Carstairs sat up and glared at him in outraged protest.
Someone stumbled in the hall. Doan pushed Harriet aside and opened the door wide. Susan Sally was leaning against the wall opposite, and her eyes were glazed, and she was swaying a little.
"They got me, toots," she said. The muscles in her soft throat tightened suddenly, and the expression on her face changed to one of incredulous, shocked surprise. "Doan!" She coughed. The sound was deep and bubbling in her throat, and then she put out one hand gropingly in front of her and fell forward in a graceful, limp whirl.
Doan caught her before she hit the floor. He stiffened, holding her, staring over her shoulder. On the wall, where she had rubbed against it, there was a wet, red smear.
"What--" said Harriet, scared. "What--"
"Shut-up," said Doan. "Take care of her."
He flicked the .25 automatic out of the breast pocket of his coat and ran down the hall. The self-operating elevator was up at this floor, its door open. Doan went down the stairs three at a time.
Edmund was contemplating his radio diagram with a slap-happy expression on his face. He looked up and saw Doan and the automatic, and came to with a startled gulp.
"Who was with Susan Sally?" Doan asked tightly.
Edmund made stiff mouthing motions and shook his head mutely and helplessly.
"Who came in after her?"
"No--no--no--" Edmund said, doing a little better.
"Who was in the lobby when she came?"
Edmund's face was paper-white. He pointed to himself.
"No one else?"
"N-no," said Edmund. "She ain't m-mad, is she? I didn't do nothin'. I juh-juh-just asked her for an autograph, is all."
"Didn't you notice anything the matter with her?"
Edmund swallowed hard. "I thought maybe she was a little drunk. I mean, she staggered. Not much, though."
"What'd she say when you asked her for an autograph?"
"She just said she was in a hurry now, and she'd give me one when she came out."
"Did she use the elevator?"
"Yes. I told her the stairs were quicker, but she said she couldn't make it. That's what she said. 'I can't make it, bub'. So I thought that was why she was drunk. I mean--staggering and--and that..."
"Where are those damned G-men hanging out?"
"D-down in the garage in the janitor's apartment, but I'm not s-supposed to tell anybody..."
"You tell them to get up to my apartment. Now."
"Yes, sir!" said Edmund, plugging in hastily on the switchboard.
Doan ran back up the stairs. Susan Sally was no longer lying in the hall, and he trotted quickly down it to his apartment and pushed the door open.
Harriet stood up beside the chesterfield. There was blood on her hands, and her face was greenish.
"They never taught me anything like this... I--I think she's..."
Susan Sally was lying face down on the chesterfield. Harriet had taken off her jacket and blouse. There was a little jagged tear, no wider than a man's thumbnail in the softly tanned skin of her back, left of her backbone, just under her shoulder-blade. Dark blood made a thin scribble down toward the hollow of her back.
Doan picked up one hand and felt for the pulse in the wrist. There was none. He pressed his fingers against the side of her neck. Then, very gently, he turned her head sideways and lifted the lid of one eye.
Harriet gulped.
"She's dead," Doan said tonelessly.
Arne came in the room and stopped short. He looked from Susan to Sally to Harriet to Doan. He didn't say anything.
"She was coming to see me," Doan said in the same toneless voice. "Somebody didn't want her to."
Arne touched the flesh around the wound on Susan Sally's back with quick, impersonal fingers. "This is another job by the same one who operated on Free-Look Jones."
"I know!" Harriet cried suddenly. "Oh, I know! Her manager! That's the one! His name is MacAdoo! He did it because he was jealous of her going to see Mr. Doan!"
"What?" said Arne blankly.
"He did! He's a nasty little man! He knew Mr. Doan would win her away from him!"
Arne looked at Doan.
Doan shrugged. "She goes on like that all the time."
"Well, I'm right!" Harriet shrilled. "Of course I'm right! He just couldn't stand the thought of her being interested in anyone else, and so he stabbed her!"
"Elmer A. MacAdoo is the name," Doan said. "In case you're interested."
Arne picked up the telephone. "Janitor," he said when Edmund answered. After a moment he cupped his hand over his mouth and talked in an inaudible voice at some length.
He waited, then. The silence in the room grew and expanded like a living thing. Carstairs stirred uneasily on the floor. Doan looked at him, and he became quiet again.
"Yes," Arne said into the telephone. He listened for a moment and then turned to Doan. "This MacAdoo lives at Malibu Beach. That's about thirty-five miles from here. He's at home. This is supposed to be he on the extension now. See if it is."
Doan took the telephone. MacAdoo's voice was saying angrily, "Hello, hello! Operator! Who is calling? Is this New York? Hello!"
"This is Doan, MacAdoo," Doan said.
