“I apologize. The reports aren’t all in yet, Sergeant. There must have been half a dozen women screaming in Koski’s apartment building and a couple of them must have seen that Jaguar gun out of there. Before you learn my story is true the hard way, why not accept it now, as one gentleman from another?”
He put his cigarette out slowly, starting at the ashtray. “Joe, for crying out loud, don’t make a production out of it. Will you swear to me right now that you have never lied to a police officer, or withheld information from him?”
“If you’ll swear to me that Harvest would still be getting this much courtesy if he wasn’t a friend of the D.A.’s.”
He looked up. “Easy, now.”
“Easy, hell. I’m giving you a chance to be a whole man.”
“I am a whole man. Or I’d be a lieutenant.”
I said, “Harvest’s secretary wasn’t in the office when we left. And as for Miss Deborah Huntington, Harvest kept insisting to me that he was sure she had killed Duncan Guest.”
“Oh? How come that’s not in your report?”
“Because I thought it was nonsense.”
“You let us decide what is nonsense and what isn’t, Joe. We’ve given you a lot of leeway and we expect your full co-operation in return.”
“Sergeant, you checked out Deborah Huntington. You checked her out thoroughly. Harvest was just making dialogue, trying to distract me from the real reason he sent for me.”
“And the real reason …?”
“Was to get me over to where those hoods could take care of me.”
“And why would he want to do that? What threat were you to him or to them? Don’t tell me they’d get that rough and that tricky just out of petulance.”
“I can’t think of any other reason. All three of them had reason to hate me, remember. I broke Harvest’s hand and I located Koski and Kranyk for you.”
“It doesn’t add,” he said. “It’s too childish for pros.”
“You’re right,” I said thoughtfully, “it doesn’t.” I stood up. “Am I free to go?”
“Of course,” he said. He coughed. “But — ah — don’t leave town.”
“I — ah — won’t,” I said. “Thanks so much for all your faith in me, Sergeant.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said.
FOURTEEN
HARVEST HAD GUTS; there was no doubting that. He had told the big lie, the daring, impossible lie, and it was temporarily being accepted. He couldn’t do what would have been instinctive in his situation — he couldn’t leave town. He had too much invested in his name and his practice here.
So he had told the daring lie, not the little one. And there was a possibility he was going to get away with it.
A prowl car took me to my car, still in front of the apartment building. The neighbors were all out on the lawns now, gassing and watching the front of the building, and I got a lot of attention from them, my new white bandage marking me as a participant.
A reporter from the Mirror-News caught me before I could get the Plymouth out of there and I was very polite to him, because the Mirror-News is owned by the Times and so is Los Angeles.
I gave the man a polite ten minutes and posed in three positions for the photographer he called over. I explained that I was working with the Department and had just about solved this double killing with some Department help.
I didn’t tell him where I was going next, because I didn’t think Arnold Giampolo had been behind the attack and I still owed him the silence I’d promised him.
I drove over to his place slowly, a throbbing in my head warning me that perhaps that vase had done more damage than the police physician had assumed.
A woman came to the door today, a fairly young woman who looked like a secretary, a well-paid secretary, a well-paid and agreeable secretary, a well-paid, agreeable and well-stacked secretary.
“My name is Joe Puma,” I told her, “and it’s very important that I see Mr. Giampolo right now.”
“He’s having lunch,” she said doubtfully.
“Maybe we could all have it together,” I said. “He promised me a meal a couple of days ago.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Joe Puma …,” she said thoughtfully. “I have a feeling the name should ring a bell.
“It’s rung a lot of bells,” I said. “Private investigator, bon vivant, romantic — just tell him the name, honey, and await his reaction.”
“I know you now,” she said. “This way, Mr. Puma.”
I walked slowly behind her, keeping to a minimum the throbbing in my head. We walked through the living room, through the dining room, and into a paneled breakfast room that looked out onto the pool.
