’s it goin’?”

“Just about right,” I said.

“Then I get his wheels lined up,” he went on, “and get behind his heap in mine, and start shoving him along. I was lucky there. Believe it or not, I got us up to seventy, near seventy anyways, before he slid off and hit. I stopped and backed up to where he was, made sure it looked good, then headed back to Eddy’s. No more’n get inside the door than blammo, there’s a barker goin’ off and — Well, hell, you was there. You know the rest of it.”

“The watch, Luddy? And ring? Didn’t you forget that?”

“Oh, hell, yes. Prob’ly that’s the most important part.” He looked up at me. “Right?”

I nodded. “Right.”

He made a sour face. “Well, I seen them dandies on Vic every day for a coupla years or more. I kind of been wanting them dandies, and they was no more use to him. When I backed up to his heap, it struck me in a flash I could stone two birds with one — Well, I could get both things done right. If I took the ring and watch — I’m not so dumb as these fuzz thinks — I realized a robber would take the money, too. So I took the money, which is percisely what a robber would do.”

He gave everybody his big grin.

When nobody grinned, or even smiled, in return, he said, “Well, hell, fellows, don’t it make sense if you’re going to make it look like a robbery, you rob everything?”

“Sure,” somebody said. “Smart, Luddy. But this guy is supposed to have got it in a car crash. Who’d rob him? Some passing pedestrian? A hitchhiker? Maybe pack rats?”

Luddy considered that. Then he said cheerfully, “Well, you can’t expect robbers to think of everything. Not every gawdamn time.”

“Luddy,” I said quietly.

He swung his head toward me. There was the funniest damned expression in his eyes. I said, “When we had our talk a few hours back, I think we missed a couple corners.”

“I guess.”

“You and Burper did catch up with Kiffer in that phone booth, right? And took care of him?”

He was quiet for a long time. Then, “Yeah, I shoved Mac outa his heap. Gimme another of them pills, will you? I chewed all mine up already.” I slid the cigarette pack across the table to him. He lit up and said, “When you come by the station there on Cypress, I was in Mac’s car with him. In case you come up, you see.”

“So you could blast me.”

“You got it exact. I’d clunked Mac in the squash earlier and he was out. I don’t think he was croaked then. We didn’t want him croaked — in case you didn’t show, you get it?”

“I get.”

“Anyhow, when you drove by I figured you was makin’ the meet just like Mac had told, and Burper would handle that end. So I give Mac another clunk on the conk. A pretty good one, kind of bent his knob in some. Then down the road, slow, lights out, waitin’ for the shot or two. Shot or two! Man, it was like Saint Valentine’s Day, and it come to me immediate something was gone wrong. So down the road I flew, managing somehow to lose Mac on the way.”

“Uh-huh. And later, after you got sprung and talked to Eddy at the penthouse, you naturally included the info that Mac had been chilled.”

“Yeah, that was what Eddy was most interested about. Right off he tells me I should take Vic out. So out I go…”

“Makes sense now. Thanks for clearing it up, Luddy.”

“Sure.” He gave me the big horsy grin for the last time. “What the hell. All the ghees I been aces with is either croaked or doin’ five or ten-speckers in college. What’s for me to lose?”

There was a little more, but I left before it was over.

I went back to Sam’s office, and sat, and thought, and smoked, until he came in.

</code>

<code> 19

Samson sat down a little heavily, looked across the desk at me. “You still here? Maybe you stayed around because you felt I might have a cell reserved for you. Would I be close to the mark. Shell?”

“Pretty close.” But Shell it was.

“In one night,” he said matter-of-factly, “you have shot and killed Francis McGee, shot and killed Eddy Lash, and committed mayhem upon the person of Clarence Ludlow. In addition to other items, such as breaking and entering, which I previously mentioned. And you probably molested three Playboy Club Bunnies — “

“Samson, you’re going too far!”

He sighed. “Well, somehow it all checks out. You blunder around, but still … Shell, what possessed you to break into Lash’s penthouse when you couldn’t possibly have known — “

“But, Sam, I did know. I went over it from every angle I could think of and there wasn’t a flaw in it, not one area where logic departed. Even last night when we went through that ABC routine we were able to identify everybody from Mac’s A-through-I except A and E, so when it became clear that Gideon Cheim was E and A had to be Warren Barr, which filled in the last two — “

“Wait a minute. Now we know that — at least, we know Barr was our Mr. A.” Sam was speaking with more emphasis than usual, “Because now — just like Jellicoe had — we’ve studied that confession of Henny Augrest’s which names Warren Barr.”

