The light above the big oak table at Headquarters was too bright. Dalmas ran a finger along the wood, looked at it, wiped it off on his sleeve. He cupped his chin in his lean hands and stared at the wall above the roll-top desk that was beyond the table. He was alone in the room.
The loudspeaker on the wall droned: “Calling Car 71W in 72’s district … at Third and Berendo … at the drugstore … meet a man . .
The door opened and Captain Cathcart came in, shut the door carefully behind him. He was a big, battered man with a wide, moist face, a strained mustache, gnarled hands.
He sat down between the oak table and the roll-top desk and fingered a cold pipe that lay in the ashtray.
Dalmas raised his head from between his hands. Cathcart said: “Sutro’s dead.”
Dalmas stared, said nothing.
“His wife did it. He wanted to stop by his house a minute. The boys watched him good but they didn’t watch her. She slipped him the dose before they could move.”
Cathcart opened and shut his mouth twice. He had strong, dirty teeth.
“She never said a damn word. Brought a little gun around from behind her and fed him three slugs. One, two, three. Win, place, show. Just like that. Then she turned the gun around in her hand as nice as you could think of and handed it to the boys … What in hell she do that for?”
Dalmas said: “Get a confession?”
Cathcart stared at him and put the cold pipe in his mouth. He sucked on it noisily. “From him? Yeah—not on paper, though … What you suppose she done that for?”
“She knew about the blonde,” Dalmas said. “She thought it was her last chance. Maybe she knew about his rackets.”
The captain nodded slowly. “Sure,” he said. “That’s it. She figured it was her last chance. And why shouldn’t she bop the bastard? If the D.A. ‘s smart, he’ll let her take a manslaughter plea. That’d be about fifteen months at Tehachapi. A rest cure.”
Dalmas moved in his chair. He frowned.
Cathcart went on: “It’s a break for all of us. No dirt your way, no dirt on the administration. If she hadn’t done. it, it would have been a kick in the pants all around. She ought to get a pension.”
“She ought to get a contract from Eclipse Films,” Dalmas said. “When I got to Sutro I figured I was licked on the publicity angle. I might have gunned Sutro myself—if he hadn’t been so yellow—and if he hadn’t been a councilman.”
“Nix on that, baby. Leave that stuff to the law,” Cathcart growled. “Here’s how it looks. I don’t figure we can get Walden on the book as a suicide. The filed gun is against it and we got to wait for the autopsy and the gun-shark s report. And a paraffin test of the hand ought to show he didn’t fire the gun at all. On the other hand, the case is closed on Sutro and what has to come out ought not to hurt too bad. Am I right?”
Dalmas took out a cigarette and rolled it between his fingers. He lit it slowly and waved the match until it went out.
“Walden was no lily,” he said. “It’s the dope angle that would raise hell—but that’s cold. I guess we’re jake, except for a few loose ends.”
“Hell with the loose ends,” Cathcart grinned. “Nobody’s getting away with any fix that I can see. That sidekick of yours, Denny, will fade in a hurry and if I ever get my paws on the Dalton frail, I’ll send her to Mendocino for the cure. We might get something on Donner—after the hospital gets through with him. We’ve got to put the rap on those hoods, for the stick-up and the taxi driver, whichever of ‘em did that, but they won’t talk. They still got a future to think about, and the taxi driver ain’t so bad hurt. That leaves the chopper squad.” Cathcart yawned. “Those boys must be from Frisco. We don’t run to choppers around here much.”
Dalmas sagged in his chair. “You wouldn’t have a drink, would you, Chief?” he said dully.
Cathcart stared at him. “There’s just one thing,” he said grimly. “I want you to stay told about that. It was okey for you to break that gun—if you didn’t spoil the prints. And I guess it was okey for you not to tell me, seem’ the jam you were in. But I’ll be damned if it’s okey for you to beat our time by chiselin’ on our own records.”
Dalmas smiled thoughtfully at him. “You’re right all the way, Chief,” he said humbly. “It was the job—and that’s all a guy can say.”
Cathcart rubbed his cheeks vigorously. His frown went away and he grinned. Then he bent over and pulled out a drawer and brought up a quart bottle of rye. He put it on the desk and pressed a buzzer. A very large uniformed torso came part way into the room.
“Hey, Tiny!” Cathcart boomed. “Loan me that corkscew you swiped out of my desk.” The torso disappeared and came back.
“What’ll we drink to?” the captain asked a couple of minutes later.
Dalmas said: “Let’s just drink.”
