“A guy’s life may depend on it.”
“I’m all broken up.”
I retrieved my hat and moved to the door. “I thought you would be. Thanks a lot, baby.”
I went down and crawled into my car and sat there wondering what Perry Mason would do. After a while, I thought to hell with Perry Mason and drove a couple of miles downtown to an apartment house that had more floors than Richert’s and an elevator to get you up and down. At a desk in the lobby, I asked a young clerk if he would please call Mr. Austin Stark and state that Mr. Solomon Burr humbly requested five minutes worth of precious, unofficial time. I expected a bounce and was surprised when I didn’t get it. The clerk pulled a plug and told me I could go right up.
On the tenth floor, a blond oak door was opened by Austin Stark himself, and I walked into an apartment that indicated a source of income considerably bigger than a district attorney’s salary. Not that I suspected anything illegal, for Stark was an honest man in matters concerning the root of evil. He was also a ruthless man. The ruthlessness was apparent in the gray eyes, the strong, sharp jaw and the cruel, pale lips. A man of concentrated purpose and driving ambition…a man who, in the final judgment, could do no wrong…a man whose final judgment would always be his own…above all, a dangerous man.
In the rich living room, we measured each other. His shallow eyes took in my marred face without a flicker of discernible reaction. He didn’t ask me to sit down. He didn’t offer me a drink. He just stood and waited.
“I’m representing Hal Decker in the Devore murder case,” I said.
He nodded shortly. “I’m aware of that.”
“You’re also aware that I have a witness who will swear that Decker spent the entire night of Devore’s murder with her.”
“True. She told me the story. She’s lying, of course.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because, as you know, I have a completely reliable witness who saw Decker leave Devore’s house.”
“Yes. Wash Richert. One of your investigators.”
He could have drawn an inference, but he chose not to. He merely waited for me to continue.
“I’ve been out to Richert’s apartment. His wife told me he isn’t home. She said he probably won’t be back for a long time.”
His face was bland. “So?”
“So I thought you might tell me where he is.”
“Why should I know where he is?”
“He’s your witness. I assume you have him under wraps.”
“You’re wrong. I don’t have Richert under raps.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
He was lying coldly and methodically, perfectly certain that any lie he might tell was justified.
“When he reports in, will you let me talk with him?” I said.
“No. Why should I let you influence my witness?”
“I don’t want to influence him. I just want to talk with him.”
“It’s unthinkable.”
I turned and started for the door. “Okay. Thanks very much.”
I had taken three steps, maybe, when the door opened and a woman stepped in. She stopped abruptly, staring at me, color seeping to the surface of her cheeks, her lips falling slightly apart. She was wearing a long, white gown that seemed to be made of multiple layers of diaphanous material. Her hair was black, loose on her shoulders, gleaming with highlights. Her eyes were blanked out by dark glasses. Under the rim of one lens, I could see the outer edge of an ugly, yellow bruise, and I thought, Why, this doll has a plain, old-fashioned shiner.
She said, “I’m sorry, Austin. I didn’t know you were engaged.”
His voice behind me was measured icily. “It’s all right, my dear. We’ve just finished. My wife Alma—Mr. Solomon Burr.”
“How do you do,” I said.
She nodded and stepped aside, and I went on into the hall and let myself out.
In my car, I sat for a while and tried to think, but it seemed that my brain wouldn’t consider anything but dames—three of them. The only one I really wanted to think about was Kitty Troop; but the other three—black, red, and platinum—kept barging in to spoil the fun.
Finally, I gave it up and decided to go home, because I was very tired. I had done everything I could possibly do tonight.
Even Perry Mason couldn’t have done more…
CHAPTER THREE
Homicide Chimes In
When I hit the office next morning, after seven hours in the sack, Kitty was sitting behind her desk with her knees crossed. Her chair was pushed back far enough to give anyone at the side an unobstructed view of her long legs.
