The pink young man slid down off the table very rapidly and stuffed the card into his pocket without looking at it and spoke close to my ear. “Hold it.”
Then he walked softly over to the framed picture of Horace Greeley and lifted it off the wall and pressed on a square of paint behind it. The paint gave—it was painted over fabric. Kincaid looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I nodded. He hung the picture back on the wall and came back to me. “Mike,” he said under his breath. “Of course I don’t know who listens or when, or even whether the damn thing still works.”
“Horace Greeley would have loved it,” I said.
“Yeah. The beat’s pretty dead tonight. I guess I could go out. Al De Spain will cover for me anyway.” He was talking loud now.
“The big black-haired cop?”
“Yeah.”
“What makes him sore?”
“He’s been reduced to acting patrolman. He ain’t even working tonight. Just hangs around and he’s so tough it would take the whole damn police force to throw him out.”
I looked towards the microphone and raised my eyebrows.
“That’s okay,” Kincaid said. “I gotta feed ‘em something to chew on.”
He went over to a dirty washbowl in the corner and washed his hands on a scrap of lava soap and dried them on his pocket handkerchief. He was just putting the handkerchief away when the door opened. A small, middle-aged, gray-haired man stood in it, looking at us expressionlessly.
Dolly Kincaid said: “Evening, Chief, anything I can do for you?”
The chief looked at me silently and without pleasure. He had sea-green eyes, a tight, stubborn mouth, a ferret-shaped nose, and an unhealthy skin. He didn’t look big enough to be a cop. He nodded very slightly and said: “Who’s your friend?”
“He’s a friend of my brother-in-law. He’s a private dick from L.A. Let’s see—” Kincaid gripped desperately in his pocket for my card. He didn’t even remember my name.
The chief said sharply: “What’s that? A private detective? What’s your business here?”
“I didn’t say I was here on business,” I told him.
“Glad to hear it,” he said. “Very glad to hear it. Good night.” He opened the door and went out quickly and snapped it shut behind him.
“Chief Anders—one swell guy,” Kincaid said loudly. “They don’t come any better.” He was looking at me like a scared rabbit.
“They never have,” I said just as loudly. “In Bay City.”
I thought for a moment he was going to faint, but he didn’t. We went out in the front of the city hall and got into my car and drove away.
I stopped the car on Altair Street across the way from the residence of Dr. Leland Austrian. The night was windless and there was a little fog under the moon. A faint pleasant smell of brackish water and kelp came up the side of the bluff from the beach. Small riding lights pinpointed the yacht harbor and the shimmering lines of three piers. Quite far out to sea a bigmasted fishing barge had lights strung between its masts and from the mastheads down to the bow and stern. Other things than fishing probably happened on it.
Altair Street in that block was a dead-end, cut off by a tall, ornamental iron fence that walled a big estate. The houses were on the inland side of the street only, on eighty- or hundred foot lots, well spaced. On the seaward side there was a narrow pavement and a low wall, beyond which the bluff dropped almost straight down.
Dolly Kincaid was pressed back into the corner of the seat, the red tip of a cigarette glowing at intervals in front of his small blurred face. The Austrian house was dark except for a small light over the embrasure in which the front door was set. It was stucco, with a wall across the front yard, iron gates, the garage outside the wall. A cement walk went from a side door of the garage to a side door of the house. There was a bronze plate set into the wall beside the gates and I knew it would read Leland M. Austrian, M.D.
“All right,” I said. “Now what was the matter with the Austrian case?”
“Nothing was the matter with it,” Kincaid said slowly. “Except you’re going to get me in a jam.”
“Why?”
“Somebody must have heard you mention Austrian’s address over that mike. That’s why Chief Anders came in to look at you.”
“De Spain might have figured me for a dick—just on looks. He might have tipped him off.”
“No. De Spain hates the chief’s guts. Hell, he was a detective lieutenant up to a week ago. Anders don’t want the Austrian case monkeyed with. He wouldn’t let us write it up.”
