Come Die with Me

by William Campbell Gault

  He was silent. Finally, “I think we’re on the same side of the fence. Though we both want it for different reasons, we both want to know who killed Tip Malone.” A pause. “I suppose you wouldn’t like to work with Calavo and Jessup?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  He nodded wearily. “Suppose then that I relay to you, from time to time, anything they might learn? You wouldn’t rebel at that, would you?”

  “Of course not. I’d be glad for any information I could get.”

  “All right, we’ll leave it at that. I’m sure I can help you. I’m sure I have sources of information not available to you.”

  “Fine.” For the second time I stood up. “I hope you’ll inform your employees that I’m no longer the enemy. The redhead might be luckier next time.”

  “I’ll inform them. Good-bye, good hunting.”

  I had the same feeling going out that I had when I left the dentist’s office after learning I had no new cavities. It hadn’t been as bad as I’d expected. He had seemed like a reasonable man except for his unreasonable expectations for the future of his shapely niece. I had the feeling about her that she would go only as far as her bust would carry her. Though that wasn’t so limited, these days.

  The elevator went down softly and gently and deposited me in the plush lobby. And there the object of my meditations was seated on a satin-upholstered love seat near the doorway.

  She rose as soon as she saw me and waited there, near the door. Her eyes were on my face and her attitude seemed worried, to me.

  When I came abreast she said, “Why did he call you? What did he want?”

  I smiled. “He wanted to warn me that he intended to protect your interests. Your Uncle thinks a lot of you, Miss Ronico.”

  She nodded, her eyes searching my face. “Did he—did he threaten you?”

  “Not exactly. From a man of your Uncle Frank’s—influence, the slightest suggestion could be read as a threat. He wants to help me find Malone’s murderer.”

  Her eyes widened. “Why …?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. One guess could be that he hopes to clear you that way. That’s one guess.”

  “You’re guessing some other way, aren’t you?”

  “Not at the moment. Guesses don’t bring anybody to justice. We need the facts, ma’am, the facts.”

  She looked away and back. “Did you talk with Selina Stone?”

  I nodded.

  “And …?” she prompted.

  “And our conversation will have to remain private. Miss Ronico, if you hope to continue your career, don’t you think it would be bright to listen more carefully to your Uncle?”

  “I intend to,” she said fervently. “Believe me, from now on I intend to.” She put a hand on my arm. “Do you think the police will bother me any more? Do you think I’ll be getting a lot of bad publicity?”

  “I have no idea,” I told her. “Just keep your nose clean, listen to Uncle Frank and hope for the best. Remember, you’re his sister’s only child.”

  With that paternal advice I left her and went out into the blazing afternoon sun. The face of innocence, I thought for some reason, and pictured her with a knife in her hand. But no, she had been cleared by the L.A.P.D.

  The afternoon traffic was heavy, and in the distance I could see the yellow pall of smog over the city, a product of all those turning engines. My eyes smarted as I walked over to the flivver. I climbed in, turned down the hill for Santa Monica Boulevard and headed for Malibu.

  Of all the people I had met, Selina Stone had seemed to be the most involved in the death of Tip Malone. He had gone to that house to meet her and she had found him there, dead. Giovanni’s information on her had undoubtedly come from his niece and not his stooges. But I couldn’t be sure of that.

  The bathers’ cars were parked solidly along the Coast Highway and a good percentage of the sun worshippers were in the water. Just a week ago it had been cold and wet. A week from today it could be cold and wet again. Erratic climate.

  Catalina was visible and all the fishing boats on the horizon. Above Point Dume a jet climbed on its tail. Perhaps it was the sight of all this life that made me think of the dead Tip Malone. And I went inescapably from that to the thought of my own death, and I shivered on this hot day. And the thought came to me that compassion was identification, everybody who mourned thought of his own funeral.

  I turned up the road that led to Big Rock Mesa, and around one of the turns near the top a Cad De Ville was parked under a tree. It was a duplicate of the car the hoodlums had driven and my eyes searched the hills, but there was nobody in sight.

