Have Gat—Will Travel (15 page)

He grinned quickly, nervously, "Excuse my choice of words, Mr. Scott. I'm somewhat overwrought. I didn't mean you were to kill anyone. At least I don't think that will be necessary." He chuckled without humor and went on, "I want you to get a blackmailer off my back. I'm being blackmailed, and the funny thing is I haven't stepped out of line." He hesitated. "Not really, you know. I told the skunk tonight — just before I came here — that I wouldn't pay anything and if the pressure wasn't removed I'd go to the police. All I got was a laugh in my face. I remembered reading about some of your — ah — exploits, Mr. Scott, so I looked you up in the phone book and came here."

"Why me instead of the police you mentioned?"

"Well, blackmail, you know. I'm not exactly proud of it. I'd like it as quiet and private as possible. That's why I came to a private investigator. It's rather an odd affair and I want to be kept completely out of it if I can. That's important." He fumbled in his coat pocket, drew out a white envelope and handed it to me. "It's worth five thousand dollars to me if you do it my way."

I picked up the envelope, peeled it open and looked fondly at the crisp green C-notes inside.

I closed the envelope, tapped it against the back of my hand and said, "The offer's very attractive, Mr. Loring, but maybe you'd better give me the whole story. Who's blackmailing you? Who'd you have the beef with tonight? Start at the beginning."

He sighed and adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses. "Well, it actually started when I became unduly interested in art." He frowned. "Art," he repeated bitterly.

That was the end of the five minutes and from there on in he was dead.

He leaned forward toward me, opened his mouth to speak, and the shot came from the open window behind me. It sounded as if it came right out of my ear.

I
saw the neat round hole appear slightly off center in Loring's forehead just before my legs uncoiled and hurled me sideways toward the wall. The gun cracked again and a slug ripped a hole in the carpet a foot from me as I came up on my hands and knees against the wall and leaped toward the corner parallel to the window.

I yanked my revolver out of its shoulder holster and had it ready for action just as Loring's head smacked soddenly into the edge of my desk and he flopped onto the carpet like a sack of cement. At almost the same instant I heard the guy drop off the fire escape and make tracks down the alley behind the building. I got to the window just in time to hear the roar as a car motor was gunned and clashed into gear. The car was gone with a shrill screaming of rubber before I could get a look. . . .

I dug a flash out of the desk and went over the fire escape, finding exactly nothing, then closed the window, locked it, and pulled down the shade before I paid any more attention to Loring. He didn't need any attention; he was slumped carelessly on the floor as if he was all tired out after a hard day's work. I left him resting and called Homicide.

It definitely wasn't my day. Instead of some nice guy like Captain Samson or Lieutenant Brown, I got Kerrigan. Lieutenant Jason Peter Kerrigan, with ears. His voice over the phone was a shrill whine that went through me like fingernails scraping on a window pane. I gave it to him fast, hung up on his screech, and dug a finger into the ear that had suffered the most.

Then I searched Loring.

He had the usual junk in his pockets: handkerchief, comb, wallet, change. I stuffed everything back except the wallet and went through that. The only things of interest were two cards. They were of interest because they had something to do with art. One was from Massy's, a well-known art store on Grand Street in downtown L. A. that specialized in fine paintings for a price; the other was printed "S. A. Fillson — Learn to Paint — Life Drawing," with an address on Broadway. I appropriated the two cards, illegally, and sat down behind my desk to wait for Kerrigan.

There's just one door into my office — the one that says, "Sheldon Scott, Investigations" on the frosted glass window — and Kerrigan came through it as if he was making a first down.

He stopped short for a moment, bandy legs spread wide while he glared at the body on the floor; then he turned the glare on me. A little perspiration glistened on his fat face and the inevitable dead cigar jutted from between his thick lips. His voice was the same as it had been over the phone five minutes before, only louder.

"So someone shot him from the window, huh? You told me through the window, right, Scott?"

I said wearily, knowing what was coming, "That's right."

"Right through the window. Right through the shade, too?"

"The window was open. I shut it and pulled the shade. Or should I have left it open so the guy could come back and try again?"

