ALSO BY G. G. FICKLING
This Girl for Hire
Copyright
This edition first published in paperback in the United States in 2006 by
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
New York
NEW YORK:
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New York, NY 10012
www.overlookpress.com
Copyright © 1960 by Gloria and Forrest E. Fickling
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
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ISBN 978-1-46830-482-4
Contents
Also by G. G. Fickling
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
ONE
“Honey?” The telephone receiver crackled in my ear.
I glared into the neon glow across the alley, barely recognizing Lieutenant Mark Storm’s voice through the wail of sirens wedged behind his words. Fog lay deep over the city, cutting its lights and buildings into squalid slits.
“What’s the matter, Lieutenant?”
“Plenty!” he continued, his voice tight, like the voice of a man who’s just seen something he wished he hadn’t. “Plenty, dammit! Do you know an L.A. Rams football player named Rip Spensor?”
“Sure,” I said, flicking wet blonde hair from my eyes as I bent over a cigarette box. I was just out of my office shower and sporting a few goose pimples and a towel. “Rip and I go out together occasionally. Why?”
“You’ve had your last date,” the deputy said harshly. “He’s dead.”
“What?”
“I understand he was six-foot-six. He ain’t any more, Honey,” the voice managed. “Brace yourself for a shock. Somebody ran him over with a steam roller!”
That picture splattered in my mind and I jerked upright, cigarette sliding from my mouth. “Mark, you’re kidding!”
“I wish I were,” the big man from Sheriff’s Homicide blared. “He lives south of the Coliseum in county territory. They’re improving the road in front of his house. He was ground right into the asphalt.”
I pictured the heavy-jawed face of Rip Spensor, a handsome young guy off the campus of Notre Dame, big, powerful, sleek, and worth a million dollars to the professional Los Angeles Rams. I’d known Rip only three months, watched him toss touchdown passes in practice at Riverside, felt those same strong arms draw me against him.
“When’d this happen, Mark?” I asked incredulously. “About two hours ago.” Sirens still wailed behind his voice. I could also hear the metallic clang of a huge construction machine. “I wouldn’t have called you, Honey, except when we started going over his house we found your picture on the table next to his bed. Framed in a big heart.”
“My picture?”
“That’s right.” His tone sharpened. “You do all right, don’t you, sweetheart? What are you running these days, a detective agency or a lonely hearts club?”
“Now look, Lieutenant, I knew Rip Spensor. That’s all. I didn’t realize he felt that—that deeply about me.”
Mark groaned angrily. “For an eyeball you don’t know much, do you? For instance, he played against the San Francisco Forty-niners tonight at the Coliseum. Were you there? I tried to reach you earlier at your apartment.”
“No, I—”
“He ran ninety-six yards for a touchdown and you didn’t even listen to the radio broadcast?”
“No, I was catching a late catnap here at my office. I told you, Lieutenant, this was strictly a friendly relationship, and that’s all. Now take out your green teeth. You’re biting hunks out of me.”
“I’d like nothing better.”
Mark Storm was an irrepressible six-foot-five-inch hunk of habitual hound dog. He never stopped making passes at me.
“Where are you?” I said, brushing the towel down over my dripping legs.
“A hundred and eighty-second off Figueroa. Aren’t you familiar with the address?”
“No!”
“Foggy as hell out here, Honey. The ambulance just came in from County Local. So did a crew from the construction gang.”
“I’m coming out, Mark.”
“It’s quarter-past two in the morning,” he returned sarcastically. “You’d better get your beauty sleep, lover girl.”
“I’ve had my usual,” I said, retrieving my cigarette and touching a match to it.
“Come out if you want, but don’t expect to keep your dinner down. I didn’t.”
“Mark, is it really that bad?”
He paused before answering, the harsh clatter of steel against steel ringing in the background. “It’s worse, Honey.”
“You certain it wasn’t an accident?”
“Are you kidding?” he said. “Since when does a three-ton steam roller run amuck all by itself on a flat road?”
“Any suspects, Mark?”
“A cousin named Ray Spensor who shared this house. He’s also with the Rams. And a couple of others.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”
I hung up, toweled myself off and stubbed out my cigarette. Fog nestled over the neon across the alley, wetly clawing at the dark sky and at the distant lights of the Pike and harbor. I slipped into a pair of panties and a bra, then encircled my right thigh with a garter holster and inserted my pearl-handled .22 before getting into a blue cashmere sweater and skirt. The clamor of the Pike’s merry-go-round and roller coaster was stilled now in the late-night darkness and fog. The horn of a ship trapped somewhere in Long Beach Harbor moaned faintly.
The terrible image of Rip Spensor being mangled on a wet road kept clicking through my brain like old-fashioned slides in a penny arcade picture machine. Each frame was more ghastly than the last. The ponderous steam roller wheezing and clanking on the asphalt. The steel cylinder suddenly rearing out of the fog. Knocking Rip down. Crushing over him as if he were an ant.
