Death in a Bowl

by Raoul Whitfield

  Carol Torney nodded. She sat down in a chair and unbuttoned her squirrel coat.

  “Like the pajamas, Bennie?” she asked.

  He swore at her. “I don’t like green,” he told her.

  She made a clicking noise. “Cut it out, Bennie,” she said. “You know I love red.”

  The pajamas were a pale blue. They were very nice. Jardinn tossed her a cigarette. They lighted up. She said:

  “Did he fall for it?”

  Jardinn shrugged. “I can’t figure Max,” he replied. “Maybe he did. We’ll play he did, anyway. You put on a good show.”

  She smiled. “What a sweet one they put on at the Bowl!” she said.

  Jardinn narrowed his dark eyes. “What a sweet one who put on?” he asked.

  She swore at him. “I can think of fifty easier ways of shoving out a guy—than that way,” she said slowly. “How come?”

  Jardinn frowned. “What gets me,” he said softly, “is why Max Cohn fooled around with my wristwatch. It was right on the dot, before I went in for a wash.”

  The girl’s long fingers played with the cigarette. They rolled it from side to side as she held it on a level with her lips.

  “He knew you’d try to trace that plane,” she said. “He wanted the ship down at the time of the kill. So he set the watch ahead. That’s my guess.”

  Jardinn nodded. “Maybe it’s all right,” he said. “But I like Max. I sort of hated to put on that act for him.”

  “Yes you did!” she replied.

  “I’d like to know who got to him,” Jardinn said quietly. “It’s the first time an outsider has worked into the agency.”

  Carol eased her body down in the chair. She stretched well shaped legs aslant with the faded carpet.

  “There’s the blonde you kicked out of here,” she suggested. “It costs Max money to keep her. I can name a lot of people in Hollywood that have the gold, Bennie.”

  He nodded. “That’s what’s going to make this hard,” he said. “There’s plenty of money around for the cover-up.”

  She said: “You were pretty rough, Bennie. You didn’t have to rush me out like that.”

  He grinned. “That was just thrown in for good measure. What do the papers read like?”

  She shrugged. “The usual bunk. They name all the pictures that Ernst directed—and list all the symphonies that Hans conducted. The reporters are all writing their heads off, naturally. The damn thing was spectacular, Bennie.”

  He swore softly. “It was a nice, colorful job,” he agreed. “Thirty-thirty rifles—one on each side of the Bowl. Not too far back, but far enough to make it touch. Two boys at the triggers, just to make sure. And neither of them missed. Plane engine drowned the cracks from their guns—silencers killed the flame red. Got a hunch the gun boys were pretty well hemmed in by their own pals. The guy that throws the switch was outside smoking a pill when he was slugged. That tone poem runs twenty odd minutes. They had their own man at the lights—and he worked them right. It was smooth—and sort of simple.”

  “They shot in the dark,” Carol reminded, frowning. “That was something.”

  He nodded. “That was hours of practice at just the same angle—somewhere in the hills,” he said. “Probably they used a dummy—and they figured the slope of the Bowl. The conductor’s platform is always in the same place. Reiner didn’t move around much. My guess is that they had their guns raised when the lights went out.”

  The girl smiled grimly. “How’d they know just when they were going out?” she asked.

  Jardinn frowned at her. “You were sleeping heavily,” he said. “They had the plane coming right over the spot. When she hit the spot—the lights went out. And so did Hans Reiner.”

  Carol Torney shook her head. “Why the big show?” she demanded. “Why not a knife in the back?”

  Jardinn laughed at her. “That answer would help a lot,” he agreed. “It won’t be easy to get.”

  She said: “Max was trying to cross you—maybe he’s got it. Making him think that you figured I played with your wristwatch was not a bad idea, Bennie.”

  Jardinn said slowly: “It’s a jolt for me. I always figured Max was just about right for the agency. It’s hard to take. He figures you about the same way. He couldn’t seem to believe that you’d cross us.”

  She smiled with her lips pressed together.

  “He’s keen,” she said. “Doing that watch job himself, and then trying to make you believe that he didn’t think I’d do it. Not agreeing with you—that wasn’t so dumb.” Ben Jardinn looked at his wristwatch. It was two-thirty. He smiled at Carol Torney.

