<code> Chapter One

I WAS as uncomfortable as the defendant in a rape case. It wasn’t physical discomfort; it was just the idea playing around in my mind that if the thing went off, it could blow a hole from one side of me to the other and I probably wouldn’t even feel the powder burns. I hoped the guy pressing the muzzle of his .45 automatic into the curve of my spine wasn’t as nervous as I was.

Besides the mental uneasiness, my head hurt. And I was mad.

It was a big, almost empty room. Empty of furniture, not people. The door was to my back and directly across the room was a brown pine desk with a swivel chair empty behind it. Two straight-backed wooden chairs in the same drab brown as the desk sat in front of it and on the left side of the desk was a low, yellow couch that seemed out of place alongside the dull, wooden office furniture.

The girl seemed out of place, too. She sat on the yellow couch with her legs drawn up under her and watched it all with a kind of twisted pleasure in her green eyes. She was getting a kick.

I watched it, too, but I didn’t get any kick out of it. I could feel the trickle of blood now, oozing down the side of my head. It had to be blood. After a bright play like this I knew it couldn’t be brains; it was either blood or sawdust.

“Nice party,” I said.

He turned with an easy grace and dabbed at his knuckles with a white silk handkerchief; a tall, bony man with a strange, booming name. Fleming Dragoon. He was slightly stooped as if his pendulous arms weighed down his narrow shoulders, yet, even so, he was majestically tall, three or four inches over six feet in height. His eyes glared at me from sunken sockets like two circles of polished coal.

Behind him, in one of the brown, straight-backed chairs in front of the desk, a little guy slumped and moaned through mashed lips. Just a little guy that had got in Dragoon’s hair. A little guy with no name and, now, practically no face.

Dragoon didn’t say anything to me. He looked past me to the two muggs at my back: one, big, red-faced, with the gun prodding my spine; the other, a smaller copy with no gun in sight, but an equally red face.

“You damn fools,” Dragoon growled. “What the hell did you bring him in here for?”

The big boy with the gun said, “He was hangin’ outside the door, boss. Listenin’. We figured he shouldn’t be listenin’ and you said you didn’t wanna be disturbed — “

“Yeah. I don’t want to be disturbed. So you bring him in.” He glared at the two punks and snarled. “Get out of here.” He jerked a long, bony thumb at the little guy slumped in the chair behind him, “And take Zerkle with you.”

“But, boss — “

“Beat it. Now.”

The pressure of the gun eased away from my back. The big goon walked over to the little guy with the bloody face and jerked him up out of the chair. Zerkle stood unsteadily, swaying, his head down on his chest. The little creep got on the other side of him and they half carried him from the room, his feet shuffling along the floor.

Dragoon looked at me. “Okay, Shell. What you snooping around my place for?”

“I wasn’t snooping. I’m on a case and came back to see you. I heard the guy in here yelling bloody murder. I stopped and waited to see what the hell was coming off and then your bodyguards sapped me.”

“Sorry they roughed you up. The boys are just a little anxious, I guess.”

“Sure. Impetuous. Don’t worry about the boys; I’ll take care of those two characters myself.

“No rough stuff, Shell. I mean it.”

I stared at him. “No rough stuff, huh? What the hell do you call this bloody damned part in my hair?” Just then I saw the girl out of the corner of my eye. She hadn’t moved. “Sorry, miss,” I said. “I forgot you were here.”

“It’s all right.” She smiled at me, a funny smile. Her lips lifted back slowly, exposing both rows of small, even, white teeth pressed together in front as if she were biting on something. Strange, peculiar, it was but not unattractive. A little vicious, maybe; a little wild.

“Sara,” Dragoon said to me, “my sister.” He turned to her, “This is Sheldon Scott, Sara. A no-good private dick. Don’t have nothing to do with no private dicks.”

She looked at her brother slantwise from the green eyes draped with incredibly long black lashes, then she swung her head back to me and gave me another one of those funny smiles. “Shouldn’t I have anything to do with private dicks, Mr. Scott?” Her voice was a throaty, musical purr like contentment out of a tiger.

“Call me Shell.”

“All right, Shell.” She said it like, “Yes, father,” but her green eyes laughed with me. Or at me. She uncurled her legs from the couch and stretched them out in front of her on the floor in one easy, silken movement.

I looked at her legs. I have a fondness for legs. Particularly legs like hers. They were well worth a second look, or as many looks as I could sneak in without seeming lecherous. The rest of her was nice like the legs. She was little, maybe five-feet-two, and about a hundred and five or ten pounds. Long-lashed green eyes, partly hidden under half-lowered lids, a pert nose, a small red mouth with sullen lips, and those small, even, white teeth. Her hair was cut short, fluffy around her small head, and as black as the bottom of the sea.

She said, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“About whether or not I should associate with private detectives.”

“Oh,” I said. “Depends on whether or not they’re what your brother calls no-good.”

“I’ll bet you’re good,” she said. “Did they hurt you?”

“Those two strong-arm boys?” She nodded and I said, “They did their best.”

“Let me see.”

“It isn’t anything. Skip it.”

“Let me see.” She pulled one of the wooden chairs out a little way in front of the desk. I sat down straddling the chair and leaned on the back and Sara came over and peered down at my head, then went out the door behind me. Dragoon walked over and folded his long frame down into the swivel chair and sat facing me.

I said, “Why the party? What’s the occasion?”

He leaned over the desk and frowned. “I was having me a little spelling bee with the crumb. He gets real wise and starts lifting my hard-earned cabbage.”

“Hard-earned,” I laughed. “With you paying off eighty-to-one tops on a two-horse parlay, and fifteen, six, and three across the board, I wouldn’t exactly call it hard-earned.”

“Okay. So I’m out a bundle anyway. A twelve-grand bundle.”

“Not exactly hay,” I agreed. “What was the gimmick?”

“The finks get their heads together in advance, then when a nice juicy long one gallops in they rig the payoff on a phony slip and split the take. Even at fifteen-to-one it adds up to a lot of fish.”

“They?”

“Well, him.”

“Sure.”

Dragoon bent his coal black eyes on me. “What for you’re so interested? Tell me that, Scott. You still haven’t spilled what you’re after and every time I see you you’re after something. What’s it this time?”

“Just curious. I came down to check on one of your boys. Joe Brooks: five-ten, hundred and sixty pounds, light straw-colored hair, blue eyes, little scar on the right side of his chin. He worked the horses for you out front; as a matter of fact, he handled the bets. Took the cash and markers, made some of the payoffs.” I grinned at him. “Coincidence.”

“What about him?” Dragoon growled.

“Joe was a hit-and-run two nights back. You know that, naturally. I’ve got a client wants to know more about it.”

“What more about it? He gets hit by a car. Bang, he’s dead. Simple.”

“Maybe. The way you tell it. My client wants a little more. Like maybe it wasn’t an accident. Like maybe it was convenient for somebody to have an accident arranged just for Joe. Preferably fatal. Like who might know more about the job.”

“You come to the wrong place, Shell.” He ran long, bony fingers through black hair matted on his head like boiled spinach. “You know,” he said, “a lot of guys wouldn’t like you comin’ around making noises like you’re making. But I’m an easygoing guy myself, so I pay it no never mind. As far as Joe’s concerned, he just gets hit by a car and that’s his funeral. Outside of that, I know from nothin’.”

While we talked, Sara had hunted up a basin of water and a clean rag. She came in the door carrying them, moving easily with a casual grace. Little and dark, kittenish — like a black panther cub. She wet the rag and started jabbing away at my scalp. Not patting, jabbing.

“For the love of Pete, woman,” I said, “take it easy.”

“Just cleaning it.”

“Leave some hair.”

“I like blonds,” she said. “You’d have awfully pretty blond hair if you’d let it grow. It’s too short. It sticks up like hair on an angry dog’s neck.”

“Thanks. I like it short.” She jabbed some more with the wet rag. I winced. “Lady,” I asked, “you trying to get a look at my brain?”

“Hold still. What happened to your nose?”

“It got banged into and I woke up with it busted. I didn’t have time to get it fixed.”

She jabbed at my brain some more.

I turned to Dragoon. “Got any ideas about who might want Joe Brooks dead? Anything I might be able to start working on? I’m starting from scratch on this thing. I came here first because he worked for you quite a while.”

He said again, deliberately, “I know from nothin’.”

Sara said, “I liked Joe. I like you better.”

“That’s nice.”

“I do. Really. I like big mean-looking men best. You’re sort of cute, too.”

She finished playing with my head and leaned back against the desk in front of me. She was wearing a black silk dress and it pulled tight against the curves of her small body. There were numerous curves, I noticed, properly distributed and surprisingly generous.

She said, “There. No one would ever know you got hurt.”

“I would.”

Her eyes widened as she looked at me and she exclaimed, “How interesting! You’re all banged up, aren’t you? What happened to your ear? Your left ear? It looks like the top of it’s gone.”

She thought that was wonderful.

“Miss Dragoon,” I said wearily, “I used to be in the Marines and got tangled up with a mortar shell that went off and tossed something into my nose. Broken nose explained. After I started my agency, a hoodlum, now deceased, took a shot at me, missed, and clipped off the top of the ear you’re admiring. Ear explained. My hair is blond because that’s how it grew and it’s short because I like it short. How’s that?”

There was no shutting this babe up. She squinted her green eyes together and said softly, “You killed him, didn’t you?”

“Killed who?”

“The man who shot at you.”

“Yeah. I aimed at his ear and missed.”

She just leaned against the desk and looked at me. It was peculiar. A lot of women have looked at me. I’ve got a strong jaw; gray eyes under screwy, nearly white eyebrows that slant up and out then change their minds and directions right at the end and swoop down at the corners of my eyes like a couple of truncated boomerangs; and I’m tanned the approximate color of a stiff bourbon-and-water. A lot of women have liked it and looked at me as if they liked it but never quite the way she was looking.

Her eyes bored into mine with a kind of hot awareness of me, but there was something else. Something half-hidden beneath the surface but alive there, like the pulse beating visibly in the hollow of her throat. She raised her right hand and let it rest against the curve of her neck. There was a small, moist smear of my blood on the back of her hand.

I jerked my gaze away from her and looked at Dragoon. “About Joe,” I said. “How long had he worked for you? What kind of company did he keep?”

“Look, Shell,” he said, “I know you for a couple years now, off and on. I see you around. I don’t want no trouble with you, with no law. Not in my business. But the only reason I say anything at all about Joe now is because I don’t know a damn thing. Why should I babble at the mouth when I know from nothin’ about him?”

He leaned back in the swivel chair and it squeaked like cheap chalk on a blackboard. “Here’s the whole picture,” he said. “Joe breezes in here from somewhere out of state about five, maybe six months or so back. He noses around and finds out I’m making book so he looks me up. He’s a likable kid and he’s worked the beetles before somewhere back East. I don’t know nothin’ against him so I take him on. Who he runs with, his life history, I don’t know about. And I don’t care about it. He works out O.K. so I’m satisfied.”

“Till you start losing a few grand on a screw-up?”

“Stop guessing.”

“Just thought I’d ask,” I said casually. “You wouldn’t polish a kid off just because a few grand turns up missing anyway. Would you, Dragoon?”

He didn’t bat an eyelash. “No. I wouldn’t polish a kid off. I can afford to drop a few grand; there’s more where that came from. It’s not the dough so much; it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Yeah, I hear you’re a great guy for principle.”

“Hell, you know what I mean. You let these punks get a half inch and soon they try to step on your face.”

Not quite as clear as it might have been, but I got the idea. He leaned forward again and let narrowed eyes stare at me from the sunken sockets. “But, Scott,” he said slowly, “you should be careful the kind of questions you ask. Some questions ain’t healthy for you, a bit.”

I grinned at him. Sara pushed away from the desk with a smooth rippling movement and came over close to me.

I looked up at her. “I didn’t thank you for mopping up my head. Thanks.”

“I didn’t mind. I just wanted to run my fingers through your hair, anyway. What there is of it.”

She put her wrist on my shoulder and let her fingernails stray back and forth at the base of my neck. Molecules in my spine started batting their brains out.

I asked, “You nervous?”

“Not a bit.”

“Well, you’re making me nervous.”

She half smiled, slanting a green-eyed look at me.

I pulled out a pack of cigarettes, offered her one and she shook her head. I fired one up, took a big drag and said to Dragoon, “I guess that’s all I get, huh?”

He nodded. “That’s all I got to give you, Shell.”

“O.K. Expect me back sometime.”

I took another big drag and then Sara got cute.

She pinched me. I mean, she really gouged me. She dug her fingernails into my neck like a lobster’s claws.

The smoke burned out through my throat as I yelled and jumped out of the chair. I turned around and glared.

She’d turned to face me, hands clasped in front of her, her mouth half open, the chin stuck out. Then her teeth pressed together in a tight smile.

I’m not sure whether I actually started out to spank that little hellcat, or whether it just happened that way. But I automatically took a step toward Sara and grabbed her wrist as I sat down in the chair again, yanking her toward me. She flopped over my thighs, apparently caught by surprise.

I held her with my left hand, raised my right in the air and then slammed it down with a satisfying thwack on her gently gyrating derriere, again and again.

I had never known Dragoon to laugh out loud at anything before, but when I glanced at him his mouth was stretched wide and a kind of happy snorting sound issued from it in strangled gusts while he banged the desk top gleefully with his open hand.

I hadn’t cooled off much since Sara had gouged me with those long red nails, but my heat had undergone a change, so that now it would have to be measured on an entirely different kind of thermometer. I had started out to spank this gal, but by the fourth or fifth thwack there was some question about what I was really doing.

I finally admitted it to myself: I wasn’t doing what I had started out to do, my heart wasn’t in it, and this that I was doing was something clear the hell removed from spanking. I wasn’t just getting even, either — I was way ahead and still gaining on her. It was time to stop.

I pushed Sara off my thighs and as she stood up she turned to face me. She didn’t say anything. Her jaw moved almost imperceptibly sideways, back and forth, the front teeth rubbing easily together. She didn’t look hurt, or angry, or embarrassed.

The corners of her small, sullen mouth curved up slightly. She was shaking as if she had St. Vitus’ dance. The palm of her hand was hot and moist.

Dragoon was still chuckling as I went out and shut the door behind me.

Nobody knew Fleming Dragoon ran a horse parlor except the L.A. vice squad, anybody who played the horses and a few other people. Even so, it was a pretty inconspicuous setup. You’ve got a hot tip on a pony in the fifth race at Belmont and you’ve got an extra two bucks in your pocket and you wonder where to go. In Los Angeles you go south on Grand to Eleventh and straight across the street. On the corner, extending about sixty feet on down Grand, is the Ace Joke Shop. It seems a little big for one of those novelty stores, but you can buy matches that explode when you strike them, chair cushions that go pffffft, horribly, when you sit on them, and about nine hundred other gadgets to either enliven or ruin a party depending on your sense of humor. But you don’t want gadgets; you’ve got a hot tip for the fifth at Belmont and it’s damn near post time, so you walk to the middle of the long, gadget-piled counter and you go through the middle of the counter where there’s a space to get in and out. You nod at Henry, the wizened little man that sells the gadgets, and he nods back at you because he knows you or else you wouldn’t get past the pfffffting cushions in the first place. Then you take a right, back toward the Eleventh Street end of the shop and on your left at the end of the counter, behind a big bookcase, there’s a door. You go through it.

You know the kind of room. On the right, guys with five o’clock shadow who take your money and fill out betting slips for you from behind a wooden counter, the speaker that gives out the wire service, results, odds. On the wall straight ahead of you and on the one to your left, scratch sheets, pages out of the Racing Form, dope sheets, showing what pigs are running at what tracks and how they’ve been running, and a ton of other information in an abbreviated code that’s completely unintelligible to a sheltered boy and makes only a little more sense to a tout. So you take a last look at the code on your horse, who is named Stupendous, and he’s been running like he had a fractured osselot and that’s good because he should pay the limit, fifteen-to-one, when he wins, which you know is today because you’ve got it straight from the feedbox. So you get reckless as a high school flash on his second date with the same girl and you make it four dollars on the nose. The guy gives you your paper slip and the squawk box says the horses are at the post, they’re off and running and then the race is over. And if that dope you got was straight from the horse’s mouth, then the horse was lying in his yellow teeth and you think the dope might conceivably have come from another portion of his anatomy. Anyway, you wonder what the hell happened to Stupendous.

If you want to ask the boss what happened to Stupendous, or shoot the bastard or spit in his eye, you go through a door in the middle of the left wall of the gambling hell and you’re in a narrow hall. On your right, a room that’s a storeroom of some kind; on your left, Fleming Dragoon’s office. But don’t stand outside the door and listen, because there are two nasty guys who hang around in the vicinity.

Got it? Know how to get there? O.K. But take it from me: don’t go. At least, don’t bet on Stupdendous….

I came out of Dragoon’s office into the narrow hall. One bulb centered in the ceiling spilled yellow light down the walls.

My pals with the red faces lounged up against the door of the storeroom. I walked down to them. The big guy was closest. He straightened up and sneered at me out of one side of his mouth.

He said, “How’s the head, snooper?”

I landed hard in the middle of his stomach with my right fist and felt it sink in. The breath rushed out of his lungs with a whoosh and he let out a little sigh as if he’d tried to say help and couldn’t finish, and the whispery sound hung on the air like the sound a man makes after a double shot of cheap bourbon. He bent over, gagging. I swung my left up from my hip and didn’t worry about the so-called button. There is a chin there, which is enough, and if I land on it solid, it is all button. I landed on it solid and felt the satisfying jar travel up my wrist and into my shoulder. He went down like a wet mop and sprawled in a motionless heap.

It took only a second, but the little guy was crouched over, his right hand digging under his coat. I stepped over the big guy and grabbed the little punk’s wrist. I twisted hard. He made a squeaking noise like air being forced out of a kid’s toy ballon and went down on his knees. I kept twisting till he bent back and his mouth opened and he said, “ah, ah,” over and over.

I reached under his coat, lifted out the gun and tossed it down to the end of the hall, then gave him the heel and back of my open hand twice across the face. His head whipped back and forth on his neck and his eyes glazed. I left the big guy piled up on the floor, the little guy down on his knees, and went out.

I glanced at my watch. It was five till seven and all of the horse players were long gone. Even the die-hards that try to make everything up on the last race. In the novelty shop, open for another five minutes, a couple high school kids were giggling over “art” slides and Henry, the salesman, was looking bored. I nodded at Henry and walked out into the sparse foot traffic on Grand. I bought a copy of the Sentinel from the newsboy on the corner, walked half a block down Eleventh to where my Cadillac convertible was parked.

The Sentinel was still pushing its campaign against reckless driving and traffic accidents. A box over at the left proclaimed, TWO TRAFFIC DEATHS IN LAST 24 HOURS and underneath it was a two column spiel condemning the follies of reckless driving and, particularly, blasting the mounting number of hit-and-run deaths that was helping to give L.A. a black eye with the National Safety Council. I read it through — Joe Brooks, the guy I was checking, had been an apparent hit-and-run kill — glanced at the comics and started the car.

I’d been told that Joe was living with his sister, Robin Brooks, at the time of his death. She lived out on Windsor near Beverly, so I headed out there pronto.

</code>

<code> Chapter Two

IT WAS a small stucco house, blue-green with white trim, just off Beverly in the 300 block on North Windsor. It was clean and cool-looking and small, like most of the other homes in that neighborhood. There was a well-kept green lawn in front, a flagstone path up to the front door.

I rang the bell and glanced down at my brown Cordovans. Calling on a lady, I wanted my shoes shined even if she turned out to be an old bat. They shined. While I admired their brilliance the door swung open and I raised my eyes slowly.

I saw a pair of low-heeled tan sandals with red-painted nails peeping out of the open toes; coarse strings tied around trim ankles; ankles curving gracefully into interesting calves; black, knee-length “clam-diggers” hugging swelling hips; bare white skin between the top of the clam-diggers and the bottom of a long-sleeved, cream-colored blouse that was tied tightly around the slim waist instead of tucked in conventionally; then the top of full, creamy breasts swelling above the open throat of the blouse like the scenes they cut out of movies; a smooth, white throat; and wham!

She was no old bat.

Maybe I should have started with the face, but if I had, I’d probably have missed all the fun I had getting to it. There was a dark eyebrow arched inquiringly over one eye and the eyes were dark and brown and big and wise. She had a small, straight nose and full, bright red lips curved slightly in an amused smile. Her hair was the rusty-red color you see once in a while in the early morning sky over South Pacific islands and there was lots of it. The thick hair framed the wise, beautiful face and brushed against her shoulders.

“Just come to look?” Her voice was pleasant, soft.

I gawked at her. “Sorry. You’re Miss Brooks?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t come just to look. I’d like to talk to you. About your brother.”

The half-amused smile went away and her face got sober. “Of course. Please come in.

I brushed past her, pleasantly, and went inside.

The living room looked comfortable and was nicely furnished. On the left was a big flagstone fireplace, empty now and screened off for the hot summer months. Beyond it was a modern, lime-green sectional divan that fitted into the corner made by the walls. The two halves of the divan were separated by a black, Chinese-modern table on which four books rested in shiny new jackets between heavy brass bookends fashioned in the shape of the upper half of a Balinese dancer who apparently had no modesty at all. To the right of the door, against the wall next to the street, was one of those well-equipped home bars made out of bamboo and red leather and grooved plywood curves and angles. It was red and yellow and green and looked as if wild music would blare out if you dropped a dime in it. Across from the bar, against the opposite wall, was a combination television set and hi-fi cabinet, stacks of records in shelves at the bottom. A couple of deep chairs rested in front of the set. Almost in the middle of the room and facing the fireplace was a long, low, green divan.

On the divan sat a slightly rumpled guy with his tie loose on a thick neck. He was pushing forty and just about one more little push would get him there. He was a big guy, about my size, which would make him a shade less than six-two and better than two hundred pounds. He was wearing a well-tailored gray suit and he just sat there with a half-empty highball glass in his right hand, an expression of annoyance on his sensual face and glared at me. I glared back just for the hell of it.

I turned to the girl in the peek-a-boo blouse, “I’m Shell Scott,” I said. “I’m a private investigator — “

“Yak,” from the guy on the couch, “a private eye.”

I looked over my shoulder at him, “Somebody asked you?” I inquired conversationally.

“Eddie!” the girl said sharply. Then to me, “How do you do, Mr. Scott. This is Eddie Kash. Eddie, Mr. Scott.”

He grunted at me. I grunted at him. We sounded like feeding time at the zoo.

Robin Brooks led me past the fireplace, deposited me in one half of the sectional divan and sat down in the other. She looked a little puzzled. “Did you say you were a private investigator?”

“That’s right.” I showed her my credentials.

“I don’t quite understand. That is, why a private detective would want to talk to me about Joe.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I hate to bother you so soon after your brother’s death, but I have a client who wants me to get all the information I can. Just a few questions, if it’s all right with you, Miss Brooks.”

I looked at her inquiringly and she slowly nodded her head, “I guess so.”

I said, “I’ll be as brief as I can. One thing, when you learned your brother had been found, did you have any idea his death might not have been an accident?”

“Not an accident?” Her brown eyes were wide. “Why, no, of course not. Why would anyone…” her voice trailed off. She frowned and said, “The police came here the night Joe was killed. They asked me the same thing, but I just thought they always did that.” She leaned forward and looked at me, “Do you think someone might have,” she hesitated and then went on, “might have killed Joe, well, intentionally?”

The blouse tied snugly around her slim waist had four buttons in sight, but the top three were unbuttoned. I had a hard time keeping my eyes on hers as I answered, “There’s always that possibility, Miss Brooks, however remote. Actually, I don’t think anything so far. I’m just checking up, asking questions around. It doesn’t mean anything yet.”

“But why?” She paused. “Who hired you? Somebody must have hired you.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you the name of my client. He asked me to keep him out of it.”

Eddie Kash got up off the divan and walked over and stood looking down at me. I guess he was tired of being ignored. He stared at me, so I cocked my head on one side and looked at him, then cocked my head on the other side and looked at him some more. His face started getting red.

“Something?” I asked pleasantly.

Robin stood up and put her hand on his arm. “Eddie, maybe you’d better go. I’ll see you later.” She guided him skillfully to the door and said, “Call me tomorrow. And you can put five on Blue Boy for me. All right?”

He said all right and he would, glared once at me over her shoulder and went out. She came back and sat down on her half of the sectional divan.

“He’s like a little boy sometimes,” she said. Then she fluttered her eyelashes at me. I could feel them flutter in my stomach. “He’s a little jealous,” she said.

“I don’t blame him.”

She smiled, “Thank you.”

“About this Blue Boy,” I asked her. “You play the horses?”

“Not much. Eddie does. Once in a while I let him bet something for me.”

“What’s he do? For a living, I mean.”

“Eddie?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I thought you wanted to talk about Joe.”

“I do. But Eddie interests me. He’s a lovely fellow.”

“Oh, he has a business of his own. Johnson-Kash Company. They make heating and ventilating equipment. I don’t know much about it but Eddie makes pretty good money.”

“Business of his own? The name sounds like a partnership.”

“It is. That is, it was. Eddie’s the sole owner now.”

“Now?”

“Four or five months ago Eddie’s partner was killed in a traffic accident. Wreck or something. The way Eddie explained it to me, both partners carried a kind of partnership insurance so that if one of them died, the surviving partner would have funds he could use to pay off the estate’s interest in the partnership. I understand it’s quite common for firms to pay premiums on that type of insurance.”

“Well, well.”

“What do you mean, well well?” She asked it pleasantly enough.

“Traffic accident. Like your brother?”

“Well, no, not exactly.” She pulled down her thin, dark eyebrows a little and squinted at me. “You ask the funniest questions.” She ran her hands down the length of the abbreviated trousers and made patting sounds on her bare knees while she looked at me. The upper part of her jiggled delightfully, like Jello.

I swallowed prodigiously.

“Can I fix you a drink?” she asked.

“Swell. Love it.”

She went over to the colorful little bar and busied herself. “Bourbon?”

“Fine. With water.”

She came back pushing a low, chromium-and-glass table with rollers on the bottom and all the fixings on top. The table was low and she had to bend way over to push it. I couldn’t help seeing. I shut my eyes a moment and said, No you don’t, Scott. No you don’t Investigate, remember?

I opened my eyes. She had the cool-looking drink extended toward my face and I could see her red lips curving in a smile behind it.

I took the drink. “Thanks,” I said. “Now tell me about Joe. What was he like? Who did he run around with? Who were his men friends, women friends, sweethearts. Any trouble he might have been in or anybody that might have had a grudge against him.” I stopped and looked at her, “I hope you don’t mind too much. All these questions, I mean.”

She shook her head and the rusty-red hair brushed against her shoulders. “No. It’s all right; I’m not too broken up about it, I guess. I hadn’t seen Joe for years until he came back here. I’ll tell you anything I can. I suppose you want to know about lately. Since Joe’s been back here?”

“Since he’s been back?” We were talking as if he were still alive.

“He was out East for several years. He just came to the coast again about six months ago. Last January, I think.”

“Good enough. Start there.”

I took a slug of my drink. It was good bourbon and it went down like good bourbon should. I peered at my watch. Seven-thirty; it was going to be one of those hot, muggy nights. I eased some more bourbon down my throat and relaxed against the cushions of the divan.

Robin said, “Well, Joe looked me up when he got in, of course. I put him up here and he started looking for a job. He got one with a Mr. Dragoon at a novelty shop.”

I grinned at her. “I know Fleming. I also know his novelty shop. Backward and forward. The novelty is that he calls it the Ace Joke Shop.”

She smiled with even white teeth, red lips and wise brown eyes. “All right, Mr. Scott. He got a job with a bookie. Better?”

“Better.”

“I didn’t much like his working there, but he needed a job and there was an opening. One of Mr. Dragoon’s help was ill.”

“I can understand that.”

She looked at me, puzzled, then went on, “He liked it there and worked there till — till the accident.”

“Who’d he run around with?”

“No one in particular. He was friendly with some of the other men who worked at the,” she smiled, “novelty shop. Then Joe knew Eddie, of course, and some of the other men who placed bets with him.”

“Eddie hang around Dragoon’s?”

“When the Northern tracks were running or when he wanted to bet something back East. That’s how I met Eddie.”

“O.K. You don’t know of any trouble Joe might have been in?”

“No. None at all, Mr. Scott.”

“Call me Shell.”

“Shell. I like that; it fits you. I got tagged with Robin Victoria Ellen Brooks.”

“All that?”

“All that. You can cut it to Robin.”

“O.K., Robin, do you have a picture of your brother around? All I’ve got so far is a description.”

“Sure. Just a minute. Mix yourself a drink if you like.” I liked.

I poured bourbon and water into my glass and added an ice cube while she went off into the bedroom or somewhere in back and rummaged around. She returned with a handful of photos, clicked on bright overhead lights and handed the pictures to me.

Four of them were night club shots inscribed, “Robin — All My Love — Joe,” and “Robin — Happy Birthday — Joe.” One of them was a snap taken in front of the house and the last was a hand-colored, eight-by-ten studio portrait inscribed “Robin — All My Love — Joe” in red ink with a fine, flowing hand. I kept the studio portrait and handed back the others. He wasn’t a bad-looking little guy, blond like me, a faint little wisp of mustache on his upper lip looking as though he’d forgotten to shave for a couple of days, the hair worn long, swept back over his ears and there was a small scar on his chin. Not bad looking but a little insipid, I thought. About twenty-four or five, say a year or two younger than Robin. I handed the portrait back.

“The earthly remains of Joe Brooks,” she said. A bit sadly, I thought.

To distract her a little I said, “Joe what? I mean, what names besides Joe?” I grinned at her, the bourbon warm in my stomach.

“Just Joe.”

“Just Joe?”

“Well, Joseph. Joseph Brooks. That’s all.”

“They must have used all the names up on you, huh?”

She nodded her head at me and played with her glass. It was empty. My glass was empty too. Terrible.

“How about girl friends?”

“Nobody. Nobody I knew about anyway. He’d go out with the boys once in a while. That’s about all. A little poker, a stag now and then. No women.” She waved the portrait at me, “He wasn’t a bad-looking man. Just didn’t fool around. Stayed home and read the Racing Form most of the time.”

“You sure?” I asked. That kind of attitude always throws me. Maybe because it’s not my attitude. Definitely not.

“As far as I know,” she said.

“How about you?” I asked. “I mean the night he was killed. Where were you? Police come here?”

“Yes. I was home all evening. Watched television. The police came about eleven or a little after. Joe had been out for an hour or two then. I didn’t know where he was. He’d just told me he was going out to see a friend of his, a fellow named Harry Zerkle, for a little while. That was about nine or nine-thirty, I think. Next thing, the police were here telling me he’d been hit by a car. They asked me some of the same questions you have, but I guess I didn’t pay too much attention, I was so frightened.”

As soon as she’d mentioned Harry Zerkle, I got a picture in my mind of the little guy with the meat-loaf face in Dragoon’s office. I said, “Zerkle? Did you say Joe left to see this Zerkle?”

“That’s right.”

“Friend of his?”

“Yes. I think it was someone he’d met fairly recently down where he worked. One of the horse-players, I imagine; I never met the man.”

I filed that away for later. I said. “Anything else?”

“Not much. The police asked me a few questions about Joe and then I had to go down and identify him. It was pretty awful.” She shuddered violently and put her glass to her lips. She seemed surprised that it was empty.

She sighed and shook her head. “Let’s not get morbid.” She smiled. “Drink?”

“O.K. One more, then.” I didn’t want to make a pig of myself. It was sure good bourbon. But what bourbon isn’t? The way I was beginning to feel, it must also have been potent bourbon.

The little mixing table was between us and she leaned over and poured and mixed. She leaned way over. I’ve mentioned the four-button blouse she had on with three buttons unbuttoned. This time I didn’t close my eyes; I was practically through investigating anyway. For the time being.

She didn’t have on a brassiere. I wasn’t guessing; there wasn’t any doubt about it. No brassiere, just the stuffing. But what stuffing!