My convertible was parked in an alley behind the office building. Fog swirled up into my face as I moved toward the car. So did the sound of someone running on the hard asphalt. I flattened against a brick wall, snapping the revolver out from beneath my skirt. The steps were hard, slamming quickly in heavy, mannish strides. They were moving toward Third Street and away from me. After an instant, I started in the same direction, but the sound of something metal falling in the alley stopped me again. It bounced several times, then rolled against a wall a few feet from the corner. The footsteps died.
A bus’s gears clashed and a yellow Metropolitan whirled past the alley, its headlights winking in the mist. I guessed the mysterious runner had either climbed aboard the bus or made it to a car along Third. Either way he was gone. I tucked my revolver back into its holster and advanced toward the shadowed outline of what looked like a large tin can. I was fairly certain he’d dropped the container and not just accidentally kicked it in his flight.
The can was a coffee tin, punctured on to
p with numerous air holes as though to house some kind of living creature. Bits of dirt poured from the openings as I examined it in the faint glow of a street light that cut through the fog. Carefully, I pried the lid open. Except for some dried soil clinging to the shiny metal, there was nothing inside. I tucked the can under my arm and walked back to the convertible, hoping a sharper light might reveal something more.
Inside the car I flicked on a small dash light, then got the mobile operator on my auto phone. After reaching my office number, the answering service cut in gruffly.
“H. West, private investigations, whatta you want at this hour?”
“Whatta you think?” I retorted. “A polite, cultured, romantic voice. When are you going to break down and hire one, Charley?”
“What’s the matter with my voice, Springtime? I’ll have you know I won a speech contest when I was twelve.”
“Where was that, at the zoo?”
He groaned. Charley April had a groan that was indefinable. So was the rest of him. He weighed over three hundred pounds and was a perfect blend of beer, bear and bombast. Why I kept him for my answering service was definable. He never sent me a bill. My line and some other chosen few were used as a front for a bookie operation he ran from his broken-down switchboard. But Charley was harmless. Despite the fact that he worked outside the limits of the law, nobody, including Lieutenant Marcus Storm, could bring themselves to close him up. Charley gave more money to polio, cancer and crippled children’s funds than a dozen legitimate millionaires all rolled into one. And he talked more horse players out of horsing around with the ponies than he took bets. Where he got all his money from, nobody knew, or asked. Charley April was just that kind of guy.
“Look, Charley! I’m in the alley behind my office. I have a hunch some character was just casing me, my car, or both. I want you to do me a favor.”
“No, thanks,” he said quickly. “I ain’t good in alleys. They’re not wide enough for me. Besides I’m casing a case right now of my own.”
“I can imagine,” I said, picturing him bent over his switchboard with a bottle of beer jammed under my office key. “I want you to refer any calls for me in the next hour to my auto phone. I’m going out to a Hundred and eighty-second and Figueroa. A football player’s been murdered out there.”
“What? Listen, Springtime. You’re a nice girl. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Baby-bottom complexion. Why don’t you quit while they’re still all in one piece. I worry about you.”
“Thanks, Charley. I worry about you, too.”
“Why?” he drawled in that inimitable beer-barrel voice. “I ain’t worth much.”
I had to smile. “You won a speech contest once, didn’t you? That’s worth something, isn’t it?”
The buttons were probably busting on his sweaty old shirt when he answered. “Oh, I guess so. But, now you keep your nose clean, understand. I don’t want nobody saying they knew you when.”
“I’ll talk to you later, Charley. Meanwhile, don’t let the bugs bite.”
“What bugs?”
“The kind that come in those cases you said you’re casing. Good night, Charley.”
“Good night, Springtime.”
He clicked off. I jammed down on the starter and my convertible’s engine growled dismally in the damp night. I repeated the action. Suddenly it kicked over and roared up into an 8-cylinder symphony of tappets and valves. That’s when I jammed down on something else. I peered through the glare of the dash light and felt a scream welling up in my throat.
A bug squatted beneath my foot. It was about as big as any I’d ever seen in my life. It was thick and black and its legs spread frighteningly huge on the rubber mat. Hair stemmed from its ugly body.
I jerked backward, allowing the mammoth spider to dart out from beneath my heel, and whirled toward the door handle nearest me. My hand touched something soft and warm and awesome. I recoiled, feeling pain stab up my arm.
In the faint grim light I saw another one clinging to the back of my hand. Then it dropped in my lap, legs spinning.
TWO
The sound that erupted in my throat was loud and twisted.
I swung wildly with my elbow, brushing the spider from my lap.
In the misty glow of neon slanting from across the alley another of the horrifying creatures glinted into view. It crawled down the back of the seat, hairy legs radiating grotesquely from around its thick body. I straightened, snatched my revolver from its holster and dropped the gun butt on the spider. It flattened on the seat, then arched up again, legs flicking wildly, and lunged at me. I fell back against the seat, grabbed madly at the door handle. Another spider leaped onto my shoulder.
