Come Die with Me (15 page)

“I brought your radio back,” I said. “It afforded me many pleasant moments.”

“Come in,” she said, “Are you supposed to be up and around? You’re looking gloomy.”

“I am gloomy. My allies are deserting me and my enemies are growing stronger.” I came into the living room.

“Sit down,” she said. “Some beer?”

“Once or twice a year I try the hard stuff,” I said. “Now seems like a good time.”

“A martini,” she suggested, “dry and cold. A double martini.”

“Okay.” I put the radio on a table and sat in a big plastic upholstered chair. “Has anybody bothered you?”

“Nobody. Not even the police. I suppose I have you to thank for that?”

I smiled. “In your own way, in your own time. There are a couple of hoodlums floating around this area and I was sure they would have dropped in here by now.”

She had been on her way to the liquor cabinet. She turned and stared at me. “Why …? Are you serious?”

“I’m serious. Because they’re investigating the death of Tip Malone. Because their boss, Frank Giovanni, told me about you and Tip.”

She was stationary and staring. “Do you think they killed Tip?”

“I have no idea. They could have. Though they wouldn’t normally use a knife, I don’t believe.” I took a breath. “Harry Adler was killed sometime yesterday. I found his body this afternoon.”

She began to tremble. She sat down quickly in the nearest chair and said, “My God, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know. Harry was investigating Tip’s death, the way it looks. It’s reasonable to guess that’s why he was killed.”

“But you’re going to continue? And probably get killed yourself.” Her voice was tight and strained. “For what—three dollars an hour and overtime?”

“A little more than that,” I told her gently. “Why do you worry? Don’t tell me you’ve become emotionally involved with me?”

“Of course I have. You know I have!” She leaned forward and put her head into her trembling hands. “Men …! What monstrous idiots men are.” She sniffed. “I mean idiotic monsters.”

“I’m here,” I said quietly, “and everything is temporarily under control. Let’s get to the drink.”

She looked up. “And forget the world?”

It wasn’t easy to keep from laughing. But I managed it, saying seriously and sonorously, “Yes, and forget the world.”

These Continental carnal-knowledge type singers were certainly weirdies. She would have been completely at home in a Beat Generation coffee house, among those strange people who really relished Edgar Guest but quoted Ezra Pound.

She made a pair of martinis, double for me and single for her. She sat on the davenport near my chair. She asked, “Were those men you mentioned the same ones you met at that gambler’s house?”

“That’s right. And today I found them looking down at the body of Harry Adler and I held them for the police and now they’ve been released. I’m sure that one of them is the man who pushed me over the cliff back of Lily Chen’s house.”

“This Lily Chen—is she really Frank Giovanni’s mistress?”

“Mmmmm-hmmm. Selina, do you remember a man named Larry Crewe?”

She frowned. “Dimly, I think. Is he a comedian?”

“Not consciously,” I said. “He—ah—met you when you were singing at that place in Santa Monica about fourteen months ago.”

“Met me?
Once
?”

“I guess. He sort of had a date with you but when he got home he was badly beaten up. By two men.”

“Got home? After the date?”

I looked at my martini and tried not to blush. “Well, the way it was, he claims you were going to meet him at his apartment after your last show. … I guess you didn’t come.”

“It’s a lie,” she said fiercely. “Look at me, Brock Callahan! Look at me when you say things like that.”

I looked at her. “I’m embarrassed. But if some pair of hoodlums were trying to—well, protect you, I was thinking there was a possibility it could be the same pair who are giving me trouble and maybe we could learn what the connection is and …” I broke off, not knowing where to go next.

“And maybe,” she said grimly, “we could learn that I killed Tip Malone? Is that where you were heading?”

“Of course not. If I thought that, would I have kept your name from the police?”

“I wish I knew,” she said. “I wish I could be sure you haven’t protected me because you would eventually be paid
in my own way, in my own time
.” She took a breath. “Those last were your words.”

“And jesting words. In bad taste, but not malice. Selina, let’s not fight. I’m sure we’re on the same side.”

Her face was momentarily naked and she said suddenly, “I remember Larry Crewe.” There was shame in her voice. “Let’s not talk about one night in a life. It was a bad time for me and I did some impulsive and regrettable things during that period. But I can’t talk about them.”