Arnold Giampolo was eating a thick soup. He looked up and saw the patch on my head. “What happened to you, Joe?”
I looked at the girl and back at him. “You may go now, Daisy,” he said. “Thank you.” She left, and he nodded toward a chair at the far end of the table from him. “Had lunch?”
“No.”
“Have it with me.”
“Thanks.” I sat down. “Is her name really Daisy?”
He nodded and smiled. “Why?”
“Oh, Orchid or Camellia or even Rose. She simply doesn’t look like a daisy.”
His smile was forced. “Joe, Joe — a patch on your head and a gag on your lips. What happened to you?”
“I tangled with Koski and Kranyk,” I said. “Kranyk will live but Koski might not. Neither one of them hurt me; it was that piano-legged blonde of Kranyk’s who put the patch on my head.”
He stared at me, his soup spoon halfway to his mouth. “Start at the beginning,” he said, “and give it to me straight. Tell me everything, Joe.”
I gave it to him straight, all of it. A maid brought me some of the soup, a creamy, rich mushroom soup and not canned. She brought me an omelette after that. I was eating fast and talking slow and finished with the airless room and my dialogue with Macrae just as we got to the coffee.
He took out a cigarette and I lighted it for him. He said, “San Francisco, eh? Harvest is making allies. He’s a slick one, isn’t he?”
“And together than he looks,” I said.
Arnold Giampolo grimaced and held his breath for a moment. Then he said softly, “You don’t think I was behind that trap, do you, Joe?”
“No,” I said.
“Thank you. I wasn’t. They’ve gone over to Harvest, the way it looks. You say Koski’s in a bad way?”
“Sergeant Macrae told me it’s doubtful if he’ll pull through.”
Again, some pain must have gripped him, for he grimaced and held his breath. “Could you wait a moment?” he said. “I need a little morphine.”
“Of course,” I said.
He left the room. My hand trembled as I lifted my coffee to my mouth. The lion was dying and the jackals were closing in. Well, Mike Petalious would take care of the jackals eventually, if he listened to someone smarter, someone like his wife.
I was pouring another cup of coffee from the silver pot when he came back in. He walked slowly and lightly, like a man on eggs. He sat down again and smiled at me dreamily.
“Great stuff,” he said.
“I’ve heard it is. Mr. Giampolo, why me? What did they want to get rid of me for? What kind of a threat am I?”
“You’re one of the few on your side of the fence who knows Giampolo is king and Harvest crown prince. You’re the only man on your side of the law who knows Petalious is the chosen heir. With you gone, that knowledge dies with you.” He sipped his coffee. “Would you like some cognac or something?”
“No, thank you. My head isn’t quite right, yet.”
He looked at me enviously. “Tough. Smart, sexy, tough and active. Damn you, Joseph Puma.”
I sipped the coffee and tried to smile at him. Tm not really smart, just windy.”
“How would you like to be Mike Petalious’ partner? He needs somebody like you.”
I shook my head. “I’m — fundamentally h
onest. I told you I wasn’t smart.”
“Maybe it’s not so stupid to be honest,” he said. “Maybe there are some rewards I’ve never considered.”
“Honesty is a disease,” I assured him. “And like most diseases today, it’s being exterminated slowly.”
He licked his lips, nibbled them as though they itched. “Why was Harvest trying to steer you onto Deborah Huntington? What was his purpose there, do you think?”
“It was something to keep my mind off the obvious, the obvious being that I was being led into a trap. He had to have some excuse to get me to think he was turning honest. Then, when the call came from Kranyk, it would be logical for me to think you had sent that pair against the honest Harvest. It all made sense until I realized he had lied about the golf and this was all so pat.”
“You were lucky,” he said.
“In a number of ways,” I admitted. “I was lucky I never had the tappets adjusted on my car, for one thing. And I was lucky I had broken Harvest’s hand, or I wouldn’t have known about the golf lie.”
