“It is only the wealthy people who can afford private investigators,” I explained to him. “Or the big firms. All of the clients I ever had were wealthy.”
I stood up. “Don’t you want your out?”
He looked at me suspiciously. “My out? Who are you to offer me an out?”
I sighed. “I figured you were getting old enough to retire. I figured you would have the sense to jump at a chance to get out of this mess clean.”
He laughed, and called me a name.
I took out my gun and said wearily, “You had your chance. Now, don’t make a move. I’m working with the Department and I’d be completely in the clear if you should get shot resisting arrest.”
I picked up his phone and called the Hollywood Police Station.
THIRTEEN
I SHOULD have been home an hour ago,” Captain Jeswald said pevishly. “I thought I’d wait around to see if Eriksen has anything new to tell us. I guess he never will.”
“He’s loyal to the Rafferty girl, because of her father,” I explained. “I guess this Big Bill Rafferty had some mighty loyal co-workers, didn’t he?”
“Big Bill didn’t kill Ryerson. And this is a Police Department, not a historical research unit, Puma. What have you got? Nothing.”
“Yet. Could you hold Eriksen overnight?”
“Why?”
“To keep him out of my hair. I like to keep as many pros off the opposing team as I can. I haven’t the resources to fight professionals. I’m not big, like the Department.” I rubbed my neck. “So I have to work longer hours and find what few allies I can.”
“I bleed for you. Quit crying on my shoulder. We’ll hold the bastard overnight.”
“Thanks,” I said. “And where’s your phone book? Or city directory. I just thought of something.”
“Who do you want to look up now?”
“A husband,” I said. “She must have been married once.”
• • •
He was a tall, thin man, a realtor and he had a small office on Ventura. It was only a shack, but he seemed to have a sizable list. His Cadillac, in the empty lot next to the office, was this year’s model.
“Three kids,” he told me, “and a wonderful wife, and here I am, still in the office at eight o’clock. Why?”
“So you can get rich and retire before you’re fifty. How long were you married to your first wife?”
“Six months. I could have had it annulled and she wouldn’t be able to use my name. But I tried to be a gentleman about it.”
“That’s our trouble,” I admitted, “we try to be gentlemen. It costs us too much. Why do you think a woman like that would marry you in the first place?”
“Why do any of ‘em marry? To make ‘em look normal and respectable. I guess we all want to conform, right? Do you want me to call off a list of married queers who live right here in the Valley?”
“Nope. You’re sure about your first wife, are you?”
He looked at his desk. “I’m sure. I caught her at it. Man, what a body, what a waste!” His eyes were reminiscent.
I thanked him and left him with his dreams and his new Cadillac. I could have used the phone in his office but it would have seemed in bad taste, somehow. I phoned from a filling station.
She said, “What now? I don’t need you around any more.”
“I have something very important to tell you and I don’t know your address. It isn’t anything I’d want to say over the phone.”
A momentary pause and she gave me the address I’d asked for.
It was a low, sprawling house with a shake roof and antiqued barn siding. It was built on a knoll overlooking the Brentwood Country Club, about twenty-five hundred feet of house. I would estimate it as worth from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars. Out here, it’s difficult to appraise real estate these days.
It was close enough to the Bluffview Branch of the Security-First National Bank to make that the logical choice of any resident interested in banking convenience.
She opened the door to me and said, “I hope you’re not bringing trouble, Puma. I’ve had my fill of that lately.”
I didn’t answer.
She led me to a living room which combined contemporary with traditional in a style that indicated she had hired a decorator and the decorator had gone strictly by the book.
I sat on a satin-covered davenport and she sat on the same piece of furniture about three feet away. “Drink?” she asked.
“No, thanks, Mrs. Diggert. When you changed your account from the Bluffview bank to the Westwood one, you should have continued with the old numbering systems on your checks. The low number on the check you sent me suggested it must be a new account.”
“Is there something wrong with the check? Didn’t it clear?”
“I came about something else, about the death of George Ryerson. I suppose, if I had known where you lived, the proximity of this house to the Bluffview shopping center would have started me off on the right trail.”
“You’re not making any kind of sense, Puma.”
“Wait,” I said wearily, “and I’ll try to. All I had was your unlisted number and your two hundred dollars. Your concern for Jean Talsman seemed like a normal attitude, then.”
I thought I could hear her breathe. I looked up to see that her face was rigid, her eyes apprehensive.
I said, “When you assured me Jean was a very close, personal friend of yours, I took the expression at its face value. When you told me that Eileen Rafferty had phoned you, you hadn’t yet learned how close she was to George Ryerson, had you?”
Her voice was tight. “You’re talking gibberish. I’m not following you at all.”
