Shooting Star / Spiderweb

  “I say it is.” He bent over me, shaking. “And I know what you really come for. You want a deal, is that it? Well, go ahead. I’ll play ball. Tell me how much you want to lay off. But you got to promise to give me the names. I want to know who it is that’s trying to knife me.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong. Nobody’s out to get you, Mr. Kolmar.”

  “Quit stalling and tell me how much.”

  “I don’t want your money. I just want these murders to stop.”

  He grunted again, turned away. I stood up.

  “Where you think you’re going?”

  “Away,” I said. “If you can’t help me, I’ll just have to find someone who can.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere.”

  He said it as if he meant it, and when he turned again I saw that he did. Because he had the gun in his hand once more.

  “You think I’m gonna let you walk out of here just like that?” he muttered. “Not me. Not until I get the truth. Not until you tell me who you’re working for, what they think they’re trying to do to me.”

  “Honestly, Mr. Kolmar—”

  “Honestly, he says. Honestly! There ain’t no such thing in this business. I know. For days now I been thinking about it, sitting there in my office and trying to figure it out. What’s happening in the industry? Why are they out to get me— me? I’m just an independent; why pick on me? Killing Foster, killing Trent. Wrecking my schedule. Trying to bankrupt me. They’re all against me.” He was shaking and the sweat poured down, rolling into his eyes and making him blink. But he held the gun, held it steady.

  “I couldn’t work today, Clayburn. I sat there and felt like I was going to blow my top. I had to come home. Something must of told me to do it. Because you’re here now, and you’re staying until you talk.”

  “But I don’t know anything about it, I swear it.”

  “Swear! Go ahead and swear. But make it fast. I give you ten seconds, Clayburn, ten seconds to talk, or I shoot.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “So I’m crazy. What difference does it make? They kill your people, wreck your pictures, take away your business. You think I care what happens now? I just want to know who did it, that’s all. And unless you tell me...”

  I sighed. “You win. But you better not let Thompson see you with that gun.”

  “Thompson? That dick?”

  “Just drove up,” I said. “See him coming up to the porch now.” I nodded toward the window. Kolmar turned his head.

  “Where?”

  I didn’t answer. I was too busy jumping him. I got my hand on the wrist holding the gun, and then I shoved my knee against his elbow. The gun dropped. Kolmar growled and made a grab at my neck. I knocked his hand down.

  Then I picked up the gun. “Sorry,” I said. “There’s been enough shooting around here. Sit down and cool off, Mr. Kolmar. I know how you feel, but try to understand this—I don’t know who killed your people. But I intend to help the police find out. And if I do hear something, I’ll tell you without asking.”

  He slumped into a chair, swimming in sweat. “Give me that gun,” he wheezed.

  “No. I’m taking it with me. You don’t need a gun, Mr. Kolmar.”

  “Yes I do. Give it to me.”

  I didn’t answer, just started to walk out.

  “You’d better,” he panted. “I’ll send Dean after you. He’d like that.”

  “Better not, you’ve lost enough employees already.”

  There was no answer to that one.

  I left him sitting there, staring and sweating.

  The sun was going down when I got outside. The Hillman-Minx still stood there, but I didn’t see Joe Dean around. And I didn’t try to look for him.

  I put the gun in the glove compartment and drove back to town. A long drive, but I’d made it before. And once again, it was dark when I arrived. It was almost six-thirty when I hit downtown.

  Time to eat; but first a stop at the office. Maybe I could call Bannock from there. Maybe I’d find some mail waiting for me.

  I didn’t call Bannock, and there was no mail. Something else waited for me. A visitor, standing there in the dim light of the hall.

  I came around the top step before I saw the figure, and then I wished I’d brought the gun. The figure wheeled, and I caught sight of a white face and wide eyes.

  “You!”

  “That’s right,” I said. “How are you, Miss Trent?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I’ve been waiting over an hour,” she said. “When they let me out down at the station, I came right over here.”

  “Let’s go inside, shall we?” I unlocked the door.

  “Is it—safe?”

  I looked at her. “Do you mean am I going to murder you?”

  She blushed. “N-no. The police told you what I said, didn’t they? I’m sorry about that, really I am. I was so hysterical, I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Understandable. Forget it.”

  “Then when I heard you’d been beat up, I felt awful for suspecting you. That’s what I was thinking about now when I asked if it was safe. I mean, nobody’s following you?”

  “Not that I know of. What about yourself?”

  “I don’t think so. They let me go.”

  “So I heard.” I pushed the door open, switched on the light. “Just want to see if I’ve got any important mail. We needn’t stay here.”

  I picked up the pile of letters the postman had shoved under the door. It was all routine stuff, as near as I could see. No need to open any of it now.

  “Suppose we go somewhere and eat?” I suggested. “I’m starved.”

  She nodded. We went downstairs and hit the first restaurant across the street. Apparently she was hungry, too. We didn’t do much talking until after the roast beef arrived.

  Then I told her about what had happened since I saw her at the Foster funeral, up to and including my recent interview with Kolmar and his chauffeur.

