by Jerry eBooks
Her tan shoulders shrugged. “John and I had an understanding. We each lived our own life. I didn’t question him and he didn’t question me.” She gave me a sidelong glance. “Does that shock you, Gus?”
“What’s the difference if it shocks me or doesn’t? I just want the truth.”
“Well, I didn’t kill him. In a detached sort of way, I was rather fond of him.”
“Yeah. Fond of being the wife of a rich man.”
“Why, Gus, I didn’t think you cared,” she said brightly. “We haven’t seen each other in so many years, and even in high school we never went out together. Don’t tell me you’ve been carrying the torch for me?”
So that was what she was, a teaser, even with a cop she had never known well. Me, I’d never had a thought for her.
I growled, “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Shouldn’t I?” She got off the chaise longue and ran her hands sensuously over her half-naked body. “Look at me, Gus. Don’t you think I have a right to flatter myself?”
“All right, you’ve got a body.”
She was standing close to me; she made me uneasy. “Now about your husband’s other girl friends?”
“I can’t answer. I told you I hadn’t been interested. But you, Gus—do you know I had a crush on you in high school? You didn’t give me a tumble. You were the big football hero, so strong, so virile-looking. You still are, you know, only more manly.”
And she kissed me.
There under the hot sun, wearing next to nothing, and more likely than not with the servants watching from the house, she pressed herself against me and kissed me.
It was a long time since I’d been kissed like that by any woman. It felt good, to my mouth, to my body, to my hands, but at the same time it made me sick to my stomach. Her husband wasn’t dead two days, and here she was. And if he had been alive, she wouldn’t have acted any differently. They’d had an understanding, she’d said. And I didn’t think she went for me in particular. Almost any man would have done who appealed to her at all.
The bitch! Like Martha. Like Holly Laird. Like every goddamn woman.
I tore her arms from around me and shoved her so hard she fell back against the chaise longue and sat down on it. I said, “I’d like to wring the necks of every one of you,” and strode off without a backward glance at her.
I hadn’t any more questions, and those I’d asked hadn’t gotten me anywhere. I was shaking all over as I climbed into my car.
6.
Back at headquarters, I learned that Detective Lou Fox had found a witness. He had been assigned to question everybody in Holly Laird’s building, in front of which the murder had taken place, and he had come up with a teen-aged girl named Ann Danderman. He left off typing up his report to tell me about it.
“This kid lives a couple of floors below Holly Laird. Seventeen. Real pretty. She was out on a date and the guy brought her home around eleven. Her folks had told her to be home by eleven-thirty, so of course they hung around necking in the doorway for half an hour. There’s a street lamp close by and she could see a car parked at the curb and Holly Laird sitting in it with a man. She knew Holly well by sight, being a fan of hers. She didn’t know Ambler and didn’t see him clearly, but it must have been him.”
“Were they making love?”
“You mean Holly and Ambler in the car? The girl says no. Just talking. At eleven-thirty sharp Ann went upstairs. The two in the car were still talking.”
“Is that all she saw?”
“It’s something. We got them spotted out there from eleven to at least eleven-thirty.”
“Does the Skipper know about this?”
“I told him first thing I got back,” Lou Fox said. “By the way, he said send you in as soon as you showed up. He’s sore at you.”
I went down the hall to the Skipper’s office. A captain has an easy life. He was tilted back in his swivel-chair, cleaning his fingernails.
“This time you’ve gone too far,” he said as soon as I had the door closed behind me. “A dozen witnesses saw you beat up Burnett in the street.”
“He had a gun in his pocket. Did you want me to give him a chance to plug me first?”
“They say you slashed him with his gun after you’d taken it away.”
“So I got a little excited. Wouldn’t you be if somebody was out to shoot you down?”
The Skipper leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. He had a beak like an eagle’s and small, dark eyes that could bore right through you. He said, “If somebody slapped around the girl I loved, I think maybe I’d lose my head too and grab a gun and go after the guy.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“He told me that’s what you did this morning to Holly Laird.”
“He’s nuts.” I drew on my cigar. “Did you ask her?”
The Skipper lost some of his fire and I knew it was all right. “I spoke to her on the phone.”
“And?”
“She says you didn’t touch her. But I don’t know. Something screwy about this. The way you sometimes act I wouldn’t put it past you to . . .” He sighed. “What gets into you every now and then, Gus?”
“She says I didn’t touch her,” I reminded him gently.
“Lucky for you she does. You’re a good man, Gus, the best I’ve got, but I’m getting fed up with some of your stunts.” He picked up his nailfile. “Did you hear about Lou’s witness?”
“Yeah. Holly Laird said Ambler dropped her off at her house and drove away. Now we find out they were sitting outside in his car at least half an hour. I’ve been telling you she lied, and this proves it. They talked and talked and then she stabbed him.”
“There’s something else. This knocks hell out of the alibis of the others in the cast.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Like this,” the Skipper said. “Holly and Ambler left the theater twenty minutes before the play ended. The curtain came down at eleven-twelve. It’s no more than five minutes from the theater to where they were sitting in the car. Burnett went there and saw them together. He was crazy jealous. He had a knife.”