I ploughed on. “You didn’t realize that Miss Rafferty was more than an employee to Ryerson and that he would tell her he was coming to see you when he broke the luncheon engagement. He was coming here to get this mess straightened out about Jean. He didn’t want any trouble with the police and that’s what your interference threatened to bring him. He came here.”
She whispered, “He did not!”
“And when he explained to you that the man Jean had gone to was Jack Ross, you went over the edge, emotionally. You had enough reason to hate Jack Ross; he had learned you were — sick, and that’s why he hadn’t married you. You hated George for what he’d done, but you couldn’t kill him here. He’d be too heavy for you to move all alone and you certainly didn’t want him found here. You suggested he drive you to the bank. For what reason? Did you suggest paying him for something?”
“You’re insane,” she said, “completely insane. Are you trying to blackmail me?”
I asked quietly, “Why not? When you got to the parking lot and saw it was deserted, you had your perfect chance. You shot him with a gun that makes very little noise.” I looked at her questioningly. “Were you drunk? You’re drunk right now, aren’t you?”
She said nothing, glaring at me.
I said, “You wanted Jean to stop dating and be a partner, didn’t you? But not until you had degraded her to a point where she would be a physical partner, too. That’s one of the roads to what you were trying to make her, isn’t it — degradation? There are others, but that’s one you used, isn’t it?”
“You’re filthy,” she said. “You’re rotten.”
“You should have had your first marriage annulled, Mrs. Diggert. Then I wouldn’t have known about Mr. Diggert. I talked with him an hour ago.”
She seemed to shrink on the davenport next to me. She began to cry. “Are you trying to destroy me?”
“No. When Talsman came here, looking for his sister, you convinced him there was something evil about Jack Ross. You probably told Tom Talsman you had big executive plans for Jean. Did you tell the Rafferty girl that, too? Is she moving in, or will she be a silent partner?”
“You don’t know anything. You can’t prove anything. You’re guessing at all of this, aren’t you?”
“Mostly. Tom worked for you, trying to get his sister ba
ck. But when he learned why you wanted her back, it sickened him, and he must have finally realized you were the one who killed Ryerson. That’s why he shouted that accusation at you in his apartment.”
“You don’t know anything, you don’t know anything — ” She was leaning forward, swaying, repeating the words over and over in a whisper.
“You killed Tom. Miss Rafferty pointed out to you how silly it was to use amateurs when you could get a professional thug. She brought Eriksen into it. Eriksen wouldn’t have to know about Ryerson; Miss Rafferty had his complete loyalty.”
Dora Diggert took a deep breath and looked at me stonily. “If you were sure about any of these things, you would have brought a police officer along.”
“I might have. You stayed remote from violence, didn’t you, using Talsman and Eriksen and the Rafferty girl? Well, money will buy almost anything. If there’s enough money.”
“There’s enough money,” she said quietly, “but you haven’t anything to sell.”
“Maybe not,” I agreed. “Well, somebody might be interested in a theory.” I stood up.
“Wait. You can’t prove murder, but the other — I could pay a little something for your silence about — the other. I thought you always worked with the police?”
“I’m usually forced to. Mrs. Diggert, the police have a fingerprint from Tom Talsman’s apartment, the fingerprint of a killer. All they need is a suspect to match it to. Are you willing to make that test?”
She stared at me. “You’re lying.”
“Why don’t we run down to the Hollywood Station and try it on for size? Come on, I’ll drive.” A long and heavy silence.
Then Dora Diggert said, “I deal in cash. George Ryerson, with his bookkeeper’s mind, didn’t realize the advantage of that. We quarreled about it quite often. He liked to threaten me with exposure from time to time. But that would be bad advertising, despite his informer’s fee from the Internal Revenue Department. Would you like to see what ten thousand dollars looks like in real cash, Mr. Puma?”
“It would be interesting,” I said. “Why don’t you bring all your money out, and we can count it?”
She smiled for the first time, a weak and still doubtful smile. She said, “That would be fun. Tell me, as a professional, what do you think of Eileen Rafferty?”
“She’s still an amateur. The first time I visited her at home, she asked me if I was armed. Why would I be, just visiting her? Unless I was still working for you, as I had been, and I had come to muscle her. If I wasn’t working for you, which I wasn’t by that time, her remark would let me know she had reason to fear you. That’s a lead to you and the kind of tip-off pros avoid. It’s better to make no casual remark.”
“That’s — rather involved.”
“It’s only a straw. This is a case composed almost entirely of straws. But once the police have enough straws to show the direction of the wind, they will have the fingerprint to prove your presence in Tom Talsman’s apartment.”
“You put together all these straws. Why is it they haven’t, too, by this time?”
