Macdonald opened his eyes and leaned forward. “The house on the corner,” he told the driver.
The house stood well back from a wide curve. It had a lot of tiled roof, an entrance like a Norman arch, and wrought-iron lanterns lit on either side of the door. By the pavement there was a pergola covered with climbing roses. The driver cut his lights and drifted expertly up to the pergola.
Mallory yawned and opened the car door. Cars were parked along the street around the corner. The cigarette tips of a couple of lounging chauffeurs spotted the soft bluish dark.
“Party,” he said. “That makes it nice.”
He got out, stood a moment looking across the lawn. Then he walked over soft grass to a pathway of dull bricks spaced so that the grass grew between them. He stood between the wrought-iron lanterns and rang the bell.
A maid in cap and apron opened the door. Mallory said:
“Sorry to disturb Mr. Atkinson, but it’s important. Macdonald is the name.”
The maid hesitated, then went back into the house, leaving the front door open a crack. Mallory pushed it open carelessly, looked into a roomy hallway with Indian rugs on the floor and walls. He went in.
A few yards down the hallway a doorway gave on a dim room lined with books, smelling of good cigars. Hats and coats were spread around on the chairs. From the back of the house a radio droned dance music.
Mallory took his Luger out and leaned against the jamb of the door, inside.
A man in evening dress came along the hall. He was a plump man with thick white hair above a shrewd, pink, irritable face. Beautifully tailored shoulders failed to divert attention from rather too much stomach. His heavy eyebrows were drawn together in a frown. He walked fast and looked mad.
Mallory stepped out of the doorway and put his gun in Atkinson’s stomach.
“You’re looking for me,” he said.
Atkinson stopped, heaved a little, made a choked sound in his throat. His eyes were wide and startled. Mallory moved the Luger up, put the cold muzzle into the flesh at Atkinson’s throat, just above the V of his wing collar. The lawyer partly lifted one arm, as though to make a sweep of the gun. Then he stood quite still, holding the arm up in the air.
Mallory said: “Don’t talk. Just think. You’re sold out. Macdonald has ratted on you. Costello and two other boys are taped up at Westwood. We want Rhonda Farr.”
Atkinson’s eyes were dull blue, opaque, without interior light. The mention of Rhonda Farr’s name did not seem to make much impression on him. He squirmed against the gun and said:
“Why do you come to me?”
“We think you know where she is,” Mallory said tonelessly. “But we won’t talk about it here. Let’s go outside.”
Atkinson jerked, sputtered. “No…no, I have guests.”
Mallory said coldly: “The guest we want isn’t here.” He pressed on the gun.
A sudden wave of emotion went over Atkinson’s face. He took a short step back and snatched at the gun. Mallory’s lips tightened. He twisted his wrist in a tight circle, and the gun sight flicked across Atkinson’s mouth. Blood came out on his lips. His mouth began to puff. He got very pale.
Mallory said: “Keep your head, fat boy, and you may live through the night.”
Atkinson turned and walked straight out of the open door, swiftly, blindly.
Mallory took his arm and jerked him to the left, on to the grass. “Make it slow,” he said softly.
They rounded the pergola. Atkinson put his hands out in front of him and floundered at the car. A long arm came out of the open door and grabbed him. He went in, fell against the seat. Macdonald clapped a hand over his face and forced him back against the upholstery. Mallory got in and slammed the car door.
Tires squealed as the car circled rapidly and shot away. The driver drove a block before he switched the lights on again. Then he turned his head a little, said: “Where to, boss?”
Mallory said: “Anywhere. Back to town. Take it easy.”
The Cadillac turned on to the highway again and began to drop down the long grade. Lights showed in the valley once more, little white lights that moved ever so slowly along the floor of the valley. Headlights.
Atkinson heaved up in the seat, got a handkerchief out and dabbed at his mouth. He peered at Macdonald and said in a composed voice:
“What’s the frame, Mac? Shakedown?”
Macdonald laughed gruffly. Then he hiccoughed. He was a’ little drunk. He said thickly:
“Hell, no. The boys hung a snatch on the Farr girl tonight. Her friends here don’t like it. But you wouldn’t know anything about it, would you, big shot?” He laughed again, jeeringly.