"Who? Who did you say?"
"Doan. You met me in Heliotrope."
"Oh! Mr. Doan. Yes. What is it?"
"Susan Sally is here."
"What? She is? Why, she hasn't any business being there! She promised me faithfully she'd go straight home. She has to start a picture tomorrow. She has to be on the set at seven-thirty. Let me talk to her!"
"I can't. She's dead."
"Now, Mr. Doan, I'm her manager, and I'm not going to argue... What did you say?"
"She's dead."
MacAdoo's voice went up a notch. "Now this is no time for jokes! She has to get her sleep, and she knows very well--"
"She's dead," Doan said patiently.
There was a long silence.
"Dead," said MacAdoo. "Oh, no. Oh, no, no!"
"At the Orna Apartments," Doan said. "On Harkness, just off Vine."
He put the telephone down and nodded at Arne.
Arne said, "She couldn't possibly have driven that far with that kind of a wound. I don't think she could have traveled a hundred yards. A wound of that type is fatal within minutes." He studied Doan for a second. "I'll notify the police. You two stay here and give them a statement. I don't want to appear as yet. There'll be no publicity of any kind--for twenty-four hours. I'll see to that."
He went out and shut the door behind him.
"I don't like him," Harriet said.
"He's getting on my nerves a bit, too," Doan answered absently.
Harriet looked down at Susan Sally. "I--I'll get a blanket and cover her up. It isn't nice for her to lie there..." She paused. "You know, I didn't like her, either, but I don't think anyone should have stabbed her like that."
"I don't think anyone should have, too," said Doan mildly.
Carstairs sat up and looked at him in a worried way.
Chapter 14
EDMUND WASN'T ON DUTY THIS TIME WHEN Doan came down the stairs, and there was no one in the lobby except MacAdoo. He was sitting on a divan in the corner near the door, shoulders hunched, staring dully at the rug between his feet. He had his catalogue sombrero in his hands, and he was twisting the brim with a sort of dull thoroughness. His hair glistened in the light, oily and tightly curled and black, and his eyes were red-rimmed when he looked slowly up at Doan.
"Hello," he said hopelessly.
Doan nodded and sat down in the chair at the end of the divan.
"I came as fast as I could," MacAdoo said.
Doan nodded again.
"They wouldn't let me go upstairs," MacAdoo said. "They told me to stay down here and keep my mouth shut. They told me that Susan Sally's death wasn't to be released to the press. They said I had to stall the studio."
"Who said all this?"
"G-men," MacAdoo said. "FBI"
/> "They're hopping around this joint like fleas in a prison camp," Doan commented.
"I don't understand it," MacAdoo said. "I don't understand what Sally has to do with G-men. She has always paid her income tax right on the dot in full. I know, because I always have made it out for her."
Doan didn't say anything.
MacAdoo glanced at him. "Is she--is she--"
"She's gone. They took her away--to the morgue."
MacAdoo took out his handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. "I don't like that."
"Me, either," Doan said.
"It's not that I'm sentimental," MacAdoo declared. "No, sir. Between me and Sally, it was always strictly business and no nonsense... Oh, hell."
"Yeah," said Doan.
"I liked her."
"Me, too."
"She shouldn't ought to have been killed."
"That's right."
"She was too damned beautiful."
"You're on the beam," Doan agreed.
"A man would have to be cracked to kill anything as beautiful as that. Am I right?"
"Sure."
"That's going to make it tough to find out who did it, because Hollywood is practically packed with people who are cracked."
"That's no lie."
"You know who did it?"
"No. Not yet."
"I'd like to have a short interview with that party."
"After me," said Doan.
MacAdoo sighed. "Thirty-five hundred dollars a week. And no picture to picture contract, either. Forty straight weeks every year, whether she worked or not."
"How much did you get of that?" Doan asked.
MacAdoo sighed again, more deeply. "Ten per cent for being her agent, five per cent for being her business manager. That amounted to five hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. Oh, it was fair enough. I could have held her up for more. She was green as grass when I found her. And then, I had to spend all my time on her. I mean, she wasn't so easy to handle.
"She got notions. Like I had to save all my gas coupons so she could go to Heliotrope every once in awhile and give the rubes the ritz on account they used to shove her around when she was a kid. And then she was always associating with low characters. No offense."
Doan nodded. "Five and a quarter a week is a nice piece of change. Have you got any more clients like that lying around?"
"I haven't got any more clients, period. I'm flatter than a flounder at this point. I told you she took all my time. As an agent, I'm really not so hot, but you could hardly go wrong with something like Susan Sally, could you?"
"No."
"They come like that only once in a lifetime. I've had my quota."
"How'd you happen to get hold of her?"