  Her eyes went wide. “They lied to you,” she said. “I know they were lying.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Dean does have a brother. He isn’t his twin, but he looks like it. I’ve seen him, when I went to visit Tom on location at the ranch.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. His name is Andy. Do you think—?”

  “That Kolmar hired him and the other mug to beat me up? Yes, it sounds probable.”

  “Then maybe he’s the murderer.”

  “I won’t rule it out, no. But I’m inclined to doubt it. What he told me makes sense—dollars and cents. He’s got too much dough tied up in his company to bump off his players. At least he’d wait until their picture roles were completed. And there’s no apparent motive.” I paused. “Did Kolmar ever quarrel with your brother over anything?”

  “No. I don’t believe so.”

  “You see? As I say, there’s no apparent motive. Unless one turns up, we’ll have to rule Kolmar out.”

  Billie Trent sighed. “But then why would he hire these men to beat you up, threaten to kill you?”

  “Because he’s afraid. I told you how he acted when I saw him. These deaths have given him a persecution complex. He thinks everybody’s out to get him; that his actors have been murdered just in order to ruin his business.”

  “But that’s fantastic!”

  “Stranger things have happened out here. Anyway, Kolmar must have some such notion. He heard I was investigating, thought I might be tied in with the plot to wreck him. Those two characters were probably hired to beat the truth out of me. Then again...”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. It could be something else entirely.”

  Billie Trent picked up her coffee. “Yes, it could be.” Her brown eyes were thoughtful. “That beating you took, did it make you decide to quit?”

  “I went out to Kolmar’s, didn’t I? No, I’m going to stick this thing out if it k—” I stopped and grinned at her. “Sorry, didn’t mean to b
e morbid.”

  “That’s all right. I understand.” She put her hand on mine. It was a nice hand, and I let it rest there. A nice, tanned, healthy, outdoor-type hand that trembled only a little.

  She leaned forward. “But there’s one thing I don’t understand,” she continued. “And that’s why you’re doing all this.”

  “The article.”

  Billie Trent shook her head. “I can’t believe that,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me the real reason, but there must be one. You’re not interested in an article any more, and I doubt if you were in the first place.”

  I looked at her hand, and then I squeezed it. “That’s right. Somebody hired me to investigate the Ryan death. I won’t mention names, because it’s confidential and it has nothing to do with what’s happened, believe me. Anyway, I started out on that basis. And I’m continuing for a personal reason.” I looked at her hand again because it was easier to go on if I didn’t look at her face.

  “You remember when I saw you the other day, I asked if your brother ever smoked reefers. Ryan did, you know. You denied it. And today Kolmar denied that any of his people ever indulged. But that angle keeps coming into this case. When Ryan’s body was discovered, they found roaches— marijuana cigarette butts—in his trailer. Some viper broke into my apartment shortly after I started to work on the murder and left part of a stick there. I’ve reason to suspect Polly Foster was on tea herself.”

  Billie nodded at me. “You sound as if you knew a lot about it.”

  “I do. You see, I used to go off on a stick-kick myself. Oh, I wasn’t an addict, but a few years back I went to a party and somebody passed the muggles around just for laughs. I tried one and liked it. Didn’t get high, because I didn’t know the technique of smoking. You’ve got to suck in a lot of air along with the smoke when you inhale.

  “Turned out that this girl—it was a girl and I’d been seeing quite a lot of her—was a regular user. She taught me how to use the weed. Pretty soon I was sending myself with the stuff any time I felt down. Never bought any of it directly: she got it from a pusher, but she wouldn’t tell me the source and I didn’t ask.

  “Don’t get me wrong, now. I wasn’t dependent; the drug didn’t have a physiological hold on me. Marijuana works differently on different people, just like alcohol. Some people drink and get sick, others get drunk and get a glow. Some people have to drink, others can go out and get drunk and then lay off for as long as they like. That’s the way it was with me and reefers. I’d pad up with this girl once a week or so and go out of this world. I won’t deny I got pleasure from it, and I thought I knew what I was doing at the time. Until I found that I was starting to hit the stuff twice a week, then oftener. And not just in private, either. We went to a couple of parties when we were high. We never got into any trouble, because people thought we’d had a few drinks. Except for a few others like ourselves who knew the score because they indulged themselves.

  “But you only think you know the score when you get into something like that. It creeps up on you gradually. You get careless about the amount you smoke, the frequency. Worst of all, you begin to get that smart aleck feeling, that snotty fraternity outlook, as though you were the privileged member of a secret society. Using your private language, your slang code, you think that you and your fellow addicts are just a little smarter and just a little better than anyone else. You’re a solid sender, the non-addicts are squares.

  “Of course, the actual smoking helps to give you that sense of false security, false superiority. When you’re high you can do anything without getting hurt. Like piling into the car with your girl at two in the morning and barrelling off to Las Vegas to get married at a hundred miles an hour.

  “That’s what I did, one morning last year. Both of us high, and the car sailing along on a little pink cloud while we giggled at nothing and watched the road curve like a snake. That’s what I told her, ‘It’s like driving over a snake’s back.’ I remember, because it was the last thing I said when we went around the curve without slowing down and I hit the side of the culvert.