“Sam, don’t get excited.”

“We even know that’s what Jellicoe threatened Barr with — unless the cowboy forked over fifty thousand he’d spill the story about Barr’s beating Roger David to death. But you couldn’t have known then, before you’d seen Henny’s confession. You simply say, clairvoyantly, that A is Barr and E is — “

“Not clairvoyantly, Sam, Just plain old common — “

“All right, you tell me what made you so sure the guy we called E was, and is, Gideon Cheim.”

“Start with Cheim’s frantic concern about his autobiography. Consider the growing evidence that blackmail material was in it, and later that there was other material, besides that in the manuscript, of potential damage to a lot of people. Too, I happened to know Cheim was not only capable of blackmail but had committed it himself in a peculiarly sly manner — which maybe gave Jellicoe his Big Idea in the first place.”

“There’s not enough — “

“Let me finish, Sam. We knew from Kiffer’s alphabet story that Eddy Lash — D — had been blackmailing somebody until Henny’s handwritten confession took the heat off him. We know Vic Pine took that confession, along with the manuscript and everything else, from Jellicoe and was quizzed by the law near Indian Ranch at eleven-twenty-two p.m. Less than forty minutes later a man phoned and put the blackmail squeeze on … Gideon Cheim. The call wasn’t from Jellicoe — he was dead. Who, then? Clearly whoever Vic took the dope to. And who would Vic take it to? Who did Vic take it to?”

“OK, OK, he took it to Lash.”

“And as soon as Lash got Henny’s confession — Cheim’s insurance against Lash’s blackmail during these past four years — Eddy simply picked up where he’d left off four years ago.”

“That may satisfy you, Shell. Maybe even me. But it’s not enough for a court of law.”

“Hell, I wasn’t going into a court, I was going into Lash’s penthouse. Look, Sam, the hell with the rest of it. We know Mr. E is the guy Ogre sold the confession to; we know Vic took it from Jellicoe but Jellicoe originally got it from Cheim, it was Cheim’s property; so E was Cheim. Will that do?”

Sam sighed. “I guess it’ll have to.”

I lit another cigarette. “The only thing I don’t know is what Lash used for blackmailing Cheim in the beginning, what it was he used on him until four years ago.”

“I can give you that,” Sam said casually.

I stared at him. “You sly old skunk,” I said. “You mean you’ve known all along what Lash had on Cheim but let me sit here and try to convince you — ” I cut it off. “OK, give.”

“We’ve known about the crime for nine years,” Sam said. “Just didn’t know who committed it.”

“Oh, merely that tiny detail, hey?”

He grinned. “Truth is, Luddy gave us the capper on it after you left the I room.”

And then Samson gave it to me.

Following which, he turned to another subject. “You already know we’ve been talking to Warren Barr. He’s given us the story about Jellicoe’s blackmail try — Barr was supposed to have fifty thousand ready by Monday night. Hardly seems enough money considering the risk, does it?”

“Well, Jellicoe was an amateur, after all.”

“Most of them are. Anyhow, Barr has also given us the story about the guy he killed — actually, it was more like manslaughter. But before I fill you in on that, how come you were so sure — before you read Henny’s paper — that Barr was our Mr. A?”

“Let’s say it was not quite a cosmic certainty, but at least a strong and reasonably valid assumption, OK? When Jellicoe came into possession of the Cheim manuscript and allied material he immediately — well, almost immediately — paid a call upon Barr. The result of that Friday-afternoon chat was that Barr got so shook he ‘nearly fell off his horse,’ as it was given to me. That same night Jellicoe checked into Indian Ranch under an assumed name. That same night or maybe over the weekend his rooms in the Cavendish were tossed. Add Barr’s record, his pro — and amateur — fighting days, and nights. Add Barr’s friendship with Vic Pine, that it was Barr who learned from Sylvia Ardent she might have seen Jellicoe at Indian Ranch, so almost certainly Vic had to get that info from Barr. Add the fact that Barr had knocked Wilfred on his can, in public.

“I talked to Barr twice myself. Both times he had the same strange reaction, first shock and something close to real fright, soon followed by obvious relief and relaxation — the reason, of course, being that I hadn’t yet hit on the real bit Jellicoe smacked him with, the murder bit. Though both times Barr, at first, must have thought that’s what I had.”