The show was good, but the audience was composed of exactly one short, fat guy with popped eyes and a sour, twisted mouth. His fat was saggy, lapping over his collar and belt, and he looked as if he might reach five-six in his socks. Leaning against the jamb of my private door, hands thrust into the pockets of his pants, he divided his attention about equally between the scuffed toe of a shoe and Kitty. As far as I could see, he showed about as much enthusiasm for one view as the other. His popped eyes, the color of skimmed milk, took no notice of me.
“You’re wasting it,” I said pleasantly.
Kitty sighed philosophically. “You never can tell about these reserved guys, they’re deep. Sometimes they crack all of a sudden. This one’s Wiley Shivers. Detective Lieutenant Wiley Shivers, to you. He represents homicide.”
“Smart,” Wiley Shivers said. “You’re a smart pair.”
“We’re really not so bad,” I said. “It’s just that we’re leery of visitors. We’ve had bad luck with some recently.”
His eyes dropped again to the toe of his shoe.
“Joker,” he said. “Some people always reaching for a fast line. You got no call to be funny, counselor. Maybe you better start worrying a little. Maybe you got some more bad luck coming up.”
Already I was sick of him. “Is that a guess or a threat?”
He straightened, rocking forward from the jamb to an unsupported perpendicular. I noticed that his feet were very small, almost like a child’s, so that the balance of his excessive weight always seemed a little precarious.
“Neither. Call it a prediction based on evidence. I’ll come in and talk with you about it.” He rolled his milky eyes at Kitty. “See that no one disturbs us, sister.”
Kitty cackled and put her legs away under the desk. “That’s a very rough assignment,” she said.
I went into my office and sat down in my chair, and Shivers came after me and sat down in the chair that Wanda Henderson had sat in yesterday.
“I hear you were out on South Twentieth last night,” he said.
“That’s right. I went out to see Wash Richert. You’ve probably heard that, too.”
“I hear a lot of things. You see him?”
“No. I saw his wife.”
“Yeah? Platinum dame with round heels?”
“I can vouch for the platinum, not the heels. Maybe you’re better acquainted with her than I am.”
“There you go again. You got a smart mouth, counselor. She tell you where Wash was?”
“No. She gave me a drink and threw me out. She didn’t even give me time to finish the drink.”
“Tough. All your luck seems to be bad. Why’d she do it? Throw you out, I mean.”
“She didn’t like my name. She didn’t like my job. She thought I was nosey.”
“Probably she thought right.”
“You’re not a nice guy, Lieutenant.”
His pale, milky eyes were unaffected. “I’m not paid to be nice. I’m paid to be a cop.”
“Are they incompatible?”
“Usually they are. You telling me you never saw Wash at all last night?”
“That’s right. I saw his wife. Then I went to see Austin Stark. After that, I went home.”
“Well, someone saw him. I thought maybe it was you.”
I looked at his nasty, fat face acro
ss the desk, and the pressure was back in my chest.
“Why not come to the point, Lieutenant?”
“Sure. He’s dead—Richert is. Someone smoked him in a room over on the east side. Crummy dump where he’d holed in.”
I stared at him, and my mind was as numb as a blank can be. After a while I said, “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Murder never does. Not in the end.”
“Who would want him dead?”
“Hal Decker would.”
I laughed caustically. “Use your head, Lieutenant. Decker’s an ordinary guy, a little guy. He doesn’t have hired hoods to bump off an unfriendly witness for him.”
“He’s got you.”
“I’m a lawyer, not a torpedo.”
“He’s got the dame—the one who took a story to the D.A.—the Henderson dame.”
“So you’ve heard about her.”
“Like I said, I hear a lot of things.”
I massaged my forehead trying to muscle my thoughts into some kind of pattern, but it wasn’t any good. They kept right on milling around in confusion.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t expect you to believe it, but I’ve never been close to Richert. Not even within shooting distance. And I’d stake my life that Wanda Henderson hasn’t, either. There’s no reason to think she’d have been able to locate him. Damn it, there’s just no one loose who wanted him dead, no one who gave a damn about his testimony against Decker.”