I was admiring the stuff with my eyes protruding when she looked up and caught me. She didn’t straighten up or get bashful or try to hide anything. She just smiled. a little wickedly I thought. I hoped.

“Newest style,” she said.

“How?”

“Style. It’s all the rage.”

“Rage. Yeah. I’ve been waiting years for it.” I swallowed a couple of times, took another look, and said stupidly, “Nice. Yes sir. Looks cool.”

“It is,” she said. “Nice for summer.”

“Nice for summer. Uh-huh.”

She finished mixing the drinks and sat up. Everything went back into its proper place including my eyes.

I had it all planned. I’d take the drink, toss it down and ask politely for another. But instead we sat there and sipped at our drinks and made small talk. I found out her parents were both dead. Mother when she was born, father just after she graduated from Hollywood High. No, she hadn’t ever thought of going into the movies, ha, ha. Silly boy. No, really, I mean it. Silly, silly, silly. She’d worked around at various jobs: movie usherette, cashier, waitress for a while, did a little modeling now. I told her I’d got the fine scar over my left eyebrow from brass knuckles — thirteen hoods had attacked me and I’d pulled off their limbs and beaten them to death. Yeah, thirteen. Yeah, beat them all to death. By the time I’d massacred all those hoods, it was eight o’clock.

I stood up weaving hardly at all. “Thanks for the information, Robin. I’ve got a couple places to go from here. Did I bring a hat?”

“You didn’t bring a hat.” She saw me to the door. opened it and leaned against the wall. “Come back if you need anything else,” she said.

I ground my molars together, nodded at her, leered and went out.

</code>

<code> Chapter Three

THE SUN was long gone, but half a block down Windsor, a steady stream of cars rushing east and west lit up Beverly Boulevard. Friday night — people going out on the town: high school kids with three months’ savings heading for the bright lights in rented tuxes; movie people wrapped in mink and dark glasses on their way to a reserved table in some exclusive club on the Strip. Somewhere in L.A. or the flicker city maybe, a guy getting rolled in an alley or the back room of a cheap hotel. Laborers, executives and clerks out on the town — and all of them sweating like drunks in a steam bath. Damn, it was hot. Someone should make underwear out of blotters. There’d be a fortune in it.

I climbed into the Caddy, rolled out the wind-wings and pulled into the packed traffic on Beverly, headed toward downtown L.A. and police headquarters. No Ciro’s or Mocambo for me, not tonight anyway. After this case, maybe. There was a big fee in it when I was through. And the guy paying for my superlative services could well afford it; he had plenty of the folding green.

The way it started, I was feeding the dozen guppies I’ve got in a ten-gallon aquarium in my office in the Hamilton Building on Broadway downtown, when the phone started making sounds like a cash register. I hoped.

The guy on the other end of the phone was the man with all that folding green. Victor Peel, calling from his ultra swank night spot on Wilshire Boulevard. It was a job, he said, would I please come over? I would and did. That had been at six o’clock, approximately two hours back.

Peel’s night spot was appropriately named the Seraglio, which Webster defines as a harem or, loosely, a place of licentious pleasure. I’d been there before but never on business. Not this kind of business.

You go inside and after the at least partial visibility on Sunset, it seems like suddenly everything goes black. But after your eyes get accustomed to the gloom, it’s cool and pleasant.

One of the reasons it’s pleasant is the hat-check girl on your left. You check something with her and admire the lady’s costume. And the lady. Her costume is repeated on all the other concession gals in the Seraglio and you don’t mind the repetition a bit: sparkling imitation jewelry studding a dangerously skimpy brassiere which looks transparent but isn’t; and a pair of long, bloomer affairs resembling the things Turkish gals wear in B pictures, made out of cheesecloth or similar stuff which looks transparent and is. After you’ve admired the check room cutie’s costume while she smiles at you like one of the Sultan’s favorite wives, you do an about-face, stumble down three steps and you’re in the night club proper. Some people say night club improper.

At a quarter after six in the P.M., the place was just a long, dark wood and chromium bar on the right facing twenty empty stools, and a bunch of white-covered tables grouped around the small dance floor squeezed in front of an empty bandstand.

I skirted the bandstand on the right and walked up to a velvet-covered archway. A big guy with a beautiful red nose stood in front of the archway with thick arms folded over his barrel chest. The small gardenia in the lapel of his dark dinner jacket wasn’t nearly big enough to hide the bulge under his left arm. I stopped in front of him and admired the splendor of his nose.

“I’m Shell Scott,” I said. “Peel wants to see me.”

“What’s he want to see you about?” He had a rumbling voice like San Pedro Harbor on a foggy night.

“I wouldn’t know. He just wants to see me. Let’s ask him.”

He thought about that a while, like a man moving a piano with his brains, then said, “O.K., come on. You first.”

He followed me through the archway, down a narrow hall past a couple dressing room doors which unfortunately were closed, then left down another hall to a door marked, “Private.”

He knocked and in a minute the door opened and a chunky guy with blue eyes like ice cubes, long sideburns and a thick brown mustache looked out at us.

“Yes?”

“You called me,” I said. “Shell Scott.”

“Of course. I’m Victor Peel.” He said it like it was Abraham Lincoln.

He nodded at Red-Nose behind me and I went in.

Peel shut the door and the room got very quiet. Soundproofed. Then he nodded me to a chair and asked, “Do you drink, Mr. Scott?”

“Almost anything.”

I told him what I preferred and he got busy at a bar on the left of the room while I sat down in front of a huge mahogany desk and watched him. He was heavy, about five-feet-ten and a hundred and ninety pounds. Close to forty-five, with a mat of thick, dark brown hair flecked with gray at the temples, and well-dressed in an obviously tailored brown suit. His face was heavy, square, with little blobs of what looked like fat at the back of his jaws. He made the drinks with an efficient economy of motion, handed me mine in a tall glass and sat down.

“How would you like,” he said, “to make five thousand dollars?” His speech was soft, clipped, almost bookish.

“All right,” I said. Depends.”

“On what?”

“On what I have to do to get it.”

He grinned. I noticed his teeth were a little crooked. “I expected something like that,” he said. “It’s nothing illegal. Probably it will be just routine for you, Mr. Scott. If I had wanted something illegal done I should have chosen another man. I checked very thoroughly on you, Mr. Scott, in my limited time. I’m a thorough man.” He rubbed his chin with a thick-fingered hand. He needed a shave. He continued, “I want you to investigate the death of a man named Joe Brooks. On Wednesday night he was killed in what was apparently an accident. Hit-and-run. He was apparently hit by a car and his body was discovered on Solano Avenue about eleven at night. I say apparently, because for reasons of my own I suspect that he was murdered. I want you to determine the facts and if Mr. Brooks was murdered, which I am quite sure is the case, determine who killed him.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “It looks like this Joe Brooks gets hit by a car and killed. You think it’s murder and you want me to find out who and why. Right?”

“Exactly.”

“Screwy.”

He frowned at me from the brittle blue eyes by lowering his straight, thick brows a quarter of an inch. “Mr. Scott,” he said deliberately, “I have not the slightest interest in whether or not this is, as you say, screwy. I’ve told you what I want and I believe you’ll find in time that it is not an unusual request. If you do not wish the case, you have merely to say so. All this is, of course, in confidence.”

“Sure.”

“You’ll take the case?”

I thought it over for a minute while I looked around the office: beige walls, slightly darker ceiling, indirect lighting, three heavy leather chairs, desk, swivel chair, Venetian blinds, bar. Nice. And expensive.

“O.K.,” I said. “I still think it’s screwy.”

“Fine.” He showed me his crooked teeth again and pulled a long, ostrich-leather wallet from his inside coat pocket.

He riffled a mass of bills and pulled out a thin sheaf of green, slid it across the smooth dark top of the mahogany desk. I picked it up and thumbed through it. Hundreds, ten of them. Ten C-notes. I slipped the pretty things into my wallet.

“A thousand now, four thousand when you’ve finished,” he said.

“Suits me.”

He leaned back in his chair and caressed his thick mustache with big, blunt fingers. Wiry brown hairs sprouted from the back of his hand. “Now,” he said, “I have certain information which may be of help to you. This Brooks works or, rather, worked for a betting commissioner named Fleming Dragoon.”

“I know him.”

“You know his place?”

I nodded and gargled some of his bourbon.

“Good,” he continued. “Mr. Brooks lived, I understand, with his sister, a Robin Brooks. He had been there for some months.” He handed me a slip of paper with a North Windsor address written on it. “So far as I know, he had been in no outstanding trouble. If he had, I naturally want to know about it. As a matter of fact, Mr. Scott, I want to know every slightest development in the case. That must be clearly understood.” He glared at me.

“Don’t pop a blood vessel,” I said. “It’s understood.” He blinked. “That’s all the information I have. I’d like you to get started on it immediately.”

“Tonight,” I said. “Right away.”

I finished my drink, walked over and put the glass on the little bar. “I’ll come back in to see you when I get anything,” I told him. “I’ll report to you personally. No written reports. I’m my own secretary. If things start to pop, I might be out of touch for days, maybe weeks. I’ll keep you posted as much as I can. When the thing winds up, I’ll make you out a report if you want it. In triplicate.”

He pursed thick lips together, then said, “That will be eminently satisfactory.”

“How about a little more,” I said.

“A little more what?”

“Dope. Information. What’s your angle? Where do you fit in with a guy getting knocked off on a dark road. I’d like to make a little sense out of this set-up.”

He wound his hands together on the desk and patted two thick thumbs together. “I have my reasons for desiring this information, Mr. Scott. They are private reasons; you are a private detective. Enough said.”

“Not enough. But I’ll buy it. For now. But,” I growled at him, “I reserve the right to return your retainer,” I tapped my hip, “and get the hell out if I think the deal’s starting to stink.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute, then nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. His eyes looked frozen; he looked as if he could be rougher than Red-Nose outside in the hall.

I looked at my watch. It was six-thirty. “I’ll get to work,” I said. “There’s probably somebody still at Dragoon’s. I can start there.”

“All right, Mr. Scott. The matter is now in your hands. One thing more, you’re completely free on this, except I wish you to leave me entirely out of the investigation.”

“O.K. You’re out.”

I didn’t see him press any buzzers or flash any signals, but the door behind me opened and Red-Nose stuck his beautiful beak in. “Everything O.K., boss?”

Peel nodded, “Mr. Scott is leaving, Charles.”

I walked over to Charles. “I know,” I said, “me first.”

At the velvet-draped archway I said, “Charles, you’d better get a bigger gardenia.” He started moving pianos again and I left him.

I stopped at the check room and gave the willowy blonde my ticket. She unhooked my handkerchief from the elastic band of her Bagdad bloomers and handed it to me.

She tilted her head back and looked down her nose at me. “It’s an odd thing to check,” she said smiling.

I grinned at her, “It’s also an odd place to check it.”

“I’m lazy.”

“I’ll bet. I don’t wear a hat; that gave me an excuse to come back.”

She moistened her lower lip with a pink tongue, “You don’t need an excuse, mister.” She smiled some more and I took a deep breath and went out.

That’s how it started.

</code>

<code> Chapter Four

SAMSON looked up from behind his paper-littered desk and gave me a big friendly frown. Samson’s like that. Big and extremely hard boiled — on the outside — with iron-gray hair and a strong, clean-shaven jaw. Detective Captain Phil Samson, eighteen years in the department, thirteen in homicide. A good, honest cop. I liked him.

I pulled up a chair, straddled it and lit a cigarette. There was another guy already talking to Samson. A young, nice-looking kid about twenty-five or so, clean-cut, not very big and neatly dressed in a dark blue, pin-stripe suit.

“If you’re busy,” I said, “I can come back later, Sam.”

“We’re about through. But don’t bother me too long,” he growled pleasantly, “I’m ready to hit the hay.” He turned to the kid, “Meet Shell Scott, Kelly. Shell, this is Tommy Kelly, reporter on the Examiner.

We said how-do-you-do’s and Sam stuck a black cigar in his mouth. He asked around the cigar, “What’s it this time, Shell?”

“Guy named Joe Brooks. Hit-and-run Wednesday night. I’m checking it for a client. Anything fishy about it?”

Samson gave me a funny grin, “You and Kelly should get together. We were just talking about the same thing. Not Brooks especially but hit-and-run. You know the stink the papers are making about it.”

Kelly chimed in, “Yeah,” he said in a high, eager voice, “the Sentinel’s riding high on it. How I’d love to get a scoop on that outfit.” He grinned boyishly then subsided into silence.

“We’ve been checking this hit-and-run thing a couple months now,” Samson said slowly. “Checking back. A lot of them have been screwy. His big jaw wiggled like a lump of cast iron while he chewed viciously on his cigar. “Not much I hate worse than a hit-and-run. Some mugg gets charged up or drunk and behind the wheel of a car, bangs into some guy, then runs off and leaves him dead or getting ready to die. Or crippled.”

“What’s with homicide?” I asked.

“There’s been some screwy angles. Like we get a guy on a hit-and-run call looks like he’s been clipped on the highway somewhere. Only he’s all beat up maybe. Or maybe the only mark on him that could have killed him is like a monkey wrench instead of a car bumper. Maybe the guy’s supposed to be home eating dinner only he’s ten miles away on a dark road. Things like that.”

I took a last drag and ground out my cigarette. “So what does it add up to?”

“It adds up to something big. And vicious. Same old story with a new twist. You know how it is, Shell. In a big city there’s always a lot of big guys. The big guy wants somebody out of his hair or just out of the way. And the big guys don’t do their own jobs. They almost always hire it done like we’d hire someone to wash the car or mow the lawn. A simple business transaction, that’s all.”

Samson stopped and lit his cigar. I’d been waiting for that; I knew he’d get around to it sooner or later. Usually it was later. He got the cigar dragging to his satisfaction and said from behind a cloud of foul-smelling smoke, “The way it looks, the kill boy, or organization or gang, whatever you want to call it, gets paid for a job. They fix the guy — bang him over the head, beat him, tie him up, anything — then smack into him with a car or run over him and that’s the end of that. Maybe they dope the victims; we’ve picked up dead hay smokers, hop-heads, drunks, a little of everything.”

I said, “Aren’t you maybe reaching a little for that one? This master-mind or organization stuff, Sam?”

He shook his big head. “Uh-uh. Too many of them. And too many of them stink. The only way it figures is that some bastard or bunch of bastards is behind it. Another thing, who knows how many of them don’t show. A neat job and how the hell you going to tell it wasn’t just an accident? How you going to trace a front bumper or a lead pipe?” He started sinking his teeth into the cigar butt again, rolling it from one side of his wide mouth to the other. “Besides,” he went on, “Kelly here’s been working on it, too, and that’s the way it adds.”

Kelly came out of his retirement. He nodded his head vigorously. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s the straight copy all right. I been with the Examiner over a year and I got some, well, kind of shady friends I guess you’d say. He grinned self-consciously. “It stacks up like Captain Samson says, though. These friends, they don’t come right out and say some gang’s behind it, but they’ve dropped a lot of hints and stuff while I was nosing around.” He grinned, “Man, what a story. If I could bust something like that, they’d give me the paper. They sure would.”

“How about this Joe Brooks?” I asked Samson. “That’s the one I’m on.”

“Another funny one. He’s picked up on Solano Avenue out there at Elysian Park about eleven at night, stiffer than a frozen mackerel. He’s mashed up pretty fair and scratched to beat hell front and back and his face messed up some, too, like maybe he’d been tossed and rolled quite a way along the side of the road.”

“You look at the body?” I asked.

“No. I got all the reports, though. When the body’s posted, he’s so full of hooch he could stay drunk for a week.”

“Maybe,” I said, “he went partying and stepped in front of a truck.” Samson scowled at me disgustedly and I said, “Weak, huh?”

“Weak. Somebody did a job on the guy. He wasn’t hit by a car in the first place and in the second, the top of his head’s bashed in. The top. We gave it out as another drunk hit-and-run for the time being.”

“Enter the proverbial blunt instrument, huh?”

“Yeah. Besides that, what’s he doing way the hell out on Solano? How’d he get out there? If he’s on a binge or a party, where’s the rest of the party? I don’t know; we’re checking all the usual angles. Sent his prints and description up to the ICC in Sacramento and sent the dope air mail special to the FBI in Washington to see if they got anything on him. He’s new to us.

“How’d you find him? Somebody call in?”

“That’s right. There’s practically no traffic out on Solano, particularly that late at night in the middle of the week. A kid out on a date — looking for a dark road, I guess — saw Brooks folded up at the side of the road. He stopped but didn’t get out when he saw the way the guy was sprawled out, turned around and hightailed it to a phone. The call came in to the complaint board and the fast car got out a few minutes after that. He’d only been dead maybe an hour or so.”

I asked, “You checked the sister and the place where he worked?”

“Sure we checked. Nothing much there; not yet anyway. The sister says the last she knew, her brother took off to see a little punk named Harry Zerkle. She doesn’t know what for. We check Zerkle, and Brooks was going to see him all right, but he never got there.”

“So Zerkle says?”

“So Zerkle says.”

I remembered Kelly. “You’re pretty quiet, kid,” I said to him.

“I guess so; I been listening. I’m interested in the story.

See, I came out here about a year back and got on with the Examiner. This is the first really big thing I’ve had a chance at — putting my own time in on it.” He grinned, “Like the Captain is.”

Samson said, “Kelly’s stringing along with us on this; nothing breaks till we say go. Turnabout, he gets some of the inside from us.” He took his cigar from his mouth and deposited it in a glass ash tray on his desk; he’d practically worried the end of it off. “It isn’t just one job, like Brooks, with us. It’s a lot of guys, how many we don’t know for sure. We got a list — Kelly’s got a copy. Hit-and-runs, out-and-out kills and borderline cases. We’re trying to check up on them all. The ones still listed as accidents or unsolved, open. Some of them go pretty far back, but maybe we can pick up something, fit them together.” He turned to Kelly, “Give Shell a gander at that list, son.

Kelly reached into his coat pocket and handed me a clear carbon on thin tissue, a list of names. Long ones, short ones, American, Mexican, Polish: Jesus Atencia, Elias Johnson, Holdak Kryzinski, William Martin, Howard Hansen, about twenty of them ending with the name of Joseph Brooks. I glanced over the list and handed it back to Kelly. “That looks like it could be a hell of a mess of work.”

Samson growled, “And it could be a hell of a mess of murder, too. Those are just the funny ones. There’s a lot more that weren’t screwy.”

Kelly looked at his watch. I’ll run along,” he said. “Thanks for your time, Captain Samson.” He turned to me, “Awfully glad I met you, Mr. Scott.” He smiled pleasantly and stuck out his hand. I shook his hand, and he left.

I looked across the desk at Samson.

“What about this Harry Zerkle? You said you quizzed him.”

“Just what I told you. We talked to the guy and Brooks was maybe going to see him that night, Wednesday. It wasn’t definite, but Zerkle stays at his house and waits for him, but he doesn’t show.”

“How do you know Zerkle stayed there and waited for Joe?”

“He lives at a boarding house out on Alvarado off Olympic. Ten people saw him there. He even played pinochle most of the night.”

“I might want to talk to him. What’s his address?”

Samson gave me a number on Alvarado and I made a note of it. A couple of ideas were playing around in my head trying to mate, but nothing had come of it yet. I said, “You think this Brooks thing is just one more in a line, huh?”

That’s the way it adds.” He squinted at me and said slowly. “Something else that’s screwy.”

“What’s that?”

“What’re you doing on a case that’s supposed to be a hit-and-run? What’s any private eye doing on it for that matter? How come this client of yours, whoever he is, has you checking up on a little punk that’s found alongside the road?”

“You know as much about that as I do, Sam. All I know is the guy wants me working on it. And for very pretty money.

“A guy, huh? You wouldn’t want to tell me what guy?”

“Uh-uh. That’s part of the conditions of the job. The guy keeps clean. And maybe I just said guy to throw you off. Maybe it was a gal.”

Samson rested his eyes on me for a long second. “O.K., Shell, you know I’m not going to press you. But give a listen a minute. I know you think you can take care of yourself and you’ve been able to so far, but could be there’s some mighty rough boys mixed up in this. Don’t miss any bets.”

I stood up and grinned down at him, “Don’t worry yourself into an early grave, Sam. I’ll carry an extra gun or something.”

“Sure. Knowing you, you’ve probably lost the one you’ve got.”

I peeled back my coat and showed him the butt of the short-barreled .38 Colt Special snug in its spring shoulder holster. “I have to carry a gun,” I told him, “the girls wouldn’t think I was a private dick if I didn’t.”

He hauled out a fresh cigar and sank his teeth into it. “Go on, stupid. Get the hell out. I got work to do.”

I left him shoving the black cigar back and forth in his wide mouth.

</code>

<code> Chapter Five

MY CAR was parked in the San Pedro Street lot be hind the Police Building. I walked out of the building and turned right toward First Street. It was nine o’clock and it had cooled off a little. A feeble breeze trickled down from the north. A guy stepped out of the shadow.

“Mr. Scott?”

“Yeah?”

“This is Kelly, I thought I’d wait and talk to you, if it’s all right with you.” He fell into step beside me.

“Sure, Kelly, what’s on your mind?”

“Well, about this case you’re on. I’m kind of working on the same thing, you know, like Captain Samson said. I thought maybe we could kind of work together on some of it.” He laughed, embarrassed.

“Okay by me.”

“I’ve got lots of ideas,” he said in an eager voice, lots of them.”

We were at my car. I said, “Where you headed?”

“Well, home, I guess. I just waited around to talk to you a little.”

“Hop in. I’ll drive you.”

He jumped in and I slid under the wheel and revved up the motor. Kelly lived at the Holloway Hotel on Norton Street off Wilshire, he said, so I swung over to Wilshire, and took a right.

We were well out Wilshire and up ahead on the right I could see the lights of the Seraglio. Out front was a big neon sign that lit up the sky like a naughty rainbow. It was supposed to represent one of the Sultan’s more voluptuous cuties. Her hips swung from side to side provocatively each time the lights flashed on and off. Not too subtle, but it made the sightseers wonder if there were live ones like that inside.

I suddenly realized I was hungry. “You eat?” I asked.

“No. Not yet. I got to talking to Captain Samson.”

“The Seraglio’s up ahead. Come on in and I’ll buy you a meal.”

“Well,” he hesitated. “Sure. That’d be well. I’ll have to call my wife, though.”

“You’re married?”

“Sure am. Got the best wife in the world. Two years now. You ought to meet her.”

“Sure,” I said.

“You married?’ he asked.

“Nope.”

“Gee, how old are you, Mr. Scott?”

“Thirty.”

“And you’re not married?” He seemed mildly incredulous.

The Sultan’s cutie was swinging it almost directly overhead now so I wheeled in and left the car with the attendant.

The willowy blonde was standing behind the counter in the check room with a bored expression on her face. She swung her merry eyes up at me and smiled. I took Kelly’s hat. “I’ll check this for you,” I said. He nodded and looked around him.

I asked. “You ever been here before?”

He shook his head, no.

I said, “See what you’ve been missing?” He laughed and said he sure did and didn’t the girls get cold?

I walked over to the blonde. She had high cheek bones and pleasantly curved lips. “I borrowed this just for you,” I said extending Kelly’s hat. “I’m curious to see where you check it.”

She tilted her head back in a way I was beginning to like and looked down her nose at me. She didn’t say anything, just pursed up her lips and took the hat from my hand.

She was put together as if I’d planned it myself: full, high breasts; slim, bare waist; pleasantly swelling hips; and long, long, terrific legs. She took the hat, turned on her heel and walked to the back of the booth, jiggling just a little. I watched her walk. It was like watching a floor show.

She came back and gave me a check. “Where’ve you been?” she asked dryly. “I thought you’d be back hours ago.”

“Busy,” I said just as dryly. “Had to go break my dates.”

“You’re Shell Scott, aren’t you? The private eyelid?”

“Private investigator, madam. How’d you know? And what’s your name?’

“Maxine. And I asked about you. I asked Mimi. She told me all about you.” The last a little slyly, I thought.

“Mimi?”

“Mimi.” She nodded at a point behind my left shoulder.

I looked around at a little, dark, cute lass hanging onto a tray of cigarettes. Mimi. She stared at me coldly. I smiled pleasantly at her. She stared at me coldly. I gave up.

I said to Maxine, “Oh.”

She smiled. Not vicious, just a nice smile. “Mimi said you eat raw beefsteak for breakfast.”

“She said that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well,” I said, “not always. Sometimes I eat hormones.

She smiled and raised an eyebrow, “What I want to know, Mr. Scott, how does she know what you have for breakfast?”

I leered at her and walked to Kelly. He was still looking. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s grab a table.”

The nightclub proper wasn’t what it had been at six in the afternoon. Almost all of the white-covered tables grouped around the dance floor were filled with people laughing, drinking, talking. A pleasant hum of conversation, giggles, and the tinkle of ice in tall glasses replaced the quiet of the afternoon. An eight-piece orchestra was playing Body and Soul while dreamy-eyed couples swirled around on the tiny dance floor; also couples not so dreamy-eyed, but just plain pie-eyed. Half a dozen smooth, well-upholstered lasses in the spangled, not-transparent bras and the transparent Turkish trousers undulated among the tables like houris out of the Arabian Nights.

Marcel, the dapper, thin-mustached head waiter, approached us smiling and rubbing his hands together. A table? But, yes. An exquisite table. The floor show would soon be commencing; our table would almost be part of the floor show. Certainement, monsieurs, but exquisite. He finally got us seated at a table near the dance floor. I wouldn’t have called it exquisite myself, but it wasn’t behind a post.

We got settled and I said, “How about a drink before dinner, Kelly?”

“All right. Wow, I forgot. I better call my wife.”

“Okay. I’ll order while you phone. What you drinking?”

“Martini, I guess. Be right back.”

He got back just as the drinks arrived and we sipped at them while we studied the menus. I ordered the prime-rib dinner and Kelly settled for a top sirloin.

Three more Martinis later the food started arriving and Kelly said, “My wife would sure like this.”

“Should have asked her down,” I said.

“Couldn’t. She has to stay with the kid. Year old.” His face brightened, “Look,” he said, digging in his hip pocket.

I knew what was coming and I steeled myself for the ordeal. It was quickly over. I looked at the pictures of young Kelly, mumbled words to the effect that undoubtedly no finer example had ever been produced and the pictures were back in his wallet, his wallet in his pocket.

He nodded at me seriously, “Yes siree, sir. Smart. Smart kid, that.”

I was saved by the prime-ribs.

You know prime-ribs? To me they’re the quickest and most luscious short cut to gastronomical pleasure. You should have seen these. I almost hated to see them go. Conversation died while we attacked the prime-ribs and steak and spurted up again when we leaned back with almost simultaneous sighs of pleasure.

“I’m stuffed,” Kelly said. “Wonderful food.”

I ordered more drinks. We drank. I ordered more.

We drank more. Things were very pleasant and rosy. I felt wonderfully relaxed and comfortable.

Kelly expertly polished off the last of his Martini and took out the olive on its little yellow stick. He examined it intently through slightly droopy eyes, top, bottom, sides. Before he got through, he knew much about that olive. Then he popped it into his mouth and leaned over the table.

“Scott,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“I got a plan.” He sounded like a conspirator.

“Okay. What’s the plan?”

“Big thing,” he said. “Really big. Scoop.”

“What’s the plan?”

“I hire the organization to do a job for me. Murder somebody. Get a terrific scoop.”

I sat up straight and almost spilled my bourbon-and-water. “You nuts?”

“Not nuts.”

“You’re drunk. Forget it.”

“Not drunk. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Say it again,” I said. “Say it slow and easy. Elucidate. Stop drinking. Give it to me again.”

“Okay. Elucidation. One. You talked to Captain Samson, you know the set-up, people get knocked off all the time, hit-and-run, no clues. Two. Somebody’s doing the jobs for pay, for money, business. Three. I hire them, find out all about the organization, expose them, tremendous scoop, they give me the newspaper. Elucidation, simple.”

I stared at him incredulously. “Kelly, you’re off your trolley. Just one simple question. Supposing this wasn’t just a screwy pipe dream, which it is, what do you pay the boys with? What do you use for money, marbles? No, that wouldn’t work; you’ve lost all your marbles.”

“Got money. Anyway, pay them later. Don’t really pay them at all. How do I know how much they charge? Maybe I get a bargain job. Nothing to worry about.” He lowered his head and looked at me from bloodshot eyes. “Say,” he said gruffly, “Whadda you mean, lost my marbles?”

“Of all the crackpot capers.” I glared at him. “This takes the cake. This ties it. Another thing,” I said with maybe a trace of exasperation, “just in case you didn’t know, it’s against the law to go around arranging to have people bumped off. It’s illegal, see?”

“Relax,” he said. “Nobody really gets bumped off. I’m just pretending. Once I get it set, we call the cops in. All kinds of cops. Protection. Put everybody in jail.”

I stared at him blankly, as if he were in a museum. “This is great. You blithely say, look, organization, this poor sucker here has done me a grievance. Knock him off.” I shook my head. “Incidentally, who is this poor sucker?”

“You.”

Just like that. No hemming. No hawing. Just “You.”

He upended his already empty glass and burped gently.

I sighed. “Kelly,” I said, “you kill me.”

He thought that was funny. Finally he calmed down and looked at me through bleary eyes. His jaw hung a little slack and his lips were loose. He said, “I don’t feel so good.”

“I don’t wonder. You’re plastered. I’m floating a little myself. Lay off and have some coffee.” I signalled the waiter and ordered two coffees, black.

“Kelly,” I said, “what you need is either a good night’s sleep or a thorough psychoanalysis. I’ll buy the sleep. Drink your coffee and run along home. Call me tomorrow.

“Sure thing,” he said. His eyelids drooped.

The lights got dim in the Seraglio and I wondered if my eyelids were drooping, too. Then a spot centered on the tiny dance floor. Show time. Marcel had said the floor show would soon be commencing. This must be what he’d meant by soon. A glib MC shot a few breezy words of patter into the mike, then hauled the mike away to make room for an Apache team. Apaches in a harem. They were good, even if they were in the wrong place.

A couple more acts floated by while I wondered when they’d get to the strip-tease. Then a tall, slinky brunette walked into the circle of light on the edge of the dance floor. She walked like a stripper. I waited for the MC to take the mike away while she stood poised on the edge of the floor. She looked like a stripper. The mike was still there and damned if she didn’t walk over and start singing into it. She sang like a stripper.

She was immensely healthy on her chest. A high-necked silver gown clung to her voluptuous curves and she rocked back and forth easily as she sang. It was nice watching, anyway.

She finished her number, bowed without falling on her face and smiled as the lights came on accompanied by applause. She was only about ten feet away so I gave her a big, toothy grin as she walked off stage. She looked at me, through me, away from me and back at me again. I kept on grinning and applauded boorishly. She walked off to her left around the bandstand and up to the velvet-covered archway I’d gone through earlier. And there was my old pal Red-Nose talking to a tuxedoed Victor Peel. The healthy singer stopped and talked a minute with them, looked over her shoulder at me, then chatted some more. She went through the archway and out of sight.

Kelly stood up. I gotta go,” he said thickly. “Grab a cab.”

“I’ll take you,” I said.

“No, no. No, no, no,” he mumbled. “Cab’s fine.” He shook himself, “Brrr. My wife’ll kill me.”

“If you live, call me tomorrow,” I said.

He nodded and started off. I remembered something. “Hey,” I yelled. “Come back.”

He stopped, turned around, aimed and made it back. I gave him the check room stub. “For your hat,” I told him. “Tell the blonde Shell sends his passion.”

“Hat. Shell sends passion.” He left.

I gulped coffee and looked up. Victor Peel stood at the side of the table looking down at me out of his icy blue eyes. More important, the babe with the healthy lungs stood by him, smiling. Not at him, at me. I stood up.

“Hello, Peel.” I pointed at the table. “Expense account. Delicious.”

“There is no expense account.” He lifted a thick lip over his crooked teeth. I guess he was smiling.

No expense account; a tough guy.

