I didn’t see the wound at all at first. It was high up, on the right side of his head, in the temple, but back rather far, almost far enough to drive the petrosal bone through the brain. It was powder-burned, rimmed with dusky red, and a fine trickle spidered down from it and got browner as it got thinner against his cheek.
“Hell, that’s a contact wound,” I snapped at the woman. “A suicide wound.”
She stood at the foot of the bed and stared at the wall above his head. If she was interested in anything besides the wall, she didn’t show it.
I lifted his still limp right hand and sniffed at the place where the base of the thumb joins the palm. I smelled cordite, then I didn’t smell cordite, then I didn’t know whether I smelled cordite or not. It didn’t matter, of course. A paraffin test would prove it one way or the other.
I put the hand down again, carefully, as though it were a fragile thing of great value. Then I plowed around on the bed, went down on the floor, got halfway under the bed, swore, got up again and rolled the dead man to one side enough to look under him. There was a bright, brassy shell case but no gun.
It looked like murder again. I liked that better. He wasn’t the suicide type.
“See any gun?” I asked her.
“No.” Her face was as blank as a pie pan.
“Where’s the Baring girl? What are you supposed to be doing here?”
She bit the end of her left little finger. “I’d better confess,” she said. “I came here to kill them both.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Nobody was here. Of course, after I phoned him and he told me you were not a real cop and there was no murder and you were a blackmailer and just trying to scare me out of the address—” She stopped and sobbed once, hardly more than a sniff, and moved her line of sight to a corner of the ceiling.
Her words had a tumbled arrangement, but she spoke them like a drugstore Indian.
“I came here to kill both of them,” she said. “I don’t deny that.”
“With an empty gun?”
“It wasn’t empty two days ago. I looked. Dave must have emptied it. He must have been afraid.”
“That listens,” I said. “Go on.”
“So I came here. That was the last insult—his sending you to me to get her address. That was more than I would—”
“The story,” I said. “I know how you felt. I’ve read it in the love mags myself.”
“Yes. Well, he said there was something about Miss Baring he had to see her about on account of the studio and it was nothing personal, never had been, never would be—”
“My Gawd,” I said, “I know that too. I know what he’d feed you. We’ve got a dead man lying around here. We’ve got to do something, even if he was just your husband.”
“You——,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s better than the dopey talk. Go on.”
“The door wasn’t shut. I came in. That’s all. Now, I’m going. And you’re not going to stop me. You know where I live, you——.” She called me the same name again.
“We’ll talk to some law first,” I said. I went over and shut the door and turned the key on the inside of it and took it out. Then I went over to the french doors. The woman gave me looks, but I couldn’t hear what her lips were calling me now.
French doors on the far side of the bed opened on the same balcony as the living room. The telephone was in a niche in the wall there, by the bed, where you could yawn and reach out for it in the morning and order a tray of diamond necklaces sent up to try on.
I sat down on the side of the bed and reached for the phone, and a muffled voice came to me through the glass and said: “Hold it, pal! Just hold it!”
Even muffled by the glass it was a deep, soft voice. I had heard it before. It was Skalla’s voice.
I was in line with the lamp. The lamp was right behind me. I dived off the bed on to the floor, clawing at my hip.
A shot roared and glass sprinkled the back of my neck. I couldn’t figure it. Skalla wasn’t on the balcony. I had looked.
I rolled over and started to snake away along the floor away from the french doors, my only chance with the lamp where it was.
Mrs. Marineau did just the right thing—for the other side. She jerked a slipper off and started slamming me with the heel of it. I grabbed for her ankles and we wrestled around and she cut the top of my head to pieces.
I threw her over. It didn’t last long. When I started to get up Skalla was in the room, laughing at me. The .45 still had a home in his fist. The french door and the locked screen outside looked as though a rogue elephant had passed that way.
“Okay,” I said. “I give up.”
“Who’s the twist? She sure likes you, pal.”
I got up on my feet. The woman was over in a corner somewhere. I didn’t even look at her.
“Turn around, pal, while I give you the fan.”
I hadn’t worked my gun loose yet. He got that. I didn’t say anything about the door key, but he took it. So he must have been watching from somewhere. He left me my car keys. He looked at the little empty gun and dropped it back in my pocket.
“Where’d you come from?” I asked.
“Easy. Clumb up the balcony and held on, looking through the grill at you. Cinch to an old circus man. How you been, pal?”
Blood from the top of my head was leaking down my face. I got a handkerchief out and mopped at it. I didn’t answer him.
“Jeeze, you sure was funny on the bed grabbin’ for the phone with the stiff at your back.”
“I was a scream,” I growled. “Take it easy. He’s her husband.”
He looked at her. “She’s his woman?”
I nodded and wished I hadn’t.
“That’s tough. If I’d a known—but I couldn’t help meself. The guy asked for it.”
“You—” I started to say, staring at him. I heard a queer, strained whine behind me, from the woman.
“Who else, pal? Who else? Let’s all go back in that livin’ room. Seems to me they was a bottle of nice-looking hooch there. And you need some stuff on that head.”
