“But not for long,” I remarked. “What did he want?”
“He knew I had remarried. He threatened to expose me as a bigamist unless—unless I did what he wanted.”
“The blackmail bite, eh?”
“N-not exactly. At first he demanded money, and I flatly refused. Then he said he would make a compromise. If I would send him a lot of clients—steer famous stars to him—he would let me alone.” She dabbed at her moist eyes with a fragment of lace doing duty as a handkerchief. “So many movie people patronize astrologers and fortune tellers, you know. And Wizardo—Mahatma Guru now—said he could clean up if he had some big names on his clientele list. He gave me four days to make up my mind, and said if I didn’t follow orders he would expose me and wreck my screen career.”
I thought that over, keeping my eyes on her agitated face. Finally I said: “Quite a creep, the Mahatma. So then what?”
“I came here to the studio this evening for some retakes. He phoned me—”
“Himself, personally?”
“No, it was a man who called himself Clancy and said he worked for Mahatma Guru. Clancy told me Guru wanted to see me at once. Not at his home, but on the corner of Gower and Sunset across the street from the Columbia Broadcasting building. I w-went there. I waited, and waited.”
“He didn’t show up?” I prompted her.
“No. So then I drove by his house and there were police cars all around, and I heard somebody say a fortune teller had b-been murdered and they were looking for an actress who had killed him, and then somebody else mentioned my name. I was p-petrified!”
“You drove straight back here to Paratone?”
“Yes. Next you and Pete came in.”
I said: “Of course you realize your alibi leaks like a sieve. You say you were at the corner of Sunset and Gower. Any witnesses to back you up?”
“N-no. None. But I didn’t kill him—I didn’t!”
Hollister took her hands in his. “You mustn’t lie to us, Lola. If you’re guilty I’ll stand by you. And Ransom, here, will do all he can. I’ve already retained him for cash.”
“I’m not lying!” she whimpered. “I didn’t kill him, I swear I didn’t! If he accused me it was because he was vindictive. He was getting even with me because I’d remarried; because I was a movie star and he was jealous, envious. It’s got to be that way, it has to be! Somebody else shot him, and he knew he was dying, and wanted to get me in t-trouble—”
As if on cue, her phone rang just when she said that last word: trouble. I uncradled the instrument. “Yeah?”
A male voice rumbled on the wire. I listened, then hung up in a hurry and faced them.
“That was the main gate. Brunvig of Homicide is on the lot and coming here with Clancy,” I said.
CHAPTER VI
ANOTHER KILLING
I couldn’t have created more consternation if I’d announced a delegation of boa constrictors. Pete Hollister and his lovely but woebegone wife gulped with dismay. Then she moaned and asked what was she going to do, and he said he didn’t know, but he would stick by her no matter what happened. It was all very touching.
It didn’t solve any problems, though. And I wasn’t quite ready to throw the brunette movie star into the arms of the law—not until I could do a little checking on Reginald Percival Clancy. When I threw my thinking machine into high gear I realized Clancy was the key to a lot of riddles.
Reviewing matters at a rapid velocity, I came to a hair-trigger conclusion and acted on it. I jumped to the wall switch, cut off the dressing bungalow’s lights.
“Outside!” I yapped. Grabbing Lola I propelled her through the doorway. “Make this fast, pet,” I told her. “Know where the scene dock is?”
“Y-yes. On the back l-lot”
“My coupe’s parked near there. Scram in that direction. You can sit in the car if it seems safe, but if you hear anybody coming, hide. Sneak in the scene dock and squeeze yourself beneath a property staircase or something. Go on, now. Blow.”
She blew.
To Hollister I said: “You take the other way around and stand sentry duty so you can warn her in case of trouble. Savvy?”
“Right,” he said, and hurried out.
I waited just long enough to scratch a match and light a cigarette. Then I loped toward the main gate and kept an eye peeled for callers. Sure enough, callers showed up in the form of Ole Brunvig and Reginald Clancy. Brunvig, beefy and looking dyspeptic, spied me and emitted a snort of rage.