He turned to Chesty and got gracious, “Gloria, this is Mr. Scott, Sheldon Scott. Mr. Scott, Miss Gloria Wayne.”

I said how-do-you-do. She took my hand and sort of kneaded it in hers. It was fun. She said, “How do you do, Mr. Scott?” and took her hand away.

“Join me?” I held a chair for Gloria and let Peel sit down all by himself. A waiter came up, brushed ineffectually at the table cloth, removed my coffee and took our order for drinks. Almost immediately the gal and I were on a “Gloria — Shell” basis.

Peel broke up what was beginning to be a most enjoyable conversation. He said, “Have you anything you want to discuss with me, Mr. Scott?

I hauled my eyes away from Gloria and looked upon Peel’s much less pleasant brown mustache and five o’clock shadow. “Not yet. I’ve covered a little ground but there’s nothing solid yet. I think things are going to start happening, though. When I get anything good I’ll check with you.”

The drinks came and Peel sipped at his champagne cocktail. He said, “Do you still think my request is so, what was it, screwy?”

“Still screwy, but it’s starting to make sense. It appears that you’re right.”

He said matter of factly, “I’m seldom wrong.”

Red-Nose came up and tapped Peel on the shoulder, “Guy wants a big check cashed, boss,” he said hoarsely. His voice sounded as if he’d left it out in the rain. Peel excused himself and got up.

Red-Nose breathed in my face. “What’s with gardenias?”

I looked at his lapel. No gardenia. No bulge. No nothing.

My,” I said. “You do take things seriously.”

He grinned happily, then turned and followed Peel toward the rear of the club. His right hip bulged as though he’d sat on a wasp’s nest.

I turned back to face Gloria. “Maybe Peel won’t be back,” I said.

“Probably not. I asked him who the man with the fangs was and he knew you, so I asked him to introduce me.”

“I’m flattered. Only I really don’t have fangs.”

“I know it. Aren’t I brazen?”

“Hussy.”

She still had on the silver gown. It fit her like skin. She had her right elbow on the table, her chin resting in her hand. She was leaning over the table. Way over. I wondered if they were real or made out of plastic or something. If they were real, I wondered if they were insured. I wondered if I should have anything more to drink.

“How about another drink?” she asked. Well, that settled that problem.

We got drinks and sipped and stared at each other.

We sat like that for a while and she said, “You can take me home, Shell.”

I hated to say it, but I said it.

“Can’t. I’m half stinking now and by the time you get through, I’ll be seeing flying guppies. Besides, we’ve both got work to do.”

“I’m through,” she said. “You’re what?”

“Through. Finished.”

“Aren’t you in the show?”

“Sure, but it’s over. There’s only two shows a night here and they’re both different. Nothing but the best.” She added apologetically, “Not that I’m the best.”

I grinned at her, “You’re the best.”

“So you can take me home.”

“I’ve got work to do.”

“Sissy. Want me to walk?”

I looked at her. I thought it over. I looked at her some more.

She said, “I dare you.”

I gave up. I tossed down the rest of my drink. “O.K. Come with papa.”

“Yes, papa.”

I leered at her and we fought our way out of the place. Passing the check room I saw Maxine standing with one hand resting on her hip. She looked at me. Coolly. I winked at her behind Gloria’s bare back. As we passed her, I said softly, “Shell sends his passion.”

She said explosively, “Baloney!”

</code>

<code> Chapter Six

OUTSIDE it had cooled off a little more and it seemed quiet as a grave after the hum and laughter of the Seraglio. Gloria clung to my arm as if it were a roll of thousand dollar bills while the uniformed attendant got the Caddy and drove it around front. I climbed behind the wheel. She scooted in and kept right on scooting till she was pressed, plumply, against me.

“Look, baby, I’ve got work to do. I ought to at least go through the motions.”

She giggled. I wondered if she was giggling at what I thought she was giggling at.

“It’s not far,” she said.

“What’s not far?”

“Hmm?” Her breath was tickling my ear.

“What’s not far?”

“My place. Over on Parkview Street. I’ll show you.”

After about fifteen minutes of her showing me, breathing in my ear and being plump, pleasantly, against me, we turned off Wilshire onto Parkview and pulled up in front of a tiny little house like the bride’s cottage with roses. She gave me the key and let me open the door for her.

“Come on in.”

“Look, I’ve got work — “

“Oh, come on. It’s too late to do anything, anyway. Or were you thinking of going home to bed?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“Well, stop thinking about it.” She smiled roguishly. “Think about me instead. Sleep later in the morning if you want to. I want company and you’re company.”

“Well…”

“Come on in; I’ll mix you a drink.”

What the hell, I could use a drink.

She had a nice place. The front door opened into a little living room with a small kitchen off to the left in back. Just this side of the kitchen was a door I supposed was to the john. On the right was another room with, instead of a door, a solid, dark blue drapery or heavy cloth curtain with big brass rings attached to the top and looped over an iron bar. The drapery had been left hanging half across the entrance and inside the room I could see a big dressing table with a huge mirror and the foot of a white-covered Hollywood bed. Bedroom. On the dressing table were a couple of pictures — one on each side. One of them was nobody I knew; the other looked very much like Victor Peel. In fact, it was Peel.

“Cozy,” I said.

“Just my size,” she said. “I love it. Sit down and I’ll mix that drink.”

I said, “I see you’ve got a couple of men in the bedroom.” She looked startled and I added, “On the dresser. In frames.”

“Oh,” she laughed, “those. You surprised me.”

“Isn’t one of them Peel?”

“Yep. The boss. He’s been wonderful to me.” She frowned. “I don’t sing so good, do I?”

I let it lie there and looked around the living room. A big color TV set, plus AM-FM radio and a record player was just this side of the bedroom entrance; a soft, gray chair a little farther down on the other side of the drapery; two more of the same on the left in the far corner. Half the wall directly across from the entrance was occupied by a huge window with dark blue draperies at each side. In front of the window was a long lounge. I lounged on it.

Gloria disappeared into the little kitchen and I could hear her rattling glasses and ice cubes; then she stuck her head out the door and asked, “What do you want? Scotch? Bourbon? Gin?”

I got up and walked over to the kitchen doorway.

“Bourbon, please. With water, not too much water.”

She busied herself with the fixings and I watched her as she measured by guesswork — she wasn’t a scientific bartender. She poured and fiddled around, then leaned over and the front of her dress pulled delightfully tight against her plumpnesses. I wondered again if they were real or came in the ladies’ stores under the trade name of “Top Secret.”

“There.” She guided me back to the lounge, sat down at least six inches from me, and handed me the drink. It was good, smooth bourbon. She took a sip at her drink and the sip turned into a swallow, then into a gulp and she put the glass down on her knee, empty.

“Wow,” I said.

“I don’t really like it much,” she confessed. “I just drink it to feel good.” She rocked her head back and forth like a pendulum. “I feel good, too.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

“Excuse me.” She got up and drifted around the end of the lounge.

I inhaled half of my drink, slowly, then I heard the metallic, sliding sound and craned my head around. Gloria wasn’t in sight, but the dark blue drapery of the bedroom entrance was closed and swinging gently back and forth. I inhaled the last half of my drink. Fast.

I could hear her moving around inside, humming snatches of a tune. It started running through my mind while I kept one eye on the drapery. It took her about five minutes. The curtain swept back and she stood there for a minute with the light warm and soft behind her.

She’d changed. Oh, how she’d changed. She had on a smoky gray negligee that might have been a week’s work for a small spider. She smiled and walked toward me like a gal doing the mating dance of the early Tahitians.

I didn’t stop her. I like dancing.

She walked over to the big window with a wicked smile on her lips and a wicked swing to her hips and pulled a tassled cord that shut the drapes over the window. She turned around and leaned back against the wall.

“Like?”

“Love. Love immensely.” My tongue flopped around as if it were disconnected.

She laughed deep in her throat, half a chuckle. “You’re empty,” she said. “Let me mix you another.”

She came over close and took the empty glass from my hand.

They were real. Really real.

She leaned over, dangerously, and put one hand on each side of my head and tilted my head back while she laughed at me with her eyes and her mouth. I could feel the glass in her hand, cold against my ear, and then her lips warm, burning against mine. They were soft lips. Soft as the velvet curtains. Softer. At first. Then hard, insistent, demanding.

I wondered if I was going to get that other drink. I decided I wasn’t.

I was right.

I unlocked the door of my apartment and went in and flipped on the small desk lamp at the right of the door. I’ve got two tropical fish tanks in the front room, and fish are like people. They don’t like having bright lights flashed in their eyes all of a sudden.

I felt as if I’d been up for a week. I went into the kitchenette and peered into the refrigerator for a bottle, found it and mixed myself a stiff nightcap. It was 3:30 A.M.

I’ve got a living room-kitchenette-bedroom-bath combination in the Spartan Apartment Hotel on North Rossmore in Hollywood. It’s just about two hundred yards as a golf ball flies from the Wilshire Country Club.

It’s comfortable. In the living room, one deep leather chair — for me; two chocolate-brown overstuffed chairs; an oversized chocolate divan; three hassocks, never in the same places; a yellow-gold, wall-to-wall carpet with a thick shag nap that makes your feet feel as if they’re walking on a mattress; big, low, black-lacquered coffee table with the current copies of Playboy, The Aquarium, and Cavalier artfully arranged to cover the water rings left by long gone highball glasses; and a fake fireplace under a yard square nude done in garish oils.

Like it? Then the hell with you; I like it fine.

Bedroom: Hollywood bed, hassock, two chairs, dresser.

Bathroom: combination bath and shower, form-fitting porcelain chair, medicine cabinet with mirror, no nude.

Kitchenette; gas range, refrigerator, breakfast nook, bottle of bourbon. Also food.

I carried my drink into the bedroom and started climbing out of my clothes. I hung the gray gabardine suit alongside the other suits in the closet, put my tie on the rack, stuck shoetrees in my brown Cordovans and tossed my shirt, shorts and socks into the laundry bag.

In the shower, I let a stiff spray of steaming water beat against my chest while I wondered about the people I’d run into during this long but interesting evening. I’d already bumped into more peculiar characters than you’ll find on a ticket from a Chinese laundry.

It had been quite an evening.

I soaped up, rinsed, turned off the shower and rubbed down with a thick towel. In bed, a sheet over me, both alarm clocks set for 8 A.M., the windows open and halfway cool at last, I thought about Gloria, Maxine, Robin and Joe till I fell asleep.

</code>

<code> Chapter Seven

I CAUGHT the tail end of the first alarm, rolled over deliciously and started dropping back again into a beautiful never-never land where sloe-eyed houris in transparent brassieres and cellophane skirts danced wickedly around my throne. A girl with a thirty-six inch bust and masses of rusty-red hair tickled my cheek with foot-long eyelashes. I looked along the sloping white bridge of her nose to slanted green eyes a yard away and the eyes turned into two lumps of polished coal. The eyelashes started growing, lengthening, then they thickened into pointed iron spikes and started pressing into my neck. The second alarm, the big one, went off like a gong in a rain-barrel and a nightmare died a-borning. I sat up, swore and looked at the clock. Eight A.M. Morning. A thoroughly disgusting and miserable time of day.

I slid my tongue distastefully along the roof of my mouth, smacked my lips together, blinked and rolled out of bed. The jar as my feet slapped the floor damn near took the top of my head off; the inside of my skull must have been a shambles.

I managed to get a robe out of the closet and tottered into the bathroom feeling old and broken. I threw water on my face, brushed my teeth and ran a comb through my hair. It didn’t make any difference to my hair. In the kitchenette I put water on to boil, started a pot of coffee and got down the box of mush. That’s right, mush. Plain old mush. Breakfast. Even without a hangover, the thought of a hearty breakfast in the morning gives me that condemned-man feeling.

I poured a handful of the flakes of mush into the boiling water and watched it cook.

It bubbled sickeningly. My stomach bubbled sickeningly.

I took the mush into the bathroom and poured it down inside the form-fitting porcelain seat. Quick and simple; breakfast was over.

I did manage a piece of toast and two cups of black coffee, and woke up.

I got dressed in a teal-blue gabardine suit. I stopped long enough to turn on the aquarium lights and feed the fish some live daphnia, squared my shoulders and went out.

It was going to be hot again; the sun burned halfway up the sky as hard and brazen as a Main Street hustler and there wasn’t any wind. Smog bit at my eyes and the American flag above the Wilshire Country Club hung limp and still, hazy through the smog. I got in the Cad, turned off Rossmore at Rosewood and headed toward North Windsor.

I think I liked her better in the blouse and clam-diggers, but she still looked like the answer to monkey glands in a tight-fitting yellow pullover sweater, a pleated white skirt, sheer nylon stockings and tan-and-white spike-heeled shoes.

She said in the soft, pleasant voice, “Well, good morning, Mr. Scott. You’re up bright and early.”

“I thought of something I missed last night. Decided I’d drop over for another chat.”

She might have frowned a little, but she opened the door and asked me in. I walked inside and well, well. There on the same low, green divan was the irritable Mr. Kash. He had on a fresh brown tweed suit this A.M., but the same sullen look was on his face.

I said cheerfully, “Good morning.”

He got up slowly from the divan and spread his legs wide. He glared at me. “For Christ’s sake, snooper,” he said nastily, “why don’t you go peddle your papers? Don’t you ever stay home?”

I’d already had enough of this lug’s glares and growls so I said without thinking, “Don’t you ever go home?”

He clamped his teeth together, his nostrils flared, and two steps brought him face to face with me. He grabbed me by the front of the coat and shoved. “Out!” he barked. “Out, snooper.”

There is nothing that makes me madder, quicker, than for some guy to start imagining he can shove me around, but I kept my hands down at my sides and said slowly, “Now, wait just a minute, friend.”

That was as far as I got; he took another half step forward, put his big hand on my chest and shoved. I put my right leg behind me, eased back, then squeezed my right hand into a fist and bounced it off his jaw like a man driving a spike. He sort of folded backward and went down on his fanny.

I said, “I forgot to tell you, Kash. Keep your paws off me.”

He was tough. He sat there for a moment, shook his head, then started to scramble up off the floor.

“Stop it! Stop it this minute.” It was Robin, standing between us and stamping on the floor with one of the four-inch heels. “You animals,” she said, “why don’t you behave?” She turned to Kash and said sharply, “Eddie, you had no right to act like that. Not in my house. I’m ashamed of you. You’d better leave and come back when you’re more sociable.”

He got the rest of the way up, dusted off the seat of his pants, felt his chin, and walked over to me. He said grimly, “Okay, pal. But you just made a mistake. Well get together again.”

He went out and slammed the door as if he wanted to buy a new one. He seemed to be always leaving right after I arrived. Maybe that was why he didn’t enjoy my arriving. Maybe if I’d been indulging in a little tete-a-tete with Robin I’d have resented interruptions myself.

I turned to Robin. “I’m sorry about that crack,” I said. “The guy irritated me a little and I didn’t stop to think how it would sound to you.”

“It’s all right.” She curved her bright red lips into a smile that looked genuine. “He didn’t have any reason to act like that. As a matter of fact, I don’t blame you a bit; he got what he deserved. He’d just been here a few minutes himself and I guess he wasn’t happy about the interruption.”

“Can’t say I blame him much.”

Thank you, sir. He wanted me to drive down to Santa Anita with him. I didn’t feel much like going anyway.” She walked over to the divan and sat down. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to leave you standing all this time. Sit down.” She patted the cushion beside her.

I didn’t need a second invitation.

“What did you want to see me about this morning?”

“I could say I just dropped by for your company.”

“You could, but I wouldn’t believe it, Mr. Scott.” She pressed her teeth gently into her lower lip and looked at me, “Or rather, Shell,” she said softly. “I think we’d discarded the Mr. Scott and Miss Brooks business last night.”

I grinned at her. “That’s right. I’d like a little more dope on your brother.”

The smile went away. “What do you want to know?”

“What was he doing back East, for instance?”

“Why, he lived there for a long time. He had a job there. With the racetrack.”

“Where did he live back East?”

“New York,” she said. “The city.”

“That’s a good town,” I said. “Anything you want, New York’s got it. Ever been there?”

“No. I’d love to go sometime, though.”

“Yeah, I know. People always say it’s nice to go to, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I don’t know, I think I’d like living there myself. Joe worked out at the Arlington Park and Fair Grounds tracks, I suppose.”

“Yes. That’s what he said.”

“He ever write you?”

“At first. Not for the last couple of years or so.”

I leaned back into the cushions and pulled out cigarettes. “Smoke?” I asked.

Thanks, I have some here.” She took a long, cork-tipped cigarette from a box on a table at the end of the divan, and lit my cigarette and hers with a chromium, table-model lighter. I breathed smoke into my lungs.

“Robin,” I said, “Joe wasn’t really your brother, was he?”

She looked at me steadily out of her wise brown eyes for a moment. “I thought you were working around to something like that,” she said quietly. “How did you know, Shell?”

“I don’t know, not really. Not till now. But I had a pretty good idea you weren’t brother and sister.” I looked at her, perplexed. “What the devil made you think you could get away with a screwy, doubletalk set-up like that anyway? Don’t you know the cops will have all the dope on him — probably today? Maybe right now?”

She rested her head on the back of the divan and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just didn’t think about it. I didn’t know what else to say. I was worried and a little scared, too, I guess. The police came down and started firing questions at me. I had to identify his body. You know, you get a little confused.” She lifted her head and looked at me, “How did you know?”

“For one thing, you should have made up some more names for Joe. Not that it’s really a very important point. It just didn’t seem logical that parents who’d name their girl Robin Victoria Ellen Brooks would stop at just Joseph for their boy. That’s a biblical name, too, if it means anything. Not much, but it’s one of those nagging ideas that sticks in your brain. Then the pictures, too.”

“What about the pictures?

“For one thing there wasn’t much resemblance. You’ve got beautiful hair, Robin. I like it. But it’s a striking shade of red. Joe was tow-headed, blond as I am. Of course you could have dyed your hair or hennaed it.

“I do not,” she cried indignantly. “I’ll have you know it’s natural.”

“No matter,” I told her. “Whether you did or not, it was only something else to wonder about a little. Then the inscriptions on the photos, ‘Robin — All My Love — Joe,’ not the kind of sentiment usually expressed by a brother to a sister. Then the pictures themselves. I saw four of them anyway, taken at night spots around town, plush places, more like a boy and girl on a date than brother and sister passing the time of night. Conceivable, but something else funny.”

She dragged on her cork-tipped cigarette and blew smoke through her nostrils, “Anything else, Mr. Private Detective?”

“Well, Arlington Park’s in Chicago, and Fair Grounds is in New Orleans.”

She took a deep breath and the yellow sweater assumed delightful proportions. “So you figured it out. No matter, I’d probably have told you about it anyway. Or the police — now I’ve had time to think about it. I suppose you think I’m awful?”

“Why?”

She turned toward me and her brown eyes flashed. “Because I was living with him, that’s why. Because he wasn’t my brother and he wanted to get married later, not right away, and because maybe I didn’t want everybody to know I was living with a man I wasn’t married to, and because — ” her voice cracked and she bit deeply into her upper lip.

“Take it easy,” I said. “I don’t give a damn about your private life. But it looks a little funny, your trying to keep on fooling everybody, the police included, after he was killed.”

“Put yourself in my place, Shell. Out of a clear blue sky there’s a policeman at the door and he wants to know if I’m Miss Brooks; and when I tell him yes, he wants to know if my brother, Joseph Brooks, lives here and I almost have to say yes to that too. Then he says there’s been an accident and they got Joe’s name and address from papers in his wallet and I have to go down and identify him and he’s dead.” Her voice rose higher and higher, then she stopped and put her head down on her knees and moaned, “Dead, dead, dead.” The long reddish hair fell down and brushed against her legs.

“Now, now,” I said foolishly. “Maybe you’d better have a drink or something.”

She raised her head and stared at me out of slightly moist brown eyes. “Yes,” she said emphatically, “I will have a drink.”

She got up and walked over to the yellow and red and green bamboo bar. She turned around. “How about you? Join me?”

“Thanks. I don’t think so. It’s a little early for me.”

“It’s early for me, too, and I hate to drink alone. Have something with me, Shell. Keep me company.”

I said, “Well, it’s against my better judgment, but Okay. I’ll call it breakfast.” I thought of the nearly naked inside of my stomach. Maybe a little hair of the dog would help dress it up.

She came back with two brimming highball glasses. They were dark amber. I asked, “Did you dilute this at all? Or did this come straight from the bottle?”

She smiled. “Weakling. I suppose you’ve got a lot more questions to ask me.”

“Not many. You’ve explained most of your reasons for saying Joe was your brother. I don’t blame you. And I certainly don’t condemn you. That is, as long as you didn’t kill him.”

This time she was the one that didn’t answer me. She swung her head around sharply to look at me, then her lips pressed together and she breathed sharply through her nose. Finally she said coolly, “You get no more drinks from me, Mr. Scott.”

“Mr. Scott?”

“Mr. Scott.”

She swallowed from her drink and shuddered, “It is a little strong, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“You really think Joe was killed? Murdered, I mean?”

I nodded again, “It looks that way. The police think so, too.”

“Why?”

“Several reasons. For one, he had so much liquor in him he should have been passed out instead of wandering around. Hardly in condition to get way out on Solano by himself. Funny.”

“Yes, it is funny,” she said frowning.

I was halfway through the tall drink by now and my stomach was beginning to feel warm as a coal heaver’s pants. I said, “Who was he?”

“Who was who?”

“Joe. What was his real name?”

“Oh, of course,” she said. “You wouldn’t know that. His name was really Maddern. Joey Maddern. He wasn’t much of a guy maybe, but I thought a lot of him. You’ll probably find out anyway; he was wanted back in Illinois on a couple of bad check charges.”

“Nice playmate.”

She dropped her eyes, then raised them and looked at me, “Lay off, will you, Shell?”

I said, “I’m sorry.” I was. There really didn’t seem much reason for me to be getting tough.

“That’s another reason he liked being known as Joe Brooks,” she added. “Joe Brooks wasn’t wanted by anybody.” She drained her drink, “Except me.”

I kept up with her by taking the last swig of my almost straight bourbon. Some breakfast.

“Something else,” I said.

“Just a minute.” She took the two empty glasses over to the bar and came back with them filled again.

“What are you trying to do, woman?” I asked her, “get me drunk?”

“No, silly. I don’t know; I just feel like getting a little stupid. Numb. Even if it is nine o’clock in the morning. What difference does it make what time you get stupid?”

“Were you addressing me?”

She ignored that. “What was the something else?”

“Sort of personal. I’d like some more on this Kash character. What do you know about him?”

“Like I told you, Shell, he placed bets with Joe — or Joey — when the tracks down here weren’t running, or when he just wanted to make a couple of bets. Joey got to know him and Eddie’d come around to see him once in a while. They’d talk horse talk, have a few drinks. Maybe Joey took a few bets on the side. I don’t think so, though. He did say he wished he had a horse-room of his own. One like Dragoon’s.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “There’s big dough in it if its worked right. This Eddie, he’s quite a horse-player, huh?”

“He claims he’s got a system now.” She smiled, “I suppose everybody has a system. Incidentally, don’t think he’s a complete boor, Shell. That might be one reason he’s, well, irritable.”

“The system’s not so hot?”

“Not so hot. Apparently it picks the wrong horses. But they’re usually close, he says.”

“Yeah. That’s the worst kind of system. You pick them close and you think the next selection can’t miss.” I grinned. “I know from experience. But I got cured quick. One other thing, how long had the two of you known Eddie?”

“About four or five months. Joe met Eddie right after he started working for Dragoon. That was early last February. Right after Joey and I, well,” she swallowed at her drink, “after we met.”

“Okay. Another thing. Did Joey have any folks?”

“His mother lives somewhere in Illinois. Peoria, I think. I never met her. Joey wrote his mother once in a while. Wrote her last just a couple of weeks ago. Liked to keep in touch and he sent her money sometimes. His father died when he was a kid.”

“I wonder if she knows about Joey.”

“Golly, I hadn’t thought about that. Probably not.”

“When the police finish their check-up on him, they’ll get in touch with her,” I said.

“Shell.”

“What?”

“You seem like a pretty right kind of a guy. I’d like to tell you a few things. About me. Maybe you’d understand things better.”

I sipped my drink and looked at her. Both the sipping and the looking were pleasant. I felt relaxed and comfortable. I wondered what was really going on behind those big brown eyes. I let her talk.

“I never had much of anything when I was a kid; maybe you know what that means. Anyway, by the time I got out of high school for a little while, both my parents were dead and I had to start working if I wanted to eat. I had a lot of little jobs, never mind them all, but the last one was as a waitress in a cafe on Spring Street. These fat, greasy guys would come in and think for a dime tip they had the privilege of squeezing my leg or pinching me where they had no business pinching. One day Joey came in and we got to talking. Maybe you’d call him not much good, but he was all right. Really. At least he was good to me. He bought me things, took me nice places. We had a lot of fun together, went around to the clubs — you saw some of the pictures we had taken — some of the places I hadn’t ever been to. We talked about getting married, but I guess he hadn’t sowed all his wild oats, or maybe he just didn’t want to settle down. Anyway, to make the story short, enter Joe Brooks,” She was quiet for a minute, worked on her drink, then asked, “Does that make me no good?”

“Not in my book, Robin. Forget it.”

“Thanks. I don’t usually tell people my life history.”

I looked at my empty glass, mildly surprised. While she’d been talking I’d chewed on the bourbon till there was nothing left but ice cubes. After I’ve had a certain, variable amount to drink, there comes out of nowhere a slow, warm flush of heat that creeps gently up my neck and over my face. I could feel it starting to creep and it felt good.

Robin took the glass out of my hand and said, “Let’s not be so gloomy.

“Let’s not.”

She walked over to the bar again. I followed her, watching the pleated white skirt swirling gracefully above her shapely, nylon-covered calves. She started making more drinks.

“Easy,” I said. “Easy does it.” The little bourbon atoms in my stomach seemed to be meeting relatives I’d consumed the night before. Reinforcements were arriving.

She nodded, “Easy does it.” She handed me a drink not quite as dark as the previous ones and lit a cigarette.

“This is the nuts,” I said. “I’ve got work to do.”

“You’re working.”

I tried to rationalize that. “Working, yes. Fine work. Very pleasant, rosy work.”

She smiled at me with full, red, red lips curving deliciously around white, even teeth. I took a big gulp of the drink. I could feel it slide down my throat like a ball of warm wax and plop into the rest of the wax in my stomach. My stomach gurgled pleasantly.

Robin was standing just a step away; she took a step toward me. That left not much between us except us. She peered at me; her breath floated through her parted lips and whispered against my throat. “What happened to the top of your ear? Your left ear?”

“Girl bit it off.” I wasn’t really trying to be funny; I just wanted to see what would happen to her face.

Nothing happened. She just took a big drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke into my face. “Shell, Shell,” she said, “you’re cute. What happened to your nose?”

“Girl bit it off.”

She laughed softly and tossed her head back and forth; masses of rusty-red hair whipped around her face. She opened her mouth, started to say something else, then changed her mind and giggled instead. She took another drag on her cigarette. This could go on all day. I walked back over to the divan and sat down before I got another faceful of smoke. She came over and sat down, too. Close. On my lap.

I lowered the level of my drink an inch and a half and set the glass down on the rug.

“Don’t sit it there,” she said mischievously.

“Why not?”

“You might kick it, knock it over.”

“How the hell am I going to kick it, knock it over?”

“Silly.”

I looked at her and she was breathing in my face and her tongue was pink and restless on her lower lip. Her wise brown eyes were close; I could see my face reflected in them a couple of inches away.

“Shell,” softly.

An inch away, “Shell, Shell, Shell,” a breath, a whisper.

Then she was all over me and she was all narrowed eyes and clusters of thick red hair and warm wet lips and her smooth arms were around my neck and gentle fingernails, traced a delicate pattern on my cheek.

Maybe I was drunk. What do you think?

So who cares what you think?

</code>

<code> Chapter Eight

I THREW a knot in my tie and Robin said lazily, “Shell, you know what?”

“What?”

“You’re like a Greek god. A Greek god with a broken nose.

“Get lost. Broken nose, yes.”

“I mean it.” I turned and looked at her while she took a deep breath and sighed and stretched slowly. Interesting.

“What time is it?” she asked.

I looked at my watch. “Almost noon. Quarter of. Time I was downtown. I haven’t been inside the office since yesterday afternoon. Business will go to pot.”

“Let it go to pot. Who cares?” Her eyes smoldered at me.

“Gotta make a living, Robin. How would I buy bourbon?”

“I suppose so. Come back and see me, Shell.”

I grinned down at her, “I’ll be back, you witch.”

“Whaat?”

“Witch. Like on a broom. Spook.”

She rolled over and said sleepily, “Go away, go way away.”

I went. The sun was almost directly overhead and it was redder and hotter than the whites of my eyes. I gunned the Cad, swung left into Beverly and stopped at the first cafe on the right. I chewed long and vigorously on a half-inch steak with a slit in the middle that probably came from the matador’s sword, downed some hash-brown potatoes and three cups of black coffee. I decided I’d last the rest of the day if I was careful. Perspiration oozed out of my pores and seeped into my clothes.

My office is on the second floor of the Hamilton Building, facing Broadway, between Third and Fourth Streets in downtown L.A. I took the elevator to the second floor, walked down to the office door, stopped, smiled and said, “Good afternoon.” Business?

She was sitting on the wooden bench to my left, holding a big, old-fashioned black purse in her lap. She weighed maybe a hundred pounds and stood five feet tall — give or take an inch — in her high-laced black shoes. And I guess you’d say she was cute.

Anyway, I thought she was cute even if she was about sixty years old. She wore a plain, shapeless black dress that hung down to within four inches of her shoes, allowing a peek at heavy gray cotton stockings, black shoes laced up over the ankle. She had a head of gray-white hair. Her eyes were misty behind gold-rimmed spectacles that must have been made about the time of the first World War.

She got to her feet, peered up at me myopically and adjusted the gold-rimmed spectacles with her wrinkled right hand.

“Are you Mr. Scott? Mr. Sheldon Scott?” It was a tiny voice, tiny like all the rest of her.

“Yes, ma’am.” I said. “Please come in.”

I unlocked the door and followed her inside. She looked around her as if she were a little bewildered and I pulled the best chair up in front of the desk for her. She sat down and I got behind the desk and looked professional.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?”

She opened and closed the big old-fashioned purse nervously and said in the tiny voice, “I don’t know, really. I’m Mrs. Maddern.”

I blinked at her for about ten seconds waiting for her to say something else before it seeped in.

“Who?”

“Mrs. Maddem.”

I woke up. Her eyes weren’t watery; she wasn’t myopic; she’d been crying. A little old lady crying for a son she probably hadn’t seen for months, maybe years. I suddenly felt rotten.

I said softly, “I’m happy to know you, Mrs. Maddern. Joe was your boy?”

“Yes. He was.” Her eyes got watery-looking again and I went on quickly, “If I can help in any way I’ll be glad to. But I don’t understand. How did you happen to come here? To see me, I mean?”

“It was a Mr. Dragoon. I came out to see Joseph; I didn’t know he’d been killed, even. Mr. Dragoon told me.” She was having difficulty keeping her voice steady. “He said Joseph had been hit by a car or run over and killed. Then when I asked him more about it, he said for me to see you, that you were the — I think he said you were the brain around here and you thought Joseph getting killed wasn’t an accident. He wasn’t very nice; I don’t think I like him.”

I could imagine Dragoon’s tactful explanation. I said, “I don’t think I like him either, Mrs. Maddern. What was it you wanted me to do?”

“Well, what he said. What Mr. Dragoon said. I want to know all about what happened to Joseph. If someone hurt him, I want you to find him. I can pay you; I have some money.” She took off her spectacles and pressed fingers against her closed eyes. She sobbed once.

I got up and walked around the desk. I put one hand gently on her frail, bony shoulder. I didn’t know quite what to say. I said, “Sure, Mrs. Maddern. Sure.”

