Night Lady

by William Campbell Gault

  I said evenly, “I’m not, Sergeant. He might be, but I’m not. He told me that was his maiden name.”

  Macrae snorted. “Freaks. Ugly slobs.”

  “Not Kutchenreuter,” I protested. “He’s handsome.”

  Macrae leaned back in his chair and looked at me coldly. “I told you not to be funny. Maybe you could sit for a while and consider your sins. Maybe we ought to hold you for a while until life looks a little more serious to you.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I don’t personally give a damn, Sergeant. I find a body, so I immediately phone you people. I guess I don’t need to tell you there are private investigators in this town who would take off for a weekend in Palm Springs if they found a body. Cooperation, that’s my guiding principle. You could phone Captain Bixby down at Headquarters if you want the word on that.”

  He stared at me for seconds and then picked up the phone on his desk. “Get me Captain Bixby at Central.”

  I smoked my cigarette and considered my sins while he waited for the connection to be completed. I thought of Freckles in the hamburger stand and of Adonis Devine. And then, for some reason, I thought of the redhead with the shopping basket.

  She’d said “Dunk” before she’d corrected it to “Mr. Guest.” She had been an attractive girl.

  Captain Bixby must have told Sergeant Macrae what a fine fellow I was, because the sergeant didn’t glare quite as fiercely after he replaced the phone in its cradle.

  “What about this joint in Santa Monica,” he asked me, “this pansy bed?”

  ‘I don’t know much about it,” I told him. “I — don’t get along so well with the Santa Monica Department.”

  “Who does? Is the proprietor a fat, greasy man?”

  “That’s right. He offered to throw me through his front window. I have a feeling he doesn’t like my client.”

  “Any indication why not?”

  “So far as I could figure it was because Adonis doesn’t trade there. I got the impression that Harry only likes people he makes money off.”

  Macrae was silent, staring at his desk.

  I asked softly, “Am I forbidden to investigate any more? Some of the stations don’t mind if I work along with them.”

  “What’s there for you to investigate?” he asked. “You were hired to find this Guest and you found him. Were you hired to do something else?”

  “No, but I might be. He and Adonis Devine were not only business associates, they were personal friends. Adonis might want me to work on the murder.”

  “Why? With all the men we have, competent men, why would he want you messing around in it?”

  “People are funny, Sergeant, I answered. “Okay, you’ve said no.’ “ I stood up. “I’ll keep my nose clean.”

  “Sit down,” he said. “I didn’t say you could go.”

  I sat down.

  He laid his index finger against his nose and stared beyond me. “Captain Bixby expressed a high degree of admiration for you.”

  I yawned.

  “We’re understaffed and overworked,” he said. “This is the biggest city in area in the United States. And we simply can’t cover it.”

  “I know it,” I agreed. “And the taxpayers won’t stand for another raise. They’ve had too many in the last few years.”

  He looked at me coldly.

  “I’ve heard it all before, Sergeant,” I explained. “From men in the Hollywood Station and the West Side Station and from downtown. I was merely repeating what I heard.”

  “What about this girl Guest was with Tuesday night?” he said. “Did the hamburger man tell you her name?”

  “No. I didn’t ask him. It didn’t seem important at the time. But he said Guest introduced him to the girl so he might remember it.”

  It didn’t seem important at the time? She was probably the last person to see Guest alive. She could easily be the murderer.”

  “You’ve established it as murder?” I asked. He stared at me. “What else?”

  “I’ve no way of knowing,” I said, “lacking your laboratory facilities. I saw the razor blade near his hand and considered it might be suicide.”

  Sergeant Macrae tapped the papers on his desk. “It was murder and it happened Tuesday night. Or call it Wednesday morning if you want. Between midnight and two o’clock.”

  I crushed my cigarette in the ashtray on the desk. I said nothing.

  “Why would I be crowding you if I thought it was suicide?”

  I shrugged. “Official venom. I run into it quite of ten.”