MacAdoo began to untwist the brim of his hat. "I've always been interested in the theater. I thought I was an actor once, but nobody else did. I used to be a stagehand, and paint scenery and like that. Then I heard Hollywood was a soft touch, so I came out here. I never even got one job."
"Then what?"
"Well, I thought I'd better be an agent. That doesn't take any brains to speak of, and look at the dough they make. Look at the offices they sport on the Strip."
"Yeah."
"So I set up in business. It didn't work."
"No clients?" Doan asked.
"Anybody can get clients. I couldn't get the clients any jobs. Ten per cent of nothing won't keep you in beans for long."
"No," Doan agreed.
"So I was down to my carfare back to New York. I didn't even have anything to eat on going there. So I was down to the station, waiting for my train. And Susan Sally came up to me and asked me how to get to Hollywood, and the movie studios. She'd just come in on the train."
"What did you do?" Doan inquired.
"I took one look at her, and then went and cashed my ticket in. I got her to sign a contract in the taxi on the way back to Hollywood. I spent most of my ticket money renting an outfit for her, and I took her to the jazziest nightclub in town that night. Half an hour after we sat down in it there were three producers sitting with us, and three more trying to bribe the head waiter to throw out the first three. I mean, you couldn't miss with Susan Sally. I got her a contract that night, written on the front of a producer's dress shirt. It just happens once to one guy, Doan. It won't again for me. I'm all done now."
"Maybe not," said Doan.
MacAdoo nodded gloomily. "I know. Everybody in town has been drooling because I had her. Now they'll give me the brush-off, but quick. I'm back playing with peanuts again. You wouldn't want to let me handle that dog of yours, would you?"
"What?" said Doan.
"He's good. I saw some of the rushes of those defense films he made. Get him released from the government, and I could maybe make you a dime or two or three."
"I'll think it over. It would make him madder than hell though if he thought he was supporting me in luxury. He's old-fashioned. He thinks I ought to feed him instead of vice versa."
MacAdoo got up slowly and wearily. "I guess I'll go home again. It doesn't do me any good to sit here. Will you call me up if you hear anything new?"
"Sure."
"Good-by, Doan."
"Good-by," Doan said.
MacAdoo went out the door, dragging his heels a little. Doan sat still, his face relaxed and bland and peaceful, until the switchboard buzzed softly. He got up, then, and went over to the desk and plugged in one of the outside lines.
"Yes?"
"Lemme speak to Doan."
"You are."
"I'm sure scared good and plenty now, Doanwashi. I sure am."
"That's too bad."
"You ain't gonna go back on your sworn word, are you?"
"Nope. Are you?"
"I guess not. Can you meet me at Hollywood and Cahuenga right away? In your car?"
"I'm on my way."
"Did you see the fella that shot at us?"
"No. Did you?"
"Man, I don't want to see him! Hurry up."
The line clicked, but it didn't hum. Doan waited for a moment, and then said:
"Well?"
Arne's voice said, "Go ahead and meet him. You still have about twenty-two hours."
"Keep out of my tracks," Doan warned. "I'm going to start huffing and puffing now."
Chapter 15
THE DIM-OUT HAS DONE A LOT FOR HOLLYWOOD Boulevard. It used to look just as cheap and cheesy as you'd think it would, and the types that clutter it up have been known to turn a strong man's stomach, but now it and they are shadowed discreetly, and it's not so bad. Of course, some very weird things come swimming out of the darkness now and then, but if you have steady nerves and a well balanced personality it is often possible to walk two or three blocks without having hysterics.
Doan rolled the Cadillac across on the signal and pulled in against the curb in the red zone on the far side and opened the door. Dust-Mouth popped out of the shadows and bounced on the front seat.
"Drive on!" he said breathlessly, slamming the door.
Doan pulled out into the traffic. "Somebody following you?"
"If they are, they sure must be dizzy by now. I been runnin' in circles for an hour."
"Where do you want to go?"
"Back to the desert. I wanta show you that there location. I wanta get this here deal all set. I don't like bein' shot at. That ain't good for a person."
"Not too much of it," Doan agreed.
Carstairs snorted twice imperiously from the back seat. Doan reached back and turned one of the windows down. Carstairs put his head outside.
"What's the matter with him?" Dust-Mouth demanded.
"He's a fresh air fiend." Doan said, turning the wing of his own window around so that the wind blew directly in his face. "So am I. You've got a new brand now, haven't you?"
"Of what?"
"Wine."
"Oh, yeah." Dust-Mouth took a round pint bottle out of his coat pocket. "This here is muscatel. It ain't as good as sherry, but it's better than
nothin'. You want a drink?"
"No, thanks. Why don't you buy sherry?"
The Essential Works of Norbert Davis Page 48