  “When I woke up, I was in the hospital, minus an eye. And she was already buried. End of story.”

  “So that’s what happened,” Billie murmured.

  “Yes, that’s what happened. They thought it was an accident, and I said it was an accident, but I know differently. I was responsible for that girl’s death. Sure, I paid for it in a way: lost her, lost an eye, lost a good business. But there’s still another installment due on the debt. I’ve quit the habit myself and I’d like to go after the source of the stuff. They peddle it all over town, you know that. Peddle it to people who are hungry for thrills, for kicks, for escape. And I know what kind of escape it brings. The kind it brought to Dick Ryan, the kind it brought to my girl.

  “Now do you see why I want to go on? This thing is a racket, a big, vicious racket, involving important money and entangling important people. You’ve read enough about the estimates on the number of addicts in this country, the yearly take on the traffic. And you’ve read what addiction does to some people. As I said, not all of them turn into drug-crazed killers, the way the sensation mongers like to picture them. But plenty of them get into the kind of mess I got into. Thousands more ruin their health, ruin their reputations, ruin their lives because of the need to procure a regular supply from the pushers who bleed them white. They’ll do anything to get the stuff: beg for it, steal for it, even kill for it if they have to. I’m not turning moralist on you, just telling you the accepted facts. At least, that’s the way I feel about it. And it’s the reefer angle in these killings that makes me want to continue.

  “I’ve never told anyone this before. I don’t quite know why I’m telling you except that maybe, if you understand, you can help me.”

  I stopped. Now I looked at her. The brown eyes were still grave, but this time her hand was squeezing mine.

  “I’m glad you told me,” she said. “Because it makes it easier for me to tell you. I was going to, anyway. That’s why I came.” She paused. “I—I lied the other day.”

  “About your brother?”

  “Yes. He did smoke reefers. He, and Ryan. I don’t know about any of the others. But that’s why he was so jittery and upset there at the last. He couldn’t get his usual supply.”

  “Who was he getting them from?”

  “I don’t know. He never talked about it to me, of course; he didn’t even realize I knew. But I’d read enough and heard enough to recognize a marijuana cigarette when I saw one, and he got careless about cleaning out his room. Gibbs knew, too, because he’d seen Tom smoking.”

  “Did Gibbs have any ideas where your brother got his stuff?”

  “No. I asked him. From Ryan, or Ryan’s friends—that’s what he thought. And then, after Ryan died, something went wrong.”

  “Did you tell the police this?” I muttered.

  “Of course not. That’s the part I couldn’t tell anyone. You know what it would do to Tom’s reputation. I was thinking of that the other day when I came to you, hoping you could find out something without the police getting wind of it. Now that Tom’s dead, I don’t want his name blackened.”

  “But you should have told them,” I said. “If it helps them to find the killer...”

  She shook her head. “It wouldn’t do any good for me to say my brother was an addict. If I knew anything more than just that, yes. But that’s all. And they already have the information on Dick Ryan; that should be enough.”

  “What’s their theory about your brother’s death?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. They just kept asking me questions. Who were Tom’s friends? Did he have any enemies?”

  “Did he?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “How about him and this man Dean?”

  “I don’t know.” She brushed her hair from her forehead. “You’re just as bad as the police.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I don’t really mea
n that.” Billie smiled at me. “It’s just that I’m so sick of questions, questions, questions all the time.”

  “One or two more, and that’s all,” I promised. “Did they find anything out about who called your brother that last evening?”

  “No. He answered the phone himself.”

  “And that was the only call he got?”

  She leaned forward again. “That evening, yes. But when we were leaving for the funeral, there was another.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “No. Because of what I said, about Tom’s reputation. She was nothing but a tramp. I hated her, and I wasn’t going to—”

  “Who? Tell me.”

  Billie hesitated. “That Mexican girl—Estrellita Juarez.”

  “She phoned before the funeral?”

  “Yes. I heard Tom talking to her in the next room. He didn’t speak to me about it after, but he let her name slip during the conversation.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I can’t remember. Something about wanting to see her, and why was it impossible. Something else, he was thanking her but he wasn’t scared.” She paused. “Yes, that’s what he said, I recall now! He wasn’t scared, and he wouldn’t think of leaving. But that doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “First sense I’ve heard,” I muttered. “Don’t you see now? The cops have been looking for this Juarez dame from the start. She disappeared right after Ryan’s death. Why? Obviously because she knows something about it and doesn’t want to be questioned. She called your brother to warn him, warn him about something or someone threatening his life. Told him to get out of town, probably.

  “No wonder he was nervous; that, plus being deprived of weed. Then, sometime during the evening, he got another call. He went somewhere and the warning came true.”

  Billie Trent frowned. “Then you think I should go to the police now and tell them about that call?”

  It was my turn to frown. “You don’t want to, do you? Because your brother and Juarez were...?”

  She nodded.

  “All right. Let me handle it. I’ve got a hunch that even if the cops know she’s still in town, they won’t be able to find her. Even if they do, she wouldn’t talk. Maybe I’ll have better luck. At least, it’s worth a try.”