  He studied me coldly. “I’m surprised your face isn’t marked more than it is. You must have been hit plenty of times.”

  “I weigh two-seventeen,” I said. “That eliminates a lot of angry men, the small and medium-sized ones.” I stood up once more. “Am I free to go?”

  He nodded. “Keep in touch with us.” He paused. “If you’re hired to work on the case, phone me and we’ll talk about it.”

  “All right, Sergeant. And thank you. If we do work together, I can guarantee you you’ll have no reason to regret it.”

  “Don’t wave the flag,” he said. “Just stay on the right side of the fence and keep a civil tongue in your head.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Good-bye.”

  I didn’t go back to the beach or to the garage apartments. I drove directly to the Hollywood Strip. I didn’t know if Adonis was home or if news of Guest’s death had been made public, but he hired me to find him and a report was due.

  He opened the door to his luxurious dump and said. “Come in. News already?”

  I came in and closed the door behind me. I said, “I found Mr. Guest. I found him dead. He was murdered.”

  It was the damnedest thing. He stood there, all man and muscle a yard wide, with that Greek god’s face rigid in shock. He stared at me for uncomfortable seconds, and then he began to blubber like a baby.

  I went to the window and looked out at the bright city.

  Later, I warmed some milk in the kitchen and brought him a cup. He was relaxing on a white leather couch.

  “Tell me about it,” he said weakly. “Tell me how you happened to find him, everything.”

  I gave it to him play by play.

  When I’d finished, he said, “Some day, I’m going to drop in on Harry. He’s a malicious man.” He clenched and unclenched his hands. “Who was the girl? What is her name?”

  “I don’t know. The police are probably working very hard to learn that about now. I guess Mr. Guest thought a lot of her. He took her down to meet that friend of his, the freckle-faced gent in the hamburger stand.”

  Devine’s face stiffened. He said nothing.

  I asked, “Did you know that Mr. Guest had this other apartment?”

  He shook his head. “Or I would have told you. It would have been a logical place to look for him.”

  “Well,” I said, “I only used part of one day. You have a refund coming.”

  “Keep it,” he said. “I may phone you in a day or so. I know some things the police might not about Duncan’s friends.”

  “If you do,” I told him, “you had better tell the police right now. That’s your duty as a citizen and as a friend of Duncan Guest’s.”

  “I’ll see,” he said irritably. “I’ll see. I’ll phone you, Mr. Puma.”

  I went out quietly.

  It was after five o’clock now and traffic on Sunset was murderous. I had two hundred dollars; I walked over to Creighton’s for dinner. At Creighton’s, you can get a pretty fair steak for seven dollars and I had one. I owed it to myself after the indignities of this day.

  From there, I went to the office to type up my short report. That was a practice of mine that kept me on the right side of the Police Department. I made complete and honest reports of all cases and kept them available to the Department.

  I picked up a paper on the way to the office, tomorrow’s edition of the Times. The story was there, more of the story than I had known when I left Sergeant Macrae.


  The police were looking for a woman. The redhead next door, the one I’d met with the shopping basket, had informed the police that there had been a ruckus in Mr. Guest’s apartment around the time he had been killed. Then she had heard a scream and a thump, and had started to go to the phone to call the police.

  She was just picking up the phone when she heard the door of Mr. Guest’s apartment close. She had gone to her front window that looked out on the runway and seen a woman hurrying past toward the stairs. The woman had worn a white sheath dress and a cerulean mink stole (whatever that is, I thought). There had not been a sound from Guest’s apartment since.

  Further, the redhead had stated, though she had never met Duncan Guest, she was aware that he used the apartment infrequently and assumed he really lived somewhere else.

  That was enough for the paper to dub this a ‘love-nest slaying” and enough for me to doubt the redhead. Because she had first called him “Dunk” when she’d talked to me, and now she had never met him.

  The redhead’s name was Sheila Gallegan and I put it in my little book.

  The freckle-faced proprietor of the hamburger stand was quoted as explaining Duncan Guest had used the beach hideaway solely for the purpose of dreaming up new promotional schemes for his clients, all of whom were wrestlers.