“So here you are, are you? This Clancy character tells me you knew right along it was Lola Dulac who bumped the Mahatma but you deliberately clammed up on me.”
“I forgot,” I said meekly, casting a dark scowl at Clancy. “I had a lapse of memory.” Ole’s neck swelled around the top of his collar and his complexion turned an apoplectic shade in the glow of a studio street lamp.
“Lapse of memory, hey? You’ll have a lapse of license, big odd. I suppose you’ll try to tell me it wasn’t your coupe flying up the side of that mountain when I drove to the Dulac girl’s house. I suppose you’re going to say you didn’t come here ahead of me so you could keep her from being arrested.”
“Stop supplying me with dialogue,” I said. “I’ll furnish my own, and it won’t be anything like what you’re screeching. As a matter of cold fact—”
My cold fact was drowned by a gun shot. From somewhere close by in the surrounding shadows a roscoe roared: Ka-Chow! in spiteful accents. Hard on the heels of this flat, barking report, Reginald Percival Clancy dropped with a hole in the head. The bullet had drilled a hole through his noggin, and he was dead before he hit the ground. He bounced once, and a macabre shudder twitched him. Then he lay still.
The unseen cannon spoke again. A tongue of orange yellow fire licked toward me, ribbonlike, and I felt a slight plucking at my right shoulder followed by a quick stinging burn, as if a bee had used me for a pincushion. I let out a yelp and dropped behind Clancy’s motionless form.
Ole Brunvig stood there with his mouth hanging open and a look of blank stupefaction on his face. Suddenly he clawed for his service .38 in his back pants pocket and the gun stuck there. He began racing around in concentric circles, yelling in rage.
At last he gave a mighty tug and the rod came loose with a tearing noise, pocket and all. He stared at the cloth clinging to the gat and called tearfully upon heaven to witness that he had just ruined a brand new thirty-dollar suit, adding that it wasn’t even paid for.
“Charge it to the city,” I snarled. “Duck before you’re a clay pigeon.”
I started rolling frantically in the direction of a property rain barrel that somebody had left out in the open overnight, seeking its dubious protection before the next shot could nail me to the earth.
There was no next shot. An abrupt silence descended, so thick you could cut it like limburger cheese. Then footfalls sounded in the distance.
I leaped upright, fastened the clutch on Brunvig’s arm.
“Come on, Ole. That was one homicide I didn’t count on, and it’s time for the payoff. Client or no client, we’re going after Lola Dulac.” I started to run toward the back lot.
Brunvig followed along in my wake. “I get it now! She killed Clancy and tried to kill you so neither of you could testify that you heard Mahatma Guru’s dying accusation naming her as his murderer!”
Another voice chimed in from the darkness as a bulky shape detached itself from the vicinity of my coupe and dashed toward us. “Good grief! You mean Lola sneaked away from here and committed another killing?” It was Pete Hollister joining us. “That was what those shots were I just heard? She murdered Clancy?”
“No,” I said, and whisked out my pencil flashlight, drenched him in its narrow beam of brightness. “No, Lola didn’t shoot the Clancy ginzo. You did.”
Then, to Brunvig: “Better put the cuffs on him, Ole. He’s the guilty man!”
“Guilty?” Hollister strangled. “Me?”
I said: “Yeah, you. Guilty of double murder—because you’re the guy who shot the Mahatma, too.”
He flinched as if I’d slapped him across the face. “You’re out of your senses, Ransom!” he yelled. “That’s crazy talk!”
“Clues are never crazy when there’s evidence to back them.” I said. “And I found plenty of both. To start with, the Mahatma who apparently croaked before my eyes had long-fingered, hairy hands, but when I got back after phoning headquarters from a pay station the corpse had short, stubby fingers. Then I touched an arm. It resisted me. Rigor mortis. But that was too soon for rigor mortis to set in. Which meant a switch had been pulled while I was out phoning. The dead man was not the one I’d watched dying.”
