by Roy Huggins
Johnston was slowly milking his right ear and looking at me with a mild and bland curiosity. He laughed abruptly and said, “I'm afraid the part about the role of a politician's wife is a little old-fashioned, but it isn't a bad theory. It's almost frightening.”
I laughed with him and took the letter out of my pocket. “Well,” I said, “here's something that might help. We can be pretty sure this won't tell us anything about Martin. I think it's safe to open it now and it probably won't have to get into official hands.” I started to tear the envelope along one edge.
“Is that Margaret's letter?”
I nodded and finished tearing off the end.
“Just a moment, Bailey!” Johnston stood up. His jaw was clamped tight and the round eyes, like Chinese agates, were hard and bright. A muscle along the side of his jaw stood out like a welt. “Don't open that,” he snapped. “I don't like the way you're handling this, Bailey. I don't like any part of it. The police should have been called long ago and that letter won't be opened until they get here.”
“The letter's addressed to me, Mr. Johnston.” I put two fingers into the envelope. Johnston stepped toward me.
I picked up the revolver. Johnston stopped. Martin leaned forward, tense, expectant. I said, “I've got a man to cover, Mr. Johnston. I can't afford to squabble with you.”
Johnston sat down.
I put the gun down and took out the letter. Johnston moved with a quick, smooth precision. He was on his feet. The change in his face was hardly perceptible. A quiet suspension of mobility, a sudden withdrawal reflected in the glazed and empty brightness of his eyes. His hand had moved with the same precision. There was a blue steel Colt glaring out of it coldly. He stepped two feet to the side, his back to the door, so that he could cover Martin, too. He pushed off the safety without looking at it or fumbling. He seemed to know just what he was doing.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“GIVE ME THE letter,” he said quietly.
I flipped the folded letter toward him. He let it fall obliquely to the rug at his feet.
“Stand up,” he said softly. “Step over to the end of the sofa with your friend. He can stand up too.” Martin got to his feet. His eyes were alive with something that was perhaps fear, certainly not disappointment.
Johnston gestured at Martin slightly with the Colt and said, “Come over here.” Martin went over. “Turn around.” Martin turned around. Johnston went over him, not too well, not too expertly. He pushed him away and Martin came back and stood beside me.
Johnston smiled. It was still a nice smile, framing a nice set of teeth. He said, “But of course. You would have his gun, wouldn't you?”
I nodded and lifted my hand.
Johnston's mouth tightened and he said, “Thanks, but I'll help myself. Come over here, slowly.”
I went over, slowly.
He found it and put it in his pocket. I went back over beside Martin.
Johnston bent down without taking his eyes from either of us. He picked up the letter and waved it at me.
“You're an idiot, Bailey,” he said pleasantly. “You go your slue-footed way, and now and then you stumble onto something significant—like this letter. And even then you don't know what you have, do you?”
“Vaguely. It probably tells us why you killed her. Maybe it outlines all the efforts you made to get rid of her before you decided to cook up a blackmail gag and hire yourself a cat's paw. I should have told you—I make a terrible cat's paw.”
Johnston's face clouded slightly and his mouth, still smiling, pulled down spastically. He nodded slowly and said, “Let's find out what it says. I'd like you both to turn around. And fold your hands behind you where I can see them.”
We turned and showed him our hands. I heard stiff paper being unfolded, a moment of silence, then, “Turn around!”
We turned around. He was slowly crumpling the letter into a wad in his hand. His face was mottled, with green-white spots like mold on a mocha cake. And his eyes were necked with red. He started to talk but the spastic pulling at his mouth stopped him.
“Take it easy,” I said. “It's from a friend of mine. I haven't read it yet.”
He dropped the wadded letter and kicked it under the sofa. In a strangled tone, he said: “So there wasn't any letter from Margaret. Is that it?”
“That's right. The case began with a gag—I thought I'd end it with one.”
“You do things up brown, don't you?” he purred. “Props and everything.”
“The letter was in my box tonight. Finding it there gave me the idea that got you on the prowl again.”
Johnston stared at me for a long time, whitely. He took the bull nose out of his pocket and gripped it purposefully in his left hand. He didn't smile and his wide mouth was slack. “You're smart, Hawkshaw,” he breathed. “Much smarter than I took you for—that was my only real mistake. But how smart is a man who'd deliberately jockey himself into a situation like this? No one knows I'm here.”
“Just one gun would be noisy enough for this time of the morning. You'll have to use two.”
Johnston leaned forward, his legs set apart. He looked tough, mean and competent. His words flowed like syrup, the kind you put out for ants. “It'll be a pleasure. People are a feckless lot. I won't even have to run...”
I waited. Martin was breathing heavily and great drops of sweat gleamed at his temple.