“There are too many murders,” I told her, “and not enough policemen.”
“You’re bright,” she said after a second. “You’re much brighter than I first imagined you were. I could use a bright man on a retainer, Mr. Puma.” She stood up, once again the poised and thinking business-woman. In command, once more.
She said lightly, “I’ll go and get some money to show you.”
Had I offered to sell out? I had schmaltzed around, talking money, but I hadn’t actually said I would sell out.
She came back in, two minutes later, carrying a small grip. If that was full of bills of a respectable denomination, it could contain what a poor man would consider a fortune.
She opened the grip on the davenport and began to take out packets of currency. They were only ten dollar bills, but they were in packets and there were a lot of packets.
I wondered if she had a different grip for each denomination, like the Iowa farmers.
When she had piled a sizable share of the bills neatly on the satin, she said softly, “That’s ten thousand dollars in tens. Of non-taxable income. Wonderful, isn’t it, Mr. Puma?”
“Beautiful color,” I said, “and fine engraving. But I guess it’s time to stop playing games, Mrs. Diggert. Ten thousand isn’t my price.”
She asked thoughtfully, “What is, Mr. Puma?”
“I guess I’ll never know,” I answered. “I suppose if someone offered ridiculous figures, high in the millions, even the saints would sell out. But I’m sure no individual I know has enough money to make me betray my profession. I guess the time has come to go down and talk with the police, don’t you think?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t.” Her hand made one more trip to the grip and came out holding a small but deadly automatic.
“My God,” I said, “you’re an amateur, too. If that’s the.25 calibre gun that killed Ryerson, you should have buried it.”
“It’s the only one I have,” she told me, “and I thought I might need it. I was right, wasn’t I?”
I saw her finger tightening and I knew it was too late to go for my own gun. I scrambled up and tried to leap over the back of the davenport.
I felt a sting and heard a splat. The sting was on that section of my anatomy which had only recently reposed on satin, a very undignified place to be hit.
Behind the davenport, I got my own.38 out and crawled quickly to the other end. Another splat sent stuffing flying from the davenport as I crawled clear of the back and stood up.
I couldn’t shoot her. There is some inherent gentility in me that prevents me from shooting at a woman. I threw the.38 at her head as she turned my way.
Luckily, my aim was good.
• • •
Lehner said, “I’m supposed to be at the fights. If I’d been called two minutes later, I would have been gone.”
“It’s a lousy fight,” I consoled him. “And this could get you some ink. I’ll be sure to mention you often to the reporters.”
He sat down behind the desk in the room and looked at the reports that had been brought in. “The prints match. I guess, the way it looks now, this Rafferty dame is going to break down before Mrs. Diggert. I figured the Rafferty girl for the toughest one between those two, didn’t you?”
“No,” I said. “Sergeant, you know the best amateur in the world is nothing measured against even a prelim pro. Mrs. Diggert is a pro.”
“Sit down,” he told me. “You’ll be here for quite a while yet.”
“I can’t sit down. It will be a few days before I’ll be able to achieve that. Superficial, that wise doc called it. I wish he had it.”
Lehner looked at me with a compassion alien to his hard face. “If you’re really feeling bad, you could come back tomorrow, Joe.”
“I’m feeling embarassed but not bad. How about Eriksen? When do you think he’ll get smart enough to open up and save his own neck?”
“He’ll never open up. But when the Rafferty girl cracks, he’ll be implicated enough to get him a year or two, maybe. It depends on the jury. We don’t worry about him; it’s this Diggert we want to nail and this print is solid enough to give us reason for working on her in relays.”
A detective came in and said, “That Rafferty girl is about ready to break, Sergeant. Want to come in and get the story with us?”
Lehner nodded and looked at me. “Want to come, Joe? You’re the man who broke it; you ought to be in at the curtain.”
“Not me,” I said. “I don’t like to listen to confessions; they make me feel guilty. You won’t need me this weekend, will you?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“Because I won’t be here,” I explained. “I’ll be out of town.”
“How far out of town?”
“Palm Springs,” I answered. “And I won’t want to be bothered.”
He frowned and then nodded. “All right. You and your rich friends. Let me know when y
ou’re ready to hire some expensive help, Joe.”
“I will. Good night, Sergeant. Good luck.”
“Thanks to you,” he said, “I’ve had it.”
I went out and left him smiling, a new role for him. I turned the Plymouth west, heading for Mary’s.
She should still be up.
THE END
William Campbell Gault
This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
4700 East Galbraith Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45236
www.prologuebooks.com
Copyright © 1958 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.
Renewal Copyright © 1986 by William Campbell Gault
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-3914-6
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3914-5
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ONE
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End of a Call Girl Page 15