“You’re insane!” Hollister sneered.
I said: “No, I’m just clever. This real corpse with stubby fingers was the genuine Mahatma, and he’d been bumped off quite a while earlier—long enough to stiffen. Therefore somebody else impersonated him when I first drifted into his parlor, somebody in an excellent makeup job, including red grease paint on his chest to look like a bullet wound. This impersonator had enacted a role for the sole and exclusive purpose of accusing Lola Dulac of the killing—an accusation which would legally stick because it came ostensibly from the murdered Mahatma’s lips.”
“Poppycock.”
“The same to you,” I responded, “with freckles on it.” I tapped him on the chest. “Now this corpse-switching routine had been pulled in my absence, but in Reginald Clancy’s presence. Therefore Clancy was in on the deal up to his tonsils. He was working in cahoots with the dead Mahatma’s impersonator, the man who was trying to frame Lola Dulac for the job. I could have pinched Clancy at once, but making him squeal was something else again, and my time was short. So I left, knowing the cops would hold him. Then I started out to locate Lola, ask her if she knew of any enemies who would want to push her into the gas chamber.”
“Melodrama!” Hollister scoffed.
“Yeah? You’re the ham with the melodrama, pal. Your voice is theatrical enough to fit that resonant basso-profundo routine you gave me when you were pretending to be the dying Mahatma. Moreover, your fingers are long and meaty—as I found out when you tried to throttle me when we were fighting on your patio. Finally, you gave yourself dead away in your conversation. You made some bad slips, without even realizing you’d made them.”
“Such as?” he asked.
“First you said: If Lola killed that bearded skunk. Later you mentioned her shooting him as he sat at his horoscope table. But I hadn’t told you those things, so how could you know unless you’d been there yourself? And if you’d been there, you were the man behind the plot. As soon as you got the real corpse in place, you stripped off your makeup and scrammed out to your home in Laurel Canyon. You were waiting for me when I showed up. You’d had plenty of time for the trip. And just now, you shot Clancy so he’d never be able to confess and implicate you. He’d given his testimony to the dicks, and his usefulness to you was finished. You erased him. The shot you fired at me, though, was just window dressing, an attempt to make things worse for your wife. Actually, anybody who’d put a bullet through Clancy’s conk would be too good a marksman to miss me.
“A fat lot of proof you’ve got for all this!” He showed me his strong white teeth. “You haven’t mentioned motive. Why should I frame my own wife?”
I flipped away my butt. “Jealousy, envy, greed, opportunism—those were your motives. I noticed extension phones in your joint. Bedroom extensions. I think you must have listened in, the night Mahatma Guru phoned Lola and put the blackmail bite on her. You realized she had another husband—in marrying you she’d committed unwitting bigamy. I imagine that made you sore, being an egotist. Also, you were envious of her screen success because you were only a character ham with a flair for makeup and impersonation, whereas she was a top star. And finally, she held the purse strings, held them tight. I learned that by asking you to bribe me, and all you had was a paltry hundred clams to offer.”
“So what?”
“So you kept yapping about how you would stick by Lola regardless of her guilt. I’m guessing now, but I think you hoped to profit by the publicity you’d get: Actor Husband Loyal To Movie Star Murderess. Shucks, some studio might slip you a starring role on the strength of the notoriety. But mainly you craved to croak the man who’d been your wife’s first hubby, and you wanted your wife to take the rap. Then your vanity would be salved. You’d inherit Lola’s estate, and perhaps be a famous movie actor. How’m I doing?”
“Rotten. You’ve got no proof.”
I said: “A paraffin test of your mitts will show if you fired a rod recently. A microdermal inspection will indicate if you’ve been wearing Hindu makeup. Fingerprints will prove you were barging around the Mahatma’s house. And—”
That was as far as I got. He jumped back and yelled: “You’ll never put me in jail!” and started running.