“You’re crazy to stick around here,” I growled. “There’s a general pickup out for you. The only way out of this canyon is back down Beachwood or over the hills—on foot.”
Skalla looked at me and said very quietly, “Nobody’s phoned no law from here, pal.”
Skalla watched me while I washed and put some tape on my head in the bathroom. Then we went back to the living room. Mrs. Marineau, curled up on one of the davenports, looked blankly at the unlit fire. She didn’t say anything.
She hadn’t run away because Skalla had her in sight all the time. She acted resigned, indifferent, as if she didn’t care what happened now.
I poured three drinks from the Vat 69 bottle, handed one to the brunette. She held her hand out for the glass, half smiled at me, crumpled off the davenport to the floor with the smile still on her face.
I put the glass down, lifted her and put her back on the davenport with her head low. Skalla stared at her. She was out cold, as white as paper.
Skalla took his drink, sat down on the other davenport and put the .45 beside him. He drank his drink looking at the woman, with a queer expression on his big pale face.
“Tough,” he said. “Tough. But the louse was cheatin’ on her anyways. The hell with him.” He reached for another drink, swallowed it, sat down near her on the other davenport right-angled to the one she lay on.
“So you’re a dick,” he said.
“How’d you guess?”
“Lu Shamey told me about a guy goin’ there. He sounded like you. I been around and looked in your heap outside. I walk silent.”
“Well—what now?” I asked.
He looked more enormous than ever in the room in his sports clothes. The clothes of a smart-aleck kid. I wondered how long it had taken him to get them together. They couldn’t have been ready-made. He was much too big for that.
H
is feet were spread wide on the apricot rug, he looked down sadly at the white kid explosions on the suede. They were the worst-looking shoes I ever saw.
“What you doin’ here?” he asked gruffly.
“Looking for Beulah. I thought she might need a little help. I had a bet with a city cop I’d find her before he found you. But I haven’t found her yet.”
“You ain’t seen her, huh?”
I shook my head, slowly, very carefully.
He said softly, “Me neither, pal. I been around for hours. She ain’t been home. Only the guy in the bedroom come here. How about the dinge manager up at Shamey’s?”
“That’s what the tag’s for.”
“Yeah. A guy like that. They would. Well, I gotta blow. I’d like to take the stiff, account of Beulah. Can’t leave him around to scare her. But I guess it ain’t any use now. The dinge kill queers that.”
He looked at the woman at his elbow on the other little davenport. Her face was still greenish white, her eyes shut. There was a movement of her breast.
“Without her,” he said, “I guess I’d clean up right and button you good.” He touched the .45 at his side. “No hard feelings, of course, just for Beulah. But the way it is—heck, I can’t knock the frail off.”
“Too bad.” I snarled, feeling my head.
He grinned. “I guess I’ll take your heap. For a short ways. Throw them keys over.”
I threw them over. He picked them up and laid them beside the big Colt. He leaned forward a little. Then he reached back into one of his patch pockets and brought out a small pearl-handled gun, about .25 caliber. He held it on the flat of his hand.
“This done it,” he said. “I left a rent hack I had on the street below and come up the bank and around the house. I hear the bell ring. This guy is at the front door. I don’t come up far enough for him to see me. Nobody answers. Well, what do you think? The guy’s got a key. A key to Beulah’s house!”
His huge face became one vast scowl. The woman on the davenport was breathing a little more deeply, and I thought I saw one of her eyelids twitch.
“What the hell,” I said. “He could get that a dozen ways. He’s a boss at KLBL where she works. He could get at her bag, take an impression. Hell, she didn’t have to give it to him.”
“That’s right, pal.” He beamed. “O’ course, she didn’t have to give it to the——. Okay, he went in, and I made it fast after him. But he had the door shut. I opened it my way. After that it didn’t shut so good, you might of noticed. He was in the middle of this here room, over there by a desk. He’s been here before all right though”—the scowl came back again, although not quite so black—because he slipped a hand into the desk drawer and come up with this.” He danced the pearl-handled thing on his enormous palm.
Mrs. Marineau’s face now had distinct lines of tensity.
“So I start for him. He lets one go. A miss. He’s scared and runs into the bedroom. Me after. He lets go again. Another miss. You’ll find them slugs in the wall somewheres.”
“I’ll make a point of it,” I said.
“Yeah, then I got him. Well, hell, the guy’s only a punk in a white muffler, If she’s washed up with me, okay. I want it from her, see? Not from no greasy-faced piece of cheese like him. So I’m sore. But the guy’s got guts at that.”
He rubbed his chin. I doubted the last bit.
“I say: ‘My woman lives here, pal. How come?’ He says: ‘Come back tomorrow. This here is my night.’”
Skalla spread his free left hand in a large gesture. “After that nature’s got to take its course, ain’t it? I pull his arms and legs off. Only while I’m doing it the damn little gat pops off and he’s as limp as—as—” he glanced at the woman and didn’t finish what he was going to say. “Yeah, he was dead.”
One of the woman’s eyelids flickered again. I said, “Then?”