GUNS AT
CYRANO’S
ONE
Ted Carmady liked the rain; liked the feel of it, the sound of it, the smell of it. He got out of his LaSalle coupe and stood for a while by the side entrance to the Carondelet, the high collar of his blue suede ulster tickling his ears, his hands in his pockets and a limp cigarette sputtering between his lips. Then he went in past the barbershop and the drugstore and the perfume shop with its rows of delicately lighted bottles, ranged like the ensemble in the finale of a Broadway musical.
He rounded a gold-veined pillar and got into an elevator with a cushioned floor.
“‘Lo Albert. A swell rain. Nine.”
The slim tired-looking kid in pale blue and silver held a white-gloved hand against the closing doors, said: “Jeeze, you think I don’t know your floor, Mister Carmady?”
He shot the car up to nine without looking at his signal light, whooshed the doors open, then leaned suddenly against the cage and closed his eyes.
Carmady stopped on his way out, flicked a sharp glance from bright brown eyes. “What’s the matter, Albert? Sick?”
The boy worked a pale smile on his face. “I’m workin’ double shift. Corky’s sick. He’s got boils. I guess maybe I didn’t eat enough.”
The tall, brown-eyed man fished a crumpled five-spot out of his pocket, snapped it under the boy’s nose. The boy’s eyes bulged. He heaved upright.
“Jeeze, Mister Carmady. I didn’t mean—”
“Skip it, Albert. What’s a fin between pals? Eat some extra meals on me.”
He got out of the car and started along the corridor. Softly, under his breath, he said: “Sucker .
The running man almost knocked him off his feet. He rounded the turn fast, lurched past Carmady’s shoulder, ran for the elevator.
‘Down!” He slammed through the closing doors.
Carmady saw a white set face under a pulled-down hat that was wet with rain; two empty black eyes set very close. Eyes in which there was a peculiar stare he had seen before. A load of dope.
The car dropped like lead. Carmady looked at the place where it had been for a long moment, then he went on down the corridor and around the turn.
He saw the girl lying half in and half out of the open door of 914.
She lay on her side, in a sheen of steel-gray lounging pajamas, her cheek pressed into the nap of the hall carpet, her head a mass of thick corn-blond hair, waved with glassy precision. Not a hair looked out of place. She was young, very pretty, and she didn’t look dead.
Carmady slid down beside her, touched her cheek. It was warm. He lifted the hair softly away from her head and saw the bruise.
“Sapped.” His lips pressed back against his teeth.
He picked her up in his arms, carried her through a short hallway to the living room of a suite, put her down on a big velour davenport in front of some gas logs.
She lay motionless, her eyes shut, her face bluish behind the make-up. He shut the outer door and looked through the apartment, then went back to the hallway and picked up something that gleamed white against the baseboard. It was a bonehandled .22 automatic, sevenshot. He sniffed it, dropped it into his pocket and went back to the girl.
He took a big hammered-silver flask out of his inside breast pocket and unscrewed the top, opened her mouth with his fingers and poured whiskey against her small white teeth. She gagged and her head jerked out of his hand. Her eyes opened. They were deep blue, with a tint of purple. Light came into them and the light was brittle.
He lit a cigarette and stood looking down at her. She moved a little more. After a while she whispered: “I like your whiskey. Could I have a little more?”
He got a glass from the bathroom, poured whiskey into it. She sat up very slowly, touched her head, groaned. Then she took the glass out of his hand and put the liquor down with a practised flip of the wrist.
“I still like it,” she said. “Who are you?”
She had a deep soft voice. He liked the sound of it. He said: “Ted Carmady. I live down the hall in 937.”
“I got a dizzy spell, I guess.”
“Uh-huh. You got sapped, angel.” His bright eyes looked at her probingly. There was a smile tucked to the corners of his lips.
Her eyes got wider. A glaze came over them, the glaze of a protective enamel.
He said: “I saw the guy. He was snowed to the hairline. And here’s your gun.”
He took it out of his pocket, held it on the flat of his hand. “I suppose that makes me think up a bedtime story,” the girl said slowly.
“Not for me. If you’re in a jam, I might help you. It all depends.”
“Depends on what?” Her voice was colder, sharper.
“On what the racket is,” he said softly. He broke the magazine from the small gun, glanced at the top cartridge. “Coppernickel, eh? You know your ammunition, angel.”
“Do you have to call me angel?”
“I don’t know your name.”
He grinned at her, then walked over to a desk in front of the windows, put the gun down on it. There was a leather photo frame on the desk, with two photos side by side. He looked at them casually at first, then his gaze tightened. A handsome dark woman and a thin blondish cold-eyed man whose high stiff collar, large knotted tie and narrow lapels dated the photo back many years. He stared at the man.
The girl was talking behind him. “I’m Jean Adrian. I do a number at Cyrano’s, in the floor show.”