Ole Brunvig raised his .38, triggered it and missed. Then Lola Dulac came blipping from behind some props.
“I heard it all!” she cried. “And I still love you, darling. Oh-h-h, Pete, I’ll protect you!” She tried to reach him, shield him. Romance, it’s wonderful!
Only instead of shielding him she accidentally tripped him. He lurched, staggered, and came spang into Brunvig’s line of fire. Brunvig’s roscoe yammered: Ka-Chee! and the Hollister hambo bit the dust, deader than canceled postage.
“Well, what do you know!” Brunvig said. “I fogged him plumb through the spine. We save the trouble of a trial.”
“Yeah,” I growled, and went to the weeping Lola. I didn’t intend to refund that hundred bucks, but I was ready to give her anything else, within reason.
ROOM 801, by Jack Halliday
I suppose I fell in love with her the first time I saw her. Love’s like that, isn’t it? I mean, the real item, the kind that hurts you late at night when you can’t keep yourself from remembering what she looked like when she was sad and wistful, or how her hair matted against her cheek when her tears stained it, or the way the dimples seemed to appear from nowhere when you really made her laugh.
It was a humid August afternoon, the fifth of the month to be precise, and I was hot and bothered and feeling melancholy like I always did around this time. Dates are like that with me. June first is another red-letter spot on the calendar. But I won’t bore you with meaningless details. Meaningless to you, I mean. To me? Everything about her is meaningful to me. Always has been. Even after all these years.
* * * *
The flight had been uneventful and the rental was actually ready on time: the right model and everything. A lanky fellow with bad skin and oily black hair greeted me. He slid the contract my way and I signed it dutifully, forced a smile and began the half-hour drive to the hotel.
I don’t remember anything particularly interesting about any of the scenery on the way over. I was just glad to disembark from the car and roll my suitcase through the doors and up and into the reception area of the Brock Plaza Hotel.
The girl behind the desk reminded me of her: bright brown eyes and light blond hair. I noticed the very fine, light hairs that decorated her tan arm as she slid the registration form across the desk. We went through the particulars and I actually felt the pulse in my neck when she slid the key case toward me. The number 801 was inked prominently on the cardboard holding the plastic room key. I snatched it up, tapped it a few times against my five-o’clock-shadowed chin and sidestepped a too-eager hotel employee looking for a tip from me for allowing him the privilege of doing something slower than I could.
The elevator smelled like the kind of lemony cleaner they used on the floors of my high school longer ago than I care to re
member. The ding of the elevator signaled that my destination was even closer now. The carpet was comfortable under my feet and a Latina housekeeper avoided my eyes as I made my way past her, magnetized by the door to the room at the end of the hall. I never could get used to the pictures decorating the hallway. Black and white and yet just as interesting as if they had recently captured some newly discovered wonder of the world this very morning.
In a moment I was once again inside the small, well-appointed room. In one way, it was decidedly nothing special. Yet in another, to someone with trained eyes like mine, it was a portal to another day and another time and another lifetime altogether. The room may have been inexpensive, but it was priceless nonetheless.
I rolled my luggage case against the wall and moved across the floor, beside the bed, and slid the curtains aside. You could barely see the Falls, but they were there all right. No telling how many marital unions they had witnessed. Time had marched on and thousands of gallons of water had poured into the Niagara River in a sort of inarticulate wedding serenade to the nameless and faceless copulating couples who had begun their marital journeys on the Canadian side of this famous little town. It had worked its magic for us too.
But that was “long ago and far away.”
I freshened up and arranged my toiletries mechanically on the sink top before I fired up a cigarette and plopped down onto the bed without even turning down the spread. I gazed out the window, mesmerized by the sight and sound of the water, wishing for all the world that this time, this year, I would finally be cleansed of it all.
The Noir Mystery MEGAPACK ™: 25 Modern and Classic Mysteries Page 26