She looked up at me, her face pinched, “I’ve been here since ten o’clock. Joseph was a good boy. He got in some little scrapes, but he was a good boy.” She felt around in the black purse, dug out a wisp of handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to carry on so.

I told her it was all right. I couldn’t help thinking, no matter what Joey had actually been, to her he was still just a little kid in knickers with a stubbed toe and dirt on his face. I went back and sat down behind the desk. I said, “I don’t quite understand, Mrs. Maddern, why you came out to Los Angeles, or why you went to Dragoon’s place. It would help if you’d explain that for me.

She nodded, fairly composed now. “Joseph wrote to me off and on, not regular. I suppose he was pretty busy. Once in a while he sent me money when he could — he was good that way.” She smiled ruefully and went on, “The last letter I got from him was around two weeks back and he wrote like he was worried about something, I thought. He said he’d made some profitable investments and had quite a bit of money here in Los Angeles in the Citizen’s Bank in a safety box. He sent me one of the keys and a card to sign so I could get into it. I signed the card and sent it back to the bank right away. Joseph said if anything happened to him, then I could just take the money out simple.” She peered at me, “Wasn’t he a good boy?”

I smiled and nodded.

“I don’t know why I just don’t let you read his letter instead of telling you,” she said. “My lands.” She pulled an envelope from her purse and handed it to me.

She’d told me about all there was to it except Joe sent his love and asked how things were and so on. He’d casually mentioned, “If anything should happen to happen to me, mom, you can just get the money out of the safety deposit box in the bank without any trouble.”

Mrs. Maddern said, “I got to worrying about what Joseph said; it wasn’t like him at all. Him never being sick a day in his life except for colds and the mumps once when he was little. So I just decided I’d come out and see him. It’s been over a year since he was home last anyhow. He said in his letters if I wrote to him, to send the letters to him care of his Grand Street address.” She hesitated, then went on slowly, “You see, Mr. Scott, this was really the first letter I received from Joseph in quite a while. There was, well, some little scrape … trouble…”

“I know,” I cut in. It’s all right, go ahead.”

“Well, on account of this trouble, I didn’t know where Joseph was till I got his letter. I went out to the address on Grand Street when I got here this morning. It’s a joke shop of all things, the Ace Joke Shop, and when I asked for Joseph, the man went in back somewhere and that’s when this Mr. Dragoon came out and talked to me. He said he was Joseph’s employer.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Now, about the money. Have you been to the bank?”

“No, not yet. I went to where Joseph worked, got a room in a hotel, then came straight here.”

“You haven’t gone to the police?”

“No. I suppose I should. Mr. Dragoon said I could see you, so I just came here. I was a little mixed up. Should I talk to the police?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Mrs. Maddern. Not right away at least. You’d better get some rest first before you see the police. You’ll want to see Joseph, too, I imagine. Arrangements and all.”

She blinked at me and nodded. Then she asked, “Mr. Scott, why are you interested in Joseph? Why did Mr. Dragoon say you could tell me about him?”

“It’s just a routine investigation, Mrs. Maddern. I have a client who’s having me check up on the accident. There have been an alarming number of such accidents. I’ve really just started on it.”

She said hesitantly, “Can I hire you?”

“No. I already have a client. But I’ll certainly give you all the information I can. Now, if you’d like, I’ll drive you to the bank and you can check that safety deposit box.”

She said that would be fine and thank you, Mr. Scott.

I spotted a parking place miraculously open a half-block from the Citizen’s National Bank and grabbed it.

In the bank Mrs. Maddern identified herself and we got into the big vault where the safety deposit boxes are without any trouble. Joe had arranged for a joint-tenancy box, so even though he was dead, Mrs. Maddern was ushered right in. The clerk turned a master key in the lock and obligingly left us.

Mrs. Maddern said, “Will you get it down for me, Mr. Scott?”

I reached up, inserted her key, lifted the box down and handed it to her. We went into one of the little booths for privacy and she lifted the lid, peered inside and said, “My lands,” with her eyes wide. She handed the box to me. “I never did see so much money,” she said.

I took a peek and almost said, “My lands,” myself. It made a good-sized head of cabbage; I’d seen more, but not very often and not recently. We counted it and there was a total of eighteen thousand, two hundred dollars. Quite a piece of change for Joey — some very profitable investments, indeed.

I looked at all that lovely green stuff and wheels spun in my brain. I let Mrs. Maddern look at the money for a while, then I said, “Might as well put it in your purse. There’s nothing else we can do here.”

“Should I?” she asked, her voice even smaller than usual. “Should I really take it?”

“Certainly,” I said. “It’s yours. From Joseph.”

She smiled sweetly and patted my hand. For no particular reason I felt good, like a boy scout getting covered with merit badges. She stuffed the money into the voluminous black bag — it was quite a wad — and we left. I held the door for Mrs. Maddern and slipped the Cad out into the after-lunch traffic.

“If you’d like,” I said, “I’ll drop you off at your hotel. Unless there’s something else you want to do first.”

“That would be fine, Mr. Scott. It’s the Sheaffer Hotel.”

I left her at her room and said, “It might not be a bad idea to stick all that cabbage in the hotel safe.”

“Cabbage?”

“The money. It’ll be safer there.”

“Thank you, Mr. Scott, I will. You’ve been very kind.”

“I’ll drop back and see you again as soon as I can. You’ll be here?”

“I’ll be here, yes. I wouldn’t know where else to go anyway.

I said good-by and left her standing in the doorway of room 324. Little and cute and sad, clutching a black purse with eighteen thousand dollars in it.

But I’d have bet the ten C’s in my wallet against a two dollar win ticket on Stupendous that Mrs. Maddern wasn’t thinking about money at all.

On the way back to the office I stopped at Greeley’s Fish Market and bought a shrimp. One shrimp, ten cents. Inflation. I used to get them for a nickel. The balding little clerk looked at me curiously and said, “Banquet, huh?” I grinned at him mysteriously, took the small paper sack and walked out while he stared after me.

At the office I tied a string around the shrimp, lowered the delicacy into the guppy tank and said, “Banquet, chums.” They went nuts.

The office, by the way, contains a solid mahogany desk that still looks so good I almost hate to put my Cordovans on it, a phone, two filing cabinets, two guppies cavorting briskly in their tank on top of the bookcase.

I climbed behind the big mahogany desk, grabbed the phone and dialed RIchmond 8-1212. A lilting feminine voice answered, “Los Angeles Examiner. May I help you?”

“This is Sheldon Scott,” I said. “I’d like to talk to Tommy Kelly.”

“One moment, please.”

I listened to the noises in the Examiner office for a few seconds, then the lilting voice said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Scott. Mr. Kelly was in this morning, but he left just before noon. He isn’t expected back today. Would you like to speak to anyone else?”

“No, no one else, thanks.” I hung up feeling vaguely uneasy. Maybe he was home in bed with an ice-pack on his head. I dug the phone book out of the desk and looked up the Holloway Hotel on Norton Street. I checked the number, stuck the book back in the drawer and the phone rang. I grabbed it.

“Sheldon Scott Agency,” I said.

“Shell, this is Samson.”

“Yeah, Sam. You sound like something’s up.”

“This Joe Brooks. He’s not Joe Brooks. He’s a guy named Maddern. Joey Maddern.”

I wondered how many more people were going to tell me Joe was Joey. I said, “Yeah, Sam, I know. I was coming down to see you later.”

He exploded. “What do you mean, you know? I just got a special delivery flown in from Washington this morning.”

“Calm down, Sam. I’ll clear it up soon as I can get down to headquarters. I’ve got a couple things to do first, though. See you in, say, an hour, hour and a half. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You hear anything from that reporter, Kelly? He call you today?”

“No. What’s with Kelly?”

“I’m not sure,’ I said. “Maybe nothing. I’ll see you later.”

I hung up and dialed Kelly’s hotel and was put through to his room. His wife answered.

“Mrs. Kelly,” I said, “this is Shell Scott. If your husband’s around I’d like to talk to him.”

“Oh, Mr. Scott.’ Her voice cooled off a little. “Tommy isn’t here; you’ll probably catch him at the Examiner office. Or in a steam bath. What did you do to him last night, anyway?”

“I’m sorry about that, Mrs. Kelly. You see, I took him to dinner and — “

“Yes, I know,” she interrupted, “I smelled it on his breath.”

I tried a small chuckle. I listened, but I didn’t hear any answering chuckle. I said, “Well, thanks. I’ll get in touch with your husband later.”

She said, “I’m not really as angry as I might sound, Mr. Scott. But I wouldn’t want episodes like last night’s to become a habit.”

I told her I was sure they wouldn’t, said goodbye pleasantly and hung up wondering uneasily just where the hell Kelly was. I checked my .38 Colt, slipped it back into its clam-shell holster and left the guppies tearing industriously at the suspended shrimp.

</code>

<code> Chapter Nine

ON WESTERN AVENUE, out near Pico Boulevard, there’s a square, white cement building set back off the highway about fifty feet. Next door there’s a big restaurant, and some of the customers park in the empty lot in front of the square, white building when they go in to eat. If you happened to check, though, you’d find, on numerous occasions, a lot more cars than people eating.

There isn’t any sign in front of the cement building, but all afternoon, except on Sunday, guys walk in and out. The ones coming out, usually look either pleased with themselves or down in the dumps. If the favorites have been winning and the guys are chalk players, they look pleased with themselves. If it’s a favorite day and the guy coming out likes to play the longshots, he’ll usually be wearing a long face and leave before the last race is over. One of those places.

I went inside and brushed through the usual heavy Saturday crowd and into the poker room in back. There was a squat, heavy-bearded guy with a face like Quasimodo behind the soft drink stand.

I walked up to him and said, “I’d like to talk to Cookie Martini.”

He sized me up with small, closed-set eyes and said gruffly, “Who wants to see him?”

“Tell him Shell Scott.”

“The boss don’t see many people during working hours. Why should he see you?”

“He’s a friend of mine. I think he’ll see me.”

He jerked his head at a red-haired guy across the room and said to him, “Tell Cookie there’s a mugg out here wants to see him.”

I leaned my elbows on the counter and looked up, “Uh-uh,” I said, “not mugg, friend. A Mr. Sheldon Scott to see him.”

He peered down at me. “Well, well,” he murmured. He glanced at the redhead. “Tell Cookie there’s a tough guy, a gentleman named Sheldon Scott, wants to see him.” He accented the “gentleman” unduly.

I said, “Thanks,” and bought two cokes. He accepted one and said, “You shouldn’t be so touchy. Where from you know Cookie?”

“Back when I thought I could beat the beetles,” I said. “I learned different.”

He grinned and gulped half his coke. “You could be bad for business.”

I rested my elbow against the coke counter and glanced at the green, felt-covered poker table on my left. Six stolid-faced men sat around the table. The draw had just been completed and a guy across the table said, “Check to the one.” Two more men checked around to the guy nearest me with his back to the coke stand. He mixed the cards up in his hand and brought them up in front of his face, leaning back a little so nobody could peek. I peeked. He squeezed the cards apart slow and easy, like if he looked at them all at once he might drop dead. He squeezed them off one at a time: ace of hearts, nine of hearts, three of hearts, seven of hearts. He hesitated just a moment, then spread to the last card. Jack of clubs. Bust. He folded the cards back into his hand, scratched his cheek and looked at the pot; there was maybe three hundred dollars in the middle of the table. He lifted two twenties and a ten off the pile in front of him and dropped them in the middle. The two men on his left tossed their cards onto the table. The guy who’d checked said, “Ladies opened,” showed two queens, and dropped his cards in the discards. Everybody folded. The winner shoved his cards into what was left of the deck and raked in the money. He had three hundred and fifty dollars and the beginning of an ulcer. Nobody said a word and the deal started again.

The redhead came back and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Climb in. Cookie’ll see ya.” He grinned with all thirty-two teeth and added, “Mugg.” I grinned back at him and went on by.

Cookie raised his five-feet-seven from behind his desk and stuck out a thin hand. “Long time no see, Scotty. Pull up a stool.”

He was thin, dressed in a baggy gray suit that had seen better days and maybe better years and he wore a sorrowful, sad-eyed and red-nosed look like a college professor flunking out of Alcoholics Anonymous. He knew his business, was a smart cookie — that’s where he got the name — and he kept his big ears open. We’d traded favors in the past and what info I got from him had always been good.

I shook his hand and said, “Business looks good outside, Cookie. How’s it going?”

He shook his head, “Terrible. Lousy. My luck’s so bad I’m afraid to wear pants with zippers. Already today a guy has fifty across on a dog that pays the limit all the way down. Thirteen hundred and fifty, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. He looked miserable. I happened to know he could write a check for a hundred grand and never miss it.

I put my coke on his desk, sat down and laughed. “You must be about down to your last million.”

“Terrible,” he sighed. “Terrible. What’s the honor, Scotty?”

“A little snooping. Thought you might have some dope I could use.”

“Anything I got, Scotty. Anytime.”

I held up three fingers and folded them down one at a time. “Joey Maddern.” He looked blank and I folded down the second finger. “Eddie Kash.” He nodded and I said, “Joe Brooks.” He nodded some more. “Start with Brooks,” I said.

He looked at me sorrowfully. “Not much. Worked for Drag downtown, handled bets. Say three months, six months. I didn’t know him personal. Two, three days back he gets bumped off.”

“Bumped off? You mean a job?”

“Naw. Just bumped off. I think he gets hit by a car. I’m not sure; he don’t mean nothing to me. I should worry.”

“That’s the way it stands,” I said. “Hit-and-run. You got anything at all that says it smells?”

He shook his head. I swigged my coke and said, “There’s rumors, Cookie. Rumors that if a guy wants a job done on some other guy and wants a nice clean job done and doesn’t want to do it himself, he can get it done for a price. Clean and simple and he stays out of it himself. What about it?”

He looked sadder than ever, if that was possible. He got up and went to the door, opened it, looked out. Then he closed the door, came back and sat down. “Look, Scotty,” he said. “That’s big league. Not good to mess around with. I tell you this much. You want a job done, you can get it done all right, but who, where, how, I wouldn’t know. Might be I could find out; might be I couldn’t. But I don’t want to know. You know the score, kid. It’s the same in Chi or New York, any big town. And the same here; you nose it around you want to do business and you can do business, all right. And there’s been business done. But outside of that, I am strictly from the country.”

“Straight goods?”

“Straight, Scotty. I always give it to you straight, don’t I?”

“Good enough. How about Kash? You got anything on him?”

He grinned lugubriously, like an undertaker at a train wreck. “He’s one of Drag’s best customers,” he said. “Wish he was mine. He knows horses like I know Miss Universe. Once in a while he makes a package, but mostly he drops it. It looks like he takes the cure a few months back; he gets in so deep Drag cuts him off. He even comes out here and wants me to take his markers, but the word’s out so we tell him Christmas is next year. Then a little while later he waltzes back into Drag’s and starts picking wrong ones all over again.” He shook his head. “Give me twenty like him and I retire in a year.”

“How long ago was this? This temporary cure?”

He stuck out his thin lower lip and thought about it “Four, five months maybe. Hell Scotty, you know we don’t keep no records.

I grinned at him. “This is me, remember?”

He frowned. “Well,” he said, “he didn’t bet nothing with me, but he wanted me to take his marker for a thousand on Paperboy in the Santa Anita Handicap.” He unlocked his middle desk drawer, pulled a loose-leaf notebook out of it and flipped the pages. “Hundred Grander, that was run on Saturday, February 26th. So he was out here then. Lucky for him he didn’t get anybody to take his paper; Third Rail won that one at $42.60. Paperboy runs clear out.” He looked up. “Lucky for me, too. I’d probably been stuck for a while with his marker.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, Cookie, I’ve got a date downtown. Thanks for the dope.”

“For nothin’,” he said.

I told him, “Drop in and see me if you want anything.” He blinked sorrowfully at me and I went out. The redhead and Squat-and-Ugly were leaning on the coke counter. I said, “So long, muggs,” and let them grin at me.

Samson took the well-chewed, unlighted cigar out of his mouth when I walked in and stuck out his cast-iron jaw.

“Okay,” he growled, “what’s this dope you talked about on the phone?”

No cracks about divorce cases even. He had to be pretty worried to pass up a chance to dig me. I briefed him quickly on how I’d learned Joe was Joey Maddern and he said, “This Maddern got in a little jam, all right. Passed a couple bad checks and lammed out. Not much dough involved, but he preferred the California sunshine to an Illinois jail. Naturally.”

I said, “I’ve got a couple angles, Sam. How about getting out that list you showed me when I was here last night?”

He said, “Got a copy here in my desk,” dug it out and handed it to me.

I looked at it. “Like a dope, I skipped over this last night. This Elias Johnson. Would he be the late Johnson of the Johnson-Kash enterprises?”

Samson fixed his brown eyes on me. “He would. What’re you getting at?”

“There’s a couple angles. This Kash is an unpleasant character that doesn’t seem to like private detectives. This one, anyway.”

Sam pulled the cigar out of his mouth, put it back in and lit it. “All right. What’s your angle on Kash?”

“Take a good look at that list of yours,” I told him. “There’s Elias Johnson, Kash’s partner. He’s a hit-and-run job. Then there’s Joe Brooks. Or Joey Maddern. Another one. Both of them hit-and-run capers, both dead and one of them is Eddie’s partner, the other the guy he placed bets with at Dragoon’s horse parlor. Also, I know Eddie and Joe were a little chummy.”

“So what, Shell? Funny, yes. Suspicious even. But when Johnson got his, we made a check. Everything looked aboveboard. I admit, if it had happened in the last week or two, now that things are stirred up so much, we might have gone over it closer. But don’t forget, either, we’re still on it. And before you take a guy into court and try to convict him, you’d better have proof positive, or else you just take him in and let him go again, clean. Besides, when this Maddern gets knocked off, we checked Eddie among others and he was as clean as a whistle.”

“How do you mean?”

“Joe got lumped Wednesday night sometime before eleven. From six o’clock at night till one o’clock Thursday morning, Kash was in a table-stakes poker game with a lot of money on the table. He was down three, four grand early in the game, but by one A.M. he was almost even so he pulled out. But he was in every hand all night. Right up to about one, Thursday A.M. That’s when the game finally busted up.”

“Who were the other guys in the game?”

He rummaged around on his desk, found a slip of paper and rattled off names. He got to a familiar one. I said, “Was that last one Louie Morris?”

“That’s right. He didn’t win anything either. As a matter of fact, there’s seven guys play and nobody wins. They all lose or break even.”

I laughed. “This Morris; I know the guy. He’s a smalltime boy, but sharp. Makes a little book, owns a string of jukeboxes and a few one-armed bandits out of town. I’ve done him a couple of favors.” I looked at my watch. It was two o’clock. I said, “You haven’t heard from Kelly, huh?”

“No, I haven’t heard from Kelly. Should I hear from Kelly? That’s the second time you’ve asked me. What’s up?”

I gave him the outline of Kelly’s drunken chatter of the night before. Samson scratched his gray head vigorously and looked at me. “What you think?” he said.

“I think he was drunk. As a matter of fact, I know he was drunk. But I also think he must have had something on his mind or he wouldn’t have waited outside for me. It’s screwy. I hope the kid doesn’t go off half-cocked.” I thought about it a minute. “He must have more sense than that.”

“Sure, Shell,” Samson said reassuringly, “sure he has.”

I wasn’t reassured. What if the screwball should take off on some dopey scheme like the one he’d laid out last night? I stopped thinking about it and asked, “Where’s the Johnson-Kash place of business?”

“Down from Seventh and Figueroa. Middle of the block.”

“How about Kash’s folding money; what bank does he keep it in?”

“How would I know where he banks?”

Kash’s place was at Seventh and Figueroa. Well, the Angelus Bank was just two blocks down Seventh; I’d start there.

I got up. “Okay, Sam,” I said. “Thanks. Keep an ear out for Kelly.”

He just stuck out his big jaw and shook his head at me.

In a drugstore phone booth, I looked up the number of the Angelus Bank and called it. A female clerk answered and I said, “Good afternoon. I wonder if you could tell me if this is the bank where the Johnson-Kash Company has its account?”

She said, “Just a moment, please,” and laid the phone down with a mild clatter. I crossed my fingers and waited.

Banks are very cagey when it comes to giving out information about depositors. It seems Mr. Jones occasionally mentions lightly his eleven thousand dollar balance with the First National Bank when, as a matter of fact, he’s seven dollars and thirteen cents overdrawn. On the other hand there are flocks of guys like Cookie Martini, with acres of green stuff stashed safely away who complain constantly that they can’t afford new shoelaces. There are maybe a hundred other reasons, but it boils down to the fact that bank officials, and right they undoubtedly are, view askance any attempt to pry into the financial lives of their depositors. To get all the information I wanted, I’d probably have to show up with a court order or a gun, but it was worth a try.

A new voice, a man’s this time, said in my ear, “This is Mr. Bland. What was it you wished?”

“I was inquiring if the Johnson-Kash Company has its account here.”

“Well.” he hesitated, “it’s not a particularly unusual request, but could you divulge your reason for desiring that information?”

I told you. Cagey. “Of course,” I said cagily. “Certainly. You see. I’d like to make a rather substantial deposit to Eddie’s account — that is, Mr. Kash’s account. For reasons of my own, I’d like to bank the money to his credit — call it conscience if you like.” I laughed softly into the mouthpiece. “At any rate, Mr. Bland, I wasn’t sure if it would be all right for me to make such a deposit. That’s really what I called to find out. Then, too, I wasn’t sure this was the right bank.”

His voice changed subtly to the tone reserved for prospective depositors. “I understand, sir. Yes, Mr. Kash’s firm has an account with us. A checking account. It is perfectly all right for anyone who so desires to make a deposit in any account whatsoever. It’s done quite often. Now, if you would like to come in this afternoon, Mr…?”

I said quickly. “No, it’s already after two o’clock. I couldn’t make it in from Hollywood in time. I’ll drop in tomorrow. Thank you very much, Mr. Bland.” I hung up.

Well, at least I knew where Kash kept his money. I got out there fast.

The air-conditioned interior of the bank was refreshing as a longshot in the last race after the blazing sun outside. I looked around, avoided everyone who looked like a vice-president ought to look and picked out a thin-faced guy standing back a little way behind the first cashier’s cage with his hands clasped behind his back. He had close-set eyes, about half as much chin as he needed and thin, bloodless lips. He looked as if he might be thirty-five, thirty-six years old. He also looked as if he wouldn’t be above making out loan slips to non-existent customers. I decided that was my boy. I picked up a couple of blank deposit slips from one of the tables lining the center of the floor, slipped one of the C-notes out of my wallet and folded it into my hand, and stepped up to the cashier’s cage.

I said, “Say, chum. Wonder if you’d do me a little favor?”

He raised his head and let his close-set eyes rest on my face. “What kind of a favor?”

“I need some information about one of your depositors here. Deposits and withdrawals a few months back. Only take a minute.”

He looked at me quizzically and said, “I’m sorry; that’s definitely against the rules. No information about depositors may be given to unauthorized persons.”

I took a different tack, fished out my little leather case, snapped it open, flashed my buzzer at him and stuck the case back in my pocket. Quick. “I’m investigating a murder. This may be important.”

He raised an eyebrow. “A private investigator, I see.”

He had good close-set eyes anyway. Twenty-twenty, no doubt.

I nodded.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. We’re perfectly willing to cooperate with the legal authorities, but we can’t give out information indiscriminately. If you could arrange to come back with a court order, or if you can furnish more positive information, we can undoubtedly be of service. What account did you wish to investigate?”

I ignored that for the moment and wiggled my right hand, resting under the wicket. I let the 100 on the corner of the bill peep out. “Possibly I could deposit this to your account. Or maybe I could let you deposit it yourself?”

He looked down at the corner of the bill, and his eyes widened as if he’d seen a gun in my fist. Ah, I said to myself, his language at last.

That wasn’t what he said. His eyes stayed wide as he looked back at my face and his insignificant chin drooped a little. “Bribery!” he sputtered. “The idea.”

He still looked like a crook. Okay, so I can be wrong.

A portly guy about forty walked up and said to the crook, “Thanks for taking over, Mr. Bland. Anything wrong?”

I walked off. The crook said, “Just a minute, you,” but I was going out the door. I climbed into the Cad, gunned it and swung right into Hope Street.

I’d accomplished a lot. Four strikes I’d had at the guy, once on the phone, three times inside and I still hadn’t made it to first base. Maybe I’d played it all wrong, but it would have been so simple if it had worked.

Over a tall, cool beer in the Sirocco on Alvarado at Eleventh, I played with adding two and two. I got everything but four.

Diagonally across the street, second building from the corner, was a big frame house which looked like the only boarding house within blocks. Samson had said little Harry Zerkle lived out here on Alvarado, so if he was both alive and at home that’s where I ought to find him. The question was, what did I do when and if I found the guy? He probably wasn’t the least bit receptive to visitors nosing into his private life, particularly now. There was a possibility he’d tell me all about the larcenous little caper that got him on his present unfriendly terms with Fleming Dragoon, but that possibility was about as remote as the nearest Bogodo Lama. Dragoon had got him to spill by the simple expedient of beating the be-jeezus out of him and what had worked once should work twice, but I couldn’t see myself following in Dragoon’s footsteps. If I just walked up and asked for Zerkle, I’d probably get a quick brush-off. Even if I did get in to see him and then asked for the score politely, like a good boy, Zerkle would likely laugh in my face.

I mulled it over for a minute, downed my beer, walked over to the big frame house, walked noisily up the wooden steps and rang the bell. I pulled the stub of a pencil from my coat pocket and stuck it over my ear.

A flat-faced old hag of about fifty, whose curves had all run together years before, opened the door and looked out at me.

“No rooms,” she said. “I’m full up.”

“No, no, madam,” I said smiling, “I merely wish to see one of your tenants.”

Madam. She liked that. For one reason or another. “Oh, sure,” she said. “Who you want?”

“A Mr. Zerkle, madam. Harry Zerkle.”

“Oh, Harry, huh?” Her eyes narrowed and crawled over my face like spiders. “He moved. He was here but he moved. Don’t know where he went.”

She started to shut the door in my face and I let my face get puzzled. I took the pencil from behind my ear and scratched my upper lip with it. “That’s very strange,” I said. “Most unusual.”

The old hag’s curiosity held her. “What’s so funny about it?”

“Why, this is the address he gave us just this morning.” I looked over my head at the faded numbers over the door. “Yes, 1031 1/2 Alvarado. Most annoying. Well, if he should get in touch with you, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell him Mr. Roberts of the D. E. Lawton Agency came by. I suppose if he wants the money, he’ll phone and give us his new address.”

I turned and started down the wooden steps holding my breath and trying to act as if I had another dozen calls to make.

She came in like she’d been rehearsed. “Hey, mister. Wait a second. What you want to see him about?”

I paused and looked back. “Well, Mr. Zerkle has a policy with us. Just a small one. I understood him to say he’d been in an accident; but of course if he’s gadding about moving, it couldn’t have been very serious, could it?”

She waddled out on the porch sagging in all directions. “Oh, he really got messed up bad,” she said, shaking her head. “Face is all messed up. He’s way too sick to go anyplace.”

“But, madam, I thought you stated that he’d left.”

Deep creases appeared in her flat face as she smiled, winningly, she probably thought. She said, “You know how it is, mister. Harry said he didn’t want to see nobody so I thought, well, you know how it is.”

I assured her I knew how it was and followed her ample bulk inside. She led me upstairs to a room halfway down the hall and tapped on the door. She said softly, “Harry.”

Bed springs creaked inside and a masculine voice said sleepily, “Yeah?”

I said quickly, “Thank you very much, madam. I appreciate your assistance, but this is rather, well, private, you know. I’ll check with you on my way out.”

She smiled winningly some more and waddled down the hall. The stairs groaned as she thumped down them. I eased the .38 out of its shoulder clip and stuck it against the door. With my left hand I knocked again.

The masculine voice inside said, “Hattie? That you, Hattie?” and the door swung open an inch.

I jammed the nose of the .38 through the crack, an inch away from Zerkle’s bugging eyes. “Easy does it, friend,” I said. “Keep it quiet.”

I pushed inside and shut the door behind me. Zerkle backed up against the rumpled bed and I walked over and blew my beery breath in his face. “Come on, friend,” I said. “Get dressed.

He had on a pair of striped shorts, his knobby legs sticking out of one end and his thin torso up out of the other. Hattie had been right; his face was really a mess. Both his eyes were circled with ugly purple and his lower lip was split. An angry bruise swelled high on his left cheekbone and the whole left side of his mouth and cheek swelled out in a lopsided pulpy mass. He’d really been worked over.

He sank down on the side of the bed and said awkwardly through his swollen lips, “Dressed? What do I gotta get dressed for? What’s the matter? Take it easy, huh? What’s the matter?” He was really scared.

I hated to keep it up but I growled, “Drag wants to see you downtown. He wants to talk some more, friend.”

He whimpered in a high voice, “I already talked to him. I didn’t give him no crap. Honest.”

“He thinks maybe you were kidding him along about Joe and you. Would you be kidding him, Zerkle? Maybe someone else is in on the payoff and you just say Joe because Joe can’t say no.”

“Honest, mister, I give it to him straight.” The words bubbled out. He certainly didn’t want to see Dragoon again. Looking at his face, I didn’t blame him. He rattled on, “Joe and me was in on it together like I told him. We pulled the deal ten, twelve times when a nice price come in. I’d go up to the window and Joe’d pay me off and slip a ticket on the winner in the stack. Then I’d cop a heel and Joe and me would meet and I’d split with him. That’s all there was. I swear that’s all there was. Nobody else, just the two of us. I told Drag that; what do I have to tell him again for?” He rubbed his hands together nervously and sweat glistened on his forehead.

“All I know is, Drag said if I found you to bring you down.”

“Please, mister,” he whined, “don’t take me down there. He’d kill me.” His voice sank lower, “He’d kill me sure this time.”

I asked, “You positive you couldn’t tell him anything about how Joe got knocked off? Wasn’t Joe supposed to meet you the night he got killed?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know nothing about Joe getting killed. What’s he want to know about that for? Why didn’t he ask me when I was down there? Joe says maybe he’ll see me, maybe not. He doesn’t show so I just thought he decided not to come by.” His face screwed up as though he was about to start bawling. “The cops ask me. They grill me and ask me and I tell the cops I’m here. I was here. I don’t know nothing about Joe. Nothing, nothing,” he moaned, “I already told him everything about Joe and me. Why don’t you leave me alone?”

I looked down at him, small and crumpled on the side of the bed. “O.K., Zerkle,” I said. “Relax. I’m not taking you anyplace. Dragoon didn’t even send me up here. I came on my own.

He lifted his head and stared at me incredulously.

I went on, “I wanted the truth from you and I didn’t think you’d tell me if I just asked. It was a dirty trick. I’m sorry, but I had to know.” I slipped my gun back in the holster.

Relief spread over his face and he whispered, “You didn’t come from Drag? He doesn’t want me downtown?”

I shook my head. “Sorry I had to do it this way. My name’s Scott. Shell Scott. I’m a private detective. If I can make us even sometime, look me up. I’m in the book.”

Relief stayed on his face, but his eyes narrowed as he thought about it. Anger grew in his eyes and suddenly he snarled, “A spotter! A dirty, stinking spotter! You stinking bastard! You dirty son of a bitch!”

His face twisted as he spat words at me and his lower lip split again and a drop of blood oozed to the surface and smeared his mouth. He yelled foul curses at me; I let him yell. I felt as if he’d earned the privilege.

On the way out I nodded at goon-girl sitting on the porch. “I believe I have everything I need, madam. Thank you very much.”

She blinked at me. “Everything all right?”

“Sure,” I said, “everything’s all right, Hattie.”

</code>

<code> Chapter Ten

IT MUST have been ninety-nine in the shade. I had the top down on the Cadillac and the cushions felt like a griddle. My eyes burned, my head hurt, my back ached — practically every portion of my anatomy felt in need of repairs. In a drive-in, I gulped coffee, then pointed the Caddy back downtown.