“Koski and Kranyk won’t bother you any more,” he promised. “I can’t guarantee anything about Harvest. Now, about that psychiatrist, I know who he is. Curt Huntington asked me to recommend one and I recommended Doctor Light. I’ll phone him for you, Joe.”
“He wouldn’t tell me anything, would he? Wouldn’t it be a violation of his ethics?”
“Maybe. But I put him through medical school, so maybe he’d bend them a little for me, particularly if a murder is involved.”
“I think it was just talk,” I answered. “I doubt if there’s a remote chance it would do me any good. She’s too well covered. Even if she’s the killer, she’s too well covered to take into court.”
“I’ll phone him anyway,” he said. “You can decide if you need him or not. And tell your Sergeant Macrae to hold both Koski and Kranyk if they recover. I’ll send him enough to keep them in San Quentin for years.”
I finished my coffee and stood up. “Well, thanks. I’m glad I kept you on my side with my silence.”
As I went out, I heard him telling Daisy to get Doctor Light on the phone for him. He was dying with dignity, like a lion should, that much was evident. He was trying to leave everything clean behind him, reward his friends and avenge his enemies, like a man should.
The sun was out in full force and people were scurrying, worrying, breathing and conniving all over town. Loving, hating, eating and sleeping while the king took morphine to dull the biting pain.
I breathed deeply and walked slowly to the car. I didn’t even hate Gregory Harvest at the moment but he had to be nailed to his home-made cross. That much I owed the dying lion.
In the outer office, his secretary looked at me fearfully. I nodded toward his door. “Judas in?”
She shook her head. “He’s over at the West Side Station. He was picked up by two uniformed men about twenty minutes ago.”
I sat in a chair next to her desk. “How wonderful. Why?”
“That — woman who hit you on the head said she saw him there at the apartment. And some other women there saw the Jaguar.” She took a deep breath. “And then Miss Huntington — changed her story.”
“Are they holding her, too?”
“No. She claims she saw your car leave and assumed you were driving it, but now she remembers the other man looked shorter than you are and she’s sure it wasn’t you.”
“Fine. And how about you, Mrs. Schroeder? How come they didn’t take you along? Or did you change your story, too?”
“I was out of the office,” she said. “I didn’t see either one of you leave.”
“So they should have taken you along. Why didn’t they? That isn’t what you told them the first time.”
She chewed her lower lip. “I called them — before they got any of the other stories. I told them my conscience was more important to me than my job.”
“That’s a good line,” I said admiringly. “Did you give it a lot of emotional overtone?”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”
“Yes I do. May I use your phone?”
She nodded mutely, staring at me.
I phoned the Venice Station and Macrae was there. “What now?” he asked gruffly.
“An apology,” I answered, “in the proper tone of voice.”
“I’m sorry, he said in a near-falsetto. “I apologize for ever doubting you, Mr. Puma. I was a beast. Drop dead!”
I chuckled. “Now you’ll never get beyond sergeant. See you later.”
I hung up and looked thoughtfully at Mrs. Schroeder. “You don’t, by chance, happen to have a cerulean mink stole, do you?”
She colored. “I don’t even have a fox scarf. You have a nasty mind, don’t you?”
“I meet so many nasty people,” I explained. I stood up. “Give my regards to Mr. Schroeder. And remember that Gregory Harvest is not a man to forget a grievance. You still might not have made the smart move by phoning the police, Mrs. Schroeder.”
“I wasn’t trying to be smart,” she said. “I was trying to be honest. That’s something you wouldn’t understand.”
I used a word I’d rather not repeat. It is a product of the bull. I left her with her mouth open and went out into the hot, late afternoon.
I hadn’t been to my office all day and I sort of missed that drab little dump. I drove over there.
There was one check in the mail. It was a small check, but five months overdue and very welcome. There was a light bill and the bill for one of my insurance policies I thought of Arnold Giampolo and made out a check for the insurance bill. My brother was my only heir but he could use the money; he was still going to college.