Samson was frowning slightly. “Since Barr’s been so handy with his fists, beat David to death, the rest of it, why not figure it was Barr worked Jellicoe over? The jealous-lover angle, after he’d talked to the Ardent woman?”

“The guy who beat the life out of Jellicoe immediately afterward picked up Cheim’s case from the desk, and that had to be Vic. Not merely because the law talked to Vic five or ten minutes later, either. The clerk — and anybody else in the whole area, for that matter — would have recognized famous Warren Barr, idol of theatergoers and every horse in the land.”

Sam nodded. “Makes sense, yeah.”

“Incidentally, that sequence — Sylvia telling Barr of maybe seeing Jellicoe, then Barr telling Vic — helps explain why Vic gave Sylvia as his alibi. Not only was she living at the Ranch, and not only had he once dated her, but he would almost automatically have thought of Sylvia because, only a few hours earlier, Barr had been talking to Vic about her and the possibility that she’d seen Jellicoe at the Ranch.” I paused. “The same reasoning, in reverse, supports the idea that Barr did tell Vic where he might find Jellicoe. Well, the hell with that. What was it Wilfred hit sweet Warren with? What did happen four years ago?”

“Not much new about any of it,” Sam said. “Barr was in — appropriately, I guess — a bar late that Sunday afternoon. Nobody else there except a married couple, only they weren’t married to each other. Roger David and Mrs. Anne Ericson — you’ll remember we checked them out last night. Barr bought them a drink. Maybe tried to move in on the gal, but Barr didn’t mention anything like that. According to him, the other guy started the fight. As I recall Barr’s words, he said, ‘The bum actually poked me, actually hit me — in the mouth. Man, my mouth. That’s one of the main things I act with.’”

I smiled. Sam was a pretty good mimic. Also, I was remembering that scene I’d watched being shot. Barr with the busty tomato apparently making a meal of his lips.

Sam went on, “Barr plain beat the man to death. Didn’t intend to, of course, he says. The gal skipped out. So did Barr — straight to Vic Pine and Eddy Lash. Eddy and his boys hauled off the dead guy’s body and that was it.”

“How about the bartender?”

“No worry about him. Ex-con, friendly with Lash. Place was the Four Aces on Ninth Street.”

I knew the Four Aces. It was a hood hangout, what guys on their way to or from prison called a “safe” bar.

“Fact is,” Sam went on, “it was from the bartender Lash found out who the girl was. She’d met this same guy there before; it was just a bar to them, a place to meet. She didn’t say anything to her husband about the fight because that would have meant telling him she was with this Roger David. Anyhow, Lash’s men took care of her in the morning — I read you the report.”

“Yeah. This bartender, he still around?”

“Close. Just brought him in a little while ago.”

“You have not been dawdling. Well, it fits together, Sam. Barr beats this David to death and goes to Vic and Lash for help. Then four years later when Jellicoe puts the bite on Barr, history repeats itself: it’s Barr-to-Vic-to-Lash once more. And that’s when the fuse was lit, and the killing started.”

I stubbed out my cigarette, thinking about Wilfred Jellicoe. “Poor Jelly,” I said. “Once he’d started, I guess he went out for the big money. Might have made it, too, considering the dope he’d got his hands on, if he’d had a little more practice at being a hood instead of the nice, meek guy he basically was. I guess when you boil it down it’s the story of a long-suffering worm who turned too late and got stepped on. Or a would-be Hyde with too much Jekyll in him.”

“Speaking of Hydes, half the underworld is getting shot up while you cavort with hoodlums and lollygag with the likes of Sylvia Ardent and Zena Tabur — “

“Samson,” I said sternly. “Surely you realize if I hadn’t — ah — interrogated Sylvia Ardent I would never have uncovered many of the vital facts of the case, facts which aided me enormously in cracking it. Further, had I not become acquainted with Miss Tabur, I could not have been instantly aware that Vic Pine’s alibi was a fraud. In sum, had it not been for what you so fatuously refer to as lollygagging, I could not possibly have been so unerringly led to the solution of this involved dilemma. And if I hadn’t been so led? Why, the mind reels and boggles — “

Sam’s expression of pain was interrupted when his phone rang. He spoke into it briefly. Then he said, “Intelligence and some of the other men have gone over that stuff of Cheim’s. Keeping part of it, the Augrest confession, things like that. And they’ve duped some pages of that manuscript. But it’s still his property, and you can pick it up any time now.”