Henry was showing another couple the art slides. I went through the door behind the bookcase and into a buzz of activity.

A beefy, baldheaded man in slacks and a white sport shirt leaned against the wall next to me studying a scratch sheet. I asked him, “What race coming up at Hollywood?”

He looked up. “Fifth. Just a couple minutes. Making anything?”

I shook my head. “Just got here. How’s it going?”

“Terrible. I had a big chunk on this Fancy Dan back East. He crawls out of the gate, runs all over the track, swings wide on the turns, then loses in a photo. And me with him on the beezer. I ask you.”

I clucked my tongue sympathetically. “Maybe you’ll make it up on the next one.

“Maybe,” He looked dubious. “This Judy’s Dream looks like a lead-pipe cinch. But after that last one, I don’t know. Say,” he added brightly, “catch this Fancy Dan next time out; they’ll beat the price down, but he ought to win sure. Pick up what you bet anyway.”

“Sure,” I said. I went over to the pages of the Racing Form pinned on the wall, ran down the entries for the Fifth at Hollywood Park, a mile and one-sixteenth route race for $5,000 claiming players and settled on Ambassador. He was a three-year-old racing against older horses which made it a bad bet in the first place, but he looked like the class of the race. If there was any. Anyway, I liked his name.

Ten horses in the race and there’d be plenty bet on all ten. If everybody bet the same horses the only books you’d find would be in libraries. I learned a long time ago you can beat a race, you can even beat a lot of races, but the only way to keep beating the races is either to make book or leave the horses alone altogether.

So I went over to the window and put a sawbuck on Ambassador to win.

This being Saturday afternoon, there were two guys taking money. I gave my ten to a big-eared individual on the right and told him, “Number seven in the fifth, to win. Holly-Park.”

“What’s your initials?”

I told him S. S. and he wrote it at the top of a square, white slip of paper followed by “7-5-HP.” Underneath that cryptic notation he added “10-0-0” and an initial. He dropped my ten through the slot of a metal cash box and handed me a copy of the slip. I now had ten fish on Ambassador’s silken nostrils.

Between the two cashiers, on a high stool, sat a wooden-faced, muscle-bound character about six feet tall and five feet across the shoulders. You know the type, a guy with cast-iron muscles and a brain to match. I said to the cashier who’d taken my money, “What’s the matter? Dragoon give you boys a guardian now?”

He looked at me squarely for the first time and said flatly, “It’s Okay, pally. I like him here. Everybody knows I can’t get away with nothin’. There’s some guys behind you wants to make a bet.”

I moved out of line. Evidently Dragoon was taking no chances on a repetition of the Brooks-Zerkle business. I saw how their little gimmick might have been worked, though. Pretty neat at that.

I looked around the room. At his ease in one of the overstuffed chairs in a corner of the room was my bosom chum, Eddie Kash. I walked over and sat down in the chair next to him.

“Judy’s Dream,” I said. “Hot tip.”

He looked up, a half-smile getting a toe hold on his sensual face, but when he saw who it was aimed at he murdered it quick.

“You!” he said as if he were swearing.

“Me,” I said pleasantly. “This Judy’s Dream. Straight from the feedbox.”

He half rose, scowling at me, then sank back into his chair. “Look, peeper,” he hissed at me, “I don’t enjoy you even a little bit. You annoy me just being around. Keep out of my way.”

I smiled at him and lit a cigarette. “What have you got against private dicks, Eddie?”

He continued glaring. “I’ve got nothing against private dicks. I just don’t crave your company, Scott.”

“Suits me.” I dragged deep on my cigarette and asked casually, “By the way, Eddie, just what was it that happened to Elias? You know, your late partner. Didn’t he drop dead or something?”

His hand tightened on the edge of the chair, then relaxed. That was all. He looked at me coldly and didn’t answer. Then he snarled at me suddenly, “That’s exactly what I wish you’d do, Scott. Drop dead.” He glowered at me from hard brown eyes. “Maybe I could arrange just that.”

Squawk suddenly started coming out of the P.A. system and I leaned back in my chair. Post time. The announcer gave us a quick rundown, told us Easy Guest was acting up at the barrier and then that familiar, pulse-quickening cry, “There they go!”

I leaned forward almost unconsciously noting the sudden quiet, the movements stopped in mid-air, the tense, strained expressions on dozens of faces. “At the start, it’s Dandy Fox going to the front, Ambassador is second, Honey’s Pride is third, Little Joe is fourth, Easy Guest and Holiday. At the quarter, Honey’s Pride in front by a length, on the rail Dandy Fox is second by a nose, Little Joe is third by one length, Easy Guest is fourth and there goes Judy’s Dream running fast on the outside.”

I never did hear Ambassador mentioned after the break. They came down to the finish and it was Judy’s Dream by three lengths and just galloping. I glanced over at the disgruntled expression on Kash’s face and I couldn’t help it; I almost strangled trying to choke a big guffaw. Half a dozen disappointed bettors turned and glared at me, but if looks could have killed, Eddie’s narrowed gaze would have had me drawn and quarter-horsed. Then I remembered and glanced down at the slip of paper in my hand. I stopped gurgling; what the hell was I laughing about?

I got up slowly and said to Eddie, “Some things a guy just knows. I let him wonder what I meant by that and walked over to the door leading to Dragoon’s office.

The big, red-faced guy I knew from the night before was lounging up against the wall between the two doors in the hall. I said, “I want to see Dragoon.”

He didn’t say anything or hiss at me or shoot me, just walked up and tapped twice on Dragoon’s door. The door opened and he motioned me in and followed behind me. Dragoon passed his coal black eyes over me, said hello and went back behind his desk. The yellow couch was empty this time so I relaxed in it and draped a leg over the side.

“What’s on your mind, Shell?” Dragoon asked.

I looked at the tough boy by the door, then back at Dragoon. “Just a little chat. Only get rid of Junior here; I don’t like the idea he might get behind me.”

Dragoon nodded and Junior went out and shut the door quietly after him. Dragoon rested his pendulous arms on the desk. “How’s the investigating?”

“Good enough. I pick up a little here, a little there.”

“What do you expect you’ll pick up here?”

“Don’t know. I picked up Harry Zerkle here. If that means anything.”

“It doesn’t. Not if you’re checking on Joe like you said you were. I got nothing’ on Joe that concerns you.”

“Anything on Joe concerns me right now. About Zerkle, though, I hate to see a little guy get all messed up like he got messed up.”

He grinned wolfishly. “Yeah. That was too bad. He’ll get over it.”

I said, “You sure all you wanted out of the guy was the dope on how he and Joe worked that race gimmick?”

“What else? You might not like my methods, Shell, but they work. And a guy in my business can’t let the help get too free with the cash. Word gets around I’m an easy mark and then where am I? Now word gets around about Zerkle and nobody else tries anything. Simple, only the shoe’s on the other foot. See?”

“Uh-huh, I see. What does it make you when word gets around about Joe?”

He learned over his desk and the corners of his mouth pulled down. “Look, Shell,” he said steadily, “you’re awful free with some of the cracks you make. You shouldn’t want me carrying a grudge against you. In the first place, there’s no word to get around about Joe, not with me in it; in the second place, if there was any word, it’d be terrible unhealthy for you to go around spreading anything.” He paused and leaned back in the squeaking swivel chair. “You already got two of my boys carrying grudges.”

I said, “They’ll have to get in line.”

“They might. You shouldn’t have roughed the boys up, Shell.”

“Okay. So now we’re even. I wouldn’t want any word to get around about me either. You know, not in my business.”

He grinned but didn’t say anything.

“Oh yeah,” I said casually, “another thing. I had a visitor this morning. A Mrs. Maddern. Said something about you telling her to see me.”

“That’s right. I didn’t want her weepin’ around here. Not good for business. You’re the boy scout. Anyway, I figured I’d be doin’ you a favor. Seeing as you’re interested in Joe.”

“Interested, yeah. In Joe Brooks. Not in Joey Maddern. She was looking for Joseph Maddern, too. Not Joe Brooks, Dragoon. How come you knew right away who she meant? The guy that worked for you was Joe Brooks. Not Maddern.”

He took a cigarette out of a tray on his desk, lit it and blew smoke into the air. Then he said, “Didn’t I tell you before?”

“You didn’t tell me before.”

“Guess it didn’t seem important. Sure, I knew he was Maddern. Probably I’m one of the few people that did know it. Didn’t think of it when you dropped in last night. Wouldn’t have thought it was important anyway. Well, when he first comes out here, he tells me who he is, Joey Maddern, but he says he just wants to be known as Joe. Plain Joe, drop the Maddern, see? There’s lots of guys around wants to be just Joe or Bill or something like that. I think he’s got a rap over him somewhere, maybe, but what the hell? As long as he’s Okay on the job, it makes me no never mind. Later he takes this Brooks handle and I find out he’s a lamster. Small stuff. It’s not hurting me and if he wants to shack up with some doll and latch onto her handle, it’s no skin off my nose.”

“It turned out to be twelve grand off your nose. Funny you’d take a guy like that on.”

He wagged his head and pushed a tendril of black hair back in place. “Not funny. He just don’t pan out. I learn my lesson. I make a mistake, that’s all. A guy makes mistakes, Shell. I’m wrong about another guy once and he’s got no rap at all over him. You can’t be right all the time.”

I nodded. “Could be, Dragoon. Could very well be.” I thought of something else. “One other thing, Dragoon. Just to satisfy my own curiosity, how’d you find out the boys were running up the overhead?”

He grinned. “A little thing. It wasn’t too hard, but I was lucky, too. See, I check all the slips-you know, the ones we pay off on. We keep copies of all the slips, but the payoff slips are kept separate. I keep them a while just for a check, then burn them. Well, when Joe gets killed I naturally give all his slips a good check for the last week or so, just so I can see everything’s in shape. Now, all the slips got the sucker’s initials on them and I happen to notice this H.Z. gets paid off on some pretty good bets. I might not have paid much attention, but a Z initial, that’s a screwy one, and the only guy I ever heard of around with a Z is this punk, Zerkle. The H fits too — Harry Zerkle — and from what I remember he’s strictly a deuce man. I check back a little farther, all the slips I haven’t burned, and that takes me back about three weeks. I see where this H.Z. makes some more nice plays — all on nice fat prices. I’m curious now, but I can’t go back no farther; no more slips. So, just for hell, I check copies of the slips we don’t pay off on.”

He stopped talking and grinned. “There’s where they slip up. Everything’s covered; all the payoffs are covered by a slip. But the funny thing was, this H.Z. character never did bet on a loser. Either they didn’t think about that angle or they thought it’d never be checked. Anyway, I haven’t seen the guy yet who can pick the long ones bang, bang, bang, like that and never miss. So, just to play it safe, I had Zerkle down for a little talk and he was nice enough to tell me all about it.”

“Was nice of him,” I said. “Of course, you asked him pretty. Okay, Dragoon. Thanks for the chatter. I’ll see you around.”

“Sure thing, Scott,” he said. “Keep your nose clean.”

“I try to. Incidentally, I just placed a bet outside. Ambassador. I didn’t get paid off; you can check it to make sure.”

He grinned.

The hopefuls were still trying to make their fortunes the easy way. I looked around and saw Kash stuffing his wallet back into his pocket and looking at a slip in his right hand. He sat down, apparently set for the rest of the day. I went out.

In the novelty shop I stopped and said to Henry, “Every time I come in there’s somebody squinting at slides. Art slides. What’s with art?”

He smirked at me and led me down the counter. He handed me a little plastic viewer and half a dozen slides from a box on the counter. It all became clear to me.

The first one was a glamazon, built to size, hiding coyly behind what might have been a piece of butterfly net. She still looked as naked as seven nudists. The other five were of approximately the same order and well worth ordering. I clucked my tongue at Henry.

He cackled, “You ain’t seen nothing’ yet, Shell,” peered around him, then reached under the counter. He was right; I hadn’t seen nothing’ yet. I looked, moved over to where the light was better, looked again and handed the outfit back. I shook my head. “Henry,” I said sorrowfully, “you’ll come to no good end.”

He cackled some more, as if he’d laid an omelette.

</code>

<code> Chapter Eleven

I CLIMBED into the Cadillac and wiped perspiration from my forehead with my handkerchief. I sat and thought a while. I wondered when the hell I was going to tie the strings together. I also wondered if I was even pulling the right strings.

I thought about Eddie. I’d struck out at the bank, but there was another way. Eddie had looked settled for a while at Dragoon’s and if he stayed put, maybe it would work.

I jumped out of the car and went back inside the novelty shop. I got Henry aside and asked him, “You know Eddie Kash?”

“Sure,” he said. “I ought to know him. He’s been here enough.”

“O.K.” I said, “want to make twenty bucks?”

His eyes sparkled. He wanted to make twenty bucks.

I had Henry get me his phone book. I looked up the number of the Johnson-Kash Company and wrote it on a piece of paper. I handed it to Henry and said, “Henry, if Eddie Kash leaves here any time before closing, call this number and ask for Mr. Bennett. If any calls come here for Kash, say he’s left. That’s all you do for the twenty. And don’t say anything to Kash. Got it? It’s important.”

“Got it,” he said. “Kinda screwy.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I gave him the double sawbuck. “I want a pair of glasses. Horn-rimmed, if you’ve got them. Not the kind that squirt water or give you black eyes. Just plain glasses, clear lenses, if you’ve got them around.”

He thought a minute, walked to one of the shelves and got down a box, took something out and came back. “Best I can do,” he said. “They got windshield wipers. Good for a laugh when it rains. Even when it don’t rain.”

I looked them over. They were about what I wanted, round horn rims, plain, except for a little lever sticking straight up about a quarter of an inch in the middle and a tiny, delicate wire-and-rubber extension almost invisible along the outer side of each lens. They’d do; they were designed so they looked normal enough till you wiggled the little lever and sent the tiny wiper swishing back and forth. I gave Henry another buck and used his phone again.

A friend of mine named Smith was in the last gasping stages of the accounting course at Woodbury’s College. I’d once given him my last fifth of bourbon so I figured he owed me a favor. After talking to about nine people at Woodbury’s and being told that classes were in session and that this was highly irregular, I got him. It took me five or six minutes to get the dope I wanted from him and I had to repeat it three times, but finally I thought I had it. He also told me the bourbon was all gone. I ignored that.

The Johnson-Kash building was in the middle of the block between Seventh and Eighth on Figueroa. I stood in front of the wide chromium and glass doors and admired my reflection. I’d stopped by the apartment, picked up a briefcase stuffed with newspapers and changed from the teal-blue gabardine suit to a solid black job I’d last worn to a funeral, drab black tie, black shoes and my one and only hat — a battered, dark snap-brim from which I’d removed the yellow and red feather. The hat rested against the clipped top of my left ear and effectively covered my erect blond hair. There was nothing at all I could do about the nose.

Even wearing the horn-rimmed glasses, I was still Shell Scott, Investigations. I wouldn’t have fooled my sixth cousin or anyone else who knew me. But at least, nobody was going to be describing a big blond in a tailored blue suit and the loudest tie you ever saw. I even looked a little studious.

I pushed through the wide doors and walked inside. In front was a desk behind which sat a pert receptionist with a typewriter, pencil behind her ear and assorted curves. Behind her, another half-dozen desks on each side of the big room stretched back to the wall, in which were three doors with gold-lettered windows. I couldn’t read the lettering from this distance, but I imagined one of the windows read, “Mr. Edward Kash, President,” or words to that effect. Two big doors in the wall to my right, as I faced the rear offices, led into other rooms I assumed were the warehouse areas.

I hugged the briefcase under my left arm and walked over to the pert receptionist. I kept my hat on. I cleared my throat and adjusted my glasses. “Mr. Kash, please?” I inquired.

She looked up and smiled mechanically. “Mr. Kash isn’t here, sir. May I help you?”

“Oh, that’s unfortunate. I thought certainly Mr. Kash would be here. Oh, well, I suppose it’s of no moment, really. If you’ll just help me to get started, I’ll go right to work.” I beamed at her.

She started to beam back, then wrinkled up her forehead. “Huh?” she said indelicately, then, “I beg your pardon? I don’t quite understand. Work at what?”

“Why, on the audit,” I said. “I’m Mr. Bennett.”

Her forehead stayed wrinkled so I said as if it explained everything, “The auditor, Mr. Bennett.”

“But I don’t know anything about an audit.” The girl was confused.

I said impatiently, “Will you direct me to whoever is in charge in Mr. Kash’s absence, young lady?” I looked at my watch. “I really must get started.”

She pressed her lips together, stood up quickly and took a deep breath as if she were blowing up two balloons. I stopped the leer just in time; it would hardly have been in character, it seemed.

She snapped, “Follow me.”

I followed her with pleasure. She led me down the aisle between the two rows of desks and into an office at the left rear. She presented me to a Mr. Matthews, a short, potbellied man with a straggling black mustache, spun around and left.

Mr. Matthews rose from behind his desk and extended his hand. I shook hands with enough pressure to bend a marshmallow and said, “Mr. Matthews, the young lady didn’t understand there was to be a special audit so I naturally asked for the executive in charge. I’ve wasted much time already and I hoped to be through by Tuesday at the latest. You understand.”

He didn’t understand. After two or three minutes of his not understanding, I assumed a grieved expression and said a bit frostily, “Mr. Matthews, if you’ll just call Mr. Kash I’m sure he can explain why you weren’t informed of this audit.”

I sat down in a chair by the desk and hugged my newspaper-filled briefcase. He hesitated and I added, after taking a deep breath and crossing my fingers, “It’s nearly five o’clock. All I actually hoped to do today was start checking your accounts receivable with a view toward revising your reserve for bad debts. Mr. Kash apparently feels that the existing reserve is inadequate.” I added casually, just as if I knew what I was saying, “You understand, of course, that the more bad debt expense we can charge against revenue, the less income tax we’ll have to pay. I won’t need the profit-and-loss statement and balance sheet for the last period until sometime Monday morning.”

For one horrible moment I couldn’t remember if it was profit-and-loss statement and balance sheet, or profit-and-balance statement and loss sheet. If Matthews wanted a little clarification, this could get cute. I could go through my spiel again like a record, but I couldn’t add anything else. Smith hadn’t told me anything else. No bourbon for him.

Matthews said, “Hmmm.”

That was enlightening. I sniffed and glanced nervously at my watch. I wasn’t acting; I was nervous. “At this rate I won’t get anything done. Well, Mr. Kash will have to pay me for this time anyway.

Matthews frowned. “Certainly, Mr. Bennett. It’s a little irregular, but I suppose it’s all right. I’ll see if I can’t locate Mr. Kash, if you don’t mind just a little more delay.”

I said, “Surely, surely. That would be fine, Mr. Matthews,” and drummed on my briefcase. From where I sat, I could watch him as he dialed numbers on the phone. The first number drew a blank. He hesitated just a moment, then dialed what looked like the number where Henry should be waiting. I hoped he was. The palms of my hands were moist while I waited and listened to the short one-sided conversation.

Matthews put the phone down and turned to me. “I couldn’t reach him,” he said. “I did call, uh, a business conference he was to attend and they told me he’d just left. I imagine he’ll be here shortly.”

“Fine,” I said. “Now if I can just get started, I’m sure Mr. Kash will explain everything when he gets here. He told me, incidentally, I’d probably find it convenient to use his office.” I looked at him inquiringly over the top rims of my glasses thinking idiotically what a laugh it would be if the little wipers should suddenly start going click-click, click-click in Matthews’ kisser.

He sighed, nodded and showed me out of his office and into the one next to his. It was a sumptuous office: thick, gray carpet; comfortable-looking chairs; on the wall, a framed reproduction of a magnificent painting of Man O’ War; and a big, blond-wood desk with an upholstered swivel chair behind it. Upholstered, yet. I sank into the chair behind the desk and looked at the framed portrait facing me. The wise brown eyes of Robin Brooks stared back at me as if to say, “Shell, Shell, what are you doing?” I picked up the portrait and showed it to Matthews.

“His wife?” I asked.

“No, uh, just a friend, I understand.”

I put the picture back on the desk. “Lovely girl, isn’t she? Lovely. Now if you’ll just have someone show me the accounts receivable, I’ll start with them as quickly as possible.”

While he went to the files I gave the office a quick once-over. Everything looked okay except the wall safe. If it was in there, Matthews would let me throw a screaming fit, but I knew damn well he wouldn’t open the thing. Probably he didn’t know the combination anyway. He came bustling back in followed by a kid about nineteen carrying two not very impressive looking binders. I hoped they were the accounts receivable ledgers. If they came in ledgers.

I said, “If you’ll just put those on the desk, young man. Thank you.” I turned to Matthews. “You’ve been quite helpful, really. I’m sorry if this has disturbed you in any way, but I’m sure Mr. Kash will straighten it all out.” I paused reflectively, “Didn’t he say anything to you this morning?”

He shook his head. “Mr. Kash hasn’t been in at all today. He sometimes doesn’t come in.” He laughed, not very heartily, “He seems to think we run the business pretty well in his absence.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said with no particular sarcasm. “However, that probably explains it. Mr. Kash only spoke to me about this special audit yesterday. I just happened to be free till Wednesday. Maybe,” I added brightly, “it’s in the nature of a surprise.”

He opened his mouth, then half shut it. Then he said, “Yes, that must be it. Yes.”

For one sickening moment I thought he was going to stand there and watch the auditor audit, but he suddenly turned and left, closing the door behind him. I wondered about him.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about the wall safe. I found it in the logical and obvious place, the middle drawer of the big blonde desk. I had to break the lock to get inside the drawer, but nobody came in and it was worth it. It seemed a small matter anyway after the trouble I’d had just getting as far as this.

It was the usual big, black book with “Angelus Bank, Los Angeles, California” stamped on the front cover in gold letters. I never knew reading check stubs could be so interesting. After twenty minutes of reading I wished I really was an auditor, but I’d learned a little anyway. In January and February of this year, the firm had apparently started dealing with a new firm, the Middleton Manufacturing Company in Riverside. These checks were all drawn by Kash and none were drawn before January or after February. In that period, Eddie had made out numerous checks to cover usual business expenses in addition to several substantial withdrawals from the Johnson-Kash account to the Middleton Manufacturing Company: $1000.00, $1500.00, $1700.00, climaxed by one big check for $10,000.00 drawn February 26th and made out to cash. I checked some other scribblings in the desk to make sure the stubs were in Kash’s handwriting. They checked.

The audit was complete. Probably the fastest audit ever accomplished. Even of just accounts receivable, whatever that was.

I wiped off the checkbook, carefully replaced it in the desk — wondering why I was going to such pains to remove proof of my presence — took off my glasses and wiped them, put them back on and walked out.

The pert receptionist sat behind her desk and looked bored. I imagine she was bored. I felt sorry for her. I really did. I leaned over her desk and said, “Sorry I was such a jerk.”

She looked at me, blinking. I reached up and wiggled the small lever on the bridge of my glasses. The miniature wipers worked like a charm: swish, swish, back and forth. Her eyes followed them in little jerks, fascinated. I thought she might be going to scream. She pulled her chin in against her neck, looked up at me from under pencilled brows and scurried off in the general direction of Mr. Matthews.

I slipped behind the desk and one-fingered quickly on the blank paper in the typewriter, “For you, sweetheart,” left the glasses on the typewriter and scurried off myself in the general direction of the Cadillac.

Eddie was going to have a stroke. That was O.K. by me. Let him stew a little. I’d got what I wanted and, besides, the receptionist wasn’t looking bored when I left. That’s my policy, never leave them bored. You never can tell.

It was five-thirty on the nose, time I saw Louis Morris. If he still lived at his apartment in the Woolford Arms on Harvard Boulevard and if he hadn’t changed his habits since the last time I saw him, he should just be getting out of bed.

I was right both times. He peeped around the corner of the door and blinked at me sleepily. “Well, Shell,” he mumbled. “Whatsa matter? Didn’t you go to bed?”

“Sure, but I got up. Half a day ago.”

“Horrible,” he said. “Horrible. Come on in, if you must.” He opened the door for me and I went inside. He smelled like mash fermenting.

I asked him, “What the devil were you drinking last night?”

He shook his tousled black head; tight curly locks of hair bounced on his white forehead. “I wish I knew. I’m dying.” He smacked his lips, “Never again. I swear it. Never, never again. Come on in the bedroom. What brings you to the morgue, anyway?”

“I need some information, Louis, and I need it straight. Case I’m on. I figure you won’t give me any doubletalk.”

“That’s right, Shell. You’re the only dick, private or otherwise, ever gave me a break. I could have got in some real trouble with the big boys over those one-armed bandits if you hadn’t wised me up. Ask and ye shall receive.”

“Poker game last Wednesday, table stakes. I hear you were in it.”

“And how I was in it. And I’m still in it Seven hundred clams I’m in it. What’s important about it besides my seven hundred clams?” He moaned, rolled back into bed and propped two pillows under his head. He was a good-looking guy about my age, husky, five-ten or eleven, pale and obviously suffering from a beautiful hangover. I could sympathize with him.

I said, “Who else was in the game?”

“Let’s see, Morey Gatz, Pete Sanders, Beeny, Lenny Crofts for a little while. He went busted quick. Then there was Eddie Kash and Hymie Blinz.” He counted on his fingers. “That’s the size of it.”

“Anybody leave?”

“Not till the game busted up. About one, one-thirty in the A.M.” He yawned and stared at me curiously. “What gives? Why all the interest? Poker against the law now?”

I said, “You sure about nobody leaving earlier? It might be important.”

“Positive. I would have gladly spit in their eyes if they had. Leave with my seven hundred clams, sure.

“Kash was there all the time, huh?”

“Sure Kash was there. All seven of us were there. Hey, what cooks here? The cops gave me the same kind of song and dance about Kash.”

“Well, under your hat, Louis, a guy got a little murdered. I’m checking some alibis. Maybe it means nothing.”

“I’m not screwed up in it, am I?”

“No, you’re all right, Louis. You didn’t knock anybody off, did you?”

“Sure. Three, four. I forget just how many.”

“I meant Wednesday night.” I forced a chuckle. Okay. I won’t tell. And, Louis, forget I was by.”

“I already forgot.” He grinned at me and yawned hugely.

I told him thanks and to go to bed nights like people.

Outside, I leaned against the door and swore softly and fluently, and with much feeling for quite awhile.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twelve

THE FIRST THING I did when I got back to the apartment was to get out of those stinking black clothes. In a dark maroon robe I felt better, more presentable even. The second thing I did was call the Examiner. No, Kelly hadn’t been back as far as they knew. No, they didn’t know where he was.

I called Kelly’s hotel and got Mrs. Kelly again.

“This is Mr. Scott again, Mrs. Kelly. I talked to you this morning. Has your husband been in yet?”

“Hello, Mr. Scott. No, he usually doesn’t get home before seven. Sometimes it’s much later.” She paused and said slowly, “Like last night. Was it something important?”

“Probably not. I thought he might get in touch with me today. I haven’t been in the apartment much and he could have called and missed me. I thought perhaps he’d left some message with you.”

“No. He did call about three this afternoon to say he might be late for dinner. That’s all. If he should phone again, I’ll tell him you’ve been trying to reach him, Mr. Scott.”

“Fine and thanks. Just tell him I called.”

I hung up and examined the phone receiver in minute detail for sixty seconds, then shrugged and got out the phone book. I found “Dragoon, Fleming” listed on Gramercy Place; I found immediately underneath, “Dragoon, Sara” on North Plymouth Boulevard. I called the pretty one.

After ten — I counted them, ten — futile buzzes she answered the phone with a soft, purring, “Yes?”

“Sara?”

“Yes. Who is it?”

“This is Shell Scott.”

She breathed it into the phone, “Oooh, I remember. The beautiful blond man.”

I snickered a little. “Yeah, that’s me. Describes me perfectly.”

“Well, hurry up,” she said, not too impatiently, “what do you want? I’m all wet; I was in the shower.”

“Oh, I’m sorry; I’ll make it quick, then.”

“It’s all right, Shell. I was just kidding. I’m standing on a towel, anyway.”

I said, “Look, I want to see you.”

She laughed some more. “Naughty,” she said. “Oh, you’re naughty.”

I growled at her, “I didn’t mean this minute. I meant later. Tonight.”

“I’m disappointed,” she teased. “How much later?”

“Say an hour. I want to talk to you.”

All right. Come by at seven-thirty. You can talk to me over dinner.”

“I didn’t say anything about dinner, Miss Dragoon.”

“I know it; you’re taking me to dinner. That’s the price of my conversation.”

“Is the conversation worth it?”

“Just wait and see, Mr. Scott. And call me Sara. When people call me Miss Dragoon, it limits my conversation.”

“Okay, Sara. Seven-thirty.”

“‘Bye, Shell.”

I hung up. My palm left moist spots on the receiver. I couldn’t understand it. That’s what I told myself.

I showered and dressed in my favorite suit as a relief from my drab costume of the afternoon’s emoting. I felt better. I went into the kitchenette and mixed a drink and felt better still.

The black panther comparison popped into my mind again when she opened the door. She was wearing an ankle-length gown of black rayon jersey that fit her like a plastic surgeon’s best graft. It was plain and unadorned except for a gold sash that made a vivid splash of color around her small waist. The top of the gown was square-cut and just low enough to be smart and provocative without being ostentatious. Carmined toenails peeped from the open toes of high-heeled gold shoes that brought the piled black hair on the top of her head to a point just above the level of my chin. The only other spots of color were in her face: the strange, long-lashed green eyes and the small, sullen red mouth, and a pair of long, green earrings dangling from the small, white lobes of her ears.

I glanced down at the ankle-length gown. “I’m afraid I didn’t dress for a formal dinner.”

She curled her lips back from the small, even teeth pressed lightly together. “It won’t make any difference, not where were going. If I can choose the place. May I, Shell?” She held the door open for me.

“Sure. Name it and you can have it.” I went in and sat down in a gold chair to the left of the door.

On an odd, gleaming black table at the left side of the room were two drinks on a hammered-silver tray: greenish liquid in long-stemmed crystal glasses.

She picked up the tray and offered it to me. I took one of the glasses and she said, “Good thing you’re on time. I had the drinks waiting.”

She took the other drink, put the tray back on the table and turned to face me with her left hand on her hip, the right hand holding her drink in the air over her head.

She said, “I only wore this because I think I look good in it. Do I look good?”

“You look good, Sara. You even look dangerous.”

“Do I?” She liked that. She pressed her teeth together in a tight smile and peered sideways at me through the screen of her lashes; posing, affected, looking like a siren out of Poe, or a passage out of Baudelaire. I had to admit it; she repelled me a little, but in a strange, kind of hypnotic way, she fascinated me, too.

“Taste your drink,” she said.

I sipped at it. Warm, strange, smoky liquor like licorice and ambrosia filtered down my throat. It was good. “Where’d you get this, Sara?”

“It’s not anisette; it’s real absinthe, Shell.”

“I wondered. You don’t see this around. It’s narcotic, against the law now.” I added, looking at her, “I understand it’s an aphrodisiac.”

“It’s good though, isn’t it? A friend of mine smuggled a bottle in from Spain. Just for me. I’ve had it almost two years.”

I raised my eyebrows and she said softly, “I only serve it for special people, on special occasions, Shell.”

I looked at her without saying anything, but I still felt flattered.

I looked around the room, really noticing it for the first time. It hit me like a sneak punch and I knew, even if I never saw it again, I wouldn’t forget it. “I like the room, Sara. It’s startling, but I like it.”

“I hoped you would. Whether people like it or not, it’s all mine. I didn’t get it out of a book.”

That was probably the best way to describe it. It wasn’t exactly modern; it certainly wasn’t provincial; it wasn’t Louis Quinze or anything like that; I guess it was essentially Sara.