“I don’t want to,” I assured her. “I want to talk about hoodlums. Or anybody else who would have reason to be jealous of a man in whom you showed interest.”

“The man I worked for in Santa Monica,” she said softly, “had a terrific crush on me. And he was the kind of man who would hire thugs. It was probably his doing. He’s since sold out there and gone back east somewhere.”

Why had she added that last sentence? Lawrence Crewe had said the man had moved to Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is not “back east.”

She interrupted my meditations to ask, “So what possible connection could that—night have with Tip’s death?”

I sipped my drink. “Yes, that’s a question. I can’t answer it. Can you?”

“There can’t possibly be a connection,” she said firmly.

She had said it too firmly; no one but a liar or a fool could be that positive and she was no fool.

I sipped the cold martini and watched the sun bring the mist from the hills. On the shadowed side they were turning purple now but the sunny slopes were bright green. This area is so seldom green, we wallow in it when it happens.

“I seem to sense a—a weakening in rapport between us,” she said quietly.

I shook my head. “No. It’s been a—depressing day, a day to bring out my cynicism. It will go away.”

“I’m making beef Stroganoff,” she said. “Share it with me?”

I nodded. “Thank you.” I turned to look at her. “Selina, two men have been killed. Let’s think about it for a minute.”

She frowned and said nothing.

“Let’s have a minute of thoughtful silence,” I went on, “and realize all the implications of two murders and realize none of us can stay remote from acts like that.”

Her voice was only a whisper. “You think I’m involved, don’t you? Why do you think that?”

“I have no rational reasons. The pattern of my investigation so far indicates it very strongly. If my hunch is right and you confide in me, you’ll have a friend and a protector if you’re involved legally.”

“I didn’t kill Tip Malone or Harry Adler,” she said, “and I have no—knowledge of who did.”

“Do you have suspicions?”

She paused only briefly before shaking her head. I didn’t press her. She had a career to maintain. She had been on her own since she was fifteen and she was not going to cooperate with anyone who might destroy that career.

I said, “It’s not a polite question but how old are you?”

“I’m thirty,” she said. “I was thirty March 7th.”

“Where are you from?”

“What difference does it make?”

I smiled. “I’d like to know about you. You’re an interesting girl. I have a feeling it was a rough fight, getting where you are.”

“It was. I was born in Oxnard, just forty miles up the coast. In the wrong part of Oxnard and it has a lot of wrong parts.”

“And you’ve been on your own since you were fifteen?”

“That’s right: My mother died in 1943. I’d done a little kid singing with a—Spanish trio that played for parties around Oxnard and Ventura, so I lied about my age and joined a USO troupe when Mama died. After the war I picked up what jobs I could, and then my agent, Jerry Kline, took me on and dreamed up—my present personality.”

“He’s a good operator, isn’t he, that Kline?”

“He’s a damned genius,” she said. “Another martini?”

“A single, please,” I said. “I’m not used to the hard stuff, and this double has just about put me over the edge.”

“I’ll make you one on the rocks,” she said, “and you can let the ice melt.” She came over to take my glass. “Are you my friend, Brock Callahan?”

“I want to be. I admire women who make it in this man’s world. I have an enormous respect for you, Selina Stone, eminent chanteuse.”

“You’re a strange mixture,” she said.

“Hell, yes,” I agreed. “Who isn’t?”

So we had dinner and talked of this and that and I imagine you think I was dallying and not tending to business like a first-rate investigator should. Who had a better right to dally, broken and bruised as I was?

But I wasn’t. I was learning, getting the pattern of a life. I was being smooth and discerning, two of my rarely used but undeniably strong, investigative talents.

I left at ten o’clock in case you’re wondering about that, as virginal going down the hill as I had been coming up. Going down the hill from Big Rock I had an eerie feeling that somehow I was getting closer to knowing on which rock he had built his Church.

Next week Selina Stone opened at the Hilton and from there she was going to New York and then to San Francisco. It would have been better, probably, for Harry Adler and Tip Malone if she had gone to New York a month ago. What I had was nebulous, and investigation might prove me a fool, but I had been up blind alleys before.