Johnston moved forward a step, crablike. “Tell me about it, master mind. Where did I slip?”
“It's kind of hard to talk with a muzzle down my throat. Besides, it depresses me.”
He pushed the guns a little closer. “Tell me how you did it. Go ahead, crow a little.”
“You got off to a bad start,” I mumbled. “That blackmail angle. I never liked that two-week trial period. The murder gun she left behind didn't help, of course. To me it meant only one thing—someone else packed those bags. But mainly it was your last zealous effort to tie the murder to Gloria Gay.” I coughed. My throat was hot and dry. “You see, you and I were the only people who dealt themselves into this game who didn't know your wife wasn't really Gloria Gay.... The man who called me wasn't just being clever. He thought he was really talking about Gloria Gay. That meant you.”
Johnston nodded slowly. He even smiled. “Good,” he murmured. “Good. But you're still rather an idiot, my friend, if you think I hired you as a prelude to murder. I didn't want to kill her. She married a hideout. She was ruthless, vicious, full of hatred, bitterness.... But I didn't intend to kill her. I just wanted to be rid of her, free of her. A leech. I asked for a divorce. I threatened her. But she knew. She knew I wouldn't force her into the open. And I was weary and she was tired of running. And she hadn't anywhere else to go. She liked it out there in the Holmby Hills.... Then I hired you to stir up whatever it was she was afraid of. That would start her running again.” The sunlight glistened brightly along the barrels of the guns. “But you let her find out about you and she knew I was behind it. That was that.... Then you told me about Buffin.” His shoulders convulsed and he seemed to be laughing silently, but his eyes were dead.
“I told you she had disappeared,” he went on. “Well, she hadn't—yet. I drove over to the house and threw Buffin's murder in her face. I told her to pack up and go. I wouldn't stop her... but she flew into a rage....” The shoulders convulsed again. “She seemed to blame me for her whole... rotten past. Gracious wife. She tried to kill me.... That's when it happened.” He lifted his head slowly. “It was an accident, you see. I didn't really intend to kill her.... She was dead when I drove her to the bridge.... I think it was her neck. It just snapped....” The round eyes blinked, the lids moved with a tired reluctance. “It's going to be rather difficult for me really... to kill the two of you.”
“Noisy, too.”
He raised the guns and his mouth tightened and pulled down.
“Wait,” I croaked. “Use your head, Johnston, I planned this. I knew you'd feel safe as long as no one knew what that love
nest of yours was really like. But I knew you wouldn't stop at anything to get hold of a letter from your wife—if there'd really been one.... Doesn't that suggest anything? Don't you know there are cops outside that door, and around the building...? I knew you were coming, Johnston. I prepared for you.”
He didn't say anything. The bright glaze was on his eyes again, depriving them of meaning, even of humanity.
“I counted on you,” I went on, “to understand that no jury would give you too hard a time for your wife's death. She was a killer. But this only leads one way, Johnston—to the gas chamber....”
He backed up slowly. Suddenly I knew what the empty brightness was. It was terror. I couldn't be sure any more what Johnston would do. His hands were tightening—the knuckles white.
It was in the shadow of the short hall, but it caught my eye. It was the door. It was swinging silently inward. I lifted my hand and put it against Martin's shoulder and gave it all I had. I pushed Martin one way and rolled the other. A shout sounded from the door. “Drop it, Johnston.”
I started up on my knees. My .38 was on the table two feet away. A gun blasted the morning stillness and the sound rolled and roared again as another thundered from the door.
I dropped to the floor and my stomach knotted up, hard and tight. The room was raw with silence and smoke and the odor of burned cordite. And perhaps with the odor of death. I stood up slowly. Johnston's terror had ridden over him. He had turned and fired. He was sprawled across the arm of the sofa, one shoulder at a cocked impossible angle, legs twisted in the alien unreality of death. Martin was getting up from near the sofa, and Quint, a tiny derringer almost lost in his hand, was coming in slowly from the door. A tall, high-hipped man stood in the doorway looking blankly into the room. Quint leaned down and put two fingers against Johnston's throat and held them there. He moved them slowly once and pressed again. He looked up at me.
“I got him in the shoulder. Must have got through to the spine. Guy's dead.”
I said, “It didn't work out quite like I expected.”
Quint shook his head. “He didn't mean to fire that shot. He just got scared. But we got down everything he said.” His face was gray. “It's a nasty business, Stu. I don't think we'd ever have got him any other way but I prefer to let the state do the killing.”
The high-hipped man in the doorway wheezed, “What the hell. Saved the state some dough.”