I sat in a deep gold chair against the wall to the left of the door. The chair was tilted a little away from the wall so it slanted sharply to the right across the room. The table, too, I noticed, was in the shape of a parallelogram, the back flush against the left wall, the ends on the same, sharp slant into and across the room. A thick, deep-pile carpet, black as Sara’s hair, stretched from one wall to the other. And there was only one other piece of furniture. That’s right, just one. It was a huge divan; angular, bizarre, like nothing I’d ever seen before. It squatted just behind the center of the room, midway between the left and right walls, its back to me and the door. Long arms like right-angle triangles with the long, flat edge parallel to the far wall stretched from the sides of the divan like black, sharp-edged wings. The divan itself was black, matching the carpet beneath it and in its center were two thick cushions of creamy white. In front of the divan, sprawled on the ebony carpet, its gleaming claws half buried in the thick nap, was a snowy white bearskin rug almost shocking in its impact.

The right wall was plain; no furniture, no lamps, nothing. It needed nothing. The slanting, diagonal lines of the chair, table and bearskin rug gave the room a feeling of movement that demanded space, emptiness on the right. Light suffused the room softly from fluorescent fixtures hidden at the juncture of the walls and ceiling.

The room was a series of shocks that built up to the strangest, most shocking thing of all; every line of the room led the eye inevitably to it. A painting.

The picture was on the wall directly in front of the divan and above the bearskin rug. It was huge, about eight feet high and six feet wide, reaching from the low ceiling almost to the floor. It was done in oils, thick, heavy blobs and smears of color and yet it wasn’t really a picture at all It was a fragment torn out of a nightmare, a scream captured in oils.

It completely dominated the room, filled it, crowded everything else into insignificance. At first I thought it was almost completely red, the brazen splashes and streaks of crimson leaping from the canvas like gaping wounds; but there were swirls of liquid green, touches of vibrant yellow, and pools of sombre black. Almost at the top of the canvas was one area of deep black spreading like a stain across the top of the painting. The whole thing was crazy; it didn’t make sense. But there was a kind of rhythm to it, a sort of aliveness.

That was the room. I couldn’t have lived in it, but it fascinated me. It was Sara’s room, all right.

Sara said, “Pay some attention to me.

I grinned at her. “I was admiring the room. It’s strange; I never saw anything quite like it.”

“What do you think of the painting? Do you like it?”

“I don’t know. Where’d you get it?”

“I didn’t get it. It’s mine; I painted it.”

I looked at her with new interest. “I didn’t know you painted.”

“I don’t. But I painted that. I just wanted to do it. You know, it’s not a real painting. It isn’t modernistic, it isn’t anything.” She came over and took my hand. “Come on. Bring your aphrodisiac.”

I got up and she led me over to the huge divan and made me sit down. The divan was surprisingly comfortable. I noticed for the first time that the right rear leg of the bearskin disappeared under the heavy base of the divan as if imprisoned there. Sara walked over to the painting and pulled a fine string hanging down at its side that turned on a small light in a chromium pin-up reflector at the upper right-hand corner of the picture. She came back and sat down beside me.

Sitting close under it like this, light spilling down from the corner of the painting, it was strange, eerie, almost over-powering. I sipped the absinthe, breathed in its aromatic fumes and stared at the matted patchwork of color.

“Have you any idea what I call it?” she asked.

I shook my head, looking at the tangled colors.

“It doesn’t really have a name. Self-Portrait, I call it.

“Why?”

“Because, I suppose, I just started on it and let it grow. It almost grows by itself. Whenever anything happens to me, or whenever I feel like it, I do some more on it. It doesn’t really finish saying anything. It isn’t finished; it never will be finished.” She looked at me, her green eyes veiled, distant. “You know, I started the thing when I was eighteen. I’ve been fooling with it for almost five years now.” She looked back at the picture and said, “It’s really sort of ghastly, isn’t it? A thing like that probably shouldn’t have a name.”

The sparkle came back into her eyes and she said, “Aren’t we serious. I’ll probably paint some more on it after you bring me home tonight. Something symbolic.”

“Like what?

She grinned and squinted at me, “How should I know? You haven’t brought me home yet. And you never will if we don’t get started.”

I’d almost finished my drink so I let the last few drops trickle down my throat and handed her the glass. The absinthe lay warm and pleasant in my stomach.

The place she’d chosen was out on La Brea and it was almost eight-thirty when I parked the Cad. It was a small building just off the highway near Bangor Street, with a flickering neon sign out front, “The Place.” Sara hugged my arm as we went inside.

It was a small, intimate spot and I didn’t see a soul I knew. It looked like a hangout for dipsomaniacs, nymphomaniacs and maniacs.

Sara seemed to know everybody. Guys in tuxes, guys in sport shirts, gals in formals and dolls in bobby-sox said hello to her and she called most of them by nicknames. A five-piece combo played soft music in the back.

We chose our own table, one luckily still left in one of the quieter corners and I said, “You seem to know your way around here.”

“I do. This is my favorite place.” She smiled. “You meet such interesting people.”

I looked around. “I believe it.”

At the next table a tall blond-haired man with a definite widow’s-peak and a slightly shorter man with black hair sat close together. The short man covered the other’s hand with his own, patted it and talked earnestly into the blond’s ear. The blond looked bored. The short man leaned closer and kissed the blond gently on the cheek.

I turned back to Sara. She was taking it all in and watching me with an amused quirk on her lips, but the trace of a frown wrinkled on her forehead.

I said, “Some guys have all the luck.”

She threw back her head and laughter rippled out of her white throat. She smiled at me pleasantly. “Thanks, Shell,” she said. “I was a little afraid maybe you’d be mad.”

“Not mad.”

She wrinkled her nose at me, reached across the table and patted my hand.

I said, “Now you kiss me on the cheek.”

She didn’t say anything to that, just let her hand rest quietly on mine and gave me a slanting, green-eyed look. Her lips were closed but moving slightly, imperceptibly. I could imagine her teeth sliding together in that strange sideways motion I’d seen before in Dragoon’s office.

I said, “You’re a strange, strange creature, Sara.”

She looked down at the tablecloth. “I suppose I am.”

“Last night, for instance. What made you jab those long red nails into my neck?”

She got a funny look on her face and answered, “I just felt like it.” No apology, just matter of fact.

“You always do what you feel like doing?”

She grinned a little, “Almost always.”

I didn’t see the waiter come up. He roared in my ear, “What’ll it be, kids?”

I looked at Sara. “What’ll it be, kid?”

“It’ll be steak or shrimp. You takes your pick. That’s all there is.”

“That’s all?”

She nodded.

“Steak, then,” I said.

“Two steaks. I want mine rare.”

Over red, rare steaks I said, “About last night, Sara. Just before I was lugged in. You were there all the time, weren’t you?”

She chewed on steak and nodded.

“Wasn’t it kind of, well, sickening?”

“Not exactly. I was there when it started; I stayed till it was over. I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t want to leave. Does that make any sense to you?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Look, Shell. I’m no angel; I’m bad. I’ve been called immoral and vicious and maybe I am. But I don’t try to kid anybody.” She grinned like a kid caught in the jam. “And sometimes I’m lots of fun.” She lowered her voice and whispered between her teeth, “Lots of fun.”

“Look, you siren,” I said. “I brought you out here to quiz you, see?”

She pouted. “I know what quiz means. I’m almost sorry. All right. Quiz me, Shell. I’m going to finish my steak before it gets cold.” I watched her while she worked on a piece of steak, then she looked up at me from under her eyebrows and said, “I’ll get you, Mr. Shell Scott. That’s fair warning.”

We batted everything around but the weather and when the steaks were gone and replaced by highballs, I said, “You know all about the little play Zerkle and Brooks worked on your brother, then.”

She nodded. “I don’t think Zerkle kept anything back. I heard it all.”

I asked, “Do you know anything, Sara, about Joe’s accident?”

“Uh-uh. It’s funny, that’s all. I wish I did; I kind of liked Joe. He was a nice little crook, anyway.”

“Did you know him well?”

“He worked for Drag four or five months. I couldn’t help knowing him. He came to see me a couple of times.” She pressed her teeth together in that funny smile. “Maybe I fascinated him, huh? Like I fascinate you.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m hypnotized. Did Dragoon ask Zerkle about Joe’s getting killed?”

She leaned over the table, her eyes merry. “Let me tell you something about Joe. He kicked me once. On the leg. Way high on my leg.”

“What’d you do, scratch him?”

“Uh-huh. High on the thigh he kicked me. Want me to show you where?” She stood up and reached for the hem of her gown.

“Murder!” I yelped. “Sit down, woman. Want to start a riot?”

She laughed and sat down. “I wasn’t going to, really.

I just wanted to see what you’d do.” She lowered her voice and said with mock secrecy, “I’ll show you later. All right, Shell? Later?” She was having a lot of fun.

“Sure,” I said. “Later. You had me scared. Now, answer the question of the quizzer without strip-tease or fancy stuff. Did Drag ask Zerkle anything about Joe’s getting knocked off?”

“Nope. And you’re an old stickin-the-mud.”

“Okay. So I’m a stickin-the-mud. I’m also a private dick. What are you laughing at?” She said it was nothing, so I went on, “Don’t forget, I bribed you with a steak. I want answers. I’ve got a job to do, so I combine business with pleasure.” I leered at her. “If you can call this pleasure.”

She raised a black eyebrow in a high arch. “Don’t kid yourself; it’s pleasure.” She got serious. “It is a pleasure, isn’t it, Shell? I mean, you do like being here with me, don’t you?”

I glared at her. “Okay, you little minx. I’m enjoying myself. Now stop trying to seduce me.”

“I will not.” She grinned.

“One more question, sweetheart. A little while back when I asked you about Joe you said it was funny. What did you mean?”

“Just funny. First place, Joe didn’t drink so much he’d be full up to the neck like he was. Second place, what was he doing way out at Elysian Park? Particularly if he was so stinking? It’s just funny, that’s all.”

“Excellent deductions, Miss Dragoon. Same as mine.”

“Don’t call me Miss Dragoon. Be intimate.”

“All right then. Sara. Very nice deductions, but just how did you know Joe was full up to the neck, as you yourself put it, with hooch? Answer me that?”

She looked at me coldly. “What is this, a cross-examination? It was in the papers, stupid. All the papers.”

“Sorry. I’m stupid.”

“No, you’re not stupid. You’re nice. Nice Shell.”

She went from frigid to steaming in the sweep of a long eyelash. It was a bit disconcerting.

I told her so. “You’re a little disconcerting.”

“Wonderful. That’s an improvement. You haven’t even told me how you like my hair.”

“I like your hair.”

“Can’t you be a little more positive about it?” she snapped. Ice again.

“Sure,” I said easily, “I like your hair. I’m positive I like it.”

She pressed her red lips together tight. “Sometimes I could kill you, Shell Scott.” She leaned back in her chair. “Questions all over?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Want me to take you home?”

“All right. First, though, you have to dance one dance with me. Then we’ll go. You haven’t even asked me to dance.”

I’d almost forgotten the band was playing.

I got up and went around to her side of the table. “May I have this dance, Miss Dragoon? Woops, Sara.”

“Why thank you,” she smiled. “Charmed.”

The five-piece combo was good. Three rhythm, one reed and one brass. They played with a heavy, pulsing beat that talked to your feet. I liked the way Sara danced. She came into my arms and pressed close against me, her left arm resting on my shoulder, fingernails teasing the hair on my neck.

“You’re too tall,” she said. “Stoop down a little.”

“Careful with those long fingernails.”

She leaned back a little way from me, looking up. She opened her mouth wide, then half closed it and said under her breath, “I’ll be careful. You afraid?”

“Scared to death. I never know when you might make like Lizzie Borden.”

She took her right arm off my shoulder and waved her hand in front of my eyes. Her red nails were long, just beginning to curve down at the ends. “Who needs an ax?”

I said, “Shut up,” and concentrated on dancing. The combo played Laura and they played it right. Soft and slow, lights dimmed, a vocalist I hadn’t noticed before whispering the words. It was nice.

The music stopped and Sara stood with me at the side of the floor, still pressed tight against me, fingers drawing little tingling circles on my neck.

I said, “You lost? No more music.”

“I’m lost. Who cares about music? I’ll hum.”

I pulled her arms down, pressed them to her sides and said, “Home we go, little girl.”

She sighed, “Okay, old man.”

“Don’t call me old man.”

“All right, daddy.”

I considered. “Well, that’s a little better.”

“Anyway,” she said, “I’m not a little girl.”

I looked at her. All of her. “The point is well taken. Now let’s get out of here.”

Sara left me at the door saying, “Just a minute, Shell. I’ll turn on a light.”

She didn’t turn on the overhead fluorescents but walked across the room, her footsteps inaudible on the thick carpet, and switched on the pin-up lamp at the corner of her “Self-Portrait.”

She said, “Shut the door and come on over.”

The light fell directly on the painting and spilled onto the white bearskin rug beneath it. Diffused light escaped into the corners of the room, but almost all of it was lost in the black carpet and divan. I sat on one of the creamy-white cushions of the divan. The cushions, the white bearskin rug and the painting seemed to be the only solid things in the room; but even they seemed disembodied, insubstantial, floating in pools of blackness.

Sara kneeled and then lay on her back on the bearskin at my feet, the black dress hugging the curves of her small body, sharply outlined by the white of the rug beneath her.

Posing again. Still the affected, artificial, strange and oddly beautiful woman. But pose or not, it was effective. She looked utterly and infinitely desirable. Except for the swelling curves of her body, she could have been a child or a woman of a thousand years ago. Ageless and timeless, as sin is ageless and timeless.

She rolled, propped herself on her right elbow, facing me, and said softly, “Shell.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Where I was kicked, where I was hurt, Shell.”

With her left hand she lifted the hem of her gown high on her leg. In the dim light I could see the dark discoloration on her thigh. It was there; it wasn’t just something she’d invented to play with me, tease me. The firm flesh was pinched in at the tight roll of her dark hose, then swelled and curved, gleaming like old ivory, between the top of the hose and the draped, black hem of her gown. She let her hand relax and the smooth jersey slid back down her thigh like a lover’s caress, easily, softly and covered the pale, gleaming skin.

She got to me, got under my skin with some dark, mesmeric distillation of her own unique fascination. It was distinctly her own as the room was hers, as the almost insane, brooding painting ominous above us was hers.

Still lying relaxed at my feet, she reached up with her left hand and took my hand in hers. The palm of her hand was hot, moist. And trembling, as I remembered her hand trembling on my wrist once before.

She pulled me to her. “Shell,” she whispered through her teeth, “I want to kiss you, Shell.”

She kissed me with small, moist lips. Easy, lingering kisses. She ran the tip of her tongue lightly across my lower lip, her green eyes wide, almost black, with tiny embers of fire burning in them from the light spilling down from above us. She kissed me softly, like the caress of cool fingers, and said, “Kiss me Shell. Hurt me.

She bit my lip. Hard.

I didn’t know whether I liked it or not. But I put my hands behind her back, pulled her roughly to me and mashed her lips under my own.

I snapped on the lights in the front room of my apartment and the guppies leaped and scurried back and forth, frightened. Dirty trick; I’d forgotten about the fish.

I said, “Sorry, fellows,” went into the bedroom and undressed. It was ten minutes after 1 A.M.

I turned the water on full blast in the shower, hot and steaming, and jumped in.

I yelled at the top of my lungs and jumped out as if I’d been jet-propelled.

I walked into the bedroom, dripping on the carpet, stood in front of the full-length mirror and looked over my shoulder at my back. On each side of my back, running from the shoulder blades down to my waist, were four vivid, scarlet furrows, raw and angry.

I looked at them and swore through clenched teeth, “The little bitch. The … little … bitch!”

</code>

<code> Chapter Thirteen

THE BELL kept on ringing and I started coming alive with the bell ringing in my ears, and I buried my head in the pillow. I could still hear the damn ringing so I climbed up out of sleep like a man crawling from a barrel of molasses and the ringing stopped and I pawed for the phone beside the bed. I got an earful of dial tone. I hung up.

I sat up and threw back the sheet and rubbed a hand across the perspiration on my chest. It was hotter than hell in summer. Sunlight spilled into the room and was blotted up by the black rug on my bedroom floor. My back stung like bloody hell and suddenly I remembered.

I sat in the middle of the bed for a few seconds, remembering, a vacuous smile on my face. I stared at my big toe; it was still there. That was a break.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, grabbed the phone and dialed ULrich 3-1212. A feminine voice, precise as a dance team at the Ambassador, said in my ear, “At the tone … the time will be … five … one … and forty seconds.”

I walked over and grabbed my watch off the dresser, checked it and the two alarm clocks. The voice was right; it was after five o’clock. I’d slept for almost sixteen hours and I still felt as dopey as a waiter in an opium den.

I got a robe out of the closet, went into the kitchenette and started coffee. I put on a pot of mush and stood staring stupidly at it. It went plop, plop, like a witches’ brew.

The phone started ringing again and I grabbed it.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Scott? That you, Mr. Scott? This is Kelly. Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to get you.”

“Where have I been? I’ve been in bed. Where the hell have you been? I thought maybe you were dead.”

“I did it,” he said excitedly. “I did it. It worked.”

“You did what? What worked?”

“What we talked about. You remember, when we had dinner? You remember? Don’t you remember?” He sounded a little scared.

I woke up all the way. I got cold all over.

“Kid,” I said. “Kelly. Old pal. Kelly. You didn’t. You were drunk; you didn’t mean all that idiot-talk you gave me at the Seraglio.”

“Well, sure I did, Mr. Scott. All of it. I got a little drunk, I guess. I don’t remember everything too well, maybe, but I thought it was all set. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” I groaned. “Nothing; just everything. You really did it?”

“Well, sure I did. Golly, I gotta talk to you. I been trying to get you half the afternoon.”

“It’s good?”

“It’s terrific. You won’t believe it. It’s colossal.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll believe it. I’ll get dressed and come down. Where are you?”

“Hansen’s Drugstore up on Hollywood Boulevard.”

“Can you spill any of it now?”

“Not over the phone. Except that Captain Samson was on the right track. Only there’s more. You better come on down here.”

“Give me fifteen minutes; you got me out of bed.”

“Bed.” He sounded disgusted. “I’ll wait.”

I hung up, went into the bathroom and took a quick cold shower and rubbed down with a thick Turkish towel. Easy on the back. Very easy.

Kelly. Tommy Kelly, intrepid reporter. The crazy damn fool. If he messed around long enough, he could get us all killed. It was still sinking in; the idiot had actually gone out and put somebody on the spot. Spot!

A cold, clammy idea climbed up into my brain by way of my spine. If I recalled Kelly’s drunken conversation correctly, the guy on the spot was me.

What did he think this was, anyway, a scavenger hunt? He was chumming around with homicidal heavies as if they were customers at a society bazaar. It was colossal, he’d said. I hadn’t even heard his story yet and already it was colossal.

I quickly picked out a tan tropic-weight suit and my .38 Colt revolver. A lot of guys prefer a bigger gun than a .38, but the Special tosses out a pill that’s .358 inches across its fanny. Tossed in the right spot, I figure that’s big enough for anything up to elephants.

I smelled something, went into the kitchenette and noticed the mush had stopped going plop and just sat on the stove and smoked. I stuck the pan under the faucet in the sink, let it hiss and sizzle for a minute, dumped it into the garbage and was ready to go.

On the way out I stopped at the fish tanks and said, “Good afternoon, fish.” They didn’t hear me. But the guppies crowded up against the glass of the small aquarium and banged their noses waiting for food. I should have saved the mush, I thought, but I grabbed a little dried shrimp and crab meal and dumped some in the feeding rings in both tanks. They glutted themselves while my stomach growled and bubbled.

I turned on the lights over both aquariums and went out. It was five-twenty-five in the afternoon, and maybe things were starting to pop.

I parked around the corner and walked inside Hansen’s. Kelly was in one of the booths at the left. When I joined him, the first thing he said was, “Gee, hello, Mr. Scott. I forgot to mention it; did you, well, bring a gun?”

“Yeah. I brought a gun. Think Ill need it?”

He looked a little embarrassed and said, “Well, I don’t know. You know…” and stopped.

I said, “Yeah, I know,” got up and ordered toast and coffee from the counterman, went back and sat down across from Kelly.

I said “What happened?”

He looked so nervous and apologetic, I didn’t even bawl him out. He fiddled with a pencil in his hand, opened his mouth, shut it, took a deep breath and said rapidly, “Well, you know what I was going to tell them. I got out there and made the arrangements with them and you’d said it was all right if I gave them your name,” he swallowed nervously and finished in a rush, “so I did. I was scared to death. Oh, man, I was scared. It seemed like a sort of lark, but when I really got there, when it really was happening I almost wet my pants.” He looked at me as if he thought I was going to eat him alive.

“Look, Kelly,” I said as calmly as I could, “I don’t follow more than half of what you’re giving me. Take it easy, start at the beginning and give me the whole picture just the way it happened.”

He wet his lips. “Well,” he said, “I told you I’ve got some sort of shady friends. Saturday after I got up I felt awful.” He smiled wryly, “I guess we did have quite a lot to drink Friday night.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Now what happened Saturday?”

He went on, “Well, in the morning I went down to the paper — I had some things to get cleaned up. Then I had a little lunch and went around to some of the bars, had a few drinks and acted like I’d had quite a bit more. Every time I’d run into one of these characters I knew, I’d buy him a drink and we’d get to talking. I let it be known that there was a guy that was really in my hair; then I’d start asking if there wasn’t some kind of an outfit that took care of problems like that for cash. Kind of mysterious, you know. Not letting on too much, but acting like I was really interested in finding out if there wasn’t some organization or individual that handled jobs where you want to get rid of somebody.”

“Real cagey,” I said.

He grinned half-heartedly. “Sure. Wait’ll you hear what happened. This went on about all afternoon. I must have talked to a dozen guys and I left a lot of whisky on top of bars. I still had quite a bit myself. Well, I went home a while after six o’clock and had dinner. Boy, my wife smelled the liquor on my breath and wanted to know what the dickens I was up to.” He peered at me, “She seemed to think I’d been with you. Isn’t that funny?”

“Hilarious.” My toast and coffee was ready so I started on it and said, “Look, I’m eaten up with curiosity. Run through it quick, will you? Well clean up the incidental details later.”

“Okay. After dinner, about seven o’clock, I started out on the bars again. I didn’t really expect anything to happen so soon, but things sure started going. I went into the Blue Moon up on Sixth. You know, where you go downstairs off the street. Well, the rest room’s in back and I’d had a little beer, so I went inside. I heard somebody come in behind me but I didn’t see him. I didn’t even think about him. I’d just got there, hadn’t had a drink or talked to anybody or anything. Somebody must have got word to him and he must have followed me in. Anyway, he went into one of the booths where I couldn’t see him and he started talking to me. Sure surprised me. I’d been running off at the mouth, he said, about some guy I wanted out of the way and I ought to be careful what I kidded around about.

“Well,” Kelly took a deep breath and sighed, “I figured maybe this was the lead I was looking for, so I said I wasn’t kidding and what’s it to you? Took a little chance, I guess.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “A little one. Go on.”

“The upshot of it was he said if I wanted to talk business, to get out of the bar and go to Pershing Square and stand on the sidewalk right in front of the statue of Beethoven, on the north side. He said it like beet, Beetoven. He said for me to go straight out of the bar and there was a guy in the bar watching to make sure I didn’t hang around or pull anything. I was supposed to stand in front of the statue and pretty quick a car would drive up Fifth Street and blink its lights once. On and off. I was supposed to run out and jump in the back of that car.”

Kelly paused and licked his lips. “It sure was funny; kind of scary. Well, I went down to Pershing Square and waited. It was fairly dark and I started getting kind of nervous and then all of a sudden the car came along and I jumped in and, wham, I got a rag stuck in my face. I think it had chloroform on it. Anyway I almost passed out, not clear out, but everything was crazy. Somehow they put a blindfold around my eyes and we drove around for a while. Where, how long, I don’t know. I felt sick as the dickens. Finally the car stopped and we went inside somewhere and they opened a door and shoved me inside and shut the door behind me.”

I asked, “You got any idea where you were?”

“Uh-uh. It could have been almost anywhere. I was almost passing out anyway. Well, I got the blindfold off and I was all alone in the room, nobody else. I tried the door and it was locked so I couldn’t get out. There was a table and a couple of chairs so I sat down in one of the chairs and waited for something to happen. There was a little light, but I couldn’t see much of anything, it was so dim. It seemed like I waited a long time and then’s when I really started getting scared, just sitting there. Finally, a man started talking, like over a mike, but there wasn’t anybody in the room, so they must have had a speaker rigged up so they could talk from somewhere else.”

“Make it short, Kelly,” I said. “What’s it boil down to?”

He looked at me with a sickly grin on his face. “Well, this man or this voice, I mean, came right out and said if I wanted a man taken care of, killed, they’d see the job was done for a price. He asked me my name and I had to tell him, and I said yes, I wanted a man out of my hair and he asked for your name.”

I said, “Then he asked for my name, huh? My name.”

“Yes. That is he asked who I meant and I told him your name.” He grinned, sickly, some more, “You know, like we talked about when we had that dinner.” He looked pale and scared. Scared of what I might say. “I guess maybe I should have left well enough alone, huh, Mr. Scott? But I got into it and I didn’t know what to do, I was so messed up. You, uh, are you mad, Mr. Scott?”

“Relax, Kelly. I guess it’s all right. It has to be. Incidentally, you might as well call me Shell. Anybody who knows me well enough to arrange my murder is entitled to at least use my first name. By the way, what reason did you give this guy for wanting me knocked off?”

“I didn’t have to give any; he didn’t ask. All he seemed interested in was who the man was I wanted, uh, taken care of.”

“How about the dough? Or am I for free?”

“Oh, that. I have to pay him five thousand dollars. I’m supposed to carry the money on me tonight and go around the bars. Somebody’s supposed to get in touch with me. No special arrangements.”

“You got any idea who this voice was? Did you see or hear anybody at any time that might give you a lead to who’s behind it?”

He shook his head slowly, staring at me out of wide eyes. “No. Not anything. I guess I sure messed things up.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s your next move?”

He just looked at me and swallowed with an effort.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” I said. “You get the hell down to headquarters and tell Samson if he’s there — or Lt. Rawlins if Sam isn’t there — every damn thing you’ve told me and anything else you know. There’s a pretty good chance we’ll both wind up in the gutter, if your bloodthirsty chums get any ideas this dream of yours is a plant. And they might get just that. Anything else happen while you were there?

“Something awful funny happened. Just before I left.

Incidentally, I left the same way I came. All the lights went out and some guy came in and I got the same treatment I’d got at Pershing Square. They let me out on a dark road out of town and I finally got a ride in some time this morning. I was sick as a dog. I went in the house and crawled into my bed. We’ve got twin beds so I didn’t bother my wife much. She just mumbled if that was me and I said yes and for her to go to sleep. I didn’t wake up till this afternoon and I left the house and started calling you.”

“What happened before you left that was so funny?”

“Well, it seemed like everything was all set and ready for me to leave and I wondered what was going to happen. The guy had already told me the lights would go out but not to be alarmed. It was just so I could leave and I was to understand they had to be careful. Guess they didn’t want me to recognize anybody. I thought the lights were going to go out and I was waiting, when all of a sudden this guy’s voice started in again. Same question as he’d asked when I first went in. I thought it was peculiar, but I started to answer and then I heard my own voice answering. I just sat and listened through the whole thing again. Everything I’d said, everything he’d said, my name, your name, the whole works. They must have made a recording of the whole conversation. Anyway, it was all there, every bit of it. And when it was over, the guy said I could see how foolish it would be to get any wrong ideas. Dangerous ideas, I think he said. Then the lights went out and you know the rest.”

“They’re sure as hell careful,” I said. “But that’s understandable.” I looked at Kelly. “You don’t have a thing more than before you were taken out there, do you? You didn’t recognize anybody, or any voices or anything. Right?”

“Right.”

“No scoop, then.”

He shook his head sorrowfully, “No scoop. Just a mess of trouble for everybody. I’m sorry as hell.”

“Maybe it isn’t as bad as it looks. At least something’s stirred up. And, one thing, we know there’s some kind of organization behind a lot of the killings in L.A. You didn’t get any line on how they planned to do the job?”

“Not a thing. Not a darn thing.”

I sat and thought a minute. “If the whole conversation was down on a tape recording — your name and the whole works — what a beautiful blackmail caper that could be worked into.”

He shook his head some more. “Isn’t it awful?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you really fell into something, Kelly. You better get down to headquarters fast. I’ve got a couple of things to do; I can’t very well go lock myself up till this blows over. The payoff isn’t supposed to be till tonight, so probably nothing’s supposed to happen till tomorrow anyway. But you can imagine what happens when you don’t show up to pay off. Can you get downtown?”

“I’ve got my car.”

“Okay. Flash down there right now, give the boys at headquarters the whole works and get them to assign somebody to stay with you. If Sam’s there and he doesn’t pass out completely when you tell him what’s up, he’ll probably want a regiment on your tail. Tell him I’ll be down later. I want to check in with my client and I’ve got some other things to do. You know, Kelly, I think you’ve given me a couple of leads that may percolate into something. So maybe it’s not all wasted.”

“I sure hope so,” he said ruefully. “I feel kind of bad.”

“Just take it easy,” I said. “And be careful. Go straight to headquarters. These guys are specialists; ruthless, cold-blooded killers. The worst kind of killers. So watch your step.”

He nodded at me and went out. I polished off the toast, gulped the last cold swallow of coffee, left four-bits on the table and took off. I figured I’d better bring Peel up to date. After all, the guy was paying me.

</code>

<code> Chapter Fourteen

I STOOD BY the check room and let my eyes get accustomed to the gloom inside the Seraglio.

I said to Maxine, “Hello, blue-eyes.”

She said, “Hello, you wolf.”

“Hey now,” I said. “Be nice. Where do you get this wolf stuff?”

That’s what it looked like last night when you left. With that … that overstuffed female.”

“Business, purely business. Say, you get my message?”

She tilted her blonde head back and glared down her nose at me. “I still say baloney,” she said. “Business!”

I grinned at her and went down the three steps into the club and over to the velvet-draped archway. Charles greeted me with a foggy, “Hi, Shamus.”

I said, “How’s about seeing Peel?”

“Sure. You first.”

I went on into the narrow hall. The door to the first dressing room was open and it was immediately evident why they call them dressing rooms. Gloria Wayne squealed, “Scotty, don’t look at me,” grabbed a silk robe and threw it around her delicious shoulders.

Hell, she’d left the door open, hadn’t she? Of course, I’d stopped.

“Hello, Gloria,” I said and grinned. “It’s good to see you.

“You’re awful,” she pouted. “Why didn’t you come to see me last night? I thought I asked you real nice.”

“You did. Real nice. But I had work to do. I’m an investigator, remember?”

“How is the investigating, anyway, Scotty? Any good clues?”

“So-so. I pick up a clue here, a clue there.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Yeah, you’re interesting. And that robe’s about two sizes too small.”

“You startled me; I just grabbed the handiest thing. When’ll I see you?”

“Dunno. I may be pretty busy for a while.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding. I might have my hands full.”

She grinned at me. “I’ll bet you will, Scotty. I’ll bet you will.”

I grinned back and went on down the hall.

Peel opened the door and said, “I was wondering when you’d be in to make a report, Mr. Scott. Sit down.” He indicated a chair in front of the desk. I relaxed in it and lit a cigarette.

“I’ve been busy,” I said. “But things are moving right along.”

Peel caressed his brown mustache with a thick finger and fixed his icy blue eyes on me. “Do you know yet who killed Mr. Brooks?”

“No, I don’t know who killed him, but I’m getting ideas. I’ve covered quite a bit of ground so far and that’s all I’ve actually got — ideas.” I brought him up to date on all I’d dug up, with the exception of Kelly’s little caper, while he stared at me from under his straight, heavy brows.

When I finished he said, “Very good. You’ve done quite well, Mr. Scott, in this short time. I hope the investigation continues to progress as satisfactorily.”

“I think it will,” I said. As a matter of fact, it should be faster; the groundwork’s all laid now. I might have something definite for you tomorrow.” I got up. “I’ve got some ideas I want to work on so I’d better get started. I just wanted to bring you up to date.”

