by Kip Chase
At the end of half an hour Horowitz had the full story on Christie’s relations with the girl and Harrison’s proposition to her, or at least as much of it as Willie knew. On these points Horowitz bore down particularly hard.
‘You mean you don’t know if Jeanie and Harrison went through with their blackmailing plans?’ he demanded.
‘No sir, I don’t’, said the now completely cowed Willie.
‘You seem to know about everything else.’
‘Well, I don’t know that. Why don’t you ask Harrison. But for God’s sake don’t tell him where you got your information.’
Horowitz smiled contemptuously. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Willie. You’re too good a stooly to lose.’
‘One more thing, Mr. Delaney’, Carmichael interceded quietly. ‘Mr. Christie told us Jeanie had another boy friend besides himself – not counting you, that is. Now, who might this other boy friend be?’
Willie thoughtfully stroked his slightly bulbous nose. ‘Well, like I told you. She had a husband. But I don’t think he ever was around. He was in the Navy. On sea duty, or they were separated, or something. Occasionally she did take a fancy to some fella, but nothing ever come of it that I know of. Nothing steady, anyway.’
Horowitz consulted the list of names he had scratched down in his notebook he had got from Willie in response to his questions.
‘Now, aside from these people here,’ he said, ‘you know of no other friends of the dead girl?’
‘No. Oh, she was a lively girl and she knew a lot of people, but just real casually. Like they’d come in and buy drinks and stuff like that. But people she knew after hours, that’s all I know of.’
‘Okay, Willie. See you around.’
Abruptly Horowitz turned and strode out of the door, Carmichael trailing along behind him.
‘Sure, lieutenant. Drop around any time’, was Willie’s weak rejoinder. ‘And glad to have met you, Mr. Carmichael’, he added as an afterthought. But the two men had already left by the back entrance.
Once inside the squad car Horowitz twisted around in the front seat to talk to Carmichael.
‘Had enough for today?’ he asked.
Carmichael gave a tired sigh. ‘I guess so.’
‘Okay. You know where Mr. Carmichael lives, Bill?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Let’s go.’
Once deposited at his home, the old man brushed aside Horowitz’s offer to see him to the door. He wheeled up the ramp and cautiously opened the front door. In his lap were a pint of Seagram’s and a bottle of soda water he had persuaded Horowitz to stop and get for him. As the door closed behind him his daughter called from the bedroom, ‘Is that you, Father?’
‘Yes. Don’t worry about me. I can manage. You just go on back to sleep.’
‘All right.’ Her voice was thick with sleepiness.
As Carmichael wheeled past the open bedroom door towards the kitchen the two bottles in his lap jostled together with a clinking noise. Instantly the voice from the bedroom responded, ‘What was that?’
The woman has ears like a lynx, Carmichael thought to himself. ‘Nothing’, he answered with forced cheerfulness. ‘This old wheel-chair needs a little axle grease, I guess.’
‘It sounded like bottles to me.’
‘It was just the wheel-chair, Martha.’ This was followed by a suspicious silence.
Carmichael hurriedly completed his trip to the kitchen and huddled there in the dark, fearfully awaiting the heavy tread of his daughter’s footsteps. After a few minutes of silence the old man flipped on the kitchen light. He then opened the two bottles, taking great pains to be quiet about it. There was a moment of near-panic when, reaching for a glass out of the cupboard, his fingers slipped and the glass started to drop to the tile drainboard below. The glass was caught and disaster averted. Forgoing ice because of the noise involved in removing an icetray, Carmichael poured himself a generous slug of the whisky, followed by an approximately equal amount of soda water. He tossed down the mixture with a smile of triumph, then with glass and bottle wheeled himself into his bedroom.
It was one o’clock when Carmichael finally settled himself into bed.
One o’clock was also the time the third show at the ‘Swinging Times’ was drawing to a close. The singer Willie had found to substitute for Pat was swinging into her last song for the night. Willie, watching appreciatively, set his glass down on the bar and decided a quick walk around the block would do him good. It would be wise to have a clear head for whatever further manoeuverings might be necessary to line up activities for the rest of the evening.