“Fine. I’ll enjoy explaining to Cheim what’s been occurring this night. In a way I can understand the old fossil’s holding out on me, because it’s plain he was — and is — accessory to numerous felonies. But he had to know what his conning me might do to Jellicoe and others — not least of whom was me, especially since much of the time I was acting on baloney the old fraud gave me. Of course, he knew he couldn’t tell me the whole truth, because I would have clapped the coot away.”

“He may still get … clapped away.” Sam had his cigar in his mouth, wooden kitchen match in hand. “But we’re not too concerned about Mr. Cheim at the moment. You might tell him we will desire to talk with him in the near future.”

“Yeah. I’ll tell him. I’ll be glad to tell him.”

Samson rubbed his eyes with one hand — match ready in the other — then said wearily, “Shell, I’ll admit that much of what you’ve said tonight, much on which you based your ridiculous actions, possessed a certain vague logic. But what if you’d based your conclusions on false premises? Ye gods! The thought is terrifying!” He waggled his head. “You do have moments approaching rationality, but you’re sure no Sherlock Holmes.”

“Praise be. Now, there’s a guy who was clairvoyant. He wasn’t logical, he was in touch with pixies.”

“What you really are, Shell,” Sam said, lighting his match and placing its flame against the end of his cigar, “is simply the luckiest goddamned man at large in the world.”

Rising to my feet I said stiffly, “Luck has nothing to do with it. And ‘at large,’ which sounds like somebody who’s escaped from somewhere, is hardly the most felicitous choice of words to describe my — Phew.”

At the door I turned and said, “Well, hell, so I had a little luck along the way. Does that make me a dummy?” The acrid fumes were reaching me again, but I stood my ground and added, “And everything worked out all right, didn’t it? Isn’t that the important thing?”

Sam puffed away, complacently, on his poisonous cigar.

</code>

<code> Home again.

My familiar, comfortable, much used, well-enjoyed, not luxurious but just-right-for-me three rooms and bath in the Spartan Apartment Hotel.

I had showered, shaved and even shampooed my hair, before even preparing to phone my second client of this case, Gideon Cheim. By the time I was ready it was sunrise. Or nearly sunrise. There were some sort of pale puky grays beginning to crud up the eastern horizon — I was in a mean mood. Even after the shower and such.

I’d done all that merely in the hope of washing some of the stink of this case off of me. It had helped. But not enough. I still felt mean. Mainly, I guess, because of Gideon Cheim, and his cute little ways. More because of him, really, than Lash, Kiffer, Luddy and the rest. Maybe that — to forestall further annoyance and depression — was why I had so long delayed this particular call. And done all the other things.

Including, after making myself a double bourbon-and-water, slipping into my favorite robe, which has by some stuffy citizens — usually female citizens with such primary interests as growing cactus plants or spending hours with binoculars looking for very ordinary birds — been referred to as “Ghahstly” or “Indecent.”

True, it’s a little wild, and extraordinarily colorful. And embroidered in gold thread upon a red and every-other-color background is a lovely dragon with scarlet flames snorting brightly from its flaring nostrils. The nostrils, presumably, are flaring because he is in pursuit — hot pursuit, you might say — of numerous fleeing damsels, scantily clad, a couple of whom are even unclad and spinning about as though in great dismay.

Maybe some people don’t like it. But it is my robe, and the hell with them. It is my wild, nights-at-home-alone-in-the-apartment robe, when alone, that is, with something delicious whom I wish to impress with by bloodcurdling taste in objets d’art. Sometimes a tomato’s reaction saves hours, even days, of possible glandular malfunction, such as when one of them rises, whirls about and leaves, slamming the door behind her, fleeing back to the security of her cactus garden.

Usually the sight of myself in that Chinese-silk masterpiece of joyous depravity lifts my spirits, brightens the inner eye. But not even my handsome robe had helped this time.

I flopped upon the often-flopped-on chocolate-brown divan in my living room — having already blown a kiss to Amelia, my yard-square nude over the fake, or gas-log, fireplace … Amelia, who is ravishing, twinkling of eye, bawdily beautiful, though perhaps a trifle ample in the rear-end department — and planted the phone on my chest.

I dialed, and waited, hoping I woke Cheim up.

Much earlier I had phoned my original client, Mrs. Gladys Jellicoe. Woke her up, too. So what? Did anybody care if I got any sleep? But I’d broken the news to her as gently as I could. She’d been depressed by the news. She was sorry about dear Jelly, of course. But how was she going to get along without the three-thousand-dollar-a-month alimony? Of course, that conversation filled my heart with gladness.