“Swell press you got in Bay City.”
“We got a swell climate—and the press is a bunch of stooges.”
“Okay,” I said. “You got a brother-in-law who’s a homicide dick in the sheriff’s office. All the L.A. Papers but one are strong for the sheriff. This town is where he lives, though, and like a lot of other guys he don’t keep his own yard clean. So you’re scared, huh?”
Dolly Kincaid threw his cigarette out of the window. I watched it fall in a small red arc and lie faintly pink on the narrow pavement. I leaned forward and pressed on the starter button. “Excuse it, please,” I said. “I won’t bother you any more.”
I meshed the gears and the car crawled forward a couple of yards before Kincaid leaned over and jerked the parking brake on. “I’m not yellow,” he said sharply. “What do you wanta know?”
I cut the motor again and leaned back with my hands on the wheel. “First off, why did Matson lose his licence. He’s my client.”
“Oh—Matson. They said he tried to put the bite on Dr. Austrian. And they not only took his licence, they run him out of town. A couple of guys with guns shoved him into a car one night and roughed him around and told him to skip the burg or else. He reported it down at headquarters and you could have heard them laugh for blocks. But I don’t think it was cops.”
“Do you know anybody called Big Chin?”
Dolly Kincaid thought. “No. The mayor’s driver, a goof called Moss Lorenz, has a chin you could balance a piano on. But I never heard him called Big Chin. He used to work for Vance Conried. Ever hear of Conried?”
“I’m all caught up on that angle,” I said. “Then if this Conried wanted to bump somebody off that was bothering him, and especially somebody that had made a little trouble here in Bay City, this Lorenz would be just the guy. Because the mayor would have to cover for him—up to a point, anyway.”
Dolly Kincaid said, “Bump who off?” and his voice was suddenly thick and tense.
“They didn’t only run Matson out of town,” I told him. “They traced him to an apartment house in L.A. And some guy called Big Chin gave him the works. Matson must have been working still on whatever it was he was working on.”
“Geez,” Dolly Kincaid whispered. “I didn’t get a word on that.”
“The L.A. Cops neither—when I left. Did you know Matson?”
“A little. Not well.”
“Would you call him honest?”
“Well, as honest as—well, yeah, I guess he was all right. Geez, bumped off, huh?”
“As honest as a private dick usually is?” I said.
He giggled, from sudden strain and nervousness and shock—very little from amusement. A car turned into the end of the street and stopped by the curb and its lights went out. Nobody got out.
“How about Dr. Austrian,” I said. “Where was he when his wife was murdered?”
Dolly Kincaid jumped. “Jeepers, who said she was murdered?” he gasped.
“I think Matson was trying to say so. But he was trying to get paid for not saying it even harder than he was trying to say it. Either way would have got him disliked, but his way got him chilled with a piece of lead pipe. My hunch is that Conried would have that done because he would not like to have anybody make the pay sign at him, except in the way of legitimate graft. But on the other hand it would be a little better for Conried’s club to have Dr. Austrian murder his wife than for her to do a Dutch on account of lo
sing all her dough at Conried’s roulette tables. Maybe not a lot better, but some better. So I can’t figure why Conried would have Matson bumped off for talking about murder. I figure he could have been talking about something else as well.”
“Does all this figuring ever get you anywhere?” Dolly Kincaid asked politely.
“No. It’s just something to do while I’m patting the cold cream into my face at night. Now about this lab man that made the blood sample. Who was he?”
Kincaid lit another cigarette and looked down the block at the car that had stopped in front of the end house. Its lights had gone on again now and it was moving forward slowly.
“A guy named Greb,” he said. “He has a small place in the Physicians and Surgeons Building and works for the doctors.”
“Not official, huh?”
“No, but they don’t run to lab men down here. And the undertakers all take turns being coroner for a week, so what the hell. The chief handles it the way he likes.”
“Why would he want to handle it at all?”