“Fine. I appreciate it, Mr. Scott. Would you care for a drink before you leave?”

“No thanks. I’ll stop outside and have a drink with dinner. My stomach’s growling.”

The door opened right on cue and the red beak was stuck inside. I preceded Charles down the hall and at the archway I said, “You sure pop in and out without any warning.”

He pointed to the wall behind the velvet curtain. “Buzzer,” he said. “The boss rings when he wants me.”

“I’m a big boy now,” I told him. “I can find my way in and out.”

He shook his head. “Boss’s orders. That’s the way he wants it and I ain’t gonna argue with him.” His big face creased in a healthy grin, “I gotta have something to do, don’t I?”

I said I guessed he was right and went on out. Prime-ribs was on the menu again but I settled for a thick steak.

Gloria came out and had a drink while I devoured my steak. She engaged me in light conversation and pumped me about the case and looked glamorous in a gold lame gown cut low in front revealing square inch upon square inch of her claims to fame. I convinced her that I couldn’t wait around and take her home tonight and, pouting, she let me leave.

As I passed the check room on the way out, Maxine said, “I can’t believe it.”

“What can’t you believe? My friends again?”

“Nobody on your arm.”

I laughed. “Must be slipping. No, I decided if I couldn’t have a willowy blonde, I’d settle for nobody.”

“Am I a willowy blonde?”

“Sure. Do something willowy.”

She clasped both hands behind her neck and swayed easily from one side to the other. It was willowy enough for anybody. I told her Salome had nothing she didn’t have except more veils, and left before she started doing the bumps. Not that I’d have minded.

I left the Caddie parked at the curb near the entrance to the Seraglio and walked to the drugstore on the corner. It was after seven o’clock and lights were on all up and down Wilshire Boulevard, chasing away the darkness. I went inside the drugstore, found a phone booth and put a call through to Samson.

He answered and I said, “Sam, this is Shell. Did Kelly give you the lowdown on what happened last night?”

When he answered, his voice was taut, strained. Something was up. “No,” he answered. “I don’t guess he will. Did you see him?”

“Yeah. What — “

“How long ago?” he interrupted. “Couple hours or less. What’s up? Didn’t Kelly talk to you?”

“No, he didn’t, Shell. Kelly’s dead.”

It got to me slow, but it got to me just the same. For a minute I thought Samson might be kidding me, then it sank in. They’d got him. Kelly’s little play of the night before, the Saturday night “lark” he’d started out on, had got the kid killed. And I’d been halfway responsible for that myself. I felt as if I were going to be sick.

Noises sputtered out of the receiver, “Shell? Shell?”

“Yeah, Sam,” I said slowly. “That hit me where I live. I sent him down to see you about an hour and a half ago. I was afraid something might happen to the kid. Damn it! I thought if he got down to see you he’d be all right. How’d it happen? When?”

“Just got it a few minutes ago. I phoned your office but you weren’t in. A call came in to the complaint board and the fast car went out. I guess he was beat up pretty bad and dumped from a car at high speed. Just about the same as a lot of the others. Only there wasn’t much of a try to cover it up.”

“Sure. It had to be that way, Sam. That’s their way of telling us to lay off.”

“What do you mean?”

“The kid got to that kill mob last night and tried to give them a fast story. It didn’t work. So they got him. They probably worked him over good before they killed him. And they gave it that hit-and-run technique just to rub our noses in it. One thing, that ties the cocky bastards in with the hit-and-run kills.”

“You mean Kelly actually went through with that crazy deal you told me about?”

“Yeah. It was a fool play from the beginning. If I’d taken the kid seriously when it came up, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.” I gave Samson a sketchy outline of the story Kelly had given me earlier in the afternoon.

He said, “Of all the damn fool — “

“Knock it off, Sam. It’s done.” My numbed brain started working a little. “Sam,” I said, “I left Kelly a little before six o’clock. It wasn’t dark yet. All he had to do was drive down to headquarters and he didn’t have any reason to go roaming around. They must have picked him up between where he left me and your office. They must have had a tail on him. They must have been tailing him all the time.”

He thought of it at the same moment. “Shell, if they tailed him, they must have seen him talking to you. They know sure as hell he spilled to you.”

The sickness started fading a little and I began getting mad. I could feel the anger rising up in my throat and I realized I was grinding my teeth together till my jaws hurt.

“Shell,” Sam said, they’ll be after you next. I’ll send somebody out.”

“Never mind. They wouldn’t get within ten blocks of me if I had an army of cops around. I’ve got something to do.” I thought of something else. “How about Mrs. Kelly? Does she know?”

“I don’t see how she could, Shell. We just got it ourselves, probably doesn’t know anything about it.”

“I’ll tell her, I said. “I feel like maybe I ought to tell her.” I told Sam I’d see him later and hung up.

I took the .38 Colt out of the holster and stuck it in my right coat pocket. I kept my hand on it as I left the booth, went out of the drugstore and walked back to the Cad. In the car, I put the gun on the seat to my right and pulled away from the curb. And I was hoping that the same guys who’d got Kelly would come after me. Those boys needed killing bad and right then I felt ready, willing and able — and maybe even a little eager.

</code>

<code> Chapter Fifteen

I DROVE OUT fast, feeling sick and bitter, burning with anger. I didn’t pay much attention to the road behind me; I was more worried about what was up ahead. How the hell was I going to tell his wife? What was I going to tell her?

I parked on Norton in the darker blot between two street lamps, left my gun on the seat and went inside the Holloway Hotel.

The clerk at the desk gave me the room number and I went up. I knocked on the door and a small, pretty woman in a dark print dress opened the door and looked at me out of cool, grave eyes.

“Mrs. Kelly?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“I’m Shell Scott. May I come in a minute?”

“Why, certainly, Mr. Scott. Please do.”

I went inside and took the chair she offered me. She sat down on a couch at the side of the room a few feet from me. I looked at her and then at the floor; I honestly didn’t know what to say. You can’t just blurt out that a woman’s husband has been killed, that he’s dead.

She said it. “Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Already there was a trace of panic in her voice.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry. There’s been an accident.”

She sat very still for a moment, looking directly at me, then her lips pulled back against her teeth and the muscles in her neck stiffened and drew taut. “It’s Tommy,” she said in a tight voice. “It’s Tommy, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” She was almost hissing at me between her clenched teeth.

I nodded at her dumbly as if I didn’t have a tongue.

“How bad…” she started, then stopped and looked at me. She looked at me while I swallowed and wet my lips. Realization seemed slowly to grow on her face and somehow, with that strange, intuitive awareness women sometimes have, she knew.

She said suddenly, “He’s dead. Tommy’s dead. Tommy’s dead.” She said it over and over while her face got blank, her eyes staring. Then her neck went limp and her head rolled forward over to the side as if she had no control over it. I stood up, went over to the couch. I thought she was going to faint, but she raised her head and stared blankly at the wall, her hands clenched, tears rolling down the tight-set mask of her face. I sat beside her and mumbled ineffectual words of sympathy that she didn’t hear.

She sat like that, quietly, for long minutes. Then she shuddered, sighed and said in a dull monotone, I’ll be all right, Mr. Scott. Thank you for staying. I think I’d like to be alone with little Tommy, with the baby.”

I told her where she could reach me if there was anything I could do, and went out.

They picked me up in the hall.

They didn’t wait for me to get outside where I could make a run for it — if I’d wanted to run — and they were neat about it. Practiced, efficient. As soon as the door closed behind me, I spotted the first guy lounging up against the wall to my left, hands stuck deep in the pockets of his jacket. At almost the same instant, a guy I could barely glimpse out of the corner of my eye slammed the muzzle of a gun into my ribs.

He said in a scratchy voice, “Keep your trap shut, Scott,” and fanned me expertly with his left hand. He said surprised, “He’s clean. Imagine that. Pretty boy’s clean.”

The guy lounging against the wall jerked his head back toward the stairs and straightened up, his hands still dipping into his pockets. He was big, with the flabby, almost obscene bigness of the hypo-pituitary and his eyes were tiny red slits in his dough-white face. He made me think of a writhing pile of maggots I’d once seen, with one bigger and fatter than the rest squirming at the top like the king of the roost.

I turned my head and looked down at the other gunman. I’d never seen either of them before. The guy on my right had a bald head that came just up to my nose, but he had the long, thick torso of a much taller man. It was his legs, stunted and bowed, that made him look short and squat and deformed. His eyes were set wide apart over a big hooked nose and thick, red lips.

I said, “You murdering son of a bitch.”

His eyes narrowed and he drew back the gun in his hand, ready to smash the butt into my face.

“Jug!” The word snapped from the throat of the big slug on my left with surprising crispness and a note of authority.

The little guy’s face screwed up, he lowered the gun and spat deliberately into my face. His spittle struck my chin and dropped onto my shirt.

I rubbed my hand across my chin and said, “You murdering son of a bitch.”

He looked straight into my eyes and his face relaxed a little. He said in a scratchy voice, “Oh, brother. Oh, brother,” and smiled as though the right half of his mouth was paralyzed. He jabbed the gun into my side so hard that it forced a grunt from my lips. “Move,” he said.

I turned and walked down the hall. The fat guy waited till we’d passed, then fell into step a couple yards behind us. The gunman called Jug slipped the gun into his coat pocket and said, “Easy, brother. Real easy.”

It was all very quick and quiet. Nobody heard us, nobody saw us. We walked down the one flight of stairs and the little guy mumbled, “Say goodnight to the guy at the desk.”

I nodded to the clerk, said goodnight and we walked outside and turned left. I could see my car gleaming about ten yards ahead and another few yards beyond it a long, black job. The black job was probably theirs.

I was seething inside. The anger was like a red flood in my brain. The way I felt it seemed I could take them with six slugs in my guts, but I wanted that gun on the seat of my car. I couldn’t know if these goons intended leaving the Cad or taking it along.

We drew abreast of the Cad and I took a quick step toward it, stopped, then started back down the street as if I’d suddenly changed my mind.

Jug grabbed me by the arm and bored his gun into my spine. “What’s the matter, pretty boy? What you tryin’ to pull?”

Fat Boy came up behind us and said, “What’s the play, Scott. Want to leave your car here?”

They held a short, whispered conversation behind me. There wasn’t anything said that I could hear, but the little guy pulled me back to the Cad and said, “Get in, brother. Keep your hands up and slide under the wheel.”

I eased inside, keeping my hands in the air in front of me, planted my behind on top of the .38, and slid under the wheel. The .38 slid along with me.

“Both hands on the wheel, brother. Twenty miles an hour. Get back on Wilshire. Any faster than twenty and you get it in the guts.” He had the long-barreled revolver out of his pocket and aimed at my middle.

I eased the car into gear and crawled up Norton to Wilshire.

The little guy snapped, “Turn right. Straight out toward Beverly Hills.” I turned right; the black job, a big Lincoln, hugged close behind us.

I said, “Aren’t you going to take me down to Pershing Square where you sent Kelly? Down to that statue of Mozart?”

“You’re goin’ somewhere else, brother. And you ain’t very educated; it ain’t Mozart, its Beethoven.” He said it like beet, Beetoven.

I didn’t think it would do any good, but I asked it anyway. “Which one of you guys did the job on Tommy Kelly?”

“You’re funny,” he said. “You ask more questions than he did. Now, shut up.”

I drove slowly to La Cienca, up it to the Sunset Strip and past the Mocambo and Ciro’s, following the wide curves of the winding road where the money plays and sometimes people get shot at.

Jug wiggled the revolver a little when we were almost at the city limits. “Climb off Sunset. Straight ahead up Doheny Road.”

We reached an unlighted stretch of quiet, dark road and I knew if I didn’t do something quick, I’d never get another chance. I moved slowly and let my left hand rest lightly on my lap.

Jug looked at me. “Both hands on the wheel, brother. Both hands.”

I put my left hand back on the steering wheel. I’d have to chance it. And quick. The speedometer hung steady on twenty. I glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw the lights of the black job following closely.

I took a deep breath and slammed on the brakes with all my strength and let the downward thrust of my legs raise my hips from the seat of the car. In the same, sudden movement, I slapped with my left hand for the gun under my left hip. I got my hand on the butt of the gun as the tires squealed and the car shuddered from the sudden clutch of the brakes. Jug’s gun vomited flame almost in my face and the heavy slug smashed past my head into the window. He was sitting sideways, facing me, and the sudden stop threw him against the dash of the car.

I squeezed the butt of the .38 in my left fist and whipped it around toward the little guy. I wanted to get him in the face. His gun was leveled again at my teeth and I was staring at the black hole in the muzzle. Before either of us could fire, the black Lincoln behind us jarred into the rear of the Cad. The muzzle of his revolver danced before my face and flame spurted out of its mouth again.

I barely felt the burn of the slug across the skin of my throat and the faint sting of hot specks of powder on my face and neck, then I was pulling the trigger. I pumped three slugs into his chest from a foot away, as fast as I could jerk the trigger, and the little guy relaxed and sank to the floor of the car and died in a twisted heap, the back of his head still pressed against the dash of the car.

The door of the car behind me slammed and I twisted my head back over my shoulder. My eyes seemed dimmed a little from the flashes of the shots fired, but I dimly saw the white blob of the big guy’s face and snapped a shot at a point two feet below the pale smear. I knew I’d missed as soon as I squeezed the trigger, but the big guy dropped to the street out of the line of fire.

I scrambled over the body of the little guy and dived out the right door of the car. I lit on my hands and knees, clutching the gun in my right hand, flipped back toward the street and slammed down on my belly. I stuck my right arm straight out in front of me, aimed under the frame of the Cadillac and darted glances back and forth under the car.

An angry, red arrow of fire lanced out at me from the point where the fat guy had dropped to the street and I felt a bullet rip through the cloth of my left sleeve and slice through the flesh of my shoulder. I gritted my teeth, angled the .38 toward the flash and eased down on the trigger. I heard the solid smack as the 158 grain lead bullet smashed into flesh. I eased the barrel of the gun down and squeezed again. The slug ploughed somewhere into his fat body and I heard him grunt, then moan.

I got to my feet, crouched and moved up beside the hood of the car. I felt in my coat pockets and dug out a half full book of matches. My left shoulder hurt like hell, but the bone was okay, the arm worked as it should. I ripped off one of the matches, lit the rest and threw the book into the street. Crouched behind the hood of the car, gun ready, I could see in the bright, brief flare of the matches the sprawling body of the big guy flat in the street. He was moving slightly, but the gun had spilled from his lax fingers and lay a few inches from his outstretched right hand.

I walked over fast, kicked away the gun and grabbed him by the collar of his coat. I rolled him over on his back and hung onto him. His eyes were open, but blood trickled from his mouth and ran down the side of his chin in a black stream. The slugs I’d thrown into him had gone down through his shoulder muscles, probably penetrating his lungs or slicing an artery on the way down into the vastness of his body.

I snapped at him, “Talk, you bastard! Where’s that wired room where you take the suckers? Where’d you take Kelly last night? Who’s the boss?”

He didn’t say anything, but his eyes blinked at me. I jammed the muzzle of my gun between his teeth without worrying about the enamel and hissed at him, “You ought to be dead. You might pull out of this if you spill, but, so help me, talk or I’ll blow your brains all over the street.”

I jerked the gun out of his mouth with part of a tooth and he coughed blood on the front of his coat He said like a man gargling, “Third … Witmer.”

“Who’s the boss?” I yelled. “Give it to me straight or you’re dead. Who’s the big boy?”

He stared at me emptily, vapidly, like an idiot. His jaw hung slack and blood glistened faintly on his chin. His body hung heavy from the coat bunched in my straining left fist. Whatever there was inside him that made him move and think and talk wasn’t there any more. He was dead. They were both dead. And all I had was a burning furrow in my left shoulder, a burning fury inside me and a mumbed “Third … Witmer,” that might mean something and might not.

I kneeled in the middle of the street for a minute, then I got up and shoved the .38 back in its holster. I carried the little guy out of my car and draped him in the back seat of the Lincoln. I lifted the dead fat one out of the street and dumped him on the floor in back with the little guy who’d spit in my face, climbed into the Cadillac and made a U-turn. Third and Witmer. It was worth a look.

I hot-rodded back down to Sunset, swung left through the Strip again and got on the Freeway headed for downtown L. A. and the Hamilton Building.

In the office I took a look at the shoulder. It wasn’t bad, so I wrapped it up and traded the bullet-torn coat of my suit for an old tweed jacket hung over a chair against the wall. I reloaded the .38 from a box of shells in my desk and fed the guppies some dry food — there was still a little of the shrimp dangling from the string in the tank. I rummaged around in the desk till I found a ring of keys and a pencil flash and stuck them in my pocket. Then I put a call through to the complaint board at headquarters, reported two dead guys in a black Lincoln on Doheny Road and was on my way to be illegal if I had to.

On the four corners of Third and Witmer were a drugstore, a small neon-lighted bar, a service station and a long, low building extending down Third. The building was dark and it looked like what I wanted. I parked on Witmer and walked up to the front door of the darkened building. On the glass was painted in small black letters, “J. E. Moffet — Real Estate.” I got out my ring of keys and started working on the door, hoping Mr. Moffet, if he existed, was home in bed.

The fourth key worked and I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. I was in a small office with one desk, one chair and Venetian blinds on the windows. I made sure the blinds were drawn and clicked on the pencil flash.

The desk was as dirty as a censor’s subconscious and empty as a dead man’s eyes. Apparently, real estate was slow. A door at the back of the room led into a hall fronting three more rooms. I gave them all a quick once-over from the doorways and that was all there was in the building.

I went through the rooms one at a time. Nothing. Not a stick of furniture, no wires, no speaker, no mike, no nothing. If I’d been given a fast shuffle, it was too late to get the right dope now; my informant was as dead as he’d ever get.

I went back over the rooms and finally I found in the middle room, in the corner an inch or two above the floor, two round holes bored through the wall. Right at the edge of one of the holes was a little curled piece of rubber like the stuff that insulates electrical wiring. Above the holes, about seven feet up the wall, a small metal hook was still screwed into the wood. This was undoubtedly the room where Kelly had made his fatal recording.

But the place had been emptied and fast. It must have been getting too warm and guys as careful as these guys had apparently been wouldn’t wait long to move if there was a chance somebody might walk in on them. At least I knew that some kind of organization existed and I was damn sure the two stiffs in the Lincoln weren’t the brains of the outfit. But who was? And how did I get to him?

I went back into the office, sat down behind the desk and in the darkness I did some concentrated thinking. I went back over it all from the time, two nights before, when Victor Peel had called me into his night club; through the business in Dragoon’s office; the talks with Robin, Sara, Samson, Zerkle and all the rest; clear up to the moment when the two hoods had picked me up outside Mrs. Kelly’s door.

That was funny. I thought about it for a minute. The two goons had been waiting for me to come out. They knew I was inside, obviously, and were just waiting till I left to pick me up. I could have been tailed; I hadn’t paid much attention to the road behind me on the way out to the Holloway Hotel, but that was a little screwy. If Dough-Face and Jug were the boys who worked over Kelly, they couldn’t very well have been tailing me at the same time — and Samson told me on the phone that the Kelly kill had come off just before I called him. It would have been a neat trick for the hoods to finish with Kelly and then just happen to pick me up. The only person who knew I was heading out to see Kelly’s wife … Samson. But that was completely nuts. Unless maybe he’d let the dope drop to somebody else.

I knocked ideas around for another ten minutes, then I got up and headed for the Caddy. I had a headful of ideas, a handful of answers and I knew where I was going.

I parked at the curb and went inside. I didn’t say anything to Maxine and I ignored Gloria’s squeal of, “Scottie.” The red-nosed Charlie stood in front of the velvet-draped archway with his hands folded across his chest.

I stopped and went back to the check room, on the way calling to Gloria, “Sit tight, sweetheart. See you later.” She smiled and nodded.

I stopped at the check room, picked up a full book of matches and said, “Maxine, do me a favor?”

She started to smile, then looked at my face and said, “Sure. What is it?” No hesitation, no questions.

“Charlie. The big guy. I want him away from that archway for a minute or two.”

She pushed her lips together and thought for a minute. “Can do, I think. Now?”

“Soon as I get over there and start talking to him. Won’t get you in trouble, will it?”

She shook her head and I walked over to Charlie.

He said, “Hi, shamus.”

“Hello, Charlie. Back again. I think I’m keeping you in a job.”

He grinned and started to say something, then looked over my shoulder. Maxine came up and said, “Hello, Shell.” Then to Charlie, “There’s a plastered wolf out here giving me some trouble, Charlie. How about helping me get him out of the check room?”

Charlie grinned and turned to me. “This’ll only take a minute, shamus. Be right back.”

I said, “Go ahead. I’ll have a drink and check with you later.”

He ambled toward the front of the club flexing his muscles and I quickly slipped through the archway. Nobody seemed to pay any attention. I took a handkerchief from my pocket, reached up and stuffed it into the buzzer on the wall, then walked down the hall and gently tried Peel’s door. It was locked, so I knocked softly.

Victor Peel opened the door and stared at me impassively from his ice-blue eyes. I went inside and shut the door behind me.

“Surprise,” I said.

He didn’t say anything, just walked back and sat down behind his desk. I walked over and pulled out my wallet. I dug out the ten hundred-dollar bills and tossed them at him.

“I’m pulling out,’ I said.

He squinted at me. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Scott,” he said steadily. “What strange reasoning prompts that decision?”

I leaned over the desk and growled at him, “The reasoning is, you black bastard, you murdered a nice young kid named Kelly.”

</code>

<code> Chapter Sixteen

HE SAT behind his big, expensive mahogany desk and looked at me. Apparently calm, unruffled, but his jaws were clamped tightly together and the little blobs of what looked like fat at the back of his jaws turned into hard, lumpy muscle. He still needed a shave.

“You’re insane,” he said slowly. “You really should be put away, Mr. Scott.” One hand rested out of sight in his lap, the other lay on top of the big desk. His fingers drummed noiselessly on the desk, the brown, wiry hairs wiggling as his fingers moved up and down.

I sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the desk from him and said, “No good. Peel. Not good at all. You fit and you’re the only one that fits. It took me a while, but it came through. It started with just a vague, pointless wondering why you really hired me to check on Joe. Then, along came Gloria. I’ll tell you why that was funny, too, in a minute.”

Peel leaned forward till his coat was pressed against the desk. He pulled his lips back from the strong, crooked teeth. “I suppose you know this is idiotic, Scott. You’re making a fool of yourself.” His voice was still low, deep and steady. “I’ve been here in the Seraglio since before four o’clock this afternoon. I couldn’t have killed anybody. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“Uh-uh. I’m not leaving. Not yet. When I do you’re coming with me. And who said Kelly wasn’t murdered at three o’clock? No matter; you know damn well you didn’t have to leave the club. You just had your boys get Kelly — the same boys that were supposed to get me but didn’t. The same boys you use for murder, for hit-and-run murders when somebody hires you to get a guy out of their hair.”

His eyes looked more like chips of ice now than ever. He stared at me from under the straight, bushy eyebrows, then glanced at the door behind me and frowned. I said, “Charles won’t be coming in, Peel. He’s been detained. Just you and me, Peel. Just us, killer.”

He glared at me a moment and said, “You must be mad, Scott. Go on. I may as well hear what you have to say.”

He was still going to brazen it out. That was all right with me.

“Stop bluffing,” I said. “I know the whole play: the kills, the lop-eared goons you had for trigger-men, the recordings. I even know about the Moffet Real Estate front you just finished cleaning out.”

He shook his head. “From what peculiar recess of your brain did these preposterous ideas come?”

“Okay,” I said. “After I got to wondering just why the hell you hired me, your luscious little chum, Gloria, really started me going, Peel. I got to asking myself why she’d take one quick look at me and suddenly decide I was Casanova and then get high on two silly drinks. I’m not that good, much as I’d like to think so. That reminded me you’d practically dumped her in my lap, set me up for a big party. Funny, that. Here I’ve got ten C-notes of yours in my pocket and another four grand of yours I’m supposed to be earning and you acting like you want me to play games. Not right.

“More likely there was a chance I might turn up a little dope you wouldn’t want turned up, and you wanted somebody on my neck I might drop it to. Somebody who might be able to get me spilling my guts, then relay the dope to you so you could fix my wagon before anything popped. Somebody like Gloria. There was a chance, a small one, that you might have had something there, but I didn’t go back. She did what she could though, Peel. She tried. I just wasn’t spilling.”

I stopped and lit a cigarette while he watched me narrowly. “It’s like this,” I said. “All you need is something to start you thinking, something that doesn’t fit, doesn’t jibe, something a guy wouldn’t ordinarily do. Then you wonder why and you knock it around and finally you get the idea. And maybe it fits. And you hang some more on it and that fits. And pretty soon you get it. By the way, lover. How nice was Gloria supposed to be to me? I noticed she had a picture in her bedroom. Hot number, that Gloria. Really hot!”

That brought him out in the open. The muscles jumped back in his jaws and a vein I didn’t know he had bulged out in the middle of his forehead and froze there like a miniature snake. His mouth got ugly and he brought his right hand up slowly from under the desk.

I didn’t move. There was still one thing I didn’t know and Peel was going to tell me. He took about a second to get his hand over the edge of the desk, but it seemed longer. His fist practically buried the squat little .32 automatic that came up with it and pointed at my throat.

When he had the gun steadied on my jugular, he squeezed some words between his teeth. “I keep this in a clip under my desk, Scott. Any time since you’ve been in here I could have squeezed the trigger and you’d be dead. I wanted to hear you talk. Now you’re going to talk some more.” His finger tightened against the trigger. “Talk!”

I didn’t wait for him to say it again. I spit it out fast “Joe was putting the squeeze on Eddie Kash. Blackmail.”

His finger eased up a little on the trigger and I breathed again. I kept it going, “You found out about it only you weren’t sure it was Joe, and you had to know who it was. You not only had to know who, but how the guy knew enough to make the squeeze work. So far, all you know was that Eddie was getting squeezed and that was one of the worst things that could possibly happen from your point of view, the one thing you didn’t want happening.

“You’re the hit-and-run boy, king of the kill racket. And you’ve got a tape recording on everybody who ever got in touch with you to hire you for a job. At first, I thought that was really tops in a sweet blackmail racket, but after I banged that around it didn’t look so good after all. You’ve got a profitable racket, murder comes high. And there’s nothing to use for blackmail after the job’s done. You’ve got your dough. You could squeeze some more out of whoever hired you, but why stick your neck out? The more you mess around with the guys you do the jobs for, the more chance for a snag that gets you some free gas. In California, you get maybe one-to-ten for extortion; for murder you’re apt to get gas on the stomach.”

I stopped and looked at Peel. He didn’t seem worried. “That gas,” I said, “It’s cyanide. Up at Quentin they’ve got a little, funny-shaped room. It’s painted green and there’s glass all around so the witnesses can watch you die. A little cyanide pill rolls down a slide into some sulphuric acid and soon you stop moving. After a few minutes, a doc plays with a long tube that sticks into the little green room from outside and he puts it over your heart and he hears a lot of nothing. No heartbeat, no nothing. You’re dead, Peel.”

He looked just a little green himself. I went on, “It’s simple. It was a lot better from your point of view to keep that tape as a club over the guy’s head — at least as long as you’re in the cash-and-carry kill racket. The only guys who know what’s cooking on your jobs can’t ever spill anything and keep their skirts clean at the same time. They’re automatically accessory before the fact, which is just as good as being a principal, and their stomachs get upset, too. And you made it a point to make sure all your clients knew you had the recordings. Another thing, you were damn careful to see nobody got a good look at you or your boys or even knew where they were taken for the arrangements. Result: there’s not much they could spill anyway.” I swallowed a couple of times and said as easily as I could, “Stop me if I’m wrong.”

He leaned back in the swivel chair and ran his left hand through the fringe of gray at his temple. His right hand — the one with the gun — didn’t even jiggle.

He said, “You’re smarter than I thought, Scott. It’s really unfortunate. You’ve given me some of the information I wanted, but you picked up more on the way. Too much more.” He glared at me, then asked, “How did Joe Brooks manage to get away with blackmailing Kash? Naturally, that’s of immense importance to me. He wiggled the gun.

I watched the gun wiggle and said, “He must have got ideas about Eddie the same way I did. Eddie was in deep, lifting from his partner. He made a lot of bets on the beetles, dropped a pile of dough — and he made all those bets with Joe at Dragoon’s horse parlor. All of a sudden he stops betting; he gets off all over town — no money. Next thing, his partner gets killed. Hit-and-run — that was one of your plays, Peel. Eddie probably paid you ten grand for that favor after he cashed a check for that much he’d made out to cash — also from company funds, but by then it didn’t make any difference.

“Then, bang, Eddie’s in the chips again and back at the bookies. And betting big chunks with Joe again. It adds. Eddie’s partner must have found out what was going on, threatened Eddie, presto, end of partner. I could see it from this far off when I knew the score and Joe was right on top of the play. You can relax; none of your smelly little circle spilled. Joe figured it out for himself.

“Now comes the cute gimmick.” I ground out my cigarette in the ashtray on Peel’s desk. “Joe thought he might have Eddie in a spot, but he wasn’t sure. Anyway, he gives it a whirl. Maybe he phones him, maybe he writes him a letter; it’s not important. The important thing is, Eddie comes through with the cash. Joe’s not sure just what he’s got, but, what the hell, the squeeze works, so what difference does it make?

“And here’s the beaut,” I said. “Eddie paid because he thought it was you. Not you, Victor Peel in person, but the boys with the tape, with the record, with the proof he’d had a job done on Johnson. Isn’t that a laugh?”

“Most amusing,” Peel said. Without taking his eyes off me he laughed softly like at somebody else’s joke. “I wondered if there could possibly have been a leak anywhere. We’ve been very careful. Something like this could be extremely bad for business.” He chuckled softly again. I didn’t like the sound of it.

“You’re right, you know,” he continued. “Any form of extortion would have been quite foolish while we were engaged in the, ah, other business. However, the recordings are not without some future usefulness, perhaps. Sort of a personal rainy-day fund, insurance against my old age if I should decide to retire from, ah, active practice, say.” He grinned at me, pleased with himself.

I said, “Look, Peel, there’s one thing I don’t get. For this whole thing to make any sense at all, you had to know Eddie was being blackmailed. It makes sense then, because if you had even the slightest idea it might have been Joe — and he stood out just a little — then when he got killed by an apparent hit-and-run, which happens to be your favorite method, you’d get worried enough to put a private detective on the kill. You couldn’t afford to leave anyone walking around who might be getting even warm on your caper. Naturally I’m assuming you didn’t kill Joe yourself or you’d have had better sense than to start me checking it. But how did you find out someone was putting Eddie in the squeeze?”

He looked at me. “Really, I see no reason why I should tell you anything more, Scott. Or admit anything to you, for that matter.”

“You’ve already admitted practically everything.” I pointed at the gun in his hand. “Besides, there’s your admission, Peel. All the admission I care about anyway. I just happen to be curious.”

He chuckled. “I don’t suppose it really makes a great deal of difference. Kash tried to make wagers on the horses and keep enough money on hand to pay off with at the same time, if it became necessary to do so. It didn’t work. He’s far too interested in the horses. The individual who was blackmailing Eddie — apparently Mr. Joe Brooks — put the pressure on Kash again. The unfortunate thing was that Eddie couldn’t get enough money together on short notice. So he got in touch with us through his original channels and asked politely if we couldn’t wait a week or two until he could accumulate the cash. Naturally we were surprised. Also, naturally, Kash was surprised when we told him we hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about.”

So that was it. Eddie had gone to them. That was the thing that had been puzzling me. I’d been holding myself in, hanging on to the anger and sickness inside me just to find out that little thing. Well I had it.

I said. “So you found out Joe was the guy running the shakedown and knocked him off.” I just said it. I didn’t really believe it myself.