Willie sidled towards the door, took another quick look at the girl singer, then stepped outside. He had walked perhaps half a block when he heard footsteps behind him. Willie looked back casually and was confronted by two men who had apparently come out of an adjacent alley. The bar owner quickened his pace. As he approached another alley a hand firmly grasped his right elbow. At the same time a voice hissed, ‘Into the alley, Willie.’
His heart beating wildly, Willie did as he was told. Once off the street he started to turn around, but immediately both his arms were pinned behind him.
‘Don’t turn around’, the voice said roughly.
‘What’s going on here?’ Willie gasped, trying to keep the shakiness out of his voice.
‘A friend of ours don’t like canaries, Willie.’
With a sinking heart Willie realized somebody must have tipped off Jock Harrison about Horowitz’s visit that evening.
‘I didn’t tell them anything’, he said shrilly. ‘Not a goddam thing.’
‘Maybe not, Willie, but it looks bad. It sure looks bad.’
‘But . . .’ Willie began to protest. He was cut off by a jarring blow at the side of his neck. His knees sagged and he would have fallen but for being held by one of the men.
‘I swear . . .’ he began again, but a vicious blow to his kidney cut him off.
‘Now listen, Willie,’ the voice said, ‘and listen good. People who talk to cops get hurt. You understand that?’ The question was accompanied by a hard fist again driven into his kidney.
‘I – understand’, Willie managed to gasp.
‘We mean to make sure you do.’
Willie was spun around and two blows landing almost simultaneously caught him in the solar plexus and on the Adam’s apple. Willie doubled over, gagged, and flecks of blood appeared on his lips. The next blow, flush on his nose, sent him to his hands and knees. A hard kick in his ribcage set him sprawling, and another kick in his groin brought a scream of pain. Methodically, professionally, the beating continued.
The next morning Horowitz was idly flipping through the night reports when he came across Willie’s name. The patrolman doing double duty as the desk man and PBX operator was startled out of his lethargy by an angry buzzing on the intercom.
‘Yes, sir’, he answered, depressing the intercom button.
‘That you, Perkins?’ Horowitz asked in a rasping voice.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Has Conners gone home yet?’
‘I’m not sure, sir. I’ll check.’
‘Well, wherever he is, get a hold of him. I want to talk to him. Now.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Ten minutes later Sergeant Conners was in Horowitz’s office. The sergeant was of medium height with a wiry build. His long bony face wore an expression of mixed fatigue and consternation.
‘I’m sorry, sir’, he was saying in tired tones. ‘I didn’t realize it was important.’
‘You knew that girl they found on the beach yesterday worked for Willie, didn’t you?’ Horowitz snarled.
‘Ah no, sir. I mean yes, sir. Yes I knew. I just didn’t connect it, I guess.’
‘You didn’t connect it’, Horowitz mimicked. ‘Mary, Mother of Jesus. Well, don’t just stand there. Fill me in on it.’
‘It’s all there in the report, sir’, the sergeant continued speaking in his tired voice. ‘We picked it up on
the network when the Hermosa police got the call. They did the investigation.’
‘Well, didn’t you follow it up? All it says here is they found Delaney in an alley and took him to a hospital. What condition is he in? Who found him? Who’s checking on it?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Like I say, I didn’t think it was important and it’s not our case.’
‘Okay, Conners, okay.’ Horowitz waved a weary hand. ‘You can go home and hit the sack now. But for Christ’s sake try and remember we’ve got a murder investigation going here. When anything happens that looks like there’s even a possibility it could be tied in with the Goodall case let me know immediately. I don’t care if it’s in Hermosa Beach or San Diego or Timbucktoo. You understand?’
‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.’
‘All right. Go on home now.’
Before the sergeant was out of the room Horowitz had picked up the phone and was dialling the number of the South Bay Hospital. He spoke briefly to the superintendent and then to one of the doctors. Next he called Carmichael.
‘How bad was he hurt?’ was Carmichael’s first reaction when he heard the news.
‘Well, the doc says he isn’t on the critical list but he really got a going over. Busted nose, three broken ribs, concussion, swollen testicles, bruises all over him, couple of missing teeth.’