Carmady still stared at the photo. “I know Benny Cyrano pretty well,” he said absently. “These your parents?”
He turned and looked at her. She lifted her head slowly. Something that might have been fear showed in her deep blue eyes.
“Yes. They’ve been dead for years,” she said dully. “Next question?”
He went quickly back to the davenport and stood in front of her. “Okey,” he said thinly. “I’m nosey. So what? This is my town. My dad used to run it. Old Marcus Carmady, the People’s Friend; this is my hotel. I own a piece of it. That snowedup hoodlum looked like a life-taker to me. Why wouldn’t I want to help out?”
The blond girl stared at him lazily. “I still like your whiskey,” she said. “Could I—”
“Take it from the neck, angel. You get it down faster,” he grunted.
She stood up suddenly and her face got a little white. “You talk to me as if I was a crook,” she snapped. “Here it is, if you have to know. A boy friend of mine has been getting threats. He’s a fighter, and they want him to drop a fight. Now they’re trying to get at him through me. Does that satisfy you a little?”
Carmady picked his hat off a chair, took the cigarette end out of his mouth and rubbed it out in a tray. He nodded quietly, said in a changed voice: “I beg your pardon.” He started towards the door.
The giggle came when he was halfway there. The girl said behind him softly: “You have a nasty temper. And you’ve forgotten your flask.”
He went back and picked the flask up. Then he bent suddenly, put a hand under the girl’s chin and kissed her on the lips.
“To hell with you, angel. I like you,” he said softly.
He went back to the hallway and out. The girl touched her lips with one finger, rubbed it slowly back and forth. There was a shy smile on her face.
TWO
Tony Acosta, the bell captain, was slim and dark and slight as a girl, with small delicate hands and velvety eyes and a hard little mouth. He stood in the doorway and said: “Seventh row was the best I could get, Mister Carmady. This Deacon Werra ain’t bad and Duke Targo’s the next light heavy champ.”
Carmady said: “Come in and have a drink, Tony.” He went over to the window, stood looking out at the rain. “If they buy it for him,” he added over his shoulder.
“Well—just a short one, Mister Carmady.”
The dark boy mixed a highball carefully at a tray on an imitation Sheraton desk. He held the bottle against the light and gauged his drink carefully, tinkled ice gently with a long spoon, sipped, smiled, showing small white teeth.
“Targo’s a lu, Mister Carmady. He’s fast, clever, got a sock in both mitts, plenty guts, don’t ever take a step back.”
“He has to hold up the bums they feed him,” Carmady drawled.
“Well, they ain’t fed him no lion meat yet,” Tony said.
The rain beat against the glass. The thick drops flattened out and washed down the pane in tiny waves.
Carmady said: “He’s a bum. A bum with color and looks, but still a bum.”
Tony sighed deeply. “I wisht I was goin’. It’s my night off, too.”
Carmady turned slowly and went over to the desk, mixed a drink. Two dusky spots showed in his cheeks and his voice was tired, drawling.
“So that’s it. What’s stopping you?”
“I got a headache,”
“You’re broke again,” Carmady almost snarled.
The dark boy looked sidewise under his long lashes, said nothing.
Carmady clenched his left hand, unclenched it slowly. His eyes were sullen.
“Just ask Carmady,” he sighed. “Good old Carmady. He leaks dough. He’s soft. Just ask Carmady. Okey, Tony, take the ducat back and get a pair together.”
He reached into his pocket, held a bill out. The dark boy looked hurt.
“Jeeze, Mister Carmady, I wouldn’t have you think—”
“Skip it! What’s a fight ticket between pals? Get a couple and take your girl. To hell with this Targo.”
Tony Acosta took the bill. He watched the older man carefully for a moment. Then his voice was very softly, saying: “I’d rather go with you, Mister Carmady. Targo knocks them over, and not only in the ring. He’s got a peachy blonde right on this floor, Miss Adrian, in 914.”
Carmady stiffened. He put his glass down slowly, turned it on the top of the desk. His voice got a little hoarse.
“He’s still a bum, Tony. Okey, I’ll meet you for dinner, in front of your hotel at seven.”
“Jeeze, that’s swell, Mister Carmady.”
Tony Acosta went out softly, closed the outer door without a sound.
Carmady stood by the desk, his fingertips stroking the top of it, his eyes on the floor. He stood like that for a long time.
“Carmady, the All-American sucker,” he said grimly, out loud. “A guy that plays with the help and carries the torch for stray broads. Yeah.”
He finished his drink, looked at his wrist watch, put on his hat and the blue suede raincoat, went out. Down the corridor in front of 914 he stopped, lifted his hand to knock, then dropped it without touching the door.
He went slowly on to the elevators and rode down to the street and his car.