The familiar, harsh, booming voice answered.

“Hello,” I said. “Is this the latter-day Marquis de Sade? I mean, Gideon Cheim?”

“Of course it’s Cheim. What do you mean by that Marquis — “

“This is Shell Scott, Mr. Cheim.”

“Oh! Ah! Have you…” He couldn’t bear to ask it.

“I’ve got your manuscript back, Mr. Cheim,” I said. “Yes, sir. Managed to grab the whole kit and kaboodle. Had to kill Eddy Lash and another fellow to do it, but I got the job done.”

“Oh, you do have it! I can’t tell you how grateful — “

I didn’t want any gratitude yet. There were a few things I felt he should know first. So I merely went on merrily, “You have to admit, when I set out to do a thing I stick with it through thick and thin. And this time it was pretty thick.”

“But you got it, that’s the main — ” A short pause. “You had to kill Eddy Lash? Then he can’t blackmail me any — “

He stopped. In his fever of excitement he had, at last, given himself away. Not that it mattered. “No,” I said, “he can’t blackmail you anymore. But wouldn’t it have been helpful if you’d told me it was Eddy Lash?” Silence. “Maybe you weren’t certain it was Eddy, but surely you had a kind of hunch, what?” More silence. “Anyhow, he can no longer blackmail you. Not about the girl, at least. Not anybody about anything.”

“The … girl?”

“Let me tell you a story, Mr. Cheim. See if you think it would make a good movie. We’ll star a fellow who, as I well know, is often in the grip of violent emotion even today, lying on his back in a hospital bed. When younger he must have been a beaut. Also, he’s a horny old bastard. Put those two bits together. When he was, say, nine years younger he killed a girl — not on purpose, apparently. He merely gave her an overdose of cantharides and a few other too potent aphrodisiacs to jazz things up a bit. Anyhow, it killed her. Oddly enough, she was a prostitute, working for a Hood who was pretty big in the girls-for-hire racket at that time. The Hood found out about it, quashed any investigation but his own, and then held that knowledge, and proof, over our Star’s head like … well, like a Sore of Damocles, as somebody once said to me. So our Star paid, and paid, and paid.

“In the meantime, though, he began hiring detectives, gathering mountains of info about all kinds of people, including male and female movie stars, TV people, big people, little people. But nothing on the Hood. What put new life into the old boy was when a sort of ogreish hoodlum approached our Star with the offer to sell him info which would get the Hood off his back. Our Star used it, too. So it was an extortion standoff, a kind of blackmail balance. Until — and here’s where it gets exciting — one day a womanlike fellow who worked for the Star got too big for his britches, or maybe Waltermittyed himself into thinking he, too, could be a Star, and used some of that info supplied by the little hoodlum to put the squeeze on a Western Hero. Then it all hit the fan — when Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe used the info to blackmail Warren Barr.”

Believe it or not, usually voluble Cheim hadn’t interrupted me once. Even when I stopped he didn’t speak for several seconds. Then he said, “I can … explain all this, Mr. Scott.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to. First, there are a few other things I’d like to tell you.”

Cheim took another tack. “Mr. Scott.” His voice was severe, even menacing. “You have betrayed my trust. You have examined my private property, the contents of that steel case which — “

“Hold it. You’re talking about betraying a trust? Besides, I told you I wouldn’t commit any felonies for you. I also said God help you if you weren’t, finally, leveling with me. Anyhow, either Vic Pine or Eddy Lash had already opened the case, so since it was already open I did look over that juicy material.”

“But … you do have my manuscript with you? All of it?”

“All of the manuscript, yes. But not — “

“Then I demand you bring it to me at once! Instantly!”

“Stop demanding, will you? You’ll get yourself all frustrated. I’ve got a little more to tell you, anyway. And this little will, I promise you, hold your interest, complete and entire.” I paused. “I’ll be back in a minute. You won’t hang up, will you?”

He spoke a short sentence of remarkable violence.

I put the phone down, walked into the kitchenette and made myself a second bourbon-and-water. I felt entitled to another belt. It had been a long day and night.

Sprawled again on the divan, drink in one hand and phone in the other, I said, “I’ve not broken any agreement or promise I made you. Even if I had, I told you all bets were off if you were lying to me.” I had a sip of my bourbon. “And you did fib a little, didn’t you?”

He said the same short sentence again.