  Now there was a real friend. I put his name in the book under Sheila “Gallegan’s. His name was Einar Hansen.

  The police laboratory had come up with the information that Duncan Guest had undoubtedly been hit with a bronze ashtray, staggered to the bathroom and collapsed and there had his throat sliced.

  The client who had hired the prominent local Hawkshaw, Joe Puma, was identified as Adonis Devine, but Mr. Devine had not been available for press interrogation.

  The by-lined writer of all this new information has implied delicately that Mr. Guest was a notorious wolf and possibly had been killed by an innocent repelling his lustful advances.

  How the innocent could be innocent enough to be led to the apartment was not explained. Nor the conflicting fact that an innocent wouldn’t be likely to slice a man’s throat after he was unconscious and momentarily lust-less.

  One thing the writer had not learned was the real name of Adonis Devine. I was one up on him there.

  I was filing my report when my phone rang. It was now nine o’clock and there would be no reason for a client to assume I was in the office.

  It was Greg Harvest, an attorney who got a lot of the carriage trade and who now and then condescended to throw me a bone.

  He had a client, he told me, who had been out with Duncan Guest the night he was murdered. Her name was Deborah Huntington. She had seen my name in the paper and she wanted to talk with me.

  “When and where?” I asked.

  “At her house. She and her brother are waiting for you there. Do you know who the Huntingtons are?”

  “Millionaires, aren’t they?”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Harvest said stiffly. “I meant it’s an old and highly respected family in this town.”

  “But also rich,’ I added, “or you wouldn’t care how old and highly respected they were.”

  “Stop the adolescent sniping, Joe. Don’t you want the business?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Is there going to be business?”

  “I’m — not sure. Her brother thinks I would be enough protection against the law, but Miss Huntington thinks otherwise. In any event, they’ll pay you for your time tonight, even if they don’t hire you.”

  “Protection against the law? Elucidate, Greg.”

  “Haven’t you read the paper? A woman was with this Duncan Guest when he was killed. That was a couple of hours after Miss Huntington left him, but are the police going to think so? The maid will testify that Miss Huntington came home that night at eleven-thirty, but the police have a middle-class notion that servants can be bought.”

  “I see. So Miss Huntington might want to hire me to investigate the murder?”

  “She might.”

  “What about her papa? Would he agree?”

  “The senior Huntington died a year ago, Joe, and her mother two years before that. The estate was split evenly between Miss Deborah and Mr. Curtis Huntington.”

  “Curt Huntington — ” I said. “That gent who owns the Wilshire Arena?”

  “That’s one of the Huntington properties, yes.”

  “Is that how Deborah met Duncan — through the wrestling at the Wilshire Arena?”

  “I have no idea. Joe, you’re interrupting a bridge game. Why don’t you ask the Huntingtons these questions?”

  “Okay,” I said sadly. “Greg, I knew you when you played pinochle. You’ve certainly come up in the world.”

  He didn’t comment on that. He gave me the address of the Huntingtons and hung up without a good-bye.

  The address was a Beverly Hills address. Beverly Hills, like Santa Monica, is a distinct and separate municipality with a police department of its own. I got along with the Beverly Hills Department very well. I had worked there for four years.

  It was late and my beard stubble was showing. I shaved in the office before driving to the Huntingtons’.

  It was a fieldstone house on a summit overlooking the Dade Country Club. It was sheltered from the road by Lombardy poplars.

  The maid told me the Huntingtons were expecting me and led me to a lofty, paneled room that ran the length of the pool in the rear of the house.

  Curtis Huntington stood near a leather-upholstered bar; a dark, slim and attractive girl sat in a chair nearby. I recognized the girl as one I had seen in a few recent TV dramas.

  Curtis Huntington was one of those slim and elegant men who wear clothes as though they invented them. He introduced me to his sister.

  I smiled at her and said, “We have a mutual friend. Einar Hansen.”