Deborah Huntington, killer …? No. At one time, maybe, but she was a fairly reasonable woman now by feminine standards. All women are partially punchy; she wasn’t much worse than the others.
My answering service informed me she had phoned at three o’clock. That was less than an hour ago.
Sheila Gallegan? Look at it objectively, Puma, not through the memory of last night. No.
Miss Quintana, soon to be Mrs. Mike Petalious? Maybe. I didn’t know her very well. I had never slept with her. Damn it.
Ruth Schroeder?
The blonde with the football legs? Mrs. Whitey Tullgren?
The model from Regal Furs? I never had followed through on her. Maybe I would, after the murder was solved.
Einar Hansen’s sister?
Snip Caster’s Aggie?
Nine women I had met and batted only .222. Figure it out for yourself, nine into two. That was pretty damned decent of me. My head throbbed and absurd and weird thoughts poured through it and I kept thinking of funerals. Why?
I went to the cooler and drank three paper cups full of water. I went to the washroom down the hall and bathed my face and neck in cool water. I had nothing to do. I had nowhere to go except to Doctor Light.
Show me the light, Doctor Light. A dizziness shook me as I straightened to dry my face and neck with paper towels. My face in the mirror above the sink looked pale and awry. It was not my face but my vision that was awry, I knew.
I had a small leather couch in my office, for emergencies, and I lay on that and tried to blank my mind. Was it a delayed reaction from the vase or too much thinking with a limited mentality?
Didn’t I want to talk with Doctor Light? Didn’t I want to know about Deborah? What was she to me except a spoiled, rich brat?
She was one of the girls I loved. I loved a lot of them and not only for the reasons you might be guessing. I love to talk with them, walk with them, eat with them, dance with them. They’re much more interesting than men to me and always had been, long before I knew their ultimate gift.
I loved Deborah and Sheila, Miss Quintana and Mrs. Tullgren, the Regal Fur model and Ruth Schroeder and Daisy and even Aggie; I loved them all because they were women and this would be a sickening world without them.
The throbbing dimmed as the blood left my head and my
vision was a little better. I got up and phoned Deborah.
“Returning your call,” I explained. “Did you phone to hire me or fire me and what is my present status?”
“Let’s not fight,” she said quietly. “You use that line a lot, Deb.”
“Only with you. I’m sorry I told the police what I did. Even if I had thought that was you in the Plymouth, I shouldn’t have told them anything like that.”
“Why did you?”
“Because I started to come back to your place last night, about a half-hour after I’d left. And I saw Sheila Gallegan going up there. With an overnight bag.
“She was frightened,” I explained. “Wouldn’t you be, if you lived where she did, and lived alone, as she does?”
“Please, Joe. Don’t make it worse by lying. Do all the frightened women in town spend the night at your place?”
“There isn’t room. It’s a small apartment. Do you know what your friend Greg Harvest was trying to sell me?”
“What?”
“The theory he supports, that you murdered Duncan Guest. He wanted to help me substantiate it.”
“How?”
“We never got around to discussing that. People started shooting at me and I haven’t seen him since.”
“Are you free tonght?”
“Later, about eight, I will be.”
“I still have the key. We won’t fight, will we?”
“I won’t. I hope you don’t. I’ve a headache.”
“I’ll rub your forehead and sing lullabies,” she promised. “Good-bye now.”
I hung up and waited a few minutes before dialing the number I had been given. A woman answered, and I said, “This is Joseph Puma. Would it be possible for me to see Doctor Light before he goes home? Mr. Giampolo phoned him about me, this afternoon.”
FIFTEEN
THE KEY WORD Doctor Light used was transvestitism and if you don’t know what it is, you could look it up, as Mr. Thurber once said. It is latent in a lot of people, more often women than men, I would guess from a look around the world today. Particularly out here. It has led to some spectacular crimes, one recent example in the Middle West, in one of the dairy states. Under the milder drive, it is harmless and sells a lot of women’s slacks.
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