He tried to laugh. “Yes. I’m sure you’ll find use for them if you can. Blackmail — is that it? You think you can blackmail these subjects just because Mr. Pawley is dead?”
“Why not?” I said. “Somebody ought to carry on Mr. Pawley’s good work.”
Chapter Ten
BLAKE BRISTLED, blond hairs standing at attention in his mustache. “Mind your tongue, thief.”
I smiled at him coldly. “Why? You mean nobody is allowed to make accusations but the late Pawley?”
“Mr. Pawley found a need in publishing. He served it.”
“What kind of bull is that? Pawley was a blackmailer, and you know it.”
“No.”
“No?” I waved the three carbons at him. The gun came up, and I saw his face whiten. I stopped that activity. I toned my voice down fifty degrees cooler than calm. “What’s the matter with you, Blake? Who are you trying to kid? Not me. I’ve read the notations on these stories.”
“Those notations were confidential memoranda written by Mr. Pawley for his own use.”
“Sure they were. The only thing he didn’t put on these stories was a price tag.” I thumbed up the first carbon, the amazing story I had read on Ceil Bowne. In fact, if the paralyzing shock of those revelations hadn’t kept me there, I might have been out of the place before Blake walked in. “Here’s a story on Ceil Bowne, if you want to pretend innocence to what was going on right here in this office where you worked.”
“You’ve no right to that story.”
“Sure. It’s dated, Blake, right here at the top of the notation. The first receipt of this story. And that date means this story — worth plenty as a circulation builder, an attention getter, a shocker — has been in the files as long as the income tax exposé on Leo Ross here. Hell, over a year old. Why would he hold a story like this over a year?”
“That’s Mr. Pawley’s concern. He had plenty of other scripts.”
“None like this. None that couldn’t have been torn out to make room for this. Because some other publisher might have come up with it, and killed its value in the magazine.”
“Evidently Mr. Pawley didn’t believe that would happen.”
“Hell. This notation on Ceil Bowne’s story would be clear to a blind man, Blake. You want me to read it to you?”
He tuned his ear again for the police cars. “I want you to shut up until the police come and remove you. That’s all I want.”
“Why, Blake? Listen to this notation, dated more than a year ago. ‘Hold. Contact subject.’ My God, isn’t that clear?”
“Perhaps he wanted to check it.”
“The hell. He never checked anything else. And we both know Ceil would never admit any of the allegations here. You know what that contact meant? It meant that Pawley was willing to let Ceil Bowne pay him monthly installments to keep this story out of the magazine.”
“Ridiculous. Anything that good would have been printed at once.”
“Maybe that’s the answer. It was too good. Ceil Bowne had a lot of money. He made several fortunes before income taxes ate them up the way they do now. He could afford big payments, especially when the revelations might ruin him.”
Blake stood up. “Very fanciful.”
“Is it? Or isn’t it true that Pawley had been contacting Bowne all these months? Contacting Bowne, and bleeding him?”
Blake’s mustache twitched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why don’t you? It’s all right here.” I shook the carbons again, and he jumped. “Here’s Pawley’s notation, and under it are a series of figures. What do they mean, Blake? Amounts collected? Dates of collections?”
“There is no such thing.” Blake stepped forward, staring at the notation clipped in the corner of the carbon.
“Sure there is.” I shook the papers again so he couldn’t really read them from any distance. “So there we are.”
“Yes. Until the police come for you.”
“I’m glad you called Scully. He’ll be interested in this blackmail evidence. You’ll be an old man, Blake, before you convince anybody that you weren’t an accomplice in this blackmail.”
“First, blackmail would have to be proved.” Blake’s voice shook.
“Sure. And they’ll start doing that immediately, because when they walk in here and I give them these papers, it’ll make something entirely new of this murder.”
Blake’s face got wild. He had held himself under leash as long as he could. Now his pretense fell apart like a dry mud pack.
He forgot the gun in his hand. His voice shook. “Let me have that.”
He rushed at me. There was nowhere I could go. I had my back against the wall and I pressed against it, setting myself, watching Blake’s face and trying to see what he was going to do with that gun.
He threw out his left hand and clutched at the papers. This was it, this was the flood tide, the moment of crisis.
I moved as little as I could, trying not to telegraph anything. I closed my left fist, brought it up swiftly, and let him have it as hard as I could just under his belt.
He stopped as though he’d run into an invisible pole. His face turned pastel green. He went on reaching for the papers for a moment, but I held them out of his reach. He clutched for support and I stepped out of his way.
His knees bent and he buckled slowly, falling face first against the wall. Unable to support himself, he slid down the wall, gasping through his opened mouth.
The gun slipped from his fingers. I set myself and scooped it up as it struck the thick-piled carpeting. I closed my hand on it and waited for him to get up, but everything in that room was changed now.
He got himself turned around, back to the wall, trying to push himself into it. He writhed on the floor, his face stricken. I was capable of breaking into this house, I was capable of killing him. He began to mewl and his face sagged.