  She smiled back as her brother frowned. She looked at him and explained, “That man in the hamburger stand. He’s — I mean, he was a very good friend of Dunk’s.”

  Huntington nodded toward a soft leather love seat and I sat down. He said, “My sister thinks it would be wise for you to investigate the death of Mr. Guest.”

  “Don’t you, sir?” I asked him.

  He said thoughtfully, “I’m not sure. The police are going to learn Deborah was out with him that evening. But we have a number of witnesses who will swear she was home at eleven-thirty.”

  “A number? I thought there was only a maid to testify.”

  He shook his head. “A maid and a housekeeper and a neighbor. The neighbor came over, as a matter of fact, to borrow some seltzer for a party they were giving and talked with Deborah.”

  “In that case,” I admitted, “you don’t really need me.”

  Deborah said quietly, “Maybe I do. I’d like to know about Duncan Guest and I can afford to pay for the information.”

  I studied her. She looked at me candidly and without any apparent grief.

  Her brother said, “Duncan was a very good friend of ours. Despite his … background, he had all the instincts of a gentleman.”

  A double-gaited gentleman, I thought, but didn’t voice it. I said, “Because of his … background, I’d be interested in learning where you met him, Miss Curtis.”

  “At a party,” she said, “in Hollywood.” She smiled. “I was introduced to him by Luscious Louis. Have you heard of Luscious Louis?”

  “A cheap imitator of Gorgeous George,” I said lightly, “and a lousy wrestler to boot.”

  Curtis Huntington wrinkled his nose and said nothing.

  I asked, “And how did you meet Luscious Louis, Miss Huntington? Understand, I’m not investigating you, but frankly he doesn’t seem like the kind of man who would move in your circles. Did you meet him through your ownership of the Wilshire Arena?”

  She shook her head. “I met Louis through my agent and the rest of them through Dunk — Mr. Guest. They’re really much more interesting personalities than you’d imagine from their ring perfo
rmances.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard,” I said. “Slumming, really then, weren’t you, Miss Huntington?”

  She colored faintly and her chin lifted. “I had no such thought in mind,” she said stiffly, “and I am beginning to doubt the advisability of hiring you.”

  I stood up. “Why don’t you sleep on it? There’s been a disturbing lack of honesty here tonight.” I turned toward the door.

  Deborah Huntington said, “One moment, Mr. Puma. You haven’t been dismissed.”

  I turned to stare at her. “Dismissed — ? I’m not a servant, Miss Huntington. I have my own business and the right to pick my own clients.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. That was a bad choice of words. But I — had a feeling you personally dislike me.”

  “I don’t even know you, Miss Huntington. But you’ve shown me a familiar pattern tonight: the beautiful daughter of a respected family getting involved with trash.”

  Curtis Huntington protested, “Duncan Guest was far from trash, Mr. Puma. You obviously never knew him.”

  I faced him. “That’s right. The first time I met him, he was dead. I was speaking of his friends.”

  “Einar Hansen was a friend of his,” Deborah Huntington said. “Do you consider him trash?”

  “Not so far as I know him. But he’s certainly not a man who would normally move in the Huntington coterie, is he?”

  Deborah Huntington stared at me. “My God, you’re a snob! A man in your trade a snob — it’s incredible.”

  “I’m not a snob,” I answered. “But I am always leary of people who try too hard to prove that they aren’t.”

  She glared. Her brother chuckled and said, “Why don’t we all have a drink? Somehow, we got off on the wrong foot.”

  She ignored him, her dark eyes glinting angrily. And then her lovely face softened and she half smiled. She said, “He might be right. Let’s call a temporary truce.”

  I shrugged. “Okay, if it’s good booze.”

  Her brother said, “I have any kind you want. Good booze for my friends and cheap booze for Deborah’s.”

  “Consider me one of your friends,” I told him, “just for tonight.”

  It was Jack Daniels and how often did I get a chance to drink that? He poured me a mammoth slug of it and added ice and a minimum of good mountain water. We sat and talked.