‘What do you figure, Carl?’
‘Damn, I don’t know. The doctor says it’s okay to talk to him. How about meeting me at the hospital and we’ll hear Willie’s side of it.’
‘All right’, Carmichael said with resignation in his voice. ‘I’ll be there in about an hour.’
‘Fine. That’ll be nine-thirty. See you then.’
Carmichael wheeled himself ahead of Horowitz into Willie’s private room with irritation. He didn’t like hospitals. He didn’t like their antiseptic clean-sheet smell, and he didn’t like the forced cheerful efficient attitude of the people who worked there.
Willie Delaney was propped up in his bed in a half-sitting position. His head above his eyes and one side of his face were heavily bandaged. His eyes were dull and heavy-lidded. When he spoke in answer to a brusque greeting by Horowitz he moved his lips with difficulty. All he said was, ‘Get out of here.’
Horowitz shook his head with a grim smile. ‘Sorry, Willie, you’ve got some questions to answer. Now, I know you’re in bad shape and I don’t want to make this hard on you. But there are some things we have to find out.’
Willie Delaney compressed his lips tightly and turned his face to the wall.
‘All right, Willie,’ Horowitz said sharply, ‘none of that. Who beat you up, Willie?’
There was no answer from the bandage-swabbed figure.
‘All right, Willie, I don’t want to get nasty about this, but you’re not giving me much choice. You do some talking right now or I promise you I’ll see that that clip joint of yours is closed down for good.’
Still not looking at the detective Willie said in a barely understandable voice, ‘You couldn’t do that.’
‘I could do it and you know I could do it. We’d find something. Board of Health, fire regulations, meeting-place for persons of ill repute, we can find it if we have to. And we’ll nail that place up tighter than a drum. Now, how about it, Willie?’
‘Let me think about it’, said Willie.
‘Now look here’, Horowitz began in cold level tones, but was stopped by a gesture from Carmichael.
The old man laid his hand gently on Willie’s shoulder and bending close to him said, ‘It was some of Jock Harrison’s boys, wasn’t it, Mr. Delaney?’
Even through the bandages and bruises the look of terror on Willie’s face was unmistakable. Carmichael leaned back with a little smile.
Horowitz said with a tired sigh, ‘All right, Willie. But don’t think this lets you off the hook. We’ll be back.’
Soft, whimpering noises were coming from Willie Delaney as the two men left the room.
As they proceeded down the hallway an empty gurney being pushed by a student nurse made a sharp turn into the corridor. There was a clang of metal as the gurney collided with the wheel-chair, followed by a loud ‘damnation’ by Carmichael. A middle-aged nurse poked her head out of the nurses’ station with a look of irritation.
‘It’s all right’, Horowitz said smoothly. ‘Just a little accident.’
The nurse frowned but said nothing. Horowitz continued, ‘Come to think of it, you may be able to help me. My name is Horowitz. I’m with the Sheriff’s Department.’ He flashed a badge. ‘Were you on duty this morning when they brought in Mr. Delaney?’
‘I was just coming on’, the nurse said grumpily.
Horowitz smiled. ‘That’s fine. Could you tell me who brought him in?’
‘That’s Receiving. Downstairs. You’ll have to ask the doctor who was on duty.’
‘All right.’ Horowitz moved as if to go, but then turned back as if something had suddenly occurred to him. ‘Say, did Mr. Delaney say anything when they brought him up here?’
‘What do you mean, say anything?’
‘Well, was he conscious? Was he talking at all?’
The nurse pursed her thin lips thoughtfully. ‘Well, he was semi-conscious. What happened to him, anyway? Looked like he’d been hit by a truck.’
‘An accident’, Horowitz said hurriedly. ‘Do you remember if he said anything?’
The nurse shook her head. ‘No, he was sort of mumbling. But nothing you could understand, and groaning quite a bit. They do that, you know.’
‘Yes. Well, thanks a lot.’
The two men found their way down to the Emergency Room and talked to the doctor who had first examined Willie. He could add nothing to the nurse’s story.
