“Bushwah!” Carlin exploded.
Hurst wasn’t bothered. “You always say that, just on general principles. Your patsy there is thinking it fits.” He nodded at Slabbe.
Slabbe said: “I’m not just checking the framework. Anything’s possible. So Nola calls Jake George off the case. Then what?”
“Then Nola shoves off in that plane wreck,” Hurst said, “and it’s all Lorenz’s baby. It’s the life of Reilly for him from there in.”
“Yeah?” Carlin said.
“Why not?” Hurst countered. “Lorenz has it on Teel. Teel’s going to marry Ione. She inherits at least half of Nola’s estate. Lorenz can blackmail Teel till 1996.”
The phone rang. Hurst answered it, said, “Yes, Miss Yates,” hung up and buttoned his tunic again, adjusted his cap. “They want the car. Miss Reed is leaving,” he explained. “Anyhow, I’ve spilled it and that’s all the hospitality I have on hand.” He nodded at the empty beer bottles.
“What’s your angle?” Carlin said. “And what about Jake George?”
“Lorenz must have knocked George off,” Hurst shrugged. “Jake was the only other guy in the world that knew about it – except me, and Lorenz didn’t know I knew – and Lorenz didn’t want Jake mixing in and maybe trying to squeeze out a few dibs himself. My angle is only to save Miss Yates grief, like I said in the first place, by saving Ione grief, which means letting Bill Teel alone. Why not, you guys? You can’t make a case against him without Lorenz splits on him and maybe not even then. And Lorenz won’t be around here for a good stretch. He’ll wait till Ione and Teel are married and then try to bleed them – only maybe this time I’ll have something to talk over with him.” Hurst’s eyes glistened a little. “How about it? If you find Jake George’s body, you’ll see it fits.”
“Maybe we already found it,” Carlin said sourly.
“You don’t say. Where?”
“Guess.”
Slabbe said absently: “In Bleeker’s Canyon, burned to a crisp in Lorenz’s Chevvy.”
Hurst’s face showed nothing. Not Carlin’s. His started to redden, and the nostrils of his bony nose flared. He opened his mouth, but after Slabbe’s quick wink he closed it again.
“So what about it?” Hurst pressed. “Lay off Teel. He’s straight now, or I don’t know guys. He went through a war, and there are people who learn their lesson.”
Carlin had to take it out on somebody. He said nastily: “Like you, I suppose. You’re the little fixer-upper because the old girl caught you snitching pears once and let you go. In a pig’s eye! What did she catch you at, punk?”
If it had been two strides from Hurst’s position to Carlin’s chair, the slope-shouldered detective would have had clawed hands on his neck. He pawed for his sap.
It was three strides, though, and the huge chauffeur made a tremendous effort and caught himself. He was breathing hard. His yellow-flecked eyes were small and shiny. Deep in his chest, he said at the sap: “You think that thing could stop me?”
Slabbe made the floor vibrate, going toward the door.
Carlin yelped: “Hey!”
“Hey, hell!” Slabbe grunted. “While you jokers were waltzing there, I heard shots from the house.”
There were two wet marks on Ruby Reed’s lime-green suit. She was on her back in front of the main door to the Nola home. Her green eyes were open and the bruise on the left one was no particular color at all now, just darker than the rest of her white skin.
Her black hair was scarcely disarranged. Her long shapely legs were not twisted awkwardly, but it was not a posed tableau: her skirt was swirled higher than a photographer would have arranged it.
For a second Slabbe’s heavy face might have shown a bit more gray granite than usual, then he was again chewing gum stolidly, “I guess I don’t get to keep that date with you, baby,” he murmured.
“Who done it?” Carlin cursed softly, dark eyes everywhere. He bit his lips, barked at the people in the wash of light from the open door, “OK, I sound like a hayseed, but who saw it, or something?”
There was no immediate answer. Prentice and Ione Nola and Miss Yates and Bill Teel stood close to each other, elbows touching. Behind them servants fidgeted and whispered. Alan Hurst stepped toward the old lady in black taffeta, breathing heavily. “You don’t have to stay here, Miss Yates,” he said.
“Cut it!” Carlin snapped.