On the street in front of my apartment building a Chev was parked and it looked like a Chev I knew. I slowed and flicked the beam on my lights a few times, and Jan stepped out from the driver’s side and walked around to step on the curb.

I parked and she came over.

“Where in the world have you been?” she asked. “I was busy all day, but I went to the hospital tonight and they said you had sneaked out this morning. Are you crazy?”

“Just restless, darling,” I told her. “Harry Adler was killed.”

“I read the papers. It’s about the only way I can keep track of you Brock, are we breaking up?”

“Get in,” I said, “and kiss me.”

When she opened the door the interior lights went on, and she could see the cast on my foot and the crutch in the back seat.

She closed the door and said, “God! what drives you?”

I kissed her forehead. “The lust for a buck. What drives you?”

“Don’t be nasty. Kiss me again.”

I kissed her and she said, “You could come to my place and I could nurse you. You
know
you shouldn’t be up and around.”

“Two men have died,” I told her. “I’ve got to be up and around.”

“Does that drive you, too?” she asked me. “Some personal sense of justice?”

“I hate killers, yes. All the killers, spiritual, mental and physical.”

“But the Police Department has the men and the facilities to take care of killers, hasn’t it?”

“Everything in time,” I said, “and there are too many killings. And they have to operate by standardized procedures. I don’t. I can be more dishonest.”

“But you never are,” she said.

“When I need to be. I try to keep it within a limit, only when I need to be, only enough to survive and keep functioning.”

A silence, rather long, and she asked, “Are you tired?”

A meaningful question and I felt like a eunuch, as I answered, “Terribly tired, honey. I think I’m having a relapse from that fall.”

She said jestingly, “The fall from the cliff or some other fall?”

“A fall from honor, from fidelity, do you mean?” I asked.

“I was teasing. Good night, dearest.
Please
be careful.”

I promised her I would and sat there until the Chev’s taillights disappeared as she turned onto Wilshire. Then I drove around to my garage and painfully made my way up to bed.

I
N THE MORNING I WAS
chomping away at the breakfast of champions when I had another female visitor. My doorbell rang and when I opened the door, Gina Ronico stood there.

She looked at the crutch and the cast and said, “I want to know who pushed you.”

“It hasn’t been determined, Miss Ronico.” I held the door open wider. “Come in.”

She came in and looked around my little rattrap, and I said, “So I’m not rich. You can sit at the table with me and have some coffee. I owe you a breakfast, don’t I?”

She sat in the chair across from mine and I poured her a cup of coffee. She nodded her thanks and stared into space.

“Some world,” I said. “It’s a hell of a way from perfect, isn’t it?”

She didn’t answer that. She looked steadily at me and asked, “Why were you over at Lily Chen’s place?”

“I was investigating your uncle.”

“And who told you about Lily Chen?”

I smiled and said nothing.

She said bleakly, “Uncle Frank promised me that if I would give up Tip Malone, he would never see Miss Chen again.”

“And you didn’t give up Tip Malone,” I pointed out. “You were with him that afternoon of the day he died.”

“Yes. And I told him that afternoon that I wasn’t going to see him any more, that I was going to accept Uncle Frank’s terms.”

I smiled again. “Did you honestly tell Tip Malone that?”

She said fervently, “I swear to you that I did. And I meant it, too. And yet, Uncle Frank was at
her
place, wasn’t he, when he was supposed to be in Las Vegas?”

“I’ve no idea.” I lied, “but maybe if he was, he just went there to tell her of your agreement.”

She shook her head. “No. He wouldn’t have to lie about that. When I phoned that Mr. Chalmers in Las Vegas, I knew
he
was lying. Then I phoned Lily’s place and nobody answered, so I thought perhaps she and Uncle Frank had taken a trip somewhere. But now I think she just didn’t answer the phone.”

I shrugged.

“That was very close to where Tip died,” she said.

I nodded.

“And now he’s trying to kill you,” she said.

I shrugged.

“I can’t stand it,” she said shakily.

“You can’t—or your career can’t?”

Tears welled in her eyes and she glared at me. “That was nasty. You are a nasty man, aren’t you?”