  It could have been a realtor’s car. Many of the realtors in Southern California drive Cads, Lincolns, Imperials and Continentals.

  My flivver complained on the last big turn and now the cantilevered redwood and glass house was in view. There was a Plymouth parked in the parking area, next to the Aston-Martin.

  Why had I come here without phoning? Because, my honest inner voice told me, you wanted to look at her slim elegance again, Callahan, and feast on your unspeakable dreams.

  She opened the door to my ring and her narrow face was pale under the jet-black hair. She said shakily “Now, what?”

  “I thought we could talk,” I said. “Some things have happened since we talked this morning.”

  A pause, and then, “Come in.”

  I came into the view-dominated living room to see Harry Adler standing near the windows, staring out at the hills and the sea. He turned and looked at me dully.

  “I was just going,” he said quietly.

  “Playing Detective, Harry?” I asked him.

  He said wearily, “Not quite. Just calling on Tip’s friends.” He looked at Selina Stone.

  She said stiffly, “He was questioning me. I don’t know how he heard about me. I’m sure Tip didn’t tell him.”

  Harry said softly, “You’re wrong about that. He told me about you.” His face hardened. “Tip liked to brag.”

  For a moment nobody spoke. Selina Stone stared rigidly at Harry, hate in her eyes. Harry looked at her without interest.

  I said, “Your ten percent relationship with Tip ended with his death, didn’t it, Harry? You never pretended to like him.”

  “He was still my client,” Harry said. “And I am interested in his death. I never said I didn’t like him.”

  Another silence, and then I said, “Well if I’m in the way, I’ll run along.”

  Miss Stone said sharply, “You’re not in the way. He is.”

  “I’m going,” Harry said. “I’m going. I didn’t come here to make trouble. I wouldn’t waste the gasoline, just for that. I came here to find out what I could about Tip. Maybe the police will have better luck.”

  “Harry,” I said, “you’d be doing me a big favor if you didn’t go to the police just yet.”

  He stared at me. “Why not?” He nodded toward Miss Stone. “You involved with her, or something?”

  I shook my head. “You know better than that. It’s simply that I haven’t included Miss Stone in any of the reports I’ve sent to the police and your going to them now would put me in a bad light.”

  “That’s too damned bad,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t help his widow,” I pointed out. “I tried to keep the information about Miss Ronico from the police, too. I always try to keep the innocents from the police until I learn they aren’t innocent. Because of the newspapers, Harry.”

  “All right,” he said. “All right!”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise,” he said sullenly. “But Callahan, you had better come up with something.” He glanced coldly at her and walked out without another word.

  The door closed and I looked at Miss Stone. I said, “It doesn’t figure. Why should he be playing detective?”

  “He has to hate somebody,” she said. “After all, the murderer cost him ten percent of Tip’s life.”

  “That’s cynical,” I said.

  She
exhaled. “Is it really? You’re not?”

  “Not completely, or the house would be full of cops right now.”

  She looked at me candidly. “You might have had a motive for that, too.”

  I sat on the davenport and smiled up at her. “Relax, lady. Skinny girls just don’t interest me.”

  “You’re a liar,” she said. “Drink?”

  “No thanks.” I rubbed my neck. “I have had a busy and disturbing day.” I told her of my adventures since leaving there.

  When I had finished, she uttered one word. “Giovanni.”

  I nodded. “Giovanni. He doesn’t scare you any more than he does me, I’m sure. He scares the hell out of me.”

  She sat down and stared into space. “I’ve seen him a couple of times at places I worked. Grotesque man, isn’t he? Those enormous shoulders and those silly little legs.”

  I said nothing.

  She looked at me. “I’m frightened. Are you sure those men who were at the gambler’s house worked for Giovanni?”

  I nodded.

  Beyond her I could see the meadow. The mare and her colt now stood in the shade of some eucalyptus trees. The Cad I’d seen on the way up was rounding a curve far below.