Hurst’s wide shoulders swung back viciously. Then his hazel eyes widened and he put a hand against the house to support himself. Miss Yates’ black eyes snapped to him. Her tinkling voice ordered: “Take Alan inside, Joseph – it’s his heart again,” and a butler sidled around her and took Hurst’s elbow.
Miss Yates transferred her glance to Teel’s haggard face. He looked older than she did. “What happened, William?” she said. “What’s wrong with your arm?”
Carlin rammed a cigar under his long nose. “I’ll handle this, thank you. Yeah, what is wrong with your arm, bo?”
Teel took his brown eyes off Ruby, sent them straight ahead to look at something a thousand miles away, and said without any inflection whatever: “I was standing in front of the door with her, waiting for Alan to bring the car around. Someone shot at us. I got hit in the arm.”
“Bill!” Ione Nola squealed and pawed at him.
“Shuddup!” Carlin bit. “He’ll live.” He looked at Teel’s tired mouth and empty eyes and his lips peeled back a trifle wolfishly. “For a while, anyhow. Hear me, son? This is a very, very old gag, maybe.”
Black taffeta rustled. The tinkling voice sounded like icicles breaking against one another. “I presume you represent the police,” Miss Yates said to Carlin. “It’s fortunate that you should be on hand at this time, unfortunate that you know only a single technique; intimidation.”
Prentice Nola scratched his beard. “Tell him, Aunt Serena,” he leered.
Carlin struggled with a mouthful of marbles.
Slabbe touched his gray hat deferentially. “Sorry, ma’am. If you people would just say where you were and if you heard the shots, and so on, you could go inside.”
“Thank you, Mr Slabbe,” Miss Yates said. “Bill was with Miss Reed, of course, as he’s admitted. Prentice, you may be sure, was no farther from a brandy decanter than necessary.”
“Merci, darling,” Prentice mocked. “I was indeed imbibing in my room on the second floor. I heard the shots and looked over my balcony railing, saw Ruby sprawled here and came down.”
Miss Yates said: “Ione, where were you?”
The pint-sized ash-blonde turned her head from Teel long enough to say, “Dressing,” and turned back again. Her little-girl’s fingers touched Teel’s gray cheek.
“I was also in my room,” Miss Yates said. “I heard the shots and also looked over my balcony railing and saw what had happened and came down. May I offer a suggestion?”
“Yes’m,” Slabbe said.
“Then I suggest you scour this vicinity for a medium-sized man who limps on his left leg.”
Carlin’s cigar gave a downward tilt as his mouth opened. “What?”
Miss Yates said coolly: “I can’t say if Prentice was using his eyes when he was on his balcony, but I was. And I saw such a man run east over the lawn.”
Slabbe looked quickly at Prentice, whose jaw was twitching and whose eyes were ugly on the old woman.
Slabbe shifted back to Teel. “We know about you, son,” he said quietly. “Did you see who it was? Was it Max Lorenz? It’s OK. We know you know him.”
Teel’s mouth opened three times for one word. When it came, it was: “Yes.”
Slabbe caught Carlin’s eye, jerked his head toward the door. Carlin scowled, said generally: “OK, you can go inside.”
“Oh, my book!” Ione Nola cried. She pointed at a slender volume that was lying near Ruby’s outstretched hand. “I loaned it to her. Bill gave it to me. I thought if she and Prentice were in love, she’d be thrilled to read—”
“Be quiet, Ione,” Miss Yates or
dered. “Go inside.”
Slabbe stooped and picked up the book. It fell open at a well-marked page.
One eye on Ione, he read:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise . . .
Carlin raged. “What the – that’s enough! Cut that out!”
Slabbe paid him no attention. He was watching Ione’s starry eyes. She said: “Isn’t it marvelous, Bill?” to Teel. “That’s the way I feel for you and—”
“Ione! Inside!” The tinkling voice was sharp. Miss Yates caught the girl’s elbow, turned her to the door. Teel started to follow, his shoulders sagging.
“Not you,” Carlin snapped at him. “You stick here, I know all about you, boy. I don’t know why you’d knock this dish off, but you could have. Two shots for her and one for yourself and heave the rod into the shrubs over there and say you saw Lorenz do it. You and me got a session coming up.”