  “Reiner was in,” he said. “He thinks Howard Frey directed the kill. Getting even. Knows how Ernst loved his brother. He’s taking it pretty hard. I told him to get drunk and sleep it off.”

  Carol chuckled. “He’s not the type,” she said. “Frey been in?”

  Jardinn shook his head. “Expect him in the morning,” he replied. “I’m getting hungry. Max should be sleeping, but we’ll play safe. I’ll order up some beer and sandwiches. Then you can run along home and sleep. Have any of the papers got the studio fight stuff?”

  She nodded. “The Press has got something about a rumored knockdown of Hans Reiner’s brother by a well known picture writer,” she replied. “It’s carefully worded, though.”

  Jardinn frowned. He said suddenly: “By God! I forgot to take that lighter out of my blue suit when I sent it to the laundry this morning!”

  Carol Torney snuffed her cigarette in the ashtray.

  “You don’t take this murder seriously enough,” she mocked.

  He grinned at her. “Business is business,” he said slowly, and reached for the phone. He ordered four bottles of beer and two Limburger on rye. He hung up, went over and kissed her roughly on the lips. Then he went back and sat down again.

  “And pleasure is pleasure,” he said.

  She kept her eyes on his. “Bennie—” she said after a while—“you’re kind of nice.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. There was a half puzzled expression on his pale face; his eyes were looking beyond her.

  “I’d like to know who got to Max,” he said softly.

  4

  POINT-COUNTERPOINT

  Ben Jardinn got to bed, in his Laurel Canyon bungalow, at four o’clock. He didn’t sleep well. The beer hadn’t been too good, and the Limburger sandwiches had been too good. At nine o’clock he got up, washed, dressed and cooked some eggs and coffee for his breakfast. There was an accumulation of papers on the patio grass—he picked out the right one and read seven columns of bunk on the maestro murder. Los Angeles and Hollywood police were working hard—they had accomplished little, so far as the newsprint showed. Hans Reiner had been cheerful before the concert. Ernst Reiner had stated that his brother had apparently had no worries. They had not seen each other, except for a few hours, in the past two years. Ernst was not familiar with the murdered conductor’s personal affairs.

  Hans Reiner had led a rather solitary life. Music was everything to him. He was unmarried, had no secretary. He traveled alone. Ernst Reiner had appeared “stunned,” according to one reporter, “dazed,” according to another—and “was a broken thing,” according to the sheet’s sob sister. The one fact of which the police were sure was that two expert rifle shots had loosed thirty-thirty bullets from positions in the Bowl. No humans had been found who had seen the riflemen or had heard the sound of the guns. No one had seen the flame. The plane had been traced—it was a tri-motor Fokker whose appearance at the precise time of the murder had been a “colossal coincidence,” according to a writer named Lunden, who got a by-line for his stuff. The plane had come over from Mines Field—it had been piloted by one Johnny Carren. Six people had been aboard. They had paid five dollars for the privilege of having a look at the Bowl from the sky. Carren had gone the limit and had dropped down low. It was alleged that one passenger had offered him a hundred dollars to wing over at a hundred feet. Carren had denied thi
s and the police had been unable to find the passenger who had made such an offer. Carren’s license was to be suspended for six months. The police believed that the arrival of the plane, just before the lights had been extinguished, had been chance. They were convinced of the fact—and were not holding Pilot Carren.

  Jardinn sipped his coffee and read that the shooting of Death Dance would be called off until after the funeral of Hans Reiner. Studio officials sympathized deeply with their star director. They were “shocked,” as were many famous musicians in Berlin, London and Paris. Hans Reiner had been a “genius whose spark of divinity often flared into flame.” There was a column of such stuff. It annoyed Jardinn; he tossed the paper aside and lighted a cigarette. He didn’t like words without reason, and it was his opinion that Hans Reiner had been a pretty good fellow who had been shot out of life for a pretty good reason. The thing was that Reiner was dead, murdered. And that the police were running around in circles. That necessitated reporters using words in place of facts.

  The phone bell rang—a reporter from the Los Angeles Times was calling. There was a rumor that Jardinn had been called into the case by Ernst Reiner. The reporter wanted a verification. Jardinn asked:

  “What case?”