  She asked, “Does he think I killed Tip? How could he think that?”

  “He might not think you killed Tip, but he could think you know who did. And the investigative techniques of his stooges are a lot cruder than mine.”

  She stared at me. “You seem to be deliberately trying to frighten me. Why?”

  “Believe me,” I said earnestly, “I’m not trying to frighten you. As a matter of fact, I warned Mr. Giovanni to keep his stooges away from here.”

  Her stare widened. “You warned Frank Giovanni?”

  “Right. You got any Einlicher around?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve got Miller’s High Life.”

  “That the next best. Could I have some?”

  She nodded and stood up, staring past me, out at her view. Then she turned and asked, “Could you stay for dinner? I’m scared silly.”

  “I never turn down a free meal,” I said.

  She went to get the beer.

  A lady like that, playing all those ritzy night spots to sophisticated audiences … A poised and lacquered lovely, adult and unsentimental, cultured, with her emotions under control and her future carefully charted—who would ever imagine that she’d try to seduce me?

  And succeed.

  EIGHT

  IT STARTED INNOCENTLY ENOUGH. I sat out on her sundeck with the High Life, watching the eastern slope of the hills turn dark with shadow as the sun moved toward the west. For some reason I was thinking of the ties that bind, loyalty and love, blood, hate and lust, man against man and man for woman.

  It was the thought of Giovanni and his niece that prompted this hillside philosophy, probably. But it brought me around to wondering why I was protecting Miss Stone. She wasn’t related to me. And it couldn’t be a very active lust; I was still tranquil from last night.

  Perhaps it was because I admire specialists, people who take a smattering of semitalents and weld them into something unique, something saleable only at the highest level and under certain conditions. They are precariously vulnerable, because they appeal only to a limited and easily bored audience and their vogue can die quickly. They are, in a sense, lambs, and lambs are my special province.

  A great tenderness for Selina Stone began to grow in me as I looked at the dark shadows on the green hills. I’m sure it wasn’t the beer.

  She came out with a martini on the rocks and sat on a plastic and magnesium stool next to me. “Peaceful, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “It certainly is. A retreat, I suppose? You’re too young to need a retreat.”

  Her narrow face showed nothing as she said, “I’m old in the ways of the world. I’ve been on my own since I was fifteen.”

  “No family?” I asked.

  “None I care to talk about. How about you, Mr. Callahan?”

  “I’ve a younger brother. And a doting aunt down in La Jolla. My parents are dead.”

  A silence, and then she asked, “Weren’t you a baseball player or something?”

  “Football,” I said.

  “Now I remember,” she said. “You’re a friend of Jan Bonnet’s.”

  “That’s right. Jan a friend of yours?”

  She shook her head. “I wanted her to do this house for me, but she was much too expensive. She has expensive tastes, hasn’t she?”

  “Not really. But she specializes in clients with expensive tastes. So do you, don’t you?”

  “I suppose,” she said. “Would you like some more beer? I’m marinating those steaks and it might delay the meal a bit.”

  I told her I could get my own and I did. Her kitchen was a Betty Furness dream, everything built in, glossy porcelain and moulded formica in a rich brown. But she was doing the steaks outside, on the greasy, weather beaten griddle. California logic.

  When I came out to the deck again with a new can of beer, soft music was coming from speakers built into the wide eaves overhead.

  I said, “For a small house, you spent a lot of money.”

  She nodded. “I never lived in a decent house until I built this place. I wish I could retire and just stay right here, night and day.”

  So there’s a sample of our dialogue and you can see how innocuous it was, giving no hint of the later savagery of her attack.

  It was pleasant. It was peaceful and meaningless and the sun went down with a fine show of red and orange, and we ate the steaks and gabbed and listened to the music and then she said she had to make a long distance call to New York. So after we did the dishes, she put through the call and I flopped on the enormous square couch in one corner of the living room, just to relax my muscles.

  And I dozed, my guard down.