“I scrammed. A guy does. But I come back. I got to thinkin’ it’s tough on Beulah, with that stiff on her bed. So I’ll just go back and ferry him out to the desert and then crawl in a hole for a while. Then this frail comes along and spoils that part.”
The woman must have been shamming for quite a long time. She must have been moving her legs and feet and turning her body a fraction of an inch at a time, to get in the right position, to get leverage against the back of the davenport.
The pearl-handled gun still lay on Skalla’s flat hand when she moved. She shot off the davenport in a flat dive, gathering herself in the air like an acrobat. She brushed his knees and picked the gun off his hand as neatly as a chipmunk peels a nut.
He stood up and swore as she rolled against his legs. The big Colt was at his side, but he didn’t touch it or reach for it. He stooped to take hold of the woman with his big hands empty.
She laughed just before she shot him.
She shot him four times, in the lower belly, then the hammer clicked. She threw the gun at his face and rolled away from him.
He stepped over her without touching her. His big pale face was quite empty for a moment, then it settled into stiff lines of torture, lines that seemed to have been there always.
He walked erectly along the rug towards the front door. I jumped for the big Colt and got it. To keep it from the woman. At the fourth step he took, blood showed on the yellowish nap of the rug. After that it showed at every step he took.
He reached the door and put his big hand flat against the wood and leaned there for a moment. Then he shook his head and turned back. His hand left a bloody smear on the door from where he had been holding his belly.
He sat down in the first chair he came to and leaned forward and held himself tightly with his hands. The blood came between his fingers slowly, like water from an overflowing basin.
“Them little slugs,” he said, “hurt just like the big ones, down below anyways.”
The dark woman walked towards him like a marionette. He watched her come unblinkingly, under his half-lowered, heavy lids.
When she got close enough she leaned over and spat in his face.
He didn’t move. His eyes didn’t change. I jumped for her and threw her into a chair. I wasn’t nice about it.
“Leave her alone,” he grunted at me. “Maybe she loved the guy.”
Nobody tried to stop me from telephoning this time.
Hours later I sat on a red stool at Lucca’s, at Fifth and Western, and sipped a martini and wondered how it felt to be mixing them all day and never drink one.
I took another martini over and ordered a meal. I guess I ate it. It was late, past one, Skalla was in the prison ward of the General Hospital. Miss Baring hadn’t showed up yet, but they knew she would, as soon as she heard Skalla was under glass, and no longer dangerous.
KLBL, who didn’t know anything about it at first, had got a nice hush working. They were to have twenty-four clear hours to decide how to release the story.
Lucca’s was almost as full as at noon. After a while an Italian brunette with a grand nose and eyes you wouldn’t fool with came over and said: “I have a table for you now.”
My imagination put Skalla across the table from me. His flat black eyes had something in them that was more than mere pain, something he wanted me to do. Part of the time he was trying to tell me what it was, and part of the time he was holding his belly in one piece and saying again: “Leave her alone, Maybe she loved the guy.”
I left there and drove north to Franklin and over Franklin to Beachwood and up to Heather Street. It wasn’t staked. They were that sure of her.
I drifted along the street below and looked up the scrubby slope spattered with moonlight and showing her house from behind as if it were three stories high. I could see the metal brackets that supported the porch. They looked high enough off the ground so that a man would need a balloon to reach them. But there was where he had gone up. Always the hard way with him.
He could have run away and had a fight for his money or even bought himself a place to live up in. There were plenty of people in t
he business, and they wouldn’t fool with Skalla. But he had come back instead to climb her balcony, like Romeo, and get his stomach full of slugs. From the wrong woman, as usual.
I drove around a white curve that looked like moonlight itself and parked and walked up the hill the rest of the way. I carried a flash, but I didn’t need it to see there was nobody on the doorstep waiting for the milk. I didn’t go in the front way. There might just happen to be some snooper with night glasses up on the hill.
I sneaked up the bank from behind, between the house and the empty garage. I found a window I could reach and made not much noise breaking it with a gun inside my hat. Nothing happened except that the crickets and tree frogs stopped for a moment.
I picked a way to the bedroom and prowled my flash around discreetly, after lowering the shades and pulling the drapes across them. The light dropped on a tumbled bed, on daubs of print powder, on cigarette butts on the window sills and heel marks in the nap of the carpet. There was a green and silver toilet set on the dressing table and three suitcases in the closet. There was a built-in bureau back in there with a lock that meant business. I had a chilled-steel screwdriver with me as well as the flash. I jimmied it.
The jewelry wasn’t worth a thousand dollars. Perhaps not half. But it meant a lot to a girl in show business. I put it back where I got it.
The living room had shut windows and a queer, unpleasant, sadistic smell. The law enforcement had taken care of the Vat 69, to make it easier for the fingerprint men. I had to use my own. I got a chair that hadn’t been bled on into a corner, wet my throat and waited in the darkness.
A shade flapped in the basement or somewhere. That made me wet my throat again. Somebody came out of a house half a dozen blocks away and whooped. A door banged. Silence. The tree frogs started again, then the crickets. Then the electric clock on the radio got louder than all the other sounds together.
Then I went to sleep.