I nodded. “And she lied about how long she was in the car with Ambler because she was covering up for Burnett. So it was either one of them.”
The Skipper was a cautious guy. “Not necessarily, but it’s worth thinking about.”
“Either one,” I said, drawing smoke into my lungs.
7.
In spite of my badge, they refused to give me a free ticket at the box office of the Empire Theater, so I had to buy one, charging it to expenses. I wasn’t stingy with the city’s money; I got me a seat in the third row orchestra.
Before the curtain rose, somebody came out and announced that Bill Burnett’s part would be played by an understudy. He didn’t mention that Burnett couldn’t show up because he was in jail.
The play was one of these grim dramas about people suffering from the weather and each other in New England. Holly Laird had her golden hair piled up on top of her head and wore a gingham dress that was cut so as not to hide her figure—the figure I’d seen a lot of this morning. And she could act. I wasn’t much for the theater, but I could tell an actress when I saw one. She was so good and, along with her talent, so easy to look at, that she wouldn’t need an angel to persuade a director to give her leading roles.
I began to have a doubt, but only a small one.
I knew she wasn’t going to be in the last scene, which was the third scene of the second act. Just before the second scene ended, I went backstage. My badge was good for something after all; it got me past the doorman.
I caught Holly Laird as she was on the way to the iron stairs running up to the dressing rooms. “Just a minute, miss,” I said.
If ever a girl looked hate at a man, she did. So what? Why should I care what a golden-haired bitch felt about me?
“We know you were sitting in the car with Ambler for half an hour or more,” I told her.
She too
k time to think it over, trying to make up her mind if she could get away with denying it. “We were talking,” she said.
“That’s not what you said yesterday and this morning.”
“I didn’t think it was important. We were discussing plays to do later in the season. He was interested in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, and I became quite excited at the prospect of playing Eliza Doolittle.”
“You sure that’s what excited you, miss?” I drawled, striking a match.
She took a step backward and gripped the banister of the iron stairs. “Why are you persecuting us?” she said.
“I’ve got a job to do, miss. I do it.”
Behind me a voice said, “My God, the demon detective again!” George Hoge came up to us, intense eyes and dangling cigaret and all. “Haven’t you done enough damage, depriving me of my male lead?”
“Get used to it,” I said. “Maybe you’ll be losing your female lead too.”
Holly uttered a cry and dashed up the stairs.
“Cops!” Hoge said, spitting the word.
There was nothing to be gained by answering him. I went outside.
The parking lot back of the theater was empty of people. The play wasn’t over yet; they were still inside. I moved between two rows of cars toward mine at the far end, and I didn’t see him or hear him. My first warning was a terrific weight slamming down on the back of my neck, and then it was too late to do anything about it.
My legs buckled. I clawed air and fell forward and my hands came to rest on the cindered ground. On hands and knees I started to twist around. The light was dim there at the fringe of the parking field floodlights; I glimpsed a shape, a pair of pants, a foot leaving the ground. I tried to pull away from that oncoming foot, but the blow on the head had made me sluggish. The toe of the shoe caught me in the temple and knocked me over on my side.
Before I could get my gun out from under my shoulder, he kicked me again, this time flush in the face. Then he faded into the night.
After a while I heard people coming out of the theater and heading toward their cars. I roused myself. I climbed up off the cinders and staggered to my car and threw myself in.
Nothing was broken in my face, though I could feel the swelling over my left cheek. Blood trickled down the back of my neck. I sopped it up with my handkerchief. The punk hadn’t done a very good job on me.
But he was in jail, so how could he have done it?
The cars rolled out of the parking lot. By the time most of them were gone, I felt strong enough to drive. I drove to the city jail.
Ernie Crull was the turnkey on duty. He grinned at my swollen cheek and discolored temple. “I’d like to see the other guy,” he said. “Where is he—in the hospital?”
“Not yet,” I said. “How’s Bill Burnett keeping?”
“Left our bed and board an hour ago when his bail was paid.”
“Bail this late at night?”
“You got influence, you can get a judge to work all hours. He had influence. None other than Mrs. John Ambler. She also put up the bail money.”
I fingered my swollen cheek.
8.
Home was a couple of furnished rooms at a second-rate hotel. I’d lived there for seven years, and it had never stopped being a lonesome place.
The alarm clock on the dresser said one-thirty when I let myself in. I looked at myself in the mirror. In addition to the marks from the two kicks, there were now scratches on my face. The knuckles of both my hands were split open.
I couldn’t remember it clearly, that last hour. I couldn’t even remember driving from the city jail to that street, but there I’d been, standing in the shadow of the building in front of which John Ambler had been murdered, and after a while Martha had come up the street, light from a lamppost catching the gold of her hair, and she was hanging onto the arm of her lover, the skinny accountant.
Was I going nuts? That hadn’t been Martha, of course. I’d never see her again. It had been Holly Laird being taken home by Bill Burnett.
And I’d taught the punk that he couldn’t slug and kick me, Gus Taylor, the hard cop, and get away with it.