I went on, “Now, there was much in your manuscript and the accompanying material which was evidence of indiscreet, and possibly criminal, and in some cases undeniably felonious behavior. It would have been felonious of me, myself, had I failed to do my duty as a citizen and bring this material to the attention of the proper authorities — “

“My God!”

” — in this case, the Los Angeles police. Certain experts have carefully read your autobiography and made duplicates of some pages. They have also examined the ‘supporting and documentary material,’ I believe you called it. Not all will be acted, upon, but some of it will. Much will go into the Intelligence Division’s files — as, for example, the connection of a certain top romantic male lead, famed for his roles in movies and television, with several upper-and lower-level Mafiosi.”

It wouldn’t be true to say Cheim failed to interrupt me this time. But it wouldn’t be completely accurate to say he did interrupt, either. What he did was several times say, or go, “Gahg,” and “Ahk,” and “Ckk,” or things very close to those.

“Are you all right?” I said. Silence. “Mr. Cheim?”

“Goddamn you, Scott, I’ll ruin you. One way or another I’ll see you in hell. No matter what I have to do. Get that manuscript to me at once, do you hear me?”

“Do I hear you? Man, I’ll bet the head doctor in the hospital can hear you. I’ll bet the foot doctor in the hospital can hear you. I’ll bet — “

“Are you coming to the Weston-Macey immediately?”

“There are one or two other things you should know, Mr. Cheim. The attitude of the police, for one. And also — this is most important — we haven’t really settled my fee. I remember you did say I could have anything, anything you possess.”

“I’ll stand by that, goddammit. Within … reason. Don’t try to hold me up.”

“I wouldn’t do that. But I was just thinking. What I’d really like to have is I!, your life story. It’s better than Fanny Hill out of Mein Kampf by Jock the Raper. I’d like to have it, sir, so that, in the fake fireplace here at my cozy little apartment, I could burn it.”

I wouldn’t really have done it, of course.

At least, not if Gideon Cheim had told me not to.

But when I became silent at my end of the phone there began a whole chorus, a real cacophony, of noises at the other end.

I wanted to tell Mr. Cheim I was only kidding, I’d bring him his damned manuscript — yes, but after I got about twelve hours’ sleep. However, I couldn’t get through to him. There were those — well — those noises.

At first it sounded as though Gideon Cheim were trying to say, or go, “Gahg” and “Ahk” and “Ckk” one right after the other and then all simultaneously, but whatever it really had been, it was followed by a word-thing or sound-thing of such uniqueness as to be absolutely beyond my limited powers of description.

That in turn was followed by a clatter, a thump, a kind of gargle. I guessed he’d dropped the phone. I could hear the squeak of squeaking shoes, soft, loud, soft again. Must have gone right by the phone.

“Hello!” I said. “Hello! Gideon? I say, old chap — “

Somebody picked the phone up, spoke into it. The voice was a woman’s; I deduced that, very likely, it was a nurse.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hello. What’s going on? Where’d Mr. Cheim go?”

“Why, he — oh, he — oh, my. I don’t really know where he went.” She was all excited. New nurse, I guessed. “He just dropped … dead.”

“No kidding?” I said.

She asked me who was calling — which struck me as a rather useless question, since it was clearly apparent that the room’s occupant wasn’t going to answer. At least, not anymore.

So I hung up. And sat. And thought.

It was a bit cool in the apartment, I thought. With the sun just coming up, a slight breeze stirring, that nice coolness we sometimes get at dawn in Southern California….

And that is why you have not read, and will not read, I!, the autobiography of Gideon Cheim.

</code>

<code> 20

With my third stiff bourbon-and-water in my hand, I leaned out the window and breathed in some early smog, filling my lungs with gasoline, kerosene, radioactive fallout, strontium 90, DDT, the heady fumes of diesel oil, parathion and other aromas of the waking city.

They say deep breathing is supposed to be good for a man, but somehow I didn’t feel much better. Depression — gad, it wasn’t like me. Maybe it was the sunrise. The sun’s rim was barely above the horizon, but I could see gobs of oily grays, some ghastly scarlets, a few gangrenous shades of greenish blues, and a little jaundice yellow, among other hues. Nature’s Paintbrush, fooey. Nature should take up something else for a hobby.

Maybe that was it, the gooey sunrise.

Or maybe it was because so many people had been kicking off lately. In the last few hours. Even in the last few minutes. Not just here in LA-Hollywood, but here, there, everywhere. Probably all over the world people were making strange noises and keeling over and dying like flies. It was a depressing thought.