Quint turned and said tonelessly, “The state doesn't like to be saved that kind of dough. Go down and get Parker.” The man with high hips shut the door and went away. I could hear him shouting at my neighbors to get back into their rooms as he walked down the hall. Quint picked up the phone and called the dead wagon. When he was through I said, “I was beginning to get worried. Began to think you didn't get my message.”
“I got it.” He looked at Martin and said, “Who are you?”
“He's okay,” I answered. “He's been doing some work for me. Don't worry about him.”
“Okay, Bailey. I tell the story my way. All you have to do is breathe through your nose for a while and maybe you'll stay in business long enough to buy yourself a new davenport. And don't expect any publicity. You're not getting any.”
“I don't think I could use it. I only lost a couple of hundred bucks on this case. What was the name of that guy with the peanut stand?”
The door opened and the plainclothes man came in. There was another plainclothes man behind him, a balding man with wide gray eyes and a suit that looked as if it had been thrown at him.
Quint said: “You know what to do, Parker.” He turned back to me, took out a couple of cigars, gave me a pained look and put one back. He lit up slowly and said, “Here's how we tell the story....”
In another hour the story was told, the men from homicide had come and gone, taking their weary burden with them. And Martin had gone too. I told him he didn't have to worry about Mrs. Cabrillo any more, that it was all right for him to go home. He didn't ask any questions. He just went away. He took his gun with him. He seemed happy.
I was alone with nothing to do, nothing to think about, and a head that felt like the revolving barrel at Venice.
I cleaned the place up and lay down on the bed. The sun was clearing the tree tops now, bright and clean and full of hope and longing. I closed my eyes. I had to get some rest before I went downtown....
Chapter Thirty-Three
I WOKE UP slowly and looked for the morning sun through the open window. It was still there, about an hour higher in the swept sky. I rolled stiffly off the bed and stood looking into Norma Shannon's clear blue eyes.
She was sitting in my deep chair, wearing a couple of large pockets with a nice crisp white linen coat around them. And there was a wide-brimmed hat sitting back on her head framing her smile.
“My,” I said hoarsely. “I won't need that drink now.”
The smile turned up another quarter of an inch and she said, “You don't believe in answering your phone, do you?”
I stretched politely, sat down on the edge of the bed and said, “Huh-uh. Only when it rings.”
“I'm not funny before breakfast either. I came up because I thought it high time you apologized to me.”
I grinned. I felt fine, as if I'd slept ten hours. My head didn't ache. It just buzzed a little, contentedly. But it almost always did that. I decided I was quite a guy.
I said, “I'll make it up to you some other way, angel. Humble pie gives me hives.”
“Not till you're shaved you won't.”
“You won't be offended, will you, if I go in and take a shower?”
She arched a full dark brow and said, “I'd probably be offended if you didn't.”
I went in and showered and shaved, got into pants and shirt and came out feeling as Atlas might if someone should take the world off his shoulders. Norma was smoking a cigarette.
I stood in front of her and said, “Let me just look at you for a while, angel. It's rather wonderful to be able to look into that face and know that I'm right about what I see there.”
“How do you think I felt—having you think you saw something else?”
“I'm sorry, Norma. I'll tell you about it over some breakfast. Maybe you'll forgive me a little... I still haven't decided whether your wandering through this case as earnest as a honey bee made things tougher for me or simpler.”
She took off the hat and shook her auburn hair so that it lay gently on her shoulders. The smile faded and some of the confusion I'd seen in the days before came into her eyes.
She stubbed out her cigarette and said, “Stuart, I tried to call you—and then came up—for a particular reason.... The police are wrong. The woman they claim is Gloria Gay, or Margaret Bleeker, the one who was killed by her husband—she isn't Gloria Gay. There was a picture of her in the News, and it wasn't Gloria at all!”
I stepped over to the sofa and sat down. I looked at my watch. I shook my head at her. “Are you always going to plague me, baby? They just took the killer out of here not two hours ago! You could know about all that but it doesn't make sense that you do.”
She stood up and stepped over to me. She put a cool hand on my forehead.
“I'll bet you're hungry,” she said. Her eyes were dancing.
I said, “Huh?”
She turned and went to the door and came back with three letters. She handed them to me and said, “Go right ahead. Catch up.”
An idea was slowly stealing over me. An idea I didn't like. Two of the letters were gas and light bills. I laid them aside. The other was from John Vega Cabrillo. I opened it. There was a check inside. A check for one thousand dollars.
I looked up. I said, “What day is this?”
She nodded her head at me and grinned. “Never mind, it's not every man who can sleep for a day and a night and not even have to take his shoes off.... And I'll tell you about everything over some breakfast.”
I looked out the window. All right. It was a different sun. I could see that now. The ho
pe and the longing were still there—but now there was promise, too.
Table of Contents
Beginning
Roy Huggins
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three