Slabbe took three steps backwards, saw that Carlin wasn’t paying attention, turned and plodded toward the street. He went to the Carleton Arms Hotel and cornered the houseman, Barney McPhail.
“You’re stuck for a hotel bill, chum,” he told the well-dressed, dapper handshaker. “Miss Ruby Reed. Dead. Shot. No more wolves will bother her. Who did?”
McPhail flicked the starboard end of a black waxed mustache delicately, pale eyes expressionless. “She registered here, 507, Saturday afternoon from New York City. So far as 1 know, she didn’t have any visitors or calls. I can check.”
“Suppose you do,” Slabbe encouraged.
McPhail did. Miss Reed had had no phone calls or visitors that anyone remembered, and such things were generally remembered in a lush thirty-five-story inn like the Carleton Arms.
“How’d she get the shiner?” Slabbe asked.
Barney McPhail did not look embarrassed, having learned poise in his day, but he squirmed just a little. “I hope nothing’s going to come of that, Slabbe,” he murmured. “It wouldn’t exactly be the job, but it would hurt my stock around here. A guy got into her suite and slugged her – she said.”
“You don’t buy it?” Slabbe asked.
“We-ell, I don’t know. It could have happened, but she’s a type – was, huh? – that would sue, or threaten to, and she didn’t. She was willing to let it pass, said she wouldn’t even have mentioned it if another guest hadn’t heard her scream and reported it.”
“What was the story, Barney?”
McPhail’s neat shoulders moved a deprecating quarter inch. “She was on her way into her suite Monday afternoon about five. She opened the door and a guy’s fist smashed her. She screamed, didn’t see the guy clear. He ran. Another guest coming from his room saw the guy’s back, called for help. I went up. Nothing missing from the Reed kid’s room. She said let it go. Should I argue?”
“How about mail for her?” Slabbe pressed.
“I’ll check.”
McPhail did it again. There had been no mail for Miss Reed. There might have been a telegram, a desk clerk thought. The records would show it. The records showed it. Miss Reed had received a telegram Monday afternoon. There was no copy of it on file here. There would be one in the telegraph company’s office. Slabbe left and went to his office and used the telephone to call the New York office of the Zenith Detective Agency.
5. A Matter of Minutes
Late though it was – nine o’clock – the purring voice of Mr Enoch Oliver over the wire assured Slabbe that he was not being inconvenienced, that it was his custom when working with less experienced investigators than regularly employed by Zenith to remain at the office in case the less experienced investigators needed moral support and/or the aid of a more experienced investigator.
Slabbe grunted under his breath, “You and the President!” Into the phone, he said: “Was there a woman involved in the last trick Max Lorenz went over for?”
“I have the file on my desk,” Mr Oliver said. “I’ll summarize the information it contains. There were eight people involved. The ring leaders were Max Lorenz, Walter Evans and his wife, Ruby Reed Evans, a night club singer who contacted wealthy women who wanted nylons and who may have married Evans for the express purpose of enticing him to divert the necessary materials from the silk company for which he worked. Lorenz was apprehended. Evans and his wife vanished. Lorenz refused to implicate them, and they were considered small fry and not traced.”
Slabbe licked his lips sanguinely. “Maybe they’re not small fry today. The girl was just shot. The guy was with her. He’s using the name of William Teel now, and with the wife dead he can marry money and have his own silk company.”
Mr. Oliver was polite about this, but purringly reminded Slabbe once again that the person whom Zenith considered it worthwhile to spend money on was one Max Lorenz. Was he dead or wasn’t he?
Slabbe grimaced. “I’ll tell you that after you have your Wheaties in the morning, Ollie, old kid. Sweet dreams.”
Slabbe telephoned City Hall and had an interesting conversation with the laboratory technician who had examined the burned Chevvy, and then got connected with the detective bureau and used Carlin’s name to instruct them to find out this and that about the telegram which Ruby Reed had received at the Carleton Arms Hotel Monday afternoon.