Nobody else had been on the street at that late hour. But pretty soon lights went on in windows and people were sticking their heads out because Holly Laird was screaming. She clawed at my face and screamed while Burnett was trying to get up from the sidewalk where I’d knocked him. I brushed her aside and helped him get up and pounded him with both fists till he went down again.
Then a harness bull had been there, a young squirt I knew but whose name I couldn’t think of, and who knew me, and he was saying over and over, “What the hell, Taylor! What the hell!”
“Get your paws off me,” I said and squirmed away from the harness bull. But I didn’t go after Burnett again.
It had become quiet on the street, though some people had come out of the houses and others had their heads poked out of windows. Holly Laird sat sobbing on the sidewalk with her boy friend’s head on her lap.
I heard myself say to the harness bull, “Look at my face. The punk slugged me and kicked me in the Empire Theater parking lot.”
Burnett’s battered head stirred on the girl’s lap. “He’s crazy!” he said thickly. “I haven’t seen him since”—he swallowed blood—“since early this afternoon.”
“He hates us, officer,” Holly said to the harness bull. “I don’t know why.”
I had walked away from them then, my feet shuffling, my shoulders heavier than I could carry. I had gone a block past my car before I had remembered it and turned back for it, and now here I was in the loneliest home a man had ever had.
I slumped in my armchair, sucking my cracked knuckles.
Burnett said he hadn’t slugged me in the parking field. I believed him. Because if he had slugged me, wouldn’t he have admitted it? Lying battered by my fists on the sidewalk and hating my guts, wouldn’t he have boasted of it? Would he have denied it after what I’d done to him, and more than that, to the girl he loved?
All right, but if he hadn’t, who had and why?
After a while I got up from the chair. There was no use going to bed. Tired as I was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I washed my hands and face and left the hotel.
9.
He lived in a couple of small rooms on the second floor of a small frame house on a street of small houses. The light showing in two of his windows was the only light in the block, so I knew he was still up. Even if he had been sleeping, that wouldn’t have stopped me any more than it had this morning when I had visited Holly Laird.
There were two doors and two vestibules off the open porch. The one on the right had his name over the bell. I was about to press it when the door at the top of the stairs opened. He closed the door and started down, and then by the light of the dim night-bulb he saw me in the vestibule.
His jaw hung slack. I said, “I want—” That was all I could get out. He turned and scurried back up the stairs.
I dashed after him. I reached the door as it slammed in my face. He had no time to lock it. I plunged into the apartment and found that he’d turned the lights off.
It wasn’t totally dark. The night-light from the stairs showed shadowy masses of furniture. But showed no movement. I stood inside the door, peering, listening, hearing only my own breath, while my hand groped for the switch which would be beside the door.
I felt it and snapped it and there was light. I stood at one end of a living room. He wasn’t in it, but Celia Ambler was.
That first look at her told me she was dead and how she had died. She lay sprawled on the floor, and her eyes were open and staring and her tongue showed.
Ahead of me there were two closed doors. He would be behind one of them, cowering, scared stiff. The only thing I had to worry about was that he would try to escape through the window. I started across the room. When I reached the dead woman, I paused to bend over her, to touch her. The marks of the fingers that had strangled her showed on her tan throat. She
was still a little warm, which meant that it had happened a short time ago.
I straightened up and one of the two doors opened, and he stepped into the room. George Hoge. His pinched face looked like a skeleton’s in which two glowing coals had been put in for eye sockets. He had a rifle.
“Don’t make a move for your gun,” he said.
I should have had my gun in my hand. I should have remembered that it was always a mistake to under-estimate anybody, especially a killer.
I glanced at the dead woman. “A knife for her husband and your hands for her,” I said. “A rifle for me. You like variety.”
“I should have killed you in the parking field.”
“Sure,” I said. “Kill and keep killing. But where did it get you? It didn’t get you Celia.”
“No.” Hoge shivered. “How did you guess?”
“Don’t know if I did. Not all of it, anyway. I got the idea you were the one slugged me tonight. If not Burnett, who then? Well, this afternoon Celia Ambler had kissed me on her terrace. Out in the open where anybody could see. You’d left, but maybe you were still hanging around. Spying from around the side of the house. Maybe spying on her, or maybe wanting to hear what a cop would have to say about her husband’s murder.”
“In other words, you knew nothing,” he said.
“Not too much,” I said. “I’d gotten myself on the wrong track all day. Then a little while ago I thought there had to be another track. I’d learned the kind of dame Celia Ambler was. I’d noticed the way you looked at her this afternoon. I’d been slugged right after you’d seen me in the theater. I came here to talk to you about it.” I looked at the dead woman. “And now I know.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Hoge said.
I shrugged. “Your other killings didn’t do you any good. You figured if you knocked off John Ambler you’d have his wife to yourself. She would come up here now and then to this place of yours and have a time with you, but didn’t suspect you were merely one more guy on her string. Right?”
His rifle wavered. “Tonight she told me. We had a fight because I saw her kissing you. Then she told me there had been others. She was laughing at me.”