Atkinson said slowly: “It’s funny…but I wouldn’t.” He lifted his white head higher, went on: “Who are these men?”
Macdonald didn’t answer him. Mallory lit a cigarette, guarding the match flame with cupped hands. He said slowly:
“That’s not important, is it? Either you know where Rhonda Farr was taken, or you can give us a lead. Think it out. There’s lots of time.”
Landrey turned his head and looked back. His face was a pale blur in the dark.
“It’s not much to ask, Mr. Atkinson’” he said gravely. His voice was cool, suave, pleasant. He tapped on the seat-back with his gloved fingers.
Atkinson stared towards him for a while, then put his head back against the upholstery. “Suppose I don’t know anything about it,” he said wearily.
Macdonald lifted his hand and hit him in the face. The lawyer’s head jerked against the cushions. Mallory said in a cold, unpleasant voice:
“A little less of your crap, copper.”
Macdonald swore at him, turned his head away. The car went on.
They were down in the valley now. A three-colored airport beacon swung through the sky not far away. There began to be wooded slopes and little beginnings of valley between dark hills. A train roared down from the Newhall tunnel, gathered speed and went by with a long shattering crash.
Landrey said something to his driver. The Cadillac turned off on to a dirt road. The driver switched the lights off and picked his way by moonlight. The dirt road ended in a spot of dead brown grass with low bushes around it. There were old cans and torn discolored newspapers faintly visible on the ground.
Macdonald got his bottle out, hefted it, and gurgled a drink. Atkinson said thickly:
“I’m a bit faint. Give me one.”
Macdonald turned, held the bottle out, then growled: “Aw, go to hell!” and put it away in his coat. Mallory took a flash out of the door pocket, clicked it on, and put the beam on Atkinson’s face. He said:
“Talk.”
Atkinson put his hands on his knees and stared straight at the beacon of the flashlight. His eyes were glassy and there was blood on his chin. He spoke:
“This is a frame by Costello. I don’t know what it’s all about. But if it’s Costello, a man named Slippy Morgan will be in on it. He has a shack on the mesa by Baldwin Hills. They might have taken Rhonda Farr there.”
He closed his eyes, and a tear showed in the glare of the flash. Mallory said slowly:
“Macdonald should know that.”
Atkinson kept his eyes shut, said: “I guess so.” His voice was dull and without any feeling.
Macdonald balled his first, lurched sideways and hit him in the face again. The lawyer groaned, sagged to one side. Mallory’s hand jerked; jerked the flash. His voice shook with fury. He said:
“Do that again and I’ll put a slug in your guts, copper. So help me I will.”
Macdonald rolled away, with a foolish laugh. Mallory snapped off the light. He said, more quietly:
“I think you’re telling the truth, Atkinson. We’ll case this shack of Slippy Morgan’s.”
The driver swung and backed the car, picked his way back to the highway again.
5
A white picket fence showed up for a moment before the headlights went off. Behind it on a rise the gaunt shapes of a
couple of derricks groped towards the sky. The darkened car went forward slowly, stopped across the street from a small frame house. There were no houses on that side of the street, nothing between the car and the oil-field. The house showed no light.
Mallory got to the ground and went across. A gravel driveway led along to a shed without a door. There was a touring car parked under the shed. There was thin worn grass along the driveway and a dull patch of something that had once been a lawn at the back. There was a wire clothes line and a small stoop with a rusted screen door. The moon showed all this.
Beyond the stoop there was a single window with the blind drawn; two thin cracks of light showed along the edges of the blind. Mallory went back to the car, walking on the dry grass and the dirt road surface without sound.
He said: “Let’s go, Atkinson.”
Atkinson got out heavily, stumbled across the street like a man half asleep. Mallory grabbed his arm. The two men went up the wooden steps, crossed the porch quietly. Atkinson fumbled and found the bell. He pressed it. There was a dull buzz inside the house. Mallory flattened himself against the wall, on the side where he would not be blocked by the opening screen door.