“I guess maybe he might get orders from the mayor, who might get a hint from the gambling boys that Vance Conried works for, or from Vance Conried direct. Conried might not like his bosses to know he was mixed up with a dead frill in a way to make a kickback on the club.”
“Right,” I said. “That guy down the block don’t know where he lives.”
The car was still crawling forward along the curb. Its lights were out again, but it was still moving.
“And while I’m still healthy,” Dolly Kincaid said, “you might as well know that Doc Austrian’s office nurse used to be Matson’s wife. She’s a redheaded man-eater with no looks but a lot of outside curve.”
“I like a well-crowded stocking myself,” I said. “Get out of that door and in the back of the car and lie down and make it fast.”
“Geez—”
“Do what I say!” I snapped. “Fast!”
The door on the right clicked open and the little man slid out like a wisp of smoke. The door clicked shut. I heard the rear door open and sneaked a look back and saw a dark shape haunched on the floor of the car. I slid over to the right side myself and opened the door again and stepped out on the narrow pavement that ran along the rim of the bluff.
The other car was close now. Its lights flared up again and I ducked. The lights swerved so that they swept my car, then swerved back and the car stopped opposite and went quietly dark. It was a small black coupe. Nothing happened for a minute, then its left door opened and a chunky man stepped out and started to stroll over towards my side of the side-paved street. I took my gun from under my arm and tucked it in my belt and buttoned the bottom button of my coat. Then I walked around the rear end of my car to meet him.
He stopped dead when he saw me. His hands hung empty at his sides. There was a cigar in his mouth. “Police,” he said briefly. His right hand shaded back slowly towards his right hip. “Nice night ain’t it?”
“Swell,” I said. “A little foggy, but I like fog. It softens the air up and—”
He cut in on me sharply: “Where’s the other guy?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t kid me, stranger. I saw a cigarette on the right side of your car.”
“That was me,” I said. “I didn’t know it was against the law to smoke on the right side of a car.”
“Oh, a smart monkey. Who are you and what’s your business here?” His heavy, greasy face reflected the sifted light in the soft misty air.
“The name’s O’Brien,” I said. “Just down from San Mateo on a little pleasure trip.”
His hand was very close to his hip now. “I’ll look at your driver’s licence,” he said. He came close enough to reach it, if we both stretched out our arms to each other.
“I’ll look at what gives you the right to look at it,” I said.
His right hand made an abrupt movement. Mine flicked the gun out of my belt and pointed it at his stomach. His hand stopped as though it had been frozen in a block of ice.
“Maybe you’re a stick-up,” I said. “It’s still being done with nickel badges.”
He stood there, paralyzed, hardly breathing. He said thickly: “Got a licence for that heater?”
“Every day in the week,” I said. “Let’s see your badge and I’ll put it away. You don’t wear the buzzer where you sit down, do you?”
He stood for another frozen minute. Then he looked along the block as if he hoped another car might arrive. Behind me, in the back of my car, there was a soft, sibilant breathing. I didn’t know whether the chunky man heard it or not. His own breathing was heavy enough to iron a shirt with.
“Aw, quit your kiddin’,” he snarled out with sudden ferocity. “You’re nothin’ but a lousy two-bit shamus from L.A.”
“I upped the rate,” I said. “I get thirty cents now.”
“Go to hell. We don’t want you nosin’ around here, see. This time I’m just tellin’ you.”
He turned on his heel and walked back to his coupe and put a foot on the running board. His thick neck turned slowly and his greasy skin showed again. “Go to hell,” he said, “before we send you there in a basket.”
“So long, Greasy-Puss,” I said. “Nice to have met you with your pants down.”
He slammed into his car, started it with a jerk and lurched it around. He was gone down the block in a flash.
I jumped into mine and was only a block behind him when he made the stop for Arguello Boulevard. He turned right. I turned left. Dolly Kincaid came up and put his chin on the back of the seat beside my shoulder.
“Know who that was?” he croaked. “That was Trigger Weems, the chief’s right bower. He might have shot you.”
“Fanny Brice might have had a pug nose,” I said. “It was that close.”