  The reporter, not without sarcasm, stated that Hans Reiner had been shot to death in the Hollywood Bowl, last evening. Hans Reiner had been conducting—he was a famous maestro. He had been murdered.

  Jardinn whistled softly, as though in surprise. He said:

  “That’s too bad—who did it?”

  The reporter muttered something that Jardinn didn’t understand, hung up. Almost immediately the phone bell rang again. Max Cohn spoke.

  “Ben? You coming down here today?”

  Jardinn grinned. “Anything doing?” he asked.

  Cohn swore at him. “I’ve got a line on Irish for you,” he said. “And Howard Frey has been in. He’ll be back in an hour. And the Gunsted woman is here now.”

  “Keep her there,” Jardinn ordered. “I’ll be down in thirty minutes or less. Got anything important on Irish?”

  Cohn was silent for a few seconds. He seemed to be thinking something over. Jardinn said impatiently:

  “Well—say something or hang up.”

  Cohn said: “Maybe it’s important. She’s running around early in the morning. I spotted her.”

  Jardinn set his cigarette on an ashtray and spoke steadily into the mouthpiece.

  “Tell me the rest when I get down there. Call up Famous Studios and tell someone that Jardinn wants to get in touch with Maya Rand. Ask how. How’s the blonde?”

  Cohn swore at him again. “She’s raising hell,” he said. “A fiddler’s got the apartment above her—and all she hears is off-key ‘Cradle Song.’”

  Jardinn chuckled. “It’s the mother yearning that’s got her,” he told Cohn. “How does Frey look?”

  Cohn hesitated again. “Worried,” he said finally. “He told me that this put him in a bad spot.”

  Jardinn nodded. “It’s liable to put a lot of people in a bad spot,” he said. “You and I included.”

  Cohn said: “You better get right down here, Ben. There’s no girl in the office, you know.”

  “That’s tough,” Jardinn admitted. “But you can look out on the Boulevard.”

  He hung up during Cohn’s reply, got his soft hat from the floor near the decanter of Scotch, and went outside. There was a flivver down the canyon about fifty feet, in the paved roadway. It looked familiar. He walked around the tiny patio of the small, Spanish bungalow and stopped as he looked toward his roadster.

  “Hello, Bennie!” Carol greeted. “I thought you were in the garage. I was going in.”

  He frowned at her. It was a warm day and the house windows were opened. He’d been talking over the telephone, and there was nothing the matter with Carol’s ears. He said:

  “You shouldn’t come up here. You know Max thinks I’ve kicked you loose. If he gets wise to our little play—”

  “He won’t,” she cut in. “He’s at the office. I saw him go up. The Gunsted woman’s there—she went up a few minutes after. I drove right out here.”

  He kept on frowning. “Why?” he asked.

  She came up to him, spoke quietly. “I’ve got something on Max. He was prowling around last night. I left the office at three. He was in back of the house. I sent Uncle Laurie around back—and when he headed for the front I worked the porch light. He didn’t see me, but I caught him.”

  Jardinn smiled. “Maybe he was figuring you’d give him a lead,” he suggested. “But be careful. Better not call the office.”

  She nodded. “I wanted you to know that he’s giving me a play,” she said. “He figures I really did fool with that wristwatch of yours, and I’m a suspicious character.”

  Jardinn nodded. He said slowly: “The police figure the plane was just around by accident. Carren, the pilot’s, got a nice story. Maybe the wristwatch stuff wasn’t worth much, Irish.”

  There was a peculiar expression in her eyes. She nodded, moved out toward the roadway.

  “Mind if I stroll around the Bowl?” she asked.

  He grinned at her. “There’ll be a mob out there—sightseers,” he said. “But go ahead. The dicks don’t know you. Max won’t be out that way—I’ll send him downtown.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Downtown?” she said. “I’ll keep my eyes open for him, Bennie, if you’re sending him somewhere else.”

  She moved off, climbed into her flivver, and clattered down the canyon road. Jardinn got into his car and drove slowly out of the driveway. He backed around, killed some time in front of the bungalow—rolled at low speed down the grade. When he turned into Hollywood Boulevard there was no sign of Carol Torney’s flivver.