Then the house door came open without sound, and a figure loomed behind the screen. There was no light behind the figure. The lawyer said mumblingly:
“It’s Atkinson.”
The screen hook was undone. The screen door came outward.
“What’s the big idea?” said a lisping voice that Mallory had heard before.
Mallory moved, holding his Luger waist-high. The man in the doorway whirled at him. Mallory stepped in on him swiftly, making a clucking sound with tongue and teeth, shaking his head reprovingly.
“You wouldn’t have a gun, would you, Slippy,” he said, nudging the Luger forward. “Turn slow and easy, Slippy. When you feel something against your spine, go on in, Slippy. We’ll be right with you.”
The lanky man put his hands up and turned. He walked back into the darkness, Mallory’s gun in his back. A small living-room smelled of dust and casual cooking. A door had light under it. The lanky man put one hand down slowly and opened the door.
An unshaded light bulb hung from the middle of the ceiling. A thin woman in a dirty white smock stood under it, limp arms at her sides. Dull colorless eyes brooded under a mop of rusty hair. Her fingers fluttered and twitched in involuntary contractions of the muscles. She made a thin plaintive sound, like a starved cat.
The lanky man went and stood against the wall on the opposite side of the room, pressing the palms of his hands against wallpaper. There was a fixed, meaningless smile on his face.
Landrey’s voice said from behind: “I’ll take care of Atkinson’s pals.”
He came into the room with a big automatic in his gloved hand. “Nice little home,” he added pleasantly.
There was a metal bed in a corner of the room. Rhonda Farr was lying on it, wrapped to the chin in a brown army blanket. Her white wig was partly off her head and damp golden curls showed. Her face was bluish-white, a mask in which the rouge and lip-paint glared. She was snoring.
Mallory put his hand under the blanket, felt for her pulse. Then he lifted an eyelid and looked closely at the upturned pupil.
He said: “Doped.”
The woman in the smock wetted her lips. “A shot of M,” she said in a slack voice. “No harm done, mister.”
Atkinson sat down on a hard chair that had a dirty towel on the back of it. His dress shirt was dazzling under the unshaded light. The lower part of his face was smeared with dry blood. The lanky man looked at him contemptuously, and patted the stained wallpaper with the flat of his hands. Then Macdonald came into the room.
His face was flushed and sweaty. He staggered a little and put a hand up along the door-frame. “Hi ho, boys,” he said vacantly. “I ought to rate a promotion for this.”
The lanky man stopped smiling. He ducked sideways very fast, and a gun jumped into his hand. Roar filled the room, a great crashing roar. And again a roar.
The lanky man’s duck became a slide and the slide degenerated into a fall. He spread himself out on the bare carpet in a leisurely sort of way. He lay quite still, one half-open eye apparently looking at Macdonald. The thin woman opened her mouth wide, but no sound came out of it.
Macdonald put his other hand up to the door-frame, leaned forward and began to cough. Bright red blood came out on his chin. His hands came down the door-frame slowly. Then his shoulder twitched forward, he rolled like a swimmer in a breaking wave, and crashed. He crashed on his face, his hat still on his head, the mouse-colored hair at the nape of his neck showing below it in an untidy curl.
Mallory said: “Two down,” and looked at Landrey with a disgusted expression. Landry looked down at his big automatic and put it away out of sight, in the side pocket of his thin dark overcoat.
Mallory stooped over Macdonald, put a finger to his temple. There was no heartbeat. He tried the jugular vein with the same result. Macdonald was dead, and he still smelled violently of whiskey.
There was a faint trace of smoke under the light bulb, an acrid fume of powder. The thin woman bent forward at the waist and scrambled towards the door. Mallory jerked a hard hand against her chest and threw her back.
“You’re fine where you are.”
Atkinson took his hands off his knees and rubbed them together as if all the feeling had gone out of them. Landrey went over to the bed, put his gloved hand down and touched Rhonda Farr’s hair.
“Hello, baby,” he said lightly. “Long time no see.” He went out of the room, saying: “I’ll get the car over on this side of the street.”