Dwelling on death isn’t very jolly. But usually I think about live people. And, man, I mean live people.

That set off another train of thought. Possibly an additional reason for my unusual sense of depression, a feeling that I was drained of energy, was the fact that I had careened and caromed through this case for free. Well, practically.

I wasn’t going to get anything from Cheim, the dead bum. And though the case had not required quite twenty-four hours of my time, since it had been composed of almost constant activity — except for the twenty minutes I’d spent sleeping — and occurred during two calendar days, I was charging Gladys Jellicoe two hundred dollars. She didn’t think that was nice. She had told me so earlier on the phone. I had told her, if she thought that was too much, then she could shove the two hundred dollars, in dollar bills, one by one … Well, I got a little peeved.

So, no billions or even millions from Cheim. Maybe two hundred dollars from dear Gladys, maybe not even a bean from Gladys.

But who says money buys happiness? Not me. Of course, it sure as hell helps a lot. However, ignoring money, there was the other side of the case, there were the positive values.

I hadn’t been shot this time, not once. I hadn’t been sapped, kicked or stomped on the head. I’d been in only one fight, and I’d won that one, had even come out of it virtually unscarred.

Best of all, though, most of all, though, that which made all the rest of it as nothing at all, though, was — or, rather, were — Sylvia Ardent and Zena Tabur.

Yes, indeed, there had been Sylvia Ardent and Zena Tabur. Seldom in a lifetime does a man have the good fortune to meet and, shall we say, get to know even one woman such as Zena, or one such as Sylvia. My cup, I thought, runneth over. Or had runneth over? Anyway, it had been pressed down and overflowing, to continue with what little I remembered of Holy Writ.

Yes, nobody could take that away from me. Nobody, of course, but me. I’d fixed it with those babes for sure. For a moment I felt a vast sense of loss, but only for a moment.

Didn’t I have my memories? My grand memories? Of course I did. They were and would always remain a splendid vision, part of an action-and-word-and-etc.-filled twenty-four hours in which at least the etc. could always be before me, as though written in flaming letters in the sky.

I was actually still in the window, looking up at the skies, the purples and pinks and flaming yucks. The heavens appeared to be ill, about to breathe their last gargling gasp —

Behind me, the phone rang.

Who in hell could be calling at this hour? Another Gladys, maybe? That would be loads of fun. I’d known as soon as I lamped her face and that boa-constrictor figure — No, not likely it would be a Gladys. Not too many of them around.

I knew several people it couldn’t be. Eddy Lash, Burper McGee, Mac Kiffer, Victor Pine, all dead. Add to that Gideon Cheim. And Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe. Nor could it be Clarence Ludlow, Warren Barr, a certain bartender and a few others, all of whom were in the clink. A whole flock of people in the cooler, others dead and cooling…. It seemed as though everything I touched turned to cold. Well, not everything.

I grabbed the phone. “Yeah?” I growled into it. “You’d better not be a — “

“Zhell?”

“Hmm?”

“Zhell, is that you?”

“Well … hello. Zena? Yeah, this is Shell. What — what do you want?”

“You, Zhell.” She sounded a little odd, not quite like zizzling Zena Tabur.

“Me?” I said cautiously.

“You.”

“What … for?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here.”

“When I get there? Hell, I just left there — forever … I presumed. Uh, Zena?”

“Yezz?”

“You sound … funny. A little different, I mean.”

“Zazz becauze zizz iz Zylvia.”

I got absolutely rigid for about two, maybe two and a half seconds. “Zzz — Sylvia? Sylvia … who?”

“Sylvia Ardent.” And then I heard her merry laughter.

“Zhell?”

“Sylvia?”

“No, this is Zena. You want to talk to Zylvia?”

“Listen. Just listen, see? I’m in no mood for — for … What did you have in mind?”

“Well, you woke Zylvia up. Then you woke me up. And now we’re both waked wide up.”

“That makes a great deal of sense. I think. But Sylvia was at Indian Ranch when I woke her up, so how come — “

“Zhe’d already called me, but I had the things in my ears and couldn’t hear anything. But when you woke me up, I phoned her, and we talked about everything, and zhe came over here.”

“What do you mean, about everything?”

There was no answer, so I said dully, “She came over there, huh?”

More softly, as if the phone was farther from her mouth, I could hear Zena saying, “He wants to know if you’re here, Zylvia. What do we got to do to convince him?”

Then they both started yelling and yacking at the same time, “Zhell,” and “Shell,” and “We’re both here, Zena and me,” while the other one was saying, “That ought to prove zomething — couldn’t you hear Zylvia talking the zame time as me?”