Having done this, he felt he should also tell Carlin about it. First, he called Abe Morse and Charlie Somers, boys who took his money occasionally, and ordered them to idle away a few hours in the vicinity of the Nola home. He then got Carlin on the wire there, gnawed off the cap of a quart of beer and enjoyed it leisurely while Carlin bawled him out.
“OK, I was a bad boy,” Slabbe said, finally. “There were just enough miles on Lorenz’s Chevvy for him to have got here from Lewisburg, with maybe eight or ten over for riding around town. Lilac Lake is a dozen miles out, so Lorenz’s car wasn’t up there and can’t be the one Ike Veech was using. By itself, that doesn’t sound like much, but here’s another thing: there was no ignition key in Lorenz’s Chevvy and the switch was off. The car was started by fiddling with the wires on the distributor, get it?”
Carlin’s voice altered. “Which means that Lorenz wasn’t the guy who rolled the heap into Bleeker’s Canyon, because if he did it, since the car was his, the ignition would be switched on and the key would be on hand.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s dandy.”
“Isn’t it, though? Can you make anything stick on Teel, Pat? Did you find the gun Ruby was shot with so that he could have done it like you said – shot her and himself and heaved it?”
“No, dammit. I still got guys searching the grounds for it. Teel sticks to his story. They got the family lawyer on hand, and he told them all to clam up – as if he had to. There ain’t no reason why Teel would kill Ruby that I see. Prentice either, or anybody else, though they could have. Any one of ’em could have sneaked out of the house by a back or side door and let her have it and then said they were in their room, or something. Only Prentice swears he only knew Ruby from Saturday night when he picked her up at Fudge Burke’s.”
“What does Teel say?” Slabbe asked.
“Nothing.”
“He’s your boy, Pat. Ruby Reed was his wife.”
Carlin evidently had no expletive on tap strong enough for the occasion. He was silent while Slabbe explained.
Then he said softly: “I’ll face up to him with it. It ought to be good.”
“Watch how Ione takes it,” Slabbe advised. “Teel could have got hold of the Caddy to drive up to the lake Monday night, too. Let him know that.”
“Yeah. This is going to hold. Maybe it’s going to put Teel and Max Lorenz in it
together. Why not? We already got Teel and the old lady on record as saying it was Lorenz who shot Ruby. OK, they’re stuck with it. Teel found out that Nola was bringing Lorenz here to upset his apple cart. Teel got to Lorenz first, told him to ride with him instead of Nola and there’d be more in the end. Maybe Lorenz didn’t sign on the dotted line right off, but as soon as Nola was dead in the plane wreck he teamed up with Teel. Sure. Lorenz contacted Ruby when he was sprung, told her to come here and he’d meet her. She was the clincher, Teel’s wife. Only when Lorenz threw in with Teel, then Ruby wasn’t needed.”
“See if the DA thinks it’s enough,” Slabbe encouraged.
“I’ll do just that,” Carlin promised.
“Check. I’ll see you downtown. You bringing him right down?”
“Soon as I can,” Carlin said. “This gang gives me the willies.”
Slabbe hung up and opened the refrigerator by his desk, treated himself to another quart of beer, waiting. When the phone rang again and a detective said, “Here’s what that telegram said,” Slabbe reached for a pencil and scratch pad. It wasn’t necessary, however. The message was short enough to remember easily.
The detective quoted: “ ‘See John Nola for your end.’ No signature. The thing was handed in at the airport Monday afternoon at three-fifty.”
Slabbe’s gray eyes were opaque. He put the telephone back into its cradle and sat without taking his hand off it for five minutes. When he was ready again, he used it to call the airport. He learned that the wrecked plane had been cleared by the control tower on last Monday at exactly 3:50 p.m., and that John Nola had made his reservation two days in advance. He called Jake George’s secretary, Susie Caston, who lived within a half dozen blocks of his office.
Ten minutes later she was there, a small blonde woman, no longer young, her face limp as the dyed rabbit fur on the collar of her three-year-old cloth coat.
Slabbe got up and fathered her into a chair, making grunting, sympathetic sounds. He studied her empty brown eyes, avoided them as he said: “I guess there’s not much doubt about Jake, honey. He wouldn’t want you to take on, though”
The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction Page 43