"You expect me to swallow that, Scott?"

He didn't like me.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Stop stretching so goddam far, Kerrigan. Okay, so I murdered him. Things were dull."

His face started getting red, and the longer we talked, the redder it got. When it got to the shade where he was ready to book me on suspicion of murder and toss me in the pokey I cooled him off. A little.

"Act your age, Kerrigan." I yanked my .38 Colt Special out of its holster, grabbed it by the two-inch barrel and handed it to him. "My gun hasn't been fired for days. What did I do with the murder gun? Eat it? Flush it down the drain? This guy was a client; I never saw him before in my life. I was supposed to help the guy, not knock him off. Whoever did it took a shot at me too, incidentally."

Kerrigan sniffed at the gun barrel, mumbled something under his breath, then shut up temporarily while the boys from Scientific Investigation went through their flashbulb routine around the body. I did get my gun back, but when the lieutenant left, I went along with him.

After half an hour at Headquarters I was on my way with the usual admonition to keep myself handy. It was after six o'clock so I had to use the Main Street exit from the City Hall, then took a right toward First. My office is between Third and Fourth on Broadway, just five blocks away, so I walked and wondered what the hell.

I was still wondering what the hell when I crossed Third Street and approached the Hamilton Building, where my office is, but I also wondered vaguely why a car would be parked in the alley at its edge. The car was facing left into Broadway, half out over the sidewalk, and I'd casually noticed it a few moments before. As I got closer, I could hear the soft purr of the motor running. Maybe I was keyed up, but I kept an eye on the car as I drew abreast of the Hamilton's wide doors.

It was a good thing.

There was a guy behind the steering wheel and when I caught the glint of metal in his hand I jumped sideways and dropped to my knees. It was pure reflex. I've seen too many guns not to get out of their way in a hurry. I was digging for my .38 before my knees hit the sidewalk.

Flame licked out of the car window, and the slug tugged at the cloth of my coat and burned across the skin of my shoulder. I flipped my gun up and snapped once at him. It had to be quick.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not usually that good. It was a lucky shot. But I got a glimpse of him as he slumped forward onto the steering wheel and his gun fell from relaxed fingers and clattered into the alley. The car horn started braying raucously as his body pressed against it. A couple of pedestrians darted frightened glances at me and scurried down the street like startled birds.

I kept my gun ready, got to my feet, and walked up to the car. I pulled the guy away from the steering wheel and the horn stopped braying suddenly.

He was a little guy, and he had an empty space in his mouth, as if he'd lost a tooth. He had. He'd also lost the back of his head. He was nobody I'd ever seen before and I started what-the-helling all over again. It didn't make sense; but it was finally filtering through my skull. Somebody wanted me dead.

C
aptain Phil Samson, tough, tricky, but thoroughly honest head of the Los Angeles Homicide Division, peered at me through bushy gray eyebrows after I gave him the whole story. His big jaw stuck out like a lump of cast iron and he wiggled a big-knuckled finger at me.

"Two of 'em," he said sweetly. "Two stiffs. One wasn't enough, huh. Shell?"

"Look, Sam," I said. "I told you how it happened. You've known me long enough so you know that's the straight copy. Why it happened, I don't know — not yet, anyway. Loring didn't get to tell me a damn thing except that he needed help. And he mumbled something about blackmail."

"Then this mysterious person plugged him from the window; that what you said?"

I nodded.

Samson didn't say anything; he just looked at me, wagging his big paw slowly from side to side like a cast-iron pendulum.

I got up. "Well, Sam, I'll be getting along. Not enough sleep lately. Pretty tired."

He started to say something, then changed his mind. I started for the door and he spoke.

"Guess I don't have to remind you to stick pretty close, Shell."

"You don't have to remind me."

Nobody said anything to me on my way out. It was easier than I'd expected. Too easy. I'd have bet fifty bucks Samson — my pal — had a tail on me.

I wasn't sleepy as I'd pretended to Samson so I headed for the office for a new coat. The hole in the coat I was wearing and the burn across my shoulder were reminding me I had a personal interest in this case now.