“Yeah. So?” I thought about it. “Ah,” I continued. “I’ve got it. I woke Sylvia up. Then I woke you up. So you female monsters got together and decided to get even with me. By waking me up. Well, ha-ha, I wasn’t even asleep yet.”

Apparently both of those babes were listening at the same time, two dainty ears near the one receiver, because first one spoke and then the other:

“Shell, we did decide to get even, in a way. You’re an absolutely horrid man, you know. You’re — “

“You’re a zex maniac, that’s what you are — “

“You’re a wolf, the absolutely worst kind of depraved — “

“You ought to be azhamed of yourzelf — “

“We took a vote on it, Shell. And we decided — “

I got a word in edgewise. “Vote? Vote? On what?”

“On if Zena and I should forgive you — “

“At firzt we didn’t think it was pozzible, but after we had some gin and tonic and watched the zun coming up — “

“Gin and tonic?” I got some more words in — and, believe me, that’s tough when you’re carrying on a dialogue with two tomatoes at the same time. Especially such dizzy and crazy … luscious … shapely … hot-blooded …

My mind was wandering.

While it wandered, the dual dialogue in my ear continued:

“Firzt vote was two to nothing. You lozt.”

“Then we voted again and it was one to one. And the last vote it was two to nothing again.”

“Only upzide down. Different from the firzt one. You won the election, Zhell.”

“I did, huh? Man, that must be strong tonic you’re drinking. What the hell kind of election did I win?”

“It isn’t the kind of thing I wanna zay on the phone. I think it kind of loses zomething on the phone.”

“We’ll explain everything when you get here, Shell.”

“Well, zay zomething. You coming over?”

“You mean, come over there? While you’re both there?”

“Zure.”

“Why not?”

“Ah,” I said. “I’ve got it. You put your sly female heads together and decided to kill me.”

“Who zays, we’re gonna un anything?”

“Shell, are you afraid to come over?”

“You’re zcared. That’s what it is. Zhell Zcott is a zizzy. He zhoots and zocks men around, but when it comes to girls he’s a zizzy — “

“I am not!”

“Well, come on over, then. But hurry.”

“Look, even if I did do such a fool thing, I’d have to get dressed. I was all ready for bed. In fact, I’m only wearing an — um — rather gaudy robe — “

“Zo come like you are, drezzed, undrezzed, what’s the differenze?”

“But — but what if I get arrested? I’m already in enough trouble with the cops, and they might really bust me. Not to mention the fact that I would never in my life live it — “

“Daddy, you’d better make up your mind in — in ten seconds. Or it’s all off!”

“You better believe it, zweetie. Zhe means it. And zo do I!”

“Ten … nine … eight…”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “You’re planning to shoot me to the moon or something? Kill me? Ambush — “

“Zeven, zix, five…”

Yeah, they were both in on it. Whatever it was. Even taking turns counting.

“Look,” I said, “I can’t just fly out of here with my wild Chinese robe flapping — just showing it in public could get me ten years — and go ripping through the streets of Hollywood, my God, especially Hollywood — “

“Four…”

“But — “

“Three…”

“But — “

“Two…”

“Well…”

“One!”

“Hold the phone! I’m on my way!”

“You better hurry up, though. Shell — “

“Yeah, you better make it zpeedy, zweetie.”

But that was the last I heard, because I’d hung up the phone, dashed to grab my car keys and zipped out the door.

Maybe they were nuts. Maybe I was nuts. Maybe they had some grim, evil, horrible, unthinkable fate in store for me. Like locking the door and peeking out the window at me, laughing like maniacs.

Or maybe …

As I jumped into the Cad, switched on the ignition and ripped out of the garage and down the alley and into the street, I was thinking: Whatever it is, whatever it isn’t, that’s life, old buddy, and if you’re going to live it you’ve got to take a chance once in a while.

And — at least when it concerns a lovely like Zena who was the whole Thousand and One Nights Entertainment rolled up into any single night of the year, or a tomato like Sylvia who, had she been born an Eskimo, might have melted all the igloos in Alaska — I’ll take a chance.

As I swung around the corner and headed toward Zena’s — and, I supposed, Sylvia’s — I got a quick but vivid impression of the morning skies, flaming reds, pinks, shadowy purples, wisps of dawn-gray, a fringe of violet.

That’s one of the nice things about Southern California. We have such glorious sunrises.

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