  And dreamed of her, of the thin loveliness of her body and the music of her voice. Half awake, I realized it hadn’t been a dream. She was next to me on the square couch and my arms were around her.

  And I mumbled something I don’t remember now and she said hoarsely, “Hold me. Don’t let me go. Hold me tight. I’m frightened.”

  And there it is, the complete story of how she forced me to submit to her carnal desire.

  She murmured, “You’re so gentle. Why are big men so gentle?”

  “They get tired from hauling all that avoirdupois around. Tired people are gentle people.”

  “No, they aren’t. Do you love Jan Bonnet?”

  “Now that’s a hell of a question to ask.”

  “I wasn’t being feminine. I was thinking a man or a woman has to love somebody. What are we without love?”

  “Free.”

  “Don’t be cynical. You’re not, naturally. You force it.”

  I didn’t argue with her.

  From the highway far below, the thin sound of a siren drifted up and from some yard in the neighborhood a dog began to bark.

  “I love the dark,” she said. “I love nights. Don’t you?”

  “Some. Did you ever meet Mrs. Malone?”

  I could almost feel her stiffen next to me. A pause. “What prompted that question?”

  “I don’t know. Tip’s funeral is tomorrow. Are you going?”

  She sat up. In the moonlight I could see her glare at me.

  “What’s come over you? Of course I’m not going to the funeral. It would be in horrible taste, wouldn’t it, my going to his funeral?”

  The odor of her perfume was stronger. The moon seemed to be grinning. Beneath me, the sheet was like silk and I wanted to fall asleep, but some perversity drove me.

  “Nobody but his wife seems to be mourning him,” I said, “and I’m not even sure she is. This afternoon I thought that maybe Harry Adler was, but that would be unlikely I’ve now decided.”

  “I think you had better leave,” she said. “You’re not a man. You’re a—a hunter, a bloodhound.”

  “I’m a man, a not-completel
y-cynical man. The cynic is you. And you’re hiding something that shields the murderer.”

  She scrambled from the bed and went to get a robe. She came back, white and ghostly in the moonlight, and said hoarsely, “Get out of here!”

  “Yes’m,” I said, and swung my feet out of the smooth warm bed. “I’m going. Don’t start screaming.”

  She stared for a few seconds and then went to the bathroom. I heard her lock the door, and not another sound.

  No diplomacy, Callahan, I scolded myself. No touch, no flair. In a sugared world, you’re made of vinegar.

  My mouth tasted bitter and there was some tremble in my knees. Was it guilt that had made me destroy the moment’s mood? Was it the thought of Jan?

  Or maybe the thought of Tip Malone, cold and mute? My bad knee ached as I bent to pick up a shoe. Again from below came the far sound of a siren and again the dog began to bark.

  High on her hill, remote from the world, protected by her agent, slowly building her reputation. A murder could make her less remote and her future more uncertain.

  Outside, the night was cold. There were a number of cars parked around a house farther up the road; except for that one, the scattered places that dotted the hills here were dark.

  The flivver groaned, coughed and began to murmur. I went down the long, winding road slowly, thinking back to that bed and that thin and spirited girl and wondering why she reminded me of someone. Who, who, who …?

  My mind was as fatigued as my body. It had been a full day, but what had I learned? I had learned Tip Malone had been lucky in his choice of women and that Frank Giovanni would go to great lengths to protect the reputation of his niece. I had learned I was not insatiable, and that wrestlers were pigeons in street fights, but I had already known that.

  As I turned off onto the highway at the base of the hill, a Cad turned into the road I had deserted. But it was not the stooges; a peroxide blonde was driving and she was alone.

  And I had the uncomfortable hunch, though it was bad for my ego, that Selina Stone had used what she had to keep me on her side.

  I would hate to think she would buy the Giovanni stooges the same way. I had kept her out of my report; continuing to keep her out was going to be rougher on my conscience. Now I had an ulterior reason. I hadn’t, until this evening. At home, I was asleep five minutes after I went to bed.