He looked startled for a moment, then laughed. It was genuine laughter. “Certainly. Then I retain you and pay you five thousand dollars to find it out and convict me. What kind of idiot do you think I am, Scott? No, I would have killed him all right, if his blackmail incentive had anything to do with my organization. But I didn’t have to. I was merely anxious to know more positively the source of the blackmail and the basis for it. I’m satisfied that it was nothing that might endanger me or my little group.”

He paused, then it came. Easy. Nothing melodramatic; just calmly matter of fact. “There’s no reason for me to lie, you know. You must realize that I have to kill you.”

Just like that. I’d been half expecting it ever since I figured Peel must have been the guy who stuck his gunmen on me when I was here before. Gunmen. That reminded me.

I ignored his last remark, or tried to, and said, “Your boys. The ones you sent to take care of me.”

“I can imagine,” he said. “If they didn’t complete their, ah, assignment — and its quite obvious they must not have — they’re probably of no further use to me.” He smiled thinly.

“Not dead they’re not.”

“I suspected as much when you came in.”

“What’d you do? Have them on my tail all the time?”

“Not at all. As soon as they finished with Mr. Kelly, they naturally called me. Charles informed me you were still out front eating, so I merely had them pick you up as you left. They followed you out to the hotel you visited and informed me of that by phone.”

“And then you gave them the word go on me, huh?”

He shrugged.

“It was a mistake, Peel. They’re probably both down at the morgue by now.”

He showed me his crooked teeth again. “No, I don’t think it was a mistake. Actually, things have worked out quite well. My little organization was composed of just those two and myself. Now you and I are the only ones who know about it. Not so good for you, is it, Mr. Scott?”

“How about Charles? He seems to be one of your errand boys.”

“That’s all he is, an errand boy. Just a stupid flunky.”

“You think everybody’s stupid but you, don’t you, Peel?” I said with disgust in my voice, “You kill for no reason at all except the money you can get out of it.”

He chuckled again. “I’m merely intelligent enough to realize how easy it is to get away with murder, literally. And in a compact organization like mine is or, rather, was,” he corrected himself, “there’s virtually no chance for trouble if the method is ingenious enough.”

He got serious. “You know, Scott, my method of, well, shall we say disposal of the selected subjects may seem a little involved to you, a bit intricate. But it’s really ingenious. Well worth the added trouble. If you use a gun, there’s always ballistics, always the chance the gun may be traced. If you beat a man to death and leave his body lying in an alley, it’s obviously murder. This way there is often room for doubt. The police may suspect, but in many cases they can never be sure. You know, Scott, you’d be amazed how many of my jobs have been completely overlooked, how many of them have simply passed as accidental deaths.”

“Sure.” I said, “I’d be amazed.”

Peel continued, “This difficulty with Mr. Brooks caused me some worry, I’ll admit. Particularly the method. Probably the person took the cue from the current campaign against hit-and-run deaths in the newspapers, don’t you think?” He laughed uproariously. “The stupid fools.” Then he got calmed down again and said, “Actually, my method has just about outlived its usefulness now that there’s been such a hue and cry in the papers. Besides, if, as you say, my two assistants are in the morgue, that simplifies my withdrawal from the business.”

“One other thing,” I said. “The tape recordings.”

“What about them?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. What about them? Where are they? Who’s got them?”

He laughed out loud in my face, then sobered. “Those recordings are the least of your worries. They’re here, right in my safe here in this room. Now what are you going to do? Take them away from me?” He laughed softly. He really seemed to be enjoying himself.

“I told you before,” I said. “I’m just curious.”

Peel stared at me from under his straight, thick brows. “Who did kill Mr. Brooks, Scott?”

That jarred me, too. I hadn’t expected it Who the hell had killed him? Eddie? No, he had an alibi for the time. Robin? I hesitated over that one; could be. She couldn’t satisfactorily explain how she’d spent all her time on the night of the kill — except that she’d been home, which was a little weak. Then there was that name business which still puzzled me a little. Dragoon? He might have if he was griped enough about Joe’s digging into his cash. But little Zerkle was still walking around. If he killed Joe, why not Zerkle, too? Sara? It didn’t figure. But there were some other angles I had I could play with if…

“Stand up.” Peel was leaning against the desk, his lips split to show me his crooked teeth. “I’ve learned all I really wanted to know. It isn’t important about Mr. Brooks. It’s time I retired. I’m rather a wealthy man.”

“Wealthy, maybe. Not much of a man.”

“No accident for you, Scott,” he spat at me. “Nothing fancy. Just a bullet in the mouth. Right in the teeth.

Some of the polish seemed to have sloughed off him. He was more bestial. More now on the surface as he must have been inside. I licked my lips with a dry tongue and swallowed.

“That’s it, Scott.” He grinned. “Be scared.”

He held the little gun very steady and centered on my face. “I almost hate to do this,” he said. He wasn’t grinning now, but his face was tense and his eyes sparkled.

I watched the bore of the gun. My legs felt as if they belonged to someone else and I was scared.

It’s funny, that feeling you get when you think you’re close to dying. Maybe you’ve been through it before. But it always happens. All of a sudden it sinks in. This guy means it; he’s not kidding. And the cotton swells up in your mouth and something happens to your stomach and your legs get weak and are not your legs at all.

My voice came out as if it was strained through gravel. “How about a cigarette before…” I didn’t finish it. I didn’t think I had to. He’d give me the smoke. He liked to play with me. Guys who get into a murder-for-pay racket, like Peel, didn’t do it just for dough. There has to be something twisted and dark and evil inside them — something that makes them get a warped satisfaction out of playing with lives. Peel was having himself a time. Big fun. Cat-and-mouse. Puppet on a string.

He looked normal enough standing behind the big desk: two legs, two arms, two hands — one with a gun, a face a little tense and twisted. But somewhere in a corner of his brain, there was wild laughter and he was getting his kicks. He’d let me have my smoke.

He didn’t answer for a long moment, then he said, dragging the words out, “Surely. Why not? Smoke it slowly, Scott. Enjoy it.”

I let out a big breath. Then I reached into my pocket for the cigarettes and matches.

“Move slowly,” he told me. “Quite slowly, Mr. Scott.”

There wasn’t much choice; I had to get him rattled a little or I’d never get to make a break. So I didn’t move slowly I came up with the pack all right, but fast.

He jerked a little. The corners of his mouth twitched and my stomach did a quick flip. I jabbed a smoke into my mouth and tossed the pack at him quick.

“Have one,” I said in a brave squeak.

The pack hit him on the shoulder and plopped down onto the floor. Two or three grains of tobacco clung to his coat. He reached up slowly with his left hand and brushed at his coat. He kept the right hand pointing at me, but he lowered the automatic till it was pointing at my navel. I saw the creases on his index finger get shallower as his finger tightened almost imperceptibly on the trigger.

“Sorry,” I said. “What’s the matter? You nervous?”

He was leery; he wasn’t sure just what was going on. He was trying to make up his mind whether to pull that trigger. Just a little off balance. Just a little but enough. Maybe.

I bent the cover back on the full book of matches I’d picked up outside. I tore one off, struck it and brought the open book and the little flame up in front of my face. I looked at Peel, but out of the corner of my eye I could see the flame lick at the row of unused matches. Then they burst into sudden flame and I slung them at his face, straight for his eyes. I hurled myself at him. He pulled his head back and let out a startled yelp and fired a shot that plucked at my arm and cracked into the wall behind me. I slid over the desk and slammed my balled left fist into the gun. Pain lanced through my bandaged shoulder, but the gun leaped out of his hand and clattered up against the wall.

I wanted to get my hands on him. The repressed anger and hate came bubbling up in me and I wanted to get my fingers around his throat. I wanted to watch his eyes bulge and feel the cords of his neck twisting under my thumbs.

I rolled off the desk and got my left foot anchored on the rug and his fist came out of nowhere and crashed into my jaw. It stopped me for a minute. He might have had me then. I was too eager; I wasn’t set for the blow and it staggered me. But he didn’t follow it up.

Through a red haze I saw him whirl and dive for the gun on the floor. He pawed for it. Got his hand on it and started to turn. He was stooped over, just coming up off the floor, his head twisted back toward me. I didn’t have time for the niceties. I took a quick step toward him and swung my right foot in a swift arc. The point of my shoe caught him in the mouth and I heard the brittle crunch of breaking teeth. He flopped back against the wall and slid down it, slowly.

It should have torn his head off his neck. It should have killed him. But he wasn’t out. His breath whistled through his mashed lips and jagged teeth like a man sucking on a clogged pipe. But he was still moving. He just sat there against the wall like a dead man while the gun toppled out of his hand. He turned his head stupidly and his eyes focused on the .32 again. He reached for it. Damned if he didn’t reach for it. Like a guy moving in slow motion while I watched him. He fumbled at it, got his hand on it, lifted it.

I leaned over and slapped the gun across the room, grabbed him by the front of his coat and lifted him up. I thought for a flashing moment of Kelly, of the ten or fifty or maybe a hundred others he’d killed or had killed. And the fun he’d had getting ready to murder me.

And I let him have it. I started it from the tight muscles in my calves, let it travel up through my shoulder and into my balled fist and I let two hundred and six pounds explode on the point of his chin. His head snapped back, back, back as if it were never going to stop. His arms jerked up a little into the air and he fell over on his face and lay still.

I stood over him breathing in great gusts, my mouth open. The tenseness drained out of me and the haze swirled away from my eyes and I felt my hand uncurl and drop down to my side like somebody had peeled it open and dropped it there. I lifted my arm and looked at the palm of my hand and I could see the four little half-moons my nails had dug into the flesh. I started to shake. I turned around and dropped down into the chair behind Peel’s desk.

I just sat there for a couple of minutes trying to get back to normal and not moving. Peel didn’t move either. Finally, I lifted the phone and called Homicide. Samson answered.

“Sam,” I said, “I’m glad you’re there. This is Shell.”

“What’s the matter? You don’t sound right.”

“I’m okay. I’m at the Seraglio. Get out here.”

“Seraglio? The night club?”

“Yeah. On Sunset.

“What the hell — “

I interrupted him. “There’ll be a red-nosed guy named Charles inside. He’ll show you where the office is. And bring a doctor.”

“A doctor? What — you hurt, Shell?”

“No, I’m all right. The doctor’s for Peel, Victor Peel, owner of the Seraglio, and my excient.

“Ex-client? What goes on?”

“I’ll give you all the dope when you get out. And get this: you’re going to bust into a safe out here, so bring somebody along from Burglary to check it.”

“You loony? We can’t go around busting open safes.”

“You can this one. Peel’s not going to object. Look, Sam. I’ll explain everything. Just get out here and get your boys started out and bring along the doctor. It’s all right, believe me.”

I put the phone back in place and felt sick. I got up and felt sick. I walked over to the door and cracked it open and walked back and sat down and felt sick. I put my head down on the desk and kept swallowing. I don’t know why I didn’t just get sick and have it over with.

I lifted up my head a few minutes later when Samson came in the door followed by a little guy with a black bag and gray hair.

I felt as if I might have a few gray hairs, myself.

</code>

<code> Chapter Seventeen

I SAID HELLO to Sam, then pointed at Peel lying in the corner. He still hadn’t moved. I hoped he wasn’t dead.

“Better take a look at him, doc,” I said. “His mouth’s mashed up a little.”

The doc walked over by Peel and opened his black bag.

Samson said, “What the devil’s coming off, Shell?”

“Safe man on the way over?”

“Yeah. Ones coming out from Burglary. He’s practically here. He’ll probably recommend a safe expert from one of the safe companies in town.”

“Okay. Just so it’s fast.”

Samson frowned. “Now, what’s it all about?”

I jerked a thumb toward Peel. “My client. Anyway, he was till half an hour or so ago. He’s your boy, Sam. He’s what’s left of the kill syndicate, the hit-and-run artists. He’s the boss-man and he’s all that’s left. He’s also the bastard that had the job done on Kelly.”

Samson’s mouth dropped open. “You kidding me?”

I shook my head wearily. “Straight stuff, Sam. There were only three of them to begin with. Peel here and two thugs. The other two were just legmen, the boys that did the actual dirty work. Peel’s the brains of the outfit and the other two are in a black Lincoln out on Doheny Road. They were earlier. Both dead. I called it in to the complaint board an hour or so ago.” I lit a cigarette. “You might check on Charles. He let you in?”

“The big guy with the nose?” Sam nodded, “One of the boys is outside with him now.”

“I think he’s clean,” I said. “Peel says he just works here, so I imagine that’s all he does. I hope so. For no reason, I kind of like Charles.”

The doc snapped his black bag shut and came over. “You’d better get this man to the hospital. He’s pretty well banged up.”

Samson said, “He’s not going to conk out on us, is he?”

The doc shook his head. “No. He needs attention though. He has a concussion, but he should be all right if he’s given proper attention. Needs some new teeth, too.”

Samson got on the phone and called for an ambulance. As he hung up, another man in civilian clothes came in the door.

“Man for the safe job,” Samson said. “What’s the deal?”

I brought him up to date. I explained to Sam all that Kelly had told me earlier in the afternoon and briefed him on the last half hour I’d spent with Peel. I wound it up by saying, “So, when you get that safe open, you should have as big a mess of dirty murders on your hands as there’s ever been in this or any other county. There isn’t any reason to believe the recordings aren’t in the safe. Peel had an idea I’d never live long enough to tell anybody about them. And he was almost right. You’ve still got Peel for anything else you want. You ought to have a whole cityful of unsolved murders all wrapped up in that safe.”

Samson said, “I’ll be damned,” shook his head and stuck a black cigar in his mouth.

I said, “You can get off to a good start by picking up Eddie Kash, Sam. That’s a pleasure I’d almost like to reserve for myself. Kash got pressed for money along about the first of the year and I think you’ll find when you go over his records that he started making out checks to a fictitious firm or firms that didn’t exist except in his chiseling mind. He’d make out the checks himself — for goods that were never delivered — then endorse them himself, too, in the name of the fake company, the Middleton Manufacturing Company.

“You’ll find somewhere in those recordings that Eddie hired Peel and his boys to take care of his partner, Elias Johnson, when Johnson got on Kash’s neck. That’s what started the whole vicious circle I’ve been running around in. Eddie didn’t know who the murder boys were that did the job for him on Johnson, but he did know that whoever it was had the records. Maybe they wouldn’t stand up in court, but it sure as hell wouldn’t do him any good. That made him a soft touch when Joe Brooks — or Joey Maddern — started his little squeeze play. You can bet that when he found out the guys he’d hired didn’t know anything about the blackmail touches, he almost fell on his face. Then he gets to thinking. If it isn’t the syndicate, then who is it? Now, if he found out that, instead of a gang of professional killers, it was just some punk like Joe…”

I stopped talking and let my mouth hang open foolishly. It didn’t come up at me, wham, and slap me in the teeth. It just sneaked up into my brain, insidiously, and started doing a minuet in the gray cells. Slow and easy. It started dancing a little faster and kicking up its heels and banging into things. Some of them it knocked over, and some of the others joined with it and pretty soon my whole brain was jumping like crazy. I stood up slowly and started for the door.

Samson said, “What the hell. Where you going?”

I stopped and turned around. “Did you say you didn’t see Joe’s body?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“Anybody here that did?”

He shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth and shook his head. “What the hell — “

I turned and started out the door.

“Where are you going?” Samson yelled.

I kept on going. I kept on going down the hall, lightheaded and mentally beating myself about the ears with a blunt instrument.

I walked into the night club and it surprised the hell out of me that people were laughing and drinking, having a big time. It seemed as if I’d been a thousand miles from the gaiety and music in the Seraglio. I walked on through, out the front door and down to my Cadillac. I started the car and headed back toward downtown L.A. At Temple Street I parked the buggy opposite the Hall of Justice, ran across the street and went down into the basement.

It was cool in the morgue.

Emil, the attendant that I knew from several previous trips to the morgue, got silently up from his chair and came toward me.

I started taking off my tie. “Good to see you, Emil.” I took off the tie, draped my coat over his chair and started unbuttoning my shirt. “I’ve got a question. Then I might want to look at one of the deceased.” At the Los Angeles County Morgue the stiffs are the deceased.

I peeled the shirt down off my back, turned around and let him take a look. “Ever see anything like that before, Emil? On one of the deceased?”

He stared at my back and shook his head, “Man, you get tangled up with a wildcat?” He furrowed his brows and added, “Yeah. Yeah. Got a deceased in back kinda like that.”

“He still here?”

“Yep. Wanta look?”

“I sure do.”

Emil turned and led the way. I followed him down between cloth-covered tables to one halfway down the room. Emil reached for the cloth covering. “Think this is it,” he said.

I looked down at the still, composed, dead face with the little wisp of a mustache and the blond hair full over the ears. There was a rectangular tag on the big toe of his right foot: “Joseph Louis Maddern.” I was finally meeting little Joey.

I said, “I’d like a look at his back, Emil. Okay?”

He nodded and turned Joe’s body carefully over on its side. I looked. There they were — furrows dug into the flesh like the furrows I’d seen the night before reflected in the mirror in my apartment. Like the furrows on my back.

I stared at them a minute, then said, “Thanks, Emil. That does it.”

He looked at me quizzically. “What’s it all about?”

“Murder,” I told him. “A funny damn murder. Thanks for the help.”

I buttoned up my shirt, stuffed my tie in the pocket of my coat and put the coat back over my shoulder. I went out and walked heavily up the steps and across Temple to my car.

I said softly, “The little bitch. The damned little bitch.”

</code>

<code> Chapter Eighteen

I ROLLED OUT the wings and let the breeze blow against my face as I drove. The breeze was cooler tonight and it felt good on my skin, but it couldn’t go down inside me and take the hard lump out of my stomach. End of case. Party’s over. And I didn’t even feel very happy about it. I looked at my watch. Eleven P.M. on this Sunday night. I didn’t feel much like doing what I was going to do, but it was one of those things that have to be done sooner or later.

I slipped the .38 out of the holster and ejected all the shells. I dropped the shells in my pocket with the tie and stuck the gun back where it belonged and listened to the purr of the Cad’s engine.

She was still up and she looked wonderful, smiling at me. I went inside and walked over and sat down on the divan. She came over and sat down beside me and looked at my face, puzzled.

She asked softly, What’s the matter, Shell? You look funny. What’s wrong?”

I looked at her and kept on feeling sick while I said, “It’s all over. I’ve been going around in circles, but just tonight I got wise. It’s all put together and everything fits and it’s funny I missed it this long. I know you murdered Joe and I know why and I’ve got to call the police and tell them to come on out and get you.

She didn’t say anything. Just looked at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am. I’m sorry as hell, Robin.”

She didn’t go into an act or throw a fit or anything. She looked at me out of the wise, beautiful brown eyes and said, “You’re not serious, are you, Shell? Not really?”

“I’m serious. I wish I weren’t, but I’m serious. It’s finished, beautiful. You’re washed up. Maybe you’ll be lucky.”

Her eyes narrowed and she shook the masses of rusty-red hair that made me think of sky over a South Pacific Island. “I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t kill him, Shell. Believe me.”

“Uh-Uh, Robin. It was you. I liked Eddie Kash, but I checked him and he was clean. It wasn’t Dragoon. It narrows down to you.”

She eased over by me on the divan, pressed close against me. “Forget about it, Shell. Please forget about it.” Her breath was warm on my cheek. She muzzled her mouth into my neck and whispered, “You don’t know. You couldn’t know anything.”

It was odd. We sat on the divan, close together, her face buried in my neck, her hair tickling the skin of my face. And we talked about it. Quietly. No screams, no violence, no anger. Just quietly and calmly as though it was an afternoon tea or we were going to laugh and have a drink in another minute. But there was a coldness in my stomach and I knew we weren’t just playing a game.

She knew it, too.

I said, “Robin, you told me Joe didn’t run around with the girls, with other women. You told me yourself you loved him, wanted to marry him. You were living with him. You had him under your skin. So, when you found out he was two-timing you with somebody else, messing around with another women, you killed him. Say you killed him because you loved him, maybe, or because you were jealous, or call it revenge. Anyway, it was murder and you’re it, Robin.”

The blood seemed drained from her face and she put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me close to her. “Stop it. Stop it,” she hissed at me. Then softly, tenderly, “Shell. Shell kiss me. Please kiss me.”

I turned my head, looked down at her. She reached up with her left hand and pulled my head down to hers. Her lips were cold, dry, stiff under my own.

It would have been easy to stop her. She was obvious, clumsy. But I didn’t. I let her go ahead, wondering if she really would, wondering how far she’d go. Her right hand crept under my coat while she pressed my lips hard with her own. She nibbled gently on my underlip with her teeth, but I could feel the gentle pressure of her hand as it found the gun.

Then her lips were gone and she shoved away from me and sprang off the divan, the gun in her hand. Her face was twisted, her lips parted and tight against her teeth. She stood facing me, the gun in her right hand, her legs spread apart on the carpet.

And she didn’t wait. She didn’t wonder about it, didn’t hesitate for a second. She raised the gun in one smooth motion and pointed it at my chest. She breathed once through her teeth, “Shell,” and pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell with a sharp click and she pulled the trigger again and again, the gun pointed at my heart. I didn’t move. I sat on the divan and watched the puzzled, then frustrated expressions grow and die on her face. I watched her face go blank and fall apart when she realized what had happened. And I watched while she stopped being beautiful.

Her face got dead and her lips came open and the flesh sagged around her mouth. The gun dropped from her limp fingers to the floor and she slowly crumpled and lay sobbing on the carpet.

After what seemed a long time, the words bubbled haltingly out of her anguished mouth.

“It doesn’t make any difference now. I’ve been living in hell anyway. I loved him,” she sobbed and her soft body quivered as she lay on the floor. “I accused him of being with another woman, cheating on me and he laughed. He laughed at me. Told me he was tired of me, he was going to leave me. We had a fight, an awful fight. We’d both been drinking a lot.”

She slowly pulled herself to a sitting position and sat and stared at me dully, mascara smeared in black smudges on her cheeks and under her eyes. “It made me hate him more than I thought I could hate anyone in my life,” she said in a flat, empty voice. “I kept on giving him drinks and he gulped them down like water while we argued. He got groggy and I went around behind him and hit him with one of the bookends. I kept on hitting him. I must have been out of my mind. He slumped over on the divan and I guess I sort of went crazy. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I tried to pour some more liquor down his throat and on his clothes and buttoned up his shirt and somehow I got him outside and into the car. I just started driving, wondering what I was going to do. I remembered something in the newspapers about a lot of accidents and I thought this would maybe look like just one more accident. When I got out on one of the dark streets around Elysian Park, I opened the car door and shoved him out. I didn’t even know what street it was. It was dark, that’s all. I was going fast and for a minute I thought I was going to lose control of the car.”

She shook her head and looked down at the carpet. “Maybe it would have been better if I had,” she said. “I came on home and parked the car and waited for the police to come. I almost went crazy, waiting.”

I got up and walked to her and pulled her to her feet. I led her over and sat her down on the divan.

I said, “You might as well tell me the rest of it, Robin. How about the things you left out? Eddie. The blackmail angle.”

“You know about that, too?”

“Most of it. I know Joe was squeezing Eddie dry. At least I think it was Joe — it could have been you. But you knew about it.”

“I knew about it,” she said listlessly. “But it was Joe. Eddie kept losing and losing at Dragoon’s and Dragoon wouldn’t let him bet any more. Then Eddie’s partner got killed and Eddie had a lot of money all of a sudden. Joe got an idea and made a phone call to Eddie and said he knew he’d killed his partner. He didn’t give any name, but it worked anyway. Joe was surprised it worked so easy, but just so he got the money he didn’t care. It was his idea that I get pretty close to Eddie so I’d be able to keep an eye on him and know if he got suspicious. Joe wanted me to pretend he was my brother. It wouldn’t have looked very good to Eddie if he’d known I wasn’t just a sister to Joe.”

“Hardly,” I said. “That’s the way it figured. Tell me, Robin, you weren’t thinking of keeping up the squeeze on Eddie all by yourself, were you?”

She snapped her head around and glared at me from her red, mascara-ringed eyes but didn’t say anything.

I said, “Anything else you want to tell me?”

She didn’t answer but leaned forward and hugged her legs, her face pressed against her knees. I walked to the phone, dialed the number of Victor Peel’s Seraglio, and asked for Captain Samson. He was still there and while I waited for him to answer, I took a last look at Robin. She wasn’t the same; she was older, uglier, emptier. I probably looked ugly, myself.

It’s a lousy business.

</code>

<code> Chapter Nineteen

ROBIN was gone, taken unresisting and quiet by the husky boys in the blue uniforms. The heavy brass bookends were missing from the little table, gone too, on their way to the laboratory for examination, and Samson and I sat in the front room that Robin had just left.

Samson worried the inevitable black cigar and said, “I guess that does it, Shell. How’d you settle on Robin for the Joe thing?”

“Well, there were five of them close enough to count and some little ones on the fringe that didn’t mean anything. The big ones were: Victor Peel, who hired me but wouldn’t give me his reasons; Robin, the passionate ‘sister’; Fleming Dragoon, where Joe worked; Fleming’s screwy sister, Sara; and Eddie Kash. I liked Eddie for it so much I hated to lose him. It seemed he really had the motive, but I checked his alibi myself and it was cast-iron. Out Eddie. You know why Victor Peel was out. That’s two gone. It could have been Dragoon because Joe was dipping into his till, he was a sticky-fingered little guy. But there was a funny angle on Dragoon — he didn’t know for sure that Joe was dipping into the profits until he beat it out of a little guy named Harry Zerkle. Zerkle and Joe were in on the chisel together and Dragoon had to beat the truth out of Zerkle. If Drag had been the guy who knocked off Joe, he’d already have known the whole story before he killed him. And beside, Joe would probably have been messed up a lot more than he was. I’ve seen Fleming at work and Joe would have spilled his guts once Drag or his hoods started working him over. So, out Dragoon. That leaves it narrowed down tentatively to the two dolls, Sara and Robin. Sara might have had a motive. Joe was chummy with her and winded up kicking her around a little.” I grinned. “I know because I saw the bruise and it was still fresh enough to have happened within just a few days.”

Sam wiggled his big jaw back and forth. “You saw the bruise? Where was it?”

“Never mind.” I grinned. “But take it from me, Sara isn’t the kind of gal who’d flip her lid simply because she got a little bruised up. As a matter of fact, she probably loved it. So, I had to take a good close look at Robin.

“Robin had said Joe wasn’t fooling around with any girls. He was and even if she didn’t know it at first, she sure as hell found out about it later. She knew he’d shacked up with a babe and the only reason for her not admitting it to us was her own guilty conscience. She figured — and probably she was right — that anyone who knew she was shacking with Joe, not her brother, remember, and knew she’d discovered he was cheating on her with another woman, would smack right into one of the best and oldest murder motives since Cain clobbered Abel. Just to tie it up tighter, there was the blackmail touch all to herself if she felt like carrying the play through. Another thing that didn’t set just right was that Robin always had Eddie take a powder as soon as I’d show up. For one reason or another, but she got rid of him while I was around asking questions. It might not have meant anything at all, but it also might have meant she was playing it safe in case I got smart enough to start asking embarrassing questions. She sure as blazes wouldn’t have wanted Kash around if I started letting cats out of the bag.”

Samson dug out a big wooden match and lit his cigar. “I can see her greedy for the dough,” he said between puffs, “but who says Joe was shacking? And who says Robin knew he was playing fancy?”

“Me. Remember, she was sleeping with the guy. Don’t ask me how I know she knew. Just take my word for it.” I grinned at him. “It has to do with some scratches. But she knew, all right.”

“Bruises. Scratches. I’ll be damned.” Samson was getting so he swore a lot.

I said, “It’s all yours, Sam. Bust it wide open. All except the Joey-Robin business — the Maddern caper. I’ve got my reasons. I don’t mean anything illegal. Let the long arm of the law take its course. Just soft-pedal that particular one, huh?”

He nodded his big, iron-gray head. “I’ll do what I can, Shell. There’ll be plenty of stuff for the papers to play up.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly, thinking of a little, eager guy. “What a scoop this would have been for Kelly.”

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty

ROOM 324. I knocked softly and after a couple of minutes a light flicked on inside and she peered out at me through the old-fashioned, gold-rimmed spectacles. She didn’t have on the high-laced shoes and in an old cotton robe and flat slippers, she looked about as big as a mouse. I still thought she was cute.

“Why, Mr. Scott,” she exclaimed, “what is it?”

“I’m sorry if I woke you up, Mrs. Maddern. I didn’t realize it was so late. May I come in for a moment?”

“Of course, Mr. Scott.”

I went inside and stood in the center of the room.

This had been a rough night already, but one of the roughest things was going to be telling Mrs. Maddern just what had happened to her son, just what kind of a larcenous character he was. I hated what I had to tell her about her Joseph. He wasn’t a barefoot kid in knickers any more. One thing in Joe’s favor, though, he was smart enough to know he was messing around with some rough boys that could stiffen him permanently if they got the idea into their heads and he still had the decency to want his mother to have what money he’d put aside if it came to that. Even if the dough was from blackmailing a murderer and stealing from a bookie. Funny how it had finally worked out.

“Sit down, Mr. Scott,” she said in her small, soft voice. “Is it about Joseph?”

“Yes.” I opened my mouth to tell her that her son was a thief and a blackmailer and a no-good little chiseler. She was peering at me expectantly out of the tops of her spectacles. Suddenly I knew I couldn’t.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Well, nothing, really.” I made it up as I went along. “It’s just that I’ve completed my investigation. I can tell you now; I was working the Los Angeles area for the National Safety Council — investigating a series of traffic accidents in the city. Your son was involved in one of those accidents, Mrs. Maddem. A hit-and-run. I’m sorry, but we haven’t been able to find the man or the car that hit Joe. You know how difficult these things are to trace. And that’s all there was to it.”

“I see,” she said.

“About the letter he wrote you,” I went on. “He wasn’t really worried about anything, just being careful. He’d been going to the doctor — I checked with the doctor myself and Joe had a slight cardiac condition. It wasn’t serious, but it made him stop and think.”

“Cardiac condition?” she asked.

“Heart trouble. I think you mentioned he’d had the mumps when he was a boy. That often weakens the heart. Then, too, he wasn’t really very robust.”

She shook her head slowly and her eyes were slightly moist. “Joseph never was very strong,” she said.

I got up and she said suddenly. “Oh, about the money.”

“That’s yours. Joseph wanted you to have it.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, can’t I pay you something? For all your help?”

“No.” I smiled at her. “I’ve been taken care of. I’m sorry you’ve had all this trouble, Mrs. Maddern. What will you do now?”

She took off her glasses, brushed at her eyes and put the glasses back on. “I suppose I’ll go back home. All the people I know are there. All my friends. I’ll arrange for Joseph to be buried back home. I’ll probably leave tomorrow.”

I walked to the door. “Well, goodnight, then, Mrs. Maddern. And good-by.”

She stood in the door, tiny and cute, and looked up at me. “Good-by, Mr. Scott. You’re very sweet”

I left feeling noble as hell.

In the office I stopped feeling noble. I leaned back in the chair behind my desk, coat off, feet on the desk. It had been quite a case. It had started with trying to find out how and why a little guy named Joe had been killed. But by the time the truth was out, there’d been enough buried secrets dug up, hidden shames uncovered and twisted desires hauled out into the sun to make a private detective wonder if he shouldn’t have taken up bookkeeping or maybe digging ditches. It had been like scratching a pimple and watching it grow into a festering sore; ugly, with pus-poisoned tentacles burning beneath the surface.

Women!

Of course, some of them were different. Sara, for one — she was, at least, different. One thing I could say for Sara: she’d been completely honest with me and if she liked me or was nice to me, it wasn’t because I was a private eye on a case; it was just because I was Shell Scott. I couldn’t say the same for Robin or Gloria.

I leaned back in the chair and felt disgusted with people in general and women in particular. And then I remembered Maxine. Ahhh, Maxine. Ahhh, again. Blonde, blue-eyed, willowy, down-her-nose-looking Maxine.

I looked at my watch. One A.M. I took my feet off the desk and grinned. Uh-huh. Maybe Maxine was different.

</code>