‘Think we’ll have to pull in Harrison, Carmichael?’ Horowitz asked on the ride back to the sheriff’s office.
The old man gnawed at his upper lip. ‘Can’t see that it would help much. This guy is an old pro, Carl. We’re not going to nail him on alley-beating. The question is, how does it fit into the big picture? Let’s say that Harrison was so anxious to keep this blackmail scheme quiet that he had the waitress killed, but if that’s true it seems like he would have got Willie permanently out of the way too. Of course, maybe those goons were supposed to kill Willie but just didn’t beat him long enough. But I don’t think so. It was a real professional job. If they’d wanted to kill him they would have done it.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Horowitz said obstinately, ‘but I don’t think it’d do any harm to talk to Jock.’
Carmichael shrugged. ‘Maybe not.’
The object of their discussion was at that moment drinking coffee with a girl in an apartment in Manhattan Beach. The apartment was one of several he kept around town. Harrison was wearing a heavily-brocaded dressing-gown over his salmon-pink silk pyjamas. On his feet were fur-trimmed leather bathroom slippers.
The girl, wearing only a sheer negligée, bent over the table to pour coffee. Her breasts hung like two ripe melons a few inches in front of Harrison’s face. The smell of fresh coffee rose in his nostrils. Reaching around the girl he picked up an ivory coloured phone recessed in a niche in the wall. The number he dialled was that of the liquor store on the corner.
‘Billy? This is Jock. Send up the morning paper, will you? Yeah, that’s right. Thanks, Billy Boy.’
Minutes later the paper arrived. Harrison peeled off a dollar bill for the delivery boy, nodded acknowledgement of the grin with which it was received, and returned to his breakfast. He glanced over the first page quickly, then the second and the third. He was half-way through the second section when he found the item he was looking for. It was only three paragraphs, noting that William B. Delaney, owner of the ‘Swinging Times’ Cocktail Lounge in Hermosa Beach, had been found severely beaten in an alley early that morning. Hospital authorities reported his condition as being serious, the article noted.
Harrison smiled to himself. He had read many such brief articles in his career
. Sometimes the condition was reported as serious, sometimes critical, but Jock Harrison could have told the doctors not to worry. The patient wasn’t going to die. His boys knew their business. If a man were to die, it wasn’t by a beating, and the body was never found. Harrison had found there were certain advantages to living on a coastline.
He noted the page number from which he was reading, then closed the paper and carelessly threw it on the floor.
Forty-five minutes later Harrison’s pearl-grey Chrysler pulled up in front of the real estate office of Jack Christie. The office was a small, one-story redwood board and batten building set in the centre of a freshly-clipped green lawn.
The girl at the desk in the outer office had pencilled eyebrows and blueing on her eyelids. She flashed a professional smile as Harrison came through the front door.
‘Mr. Christie in?’ Harrison asked pleasantly.
‘Why, yes. He’s busy right now. Would you care to wait?’
‘Tell him Jock Harrison is here.’
With a slightly annoyed look the girl punched an intercom button on her desk. Lowering the tone of her voice somewhat she said huskily into the speaker, ‘Mr. Christie, there is a Mr. Harrison to see you.’ She waited thirty seconds without a response. ‘Mr. Christie?’ she repeated.
Christie’s voice, distorted by the small speaker, answered back, ‘Yes, Miss Wiggins, I heard you. I’ll be out in just a minute.’
Moments later a man emerged from Christie’s office with a disgruntled expression. Christie loomed behind him, his hand on the door. ‘Come in’, he said brusquely to Harrison.
Seated in front of the highly polished mahogany desk Harrison pulled from his breast pocket a black foul-looking cigar. He bit off the end, then deliberately spat it out on the floor, all the while narrowly watching Christie’s face.
Christie was standing behind the desk, his fingers nervously clutching the edge of the chair.
Deliberately, Harrison lit his cigar, puffed vigorously, then expelled a thick cloud of blue-grey smoke. Still watching Christie intently he said, in an easy conversational tone, ‘Thought it was about time we had a little chat, Jack.’
Christie ran his tongue over his thick lips.