I folded the three carbons and pushed them into my outside coat pocket. I didn’t want to get them confused with the Jack Roland story. They were a different matter entirely.
I looked around the room one more time. Of course I would never know what uranium strike I might have made in those files, but I had more than I’d ever hoped to have already. I had earned whatever Yol and Leo might pay me.
And then I heard the siren of the police car swinging up the hills.
Blake heard it, too. Some hope showed in his face and he began muttering to himself against the wall, although he still made no effort to get up.
I crossed the room, closed the door, locked it.
The siren was louder now. I walked across the foyer and went out the French window into the garden.
I heard Blake pounding on the office door as I went through the lanes of exotic plants.
I did a fair imitation of Jack Roland going over that wall this time. I wished he could have seen me; he would have appreciated it.
I ran across the soggy lawn, the water squishing around my shoes. I found a gate in the side hedge but it was locked and chained.
The sirens were sighing to nothing and I looked over my shoulder. A police car wheeled into the drive.
I pressed close against the hedge, pushed between it and the fence. I was scared. I didn’t want to be caught now. I didn’t want to talk to Scully. I had too much to do first. Besides I have always hated frustration. I had not escaped Blake to surrender to the San Rafael police.
I must have looked like a not-very-agile monkey as I climbed that fence. The hedge shook as I used it to support me. The only thing that saved me was that the cops were hurrying into the house and not looking my way.
Water sprayed off the hedge and soaked me. I pulled myself to the top of the cyclone fence. My hands were cut, but it didn’t seem to matter much. I dropped on the outside and ran to my car. I was out on the highway headed north before I even took time to breathe.
• • •
I barreled through the studio gates at Twenty Grand Pictures without even slowing down. In m
y mirror, I saw the gateman stride out of his dry crib and stand there with his hands on his hips, watching me.
I skidded through the rain-wet streets until I came to stage eight. I parked the car then, got out and walked through the “no admittance” entrance. There were fifteen or sixteen carpenters and electricians at work. When I asked about Ceil Bowne, a carpenter shrugged and shook his head. He’d never heard of him. An electrician called down that there were no sets finished yet, and that Ceil had called off rehearsals. “Probably at home,” he said. “That’s where I’d be on a wet day like this.”
From stage eight, I drove to administration. When Gaye Bain saw my face, she scowled. “Sam. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s wrong if I can just get in there to talk to Yol Myrene fast.”
“Sorry, Sam. Yol’s not in his office this afternoon.”
“The hell. Where is he?”
“Taking the afternoon off. He’s at home. He called me from there a few minutes ago.”
“Fine. They all put me to work, then they take off.”
“That’s the way the paycheck bounces,” Gaye said. “If you want to talk to him, I can call him for you.”
“No. I’ve got to see him.”
“Why don’t you drive out, Sam? I’ll call and tell him you’re coming.”
I stared out the window a moment, shook my head. “No. Call him and tell him that I’ve got to see Ceil Bowne first. If Yol would like to meet me there, it might be important enough. If not, I’ll see him after I talk to Ceil.”
Gaye’s face was pale. “Is it important enough, Sam?”
“I think it is.”
“Then I’m sure Yol will think so. Why don’t I ask him to meet you at Ceil Bowne’s? They live only a few blocks apart.”
“Fine.”
I checked in at my own office, found my secretary knitting a red sweater.
“Julie,” I said, “you trying to get yourself whispered about?”
She gave me the blank stare. “Who are you?” she said.
I glanced at my name on the door. “I worked here last payday.”
“Oh, that’s who you are! My boss. Thought you looked familiar. It’s just that I’ve seen so little of you recently.”
“Anybody try to get in touch with me here today?”
Her mouth became a firm line. “Only that starlet.”
“What starlet?”
She mocked me. “What starlet? The one that haunts you when you’re here, and haunts the office when you’re not.”
“Toni?” I felt that odd emptiness when I spoke her name.
Julie Ferman nodded. “She’s called a dozen times. She made a big production of checking her note pad. “No. Thirteen times. I missed asking her name once. But I recognized her voice.”
“Did she say what she wanted?”
“Oh, yes. Come over to her place. Thirteen times. Do you need the address, boss?”
“What makes you think I’m going?”
“What makes me think bees spread pollen from lily to lily? Thirteen calls and you’re not going? Besides, she said it was very urgent. She told me five times that it was urgent that I tell you not to believe anything until you talked to her.” She shoved her tongue in her cheek. “You won’t, will you, boss?”
I left the office not intending to go anywhere near Toni Drake. I’d been had, but good. However, by the time I was out on Hollywood Boulevard, I was angrier even than the stupid drivers would make me. What was the idea of her calling the office like this? She must be pretty scared if she needed an alibi that badly.
I was parked in front of her apartment house before I had even reminded myself that I had urgent business out at Ceil Bowne’s lavender ranch house.