Shivers’ lips, twisted with sour sarcasm. “Maybe you think the D.A. bumped his own witness. Maybe that makes sense to you.”
“No. That makes no sense, either. Not a damned thing about this makes sense.”
Surging up onto his little feet, he said, “One thing makes sense, counselor. Whoever killed Richert, it’s my job to find him. That makes all the sense I got any use for. You think I’m an unpleasant guy, and probably I am, but you haven’t seen anything yet. Believe me, you haven’t begun to see how unpleasant I can be.” He turned and went over to the door, and turned back again. “Be seeing you, counselor,” he said.
He went out across the reception office, and I heard his thin, dry voice directed at Kitty from the vicinity of the hall door, “It’s not that you aren’t good looking, sister. It’s just that I’m too old.”
Kitty came in and sat down on my desk. “You hear what he said? I thought it was very considerate of him. Restored my confidence.”
“Well,” I said bitterly, “he didn’t say anything to restore my confidence.”
She put fingers under my chin and tipped my face up. “I know. Just when you’re beginning to look human, too. You look much better without the fat lips, Sol.”
Her voice was light, but her eyes were clouded. I got the idea that she might be concerned.
“You been listening at the door again?” I said.
“Of course. Naturally.” Her eyes were lifted to the window behind me. “We’ve been loafing too hard, Sol. We ought to go somewhere on a vacation.”
“Together, honey? That’s a very interesting idea that I may remind you of later.” I stood up and moved around the desk. “Right now I’ve got a date with another gal. You have Wanda Henderson’s address?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’m going out there.”
“Look, hero, a lawyer’s supposed to see his clients in his office. He doesn’t run around knocking on doors like a census-taker. Damn it, do you have to go looking for trouble?”
“I’m not looking for trouble, honey. I’m looking for a way out of it. In case you haven’t noticed, trouble’s all around me. I’m buried in it, right up to my neck.”
She slipped off the desk. “Sure you’re in trouble. You know why? Because the area’s swarming with dames. Scratch a dame, you always uncover trouble. I knew you were out of your depth, Sonny, the minute that redhead showed up here yesterday. Then, as if a redhead wasn’t enough, you had to go get involved with a platinum blond, with round heels, no less. This case starts out as a nice, simple frame for murder, and all of a sudden it develops female trouble.”
I grinned. “You haven’t credited all the cast. There’s a black-headed doll, too. Her name’s Alma Stark.”
“The great man’s wife? How does she figure?”
“I don’t know how she figures, but she’s got a black eye. A dame with a black eye must have been into something.”
Kitty eased up close and tapped me on the chest with a red nail. “For your information you still haven’t got the cast complete. There’s still another female on the stage. She’s beautiful, intelligent, and loaded with charm. Besides, you owe her three months’ salary, and she doesn’t want you dead until it’s paid. Take care, lover.”
That put us on an upbeat, and it seemed like a good place to leave us for the time being, so I got the address and went downstairs to my car. After cutting across town for about twenty minutes, I came to the address Kitty had given me. This was another walkup, but Wanda Henderson lived on the second floor instead of the third, and I was feeling better than I had felt yesterday, what with the rapid healing of my bruises and the growing affection for Kitty Troop. Even with Wiley Shivers in the background, any mental state was reasonably bright as I knocked on Wanda’s door.
The door was a little off the latch and I and swung inward away from my knuckles. Through the crack between door and jamb, I could see a kind of dull, red stain on the worn carpet of the room. Having been made susceptible to suggestion by recent experience, I thought at first that it was blood, but then I saw that it wasn’t blood at all. It was hair.
I pushed the door open farther and stood there looking at Wanda Henderson, and I could see that she would be cold to the touch. Her arms were spread, the fingers clawed. Her red hair splashed around her head, and there were bruises on her throat. She’d been killed by hands—direct, primitive, the most brutal of all forms. At least it was a change from shooting.
I pulled the door shut very quietly, I turned, and went back downstairs to the car and drove away.