  Max Cohn was in the outer office, talking to Marie Gunsted. She was a middle-aged woman with a passive, rather flat face. Her eyes were almost colorless. She was dressed in dark clothes and wore a dark, ugly hat. Jardinn smiled at her.

  “Just a few minutes, Miss Gunsted,” he said. “Come on inside, will you, Max?”

  Jardinn went in and sat down. He glanced toward the wastepaper basket. It had been cleaned out. The charred bits of the sheet he had written on last night were gone. He was looking at the calendar hanging over his desk when Cohn came in. He shut the door back of him, came over to Jardinn.

  “Let’s have it,” Jardinn said. “You ran into Carol Torney running around town, early this morning?”

  Cohn nodded. His little eyes were half closed; his short, chunky figure stood near the chair in which Jardinn sat.

  “About three-thirty last night,” he said. “She was walking, wearing a fur coat. She was going toward her house.”

  Jardinn said: “What in hell were you doing out at that time?”

  Cohn grinned broadly. “I figured I might be able to pick something up—something on the Bowl murder. I didn’t feel sleepy, so I went out. Just walked around.”

  Jardinn nodded. “All right,” he said. “She was walking toward her house, at three-thirty. What of it?”

  Cohn stopped grinning. “She was walking in that direction, but she didn’t go there,” he said. “She went somewhere else.”

  Jardinn said quietly. “I don’t want the three guesses. You’re being paid to tell me things. Don’t let’s play games.”

  “She went to Ernst Reiner’s place,” Cohn said. “Went around to the back.”

  “Did she get in?” Jardinn asked.

  Max Cohn nodded. “Right away,” he said. “She didn’t make any fuss about it. Either she had a key, or she didn’t need one. She got in—and at four-ten she came out. She went home. She went right in and undressed in the dark. Or maybe she didn’t undress. I went home and got some sleep.”

  Jardinn reached for his cigarettes, tapped one on the desk surface, slipped it between his thin lips. He said quietly:

  “All right, Max—that wasn’t a bad stroll. Don’t talk about it—I’ll handle that end. Go down to the Times and
ask Connors for a look around the morgue. Get everything you can on both Ernst and Hans Reiner. See if they’ve ever printed anything about Frey. You might look up Maya Rand, too. The clippings are all indexed. There’ll be A.P. stuff from abroad. If you can get anything on Hans Reiner from the other side, it might help. I’ll be here at four this afternoon.”

  Cohn nodded. “You putting the Gunsted woman on Carol?” he asked.

  Jardinn nodded. “Better drop over and get the office keys from her,” he said. “Don’t get in an argument—just get the keys.”

  Cohn said: “She’s had time to have more made.”

  Jardinn smiled a little. “We’ll have some different locks put on the doors,” he said. “But get the keys, anyway. On your way out tell the Gunsted woman to come in. See you at four.”

  Cohn moved toward the door of Jardinn’s office. He turned with his left hand on the knob. His little eyes were very small as he looked at the detective.

  “It gets me—Carol working against us, Ben. It don’t seem right.”

  Jardinn smiled grimly. “It don’t, Max,” he said for the second time. “She’s afraid of something. Afraid of the agency, maybe. Afraid of what we might do. We’ve had some luck lately. Someone else knows that, other than Carol.”

  Cohn said: “They’ve offered her money to cross us up, big money. And she’s grabbed it.”

  He shook his head, swore and went outside. Jardinn heard his voice, very faintly through the thick door, as he spoke to Marie Gunsted. He rose from the chair, faced the window and looked down on Hollywood Boulevard. Jane Winston came out of the Pig ’n’ Whistle, across the street, and walked slowly along the paving. An Isotta-Fraschini, with a New York license, rolled shinily along. There was the sound of the door opening. It was Marie Gunsted, but Jardinn was still thinking of Max Cohn.

  Ernst Reiner working against Howard Frey and Frey working against Reiner. Max Cohn fighting Carol Torney—and Carol watching Max. A score for one—a score for the other. Point-counterpoint. For the first time the agency gears were grinding. Money could do that. Money was doing it. But who was lying—Carol or Max? Reiner or Frey? The human who had planned the murder of Hans Reiner was a mystery. Little mysteries were trying to keep him so.