I walked into the court, crossed the patio and rang the doorbell.
There was the faintest sound, like a rattlesnake might make half a block away from you, the whisper of distant trouble, someone catching his breath inside the room, or somebody running, bumping a chair on a thick rug.
I listened a moment, rang the bell again. Toni had been calling me. It was no time to be coy again.
From within the apartment, I heard another sound. Somebody was running, moving swiftly toward the back door. I was just in the angry mood that made me anxious to see who was in such haste to get out of Toni’s apartment when I came calling.
I’d long since got over expecting anything from any woman, but I was burned crisp about Toni and wanted something concrete to hurl into her pearly white teeth when she started lying to me again.
I ran to the end of the east wing and around the apartment house. I heard Toni’s back door slam, but when I got around there, there was nothing but the gentle whisper of smog-laden rain.
I stood there in the rain a moment, looking around. A high hedge made this rear entrance very discreet and enclosed. Here you could come and go completely unobserved, which was the point of the whole arrangement.
I strode toward the alley, still in the grip of white anger. A car started out there, and somebody gunned it hard. I ran through the short enclosed walk, but when I stepped out into the alley, the car was a blur of rain and exhaust smoke boiling around the corner.
I walked slowly back toward the rear of the apartments. The back door to Toni’s apartment stood open. I saw no sense, in returning to the front door and the formality of ringing.
I stepped inside the back door, banged it closed after me.
“Toni?”
There was no answer.
That’s when panic laced through the anger in me and dissolved it.
I strode through the kitchen, and into the front room, where last night it had all started between Toni and me. Another short-lived romance.
I didn’t see her at first. The room was disordered, as though two women had fought in furious silence. A vase was shattered, a shoe lay overturned near a chair. I stepped nearer and saw Toni’s foot, and her leg, and then her body. I lunged forward and knelt beside her.
A stocking was twisted about her throat. Her face was discolored, but her hands were at her sides. That appeared odd when you first thought about it.
If somebody were trying to strangle her with a stocking, why hadn’t she been fighting them, or pulling at the stocking about her throat?
Chapter Eleven
THE AMBULANCE arrived first.
I stood outside Toni’s apartment and motioned them toward me. Other figures were beginning to appear at entrance doors in the three wings of the apartment building.
I didn’t even look at them. They crept nearer when the ambulance attendants carried the stretcher into the front room where Toni lay.
The attendant looked at her, then at me. “Is she dead?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not yet.”
“What happened?”
“What difference does it make what happened? We’ve got to get her to the hospital.”
“This might be something for the police.”
“We can’t wait for that. Somebody hit her over the head with that vase. Then when she was out, they put the stocking around her throat and tried to strangle her.”
“How do you know that?”
“Hell, I don’t know it. I only know you’ve got to get her to the hospital. This is what I figured out after I called you — while I was waiting. Now let’s go.”
“The police are right behind us. We better wait.”
They lifted Toni and placed her on the stretcher. For a moment I thought she moved, maybe not. Perhaps her head rolled a little and I was so anxious to see her come out of it that I saw it as a returning to consciousness.
A plainclothes detective and a patrolman entered the front door. The detective said, “Where you faking her?”
One of the attendants was listening to Toni’s heart with his stethoscope. He glanced up at the detective. “Her heart is still beating. We better get her to the hospital.”
“Wait a minute,” the detective said. “We’ve got to have a report on th
is thing.”
“You can get it from me.”
He wheeled around, looked me over. “Who are you?”
“I called the hospital. I found her like this.”
The detective waved the stretcher out. “What’s your name?” He was looking at me again.
I watched them carry Toni through the door. I felt a twist inside. She looked younger, sweeter than ever, lying there like that, like a little girl asleep. Hell, don’t they always?
I told the detective my name, showed him my identification. He looked it all over carefully. He handed it back. “What were you doing here?”
“Toni Drake — that’s the girl’s name — she works for our studio. She had called my office today and asked me to come over. My secretary said she sounded worried — ”
“What’s your secretary’s name?”
I told him and then said, “Why?”
“Friend, we listen to everything you say. But that doesn’t mean we believe it all. We’ll check. Everything. If it all checks out like you say — okay.”
I remembered that I had rung the doorbell, run around back, stood out there, and then entered through the back door. How was that going to look? I knew the cops would turn up at least one person in the apartment house who had witnessed my whole poor performance. There’s always one. Old ladies from Iowa go out to California, and then they have nothing to do but watch what their neighbors are doing. The town is full of them. I decided it would be best to tell this boy all I had done, no matter what construction he gave the facts. If he heard them first from me, they were not going to sound so odd when he heard them next from the dear old lady from Iowa.
When I got through, the detective just stood there and looked at me for what seemed a very long time.
“Ran around back, heard somebody run into the alley, heard a car, but it got away before you could even tell what kind of car it was. Oh, boy! You don’t write for the movies, do you?”
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