Samson had told me the guy I'd popped was Slippy Rancin, a two-bit torpedo with an I. Q. like two and two. I couldn't see Rancin dreaming up this caper all by himself the way it was beginning to shape up. And I wanted the right guy to get kissed off for the slug with my name on it. Besides, there was five grand of Loring's money resting where I'd stuck it in my inside coat pocket and I like my clients to get their money's worth. Even the dead ones.

This thing was screwier than a rejected pretzel. Probably the damnedest case I'd seen in two years of private-eyeing in L. A. A guy had been murdered right under my broken nose and in my own office; I'd shot a hood myself, and slugs had been tossed at me twice; I'd been twice to Headquarters; and I had a dead man's five G's in my kick. And I hadn't even started on the case.

Hell, I didn't even know what it was all about. But I did know somebody wanted me removed from among the living. They'd tried twice and maybe they thought the third time would be the charm.

It was high time the sleuth sleuthed.

My disgustingly yellow '47 Cadillac convertible got me to the Loring place on Lorraine Boulevard by a quarter to nine. The phone book had given me the address but it hadn't given me the dimensions. Anyone with a house that big had to be in the social register. Or a politician. It looked a little bit like a southern colonel's old mansion with glass bricks and modern improvements added. And it looked like enough moolah to choke all the cows in Carnation.

There were lights on inside so I walked up and fingered the buzzer. The door opened and a small, birdlike woman with a middle-aged, doll-sized face turned a pair of clear brown eyes on me. She didn't look like a wife who'd just learned she was a widow, so I asked for Mrs. Loring.

"I'm Mrs. Loring."

So she was the widow, but apparently she didn't know it yet.

"I'm a private investigator," I said. I'd just started to give her my name and state my business when she interrupted me with a remark that stopped me like Louis stopped Schmeling. The second time.

"Oh, yes. Come in, Mr. Ellis."

Ellis! I tossed that around like a hot dime while she led me in a spacious, soft-looking living room and sat down facing me under the one lamp that was burning.

She said, "I won't need you after tonight, Mr. Ellis. The police were here earlier and informed me that my husband had been murdered."

She said it as if she was telling me it was Booth who shot Lincoln.

She glanced toward the shadowed corner of the room and said, "Nancy, bring me my checkbook, please." She turned to me again, "Do you have anything to report?"

My head was spinning like the tenth Martini. I've been told I'm fast on the uptake, but I was a lap behind and losing ground fast. After everything else, now this. Ellis? Checkbook? Nancy? Report?

Nancy. I glanced toward the corner where there was some kind of a low-slung divan just in time to catch a dim flash of white thighs as someone I hadn't noticed up to now swung her legs to the floor and got up. I didn't know whether to appreciate it or be disinterested; Nancy might be nine or ninety.

"Report?" I mumbled. "Well, no. I haven't anything to report. Nothing of any importance." What the hell could I say? I was as confused as a pallbearer at the wrong funeral.

Mrs. Loring shrugged her tiny shoulders. "No matter," she said. "Oh, thank you, Nancy."

I looked up.

I gnashed my teeth.

I breathed heavily.

T
he girl was standing by Mrs. Loring and I could see with half an eye she wasn't nine or ninety. She was closer to twenty-five and she looked as if she'd started life with a beautiful face that had grown easier to look at every year.

And the body. The body had tagged right along.

She was about five-four of perfectly proportioned woman dressed in a terrifically curved white sweater and a pleated black skirt. Red hair hung down around her shoulders and she had a sullen red mouth with lips so full they looked as if they'd been bruised and swollen. On her, they looked good. Her eyes didn't fit with the sensual body and the bruised-looking lips. They were a deep brown that was almost black — and they were the widest, most innocent-looking eyes I'd ever seen in all my thirty years.

She was staring at my big frame with a hungry look.

I've got short-cropped blond hair that sticks straight up half an inch all over my head, almost white eyebrows that slant up and then swoop down at the corners of my gray eyes, a nose that hasn't been the same since it got busted on Okinawa, and a strong jaw. My face has seen a lot of sunshine and a lot of women, and some of the women have given me that hungry look before. But this was the full treatment.