It wasn’t that I didn’t even consider calling the police. I did. It was my first thought. My second thought, however, was of Wiley Shivers, and I felt that anyone, even in case of murder, was justified in not calling the police if calling them meant facing Shivers the second time in one day.
Now the whole affair was a monstrous bit of nonsense verse. Nothing whatever made any sense at all, and I was groping blindly in a maniac world that was filled with wandering women and a fine, indiscriminate slaughter of witnesses. Why? Why the impartial elimination of the key witness on both sides? The only guy who’d figured in the business all the way was Austin Stark. All the way to the murder of Wash Richert, that is. But how could you figure Stark in the elimination of his own man? Of course, he probably had Richert’s signed statement, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same as a live guy in court putting the clincher on a frame.
Several blocks from the walkup, I stopped at a corner drug store and went inside to the phone. I dropped a dime and dialed.
“Hello, Kitty. Anyone there?”
“No. Your date over already?”
“It never even got started. Wanda had another date, in Samara.”
“What the hell you talking about, lover?”
“You don’t get it? A novel reader like you? Never mind, though. It means she’s dead.”
The wire sang between us, and after a while, she said quietly, “One of the others called in, right after you left—the platinum one.”
“Richert’s wife? What does she want?”
“She wants to talk with you. She sounded scared. She sounded scared to death. Which reminds me that I’m scared to death myself. I’ll bring all the petty cash and meet you at the bus station. We can’t afford a train.”
“Some other time, hussy. What about the platinum? She coming to the office?”
“No. She’s waiting in a little bar called The Peanut. They serve them in bowls with beer. It’s on Fifteenth, just off Wamego Street.”
<
br /> “I know the place. See you later.”
“I wonder,” she said sadly, and hung up.
On Fifteenth, just off Wamego, The Peanut was a dismal, little bar which, like all bars in the morning, somehow gave the impression of having a hangover. In the shadowy interior, behind the peanut bowls, a bartender looked at me as if he wished he didn’t have to. Opposite the bar lining the wall, there was a string of booths, each with its own peanut bowl, and private remote-control box for the juke box in the rear. In the last booth, where the shadows were deepest, I caught a glimmer of platinum, the white movement of a lifted hand.
I told the bartender to bring me a shot of rye and went back to the booth and sat down. While I was waiting for the rye, I saw that Kitty had been right. Mrs. Richert was scared to death. Her face was drawn, no more than a shade darker than her hair, and her eyes were still and wary. She held a glass in her fingers, twisting it slowly, with odd little jerks.
“You wanted to talk with Wash,” she said. “It’ll never happen now.”
“I know. A cop named Wiley Shivers came to see me this morning.”
“Yeah.” Her eyes stared into her slowly rotating glass. “Nasty little toad. I wasn’t thinking straight, or I wouldn’t have put him on you. You got an idea Wash didn’t really see Hal Decker leaving Danny Devore’s place the night of Danny’s murder?”
“Yes. Hal spent that night with his girl. She was willing to swear to it. You get the tense? Was, I said. That was yesterday. Today she’s dead. Murdered. I just left her on the floor of her apartment.”
Fear moved like a shadow across her face. “The devil,” she said softly. “The merciless, arrogant devil.”
“Stark?”
The flesh quivered on her bones, and I could see her fingers tighten convulsively on the glass. “So you’ve figured it out. He killed Danny Devore, and I guess he killed Hal Decker’s girl. For that, I don’t give a damn. But he killed Wash, too, and Wash was mine. I’ve played him for a sucker whenever the notion struck; but he was mine, and I never wanted him dead. And I want the guy who killed him.”
“And if Hal Decker, an innocent guy, goes clear in the process, that’s purely coincidental, I suppose.”
Her eyes flicked up and down, and the hardness was in there with the fear. “That’s right. Wash and I had this fixed up for a big bundle, but now hope for the bundle’s dead with Wash, and all I want is to get even. I want the guy who killed Wash. Anything that comes with it is frosting on the cake, as far as I’m concerned.”
The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack Page 3