I screamed again, tumbling into the fog-shrouded alley. My head struck asphalt. …
When I woke up, I was in Mark Storm’s office at Sheriff’s Homicide. The big lieutenant bent over me.
“You all right, Honey?”
“I—I think so. What—what happened?”
“A couple of patrolmen found you in the alley behind your office. Your car was crawling with tarantulas. Charley April says you called him about some guy casing the area.”
I listened to the sound of water dripping outside his window. It was running down off the eaves and striking a tin roof below. A fog horn still blared far out in the bay. I told Mark the story. What I knew. The tin can. The sudden sensation under my foot, like a mouse.
“They were huge, Mark,” I shuddered.
“So I noticed. Hector’s got a couple of them in the lab right now. He’s checking to see what variety they are.”
He removed his peacock-blue felt hat and rubbed dampness from the crown, then tossed it on his desk. After a moment, he looked at me again. I was lying on a couch in one corner of his office. My right hand hurt. It was bandaged.
He tucked a cigarette in his broad mouth and asked, “Did you see the man?”
“No. Aren’t tarantulas supposed to be nonpoisonous, Mark?”
He winced, lit a match and inhaled some smoke. “They used to say in South America that the bite of a tarantula created an insane desire to dance. I guess that’s how the Cha-Cha-Cha became popular. How you doing?”
“All I’ve got is an itch.”
“Where?”
“On my hand, Lieutenant. By the way, who performed the first aid?”
“Doc Carter. The only swelling and perforations he could find were on the back of that hand. Honey, how do you manage to get into so much trouble in such a short time?”
“I practice. With Arthur Murray tarantulas. What time is it?”
He studied his watch. “Quarter to four. Fog’s still pea soup thick.” He sat on the edge of his desk and rubbed his big hands together. “I just got back from the morgue. Spensor’s a mess. Do you think there’s any connection?”
“Between what?”
“Between the steam roller and the tarantulas.”
I sat up slowly, brushing hair from my eyes. “Maybe.”
Mark moved to the window, peering out between two of the plastic slats. “You sure it was a man?”
“Sounded like one. Heavy. Not brittle like high heels or light like a woman’s flats.”
He rubbed at his forehead. “There’s another woman in this case.”
“What do you mean, another?”
“Besides you.”
I stood up, the pain in my hand increasing as I moved. “How do I fit?”
“The photograph of you next to Spensor’s bed.” He fixed taut brown eyes on me. “Was this serious?”
“I told you, no, Mark.”
He brought his fist down hard on the desk. “You’re a smart apple, aren’t you, Honey?”
“You always called me a peach, Lieutenant.”
“Don’t be funny. What if those babies had been black widows?”
“Then Rip Spensor and I could have shared the same slab.”
“Yeah, just like you’ve shared a few other things.”
“Lieutenant, your mind is positive
ly one-track.”
“You’re the one who’s one-track,” he thundered. “That license of yours ought to be hanging over a four-poster. You don’t solve cases, you entertain them!”
Hector Gonzales, a thin, bespectacled lab man, came into the room, carrying a paper in his hand. His swarthy face was haggard and his hands shook nervously as he stared at us.
“Those are Mygales,” he said flatly.
“What?” the deputy boomed.
“Mygales,” Hector repeated carefully. “The technical name is Theraphosidae, a species of trap-door spider. The largest of any known living species. Stout, dark brown or black in color, thick legs covered with hair mingled with longer bristles—”
“Don’t give us all that crap, Hector,” Mark returned hotly. “Are they dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“How dangerous?”
“We let one of them loose with a white rat. He was dead in thirty seconds. With convulsions. They have been known to kill large birds.”
Mark’s eyes flicked at me. “How about people?”
Hector squinted through his glasses. “On occasion, if the venom is injected into the right spot. Miss West was apparently fortunate. The back of the hand is not a very vulnerable area.”
I smiled faintly, rubbing the injured hand. “Well, Lieutenant, what were we saying about the entertaining qualities of my job?”
His big face reddened. “All right, I apologize, but you have no right to be meddling in this case.”
“Rip kept a photograph of me that says I do,” I countered. “May I go now?”
“Sure,” Mark said grimly, not looking at me. “Your car’s parked downstairs. It’s been thoroughly cleaned out, so don’t worry.”
I started toward the door. “I won’t.”
He moved in front of me, blocking my path with his six-foot-five frame. “Only let me give you a word of advice. There are all kinds of spiders. So watch out.”
“What kind did you have in mind, Lieutenant?”
“The female of the species,” he said. “The other woman.”
“Who is she?”
“Angela Scali.”
I frowned. “The Italian Angel?”
“That’s right. This year’s Academy Award winner. Hollywood’s answer to the H-bomb.”
Honey West: A Kiss for a Killer Page 1