I rode around a few blocks and stopped to let him get in beside me. “Where’s your car?” I said.
He took his crumpled reporter’s hat off and smacked it on his knee and put it back on again. “Why, down at the city hall. In the police yard.”
“Too bad,” I said. “You’ll have to take the bus to L.A. You ought to spend a night with your sister once in a while. Especially tonight.”
Four—Redheaded Woman
The road twisted, dipped, soared along the flank of the foothills, a scatter of lights to the northwest and a carpet of them to the south. The three piers seemed remote from this point, thin pencils of light laid out on a pad of black velvet. There was fog in the canyons and a smell of wild growth, but no fog on the high ground between the canyons.
I swung past a small, dim service station, closed up for the night, down into another wide canyon, up past half a mile of expensive wire fence walling in some invisible estate. Then the scattered houses got still more scattered along the hills and the air smelled strongly of the sea. I turned left past a house with a round white turret and drove out between the only electroliers in miles to a big stucco building on a point above the coast highway. Light leaked from draped windows and along an arched stucco colonnade, and shone dimly on a thick cluster of cars parked in diagonal slots around an oval lawn.
This was the Club Conried. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do there, but it seemed to be one of the places where I had to go. Dr. Austrian was still wandering in unknown parts of the town visiting unnamed patients. The Physicians’ Exchange said he usually called in about eleven. It was now about ten-fifteen.
I parked in a vacant slot and walked along the arched colonnade. A six-foot-six Negro, in the uniform of a comic-opera South American field marshal, opened one half of a wide grilled door from the inside and said: “Card, please, suh.”
I tucked a dollar’s worth of folding money into his lilac-colored palm. Enormous ebony knuckles closed over it like a dragline over a bucketful of gravel. His other hand picked a piece of lint off my left shoulder and left a metal tag down behind my show handkerchief in the outside breast pocket of my jacket.
“New floor boss kinda tough,?
?? he whispered. “I thank you, suh.”
“You mean sucker,” I said, and went in past him.
The lobby—they called it a foyer—looked like an MGM set for a night club in the Broadway Melody of 1980. Under the artificial light, it looked as if it had cost about a million dollars and took up enough space for a polo field. The carpet didn’t quite tickle my ankles. At the back there was a chromium gangway like a ship’s gangway going up to the dining-room entrance, and at the top of this a chubby Italian captain of waiters stood with a set smile and a two-inch satin stripe on his pants and a bunch of gold-plated menus under his arm.
There was a free-arched stairway with banisters like white-enameled sleigh rails. This would go up to the second-floor gambling rooms. The ceiling had stars in it and they twinkled. Beside the bar entrance, which was dark and vaguely purple, like a half-remembered nightmare, there was a huge round mirror set back in a white tunnel with an Egyptian headdress over the top of it. In front of this a lady in green was preening her metallic blond hair. Her evening gown was cut so low at the back that she was wearing a black beauty patch on her lumbar muscle, about an inch below where her pants would have been, if she had been wearing any pants.
A check girl in peach-bloom pajamas with small black dragons on them came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes as black and shiny and expressionless as the toes of patent-leather pumps. I gave her a quarter and kept my hat. A cigarette girl with a tray the size of a five-pound candy box came down the gangway. She wore feathers in her hair, enough clothes to hide behind a three-cent stamp, and one of her long, beautiful, naked legs was gilded and the other was silvered. She had the cold, disdainful expression of a dame who is dated so far ahead that she would have to think twice before accepting a knockdown to a maharajah with a basket of rubies under his arm.
I went into the soft purple twilight of the bar. Glasses tinkled gently. There were quiet voices, chords on a piano off in a corner, and a pansy tenor singing “My Little Buckeroo” as confidentially as a bartender mixing a Mickey Finn. Little by little the purple light got to be something I could see by. The bar was fairly full but not crowded. A man laughed off-key and the pianist expressed his annoyance by doing an Eddie Duchin ripple down the keyboard with his thumbnail.