Mallory looked at Atkinson. He said casually: “Who has the letters, Atkinson? The letters belonging to Rhonda Farr?”
Atkinson lifted his blank face slowly, squinted as though the light hurt his eyes. He spoke in a vague, far-off sort of voice.
“I—I don’t know. Costello, maybe. I never saw them.”
Mallory let out a short harsh laugh which made no change in the hard cold lines of his face. “Wouldn’t it be funny as hell if that’s true!”
He stooped over the bed in the corner and wrapped the brown blanket closely around Rhonda Farr. When he lifted her she stopped snoring, but she did not wake.
6
A window or two in the front of the apartment house showed light. Mallory held his wrist up and looked at the curved watch on the inside of it. The faintly glowing hands were at half-past three. He spoke back into the car:
“Give me ten minutes or so. Then come on up. I’ll fix the doors.”
The street entrance to the apartment house was locked. Mallory unlocked it with a loose key, put it on the latch. There was a little light in the lobby, from one bulb in a floor lamp and from a hooded light above the switchboard. A wizened, white-haired little man was asleep in a chair by the switchboard, with his mouth open and his breath coming in long, wailing snores, like the sounds of an animal in pain.
Mallory walked up one flight of carpeted steps. On the second floor he pushed the button for the automatic elevator. When it came rumbling down from above he got in and pushed the button marked “7.” He yawned. His eyes were dull with fatigue.
The elevator lurched to a stop, and Mallory went down the bright, silent corridor. He stopped at a gray olive-wood door and put his ear to the panel. Then he fitted the loose key slowly into the lock, turned it slowly, moved the door back an inch or two. He listened again, went in.
There was light from a lamp with a red shade that stood beside an easy chair. A man was sprawled in the chair and the light splashed on his face. He was bound at the wrists and ankles with strips of wide adhesive tape. There was a strip of adhesive across his mouth.
Mallory fixed the door latch and shut the door. He went across the room with quick silent steps. The man in the chair was Costello. His face was a purplish color above the white adhesive that plastered his lips together. His chest moved in jerks and his breath made a snorting noise
in his big nose.
Mallory yanked the tape off Costello’s mouth, put the heel of one hand on the man’s chin, forced his mouth wide open. The cadence of the breathing changed a bit. Costello’s chest stopped jerking, and the purplish color of his face faded to pallor. He stirred, made a groaning sound.
Mallory took an unopened pint bottle of rye off the mantel and tore the metal strip from the cap with his teeth. He pushed Costello’s head far back, poured some whiskey into his open mouth, slapped his face hard. Costello choked, swallowed convulsively. Some of the whiskey ran out of his nostrils. He opened his eyes, focused them slowly. He mumbled something confused.
Mallory went through velour curtains that hung across a doorway at the inner end of the room, into a short hall. The first door led into a bedroom with twin beds. A light burned, and a man was lying bound on each of the beds.
Jim, the gray-haired cop, was asleep or still unconscious. The side of his head was stiff with congealed blood. The skin of his face was a dirty gray.
The eyes of the red-haired man were wide open, diamond bright, angry. His mouth worked under the tape, trying to chew it. He had rolled over on his side and almost off the bed. Mallory pushed him back towards the middle, and said:
“It’s all in the game.”
He went back to the living-room and switched on more light. Costello had struggled up in the easy chair. Mallory took out a pocket knife and reached behind him, sawed the tape that bound his wrists. Costello jerked his hands apart, grunted, and rubbed the backs of his wrists together where the tape had pulled hairs out. Then he bent over and tore tape off his ankles. He said:
“That didn’t do me any good. I’m a mouth breather.” His voice was loose, flat and without cadence.
He got to his feet and poured two inches of rye into a glass, drank it at a gulp, sat down again and leaned his head against the high back of the chair. Life came into his face; glitter came into his washed-out eyes.
He said: “What’s new?”
Mallory spooned at a bowl of water that had been ice, frowned and drank some whiskey straight. He rubbed the left side of his head gently with his finger-tips and winced. Then he sat down and lit a cigarette.