<code> Chapter One

IT WAS Bedlam, and Babel, and Baghdad galloping, and Lady Godiva in the middle naked as an artificial eye on a white-satin spread. And not a sign of a horse.

It was the United Nations of Hollywood all decked out in masks and sarongs and baggy bloomers and Snug-Fit Pantie Girdles, and the whole thing charged up to “Better Employee Relations” by Magna Studios, producers of the epic epic you’ll soon be seeing for sixty-eight cents plus seven cents federal tax at all your neighborhood theatres.

The cameras had stopped rolling in the afternoon on Magna’s most recent supercolossal, Cry Cry, and this was the blowout celebrating wrapping the thing up two weeks under schedule.

Me? I was watching Lady Godiva.

And with good reason. Almost everyone here was wearing some kind of costume except the Lady, who warn’t no lady. I couldn’t have told you who she was, though. She was wearing a mask that covered her face, and I didn’t know her that well.

I was wearing a mask, too, but that didn’t stop a lot of people from recognizing me. I’m just under six-two and weigh four or five pounds over two hundred, so I stuck up in the air a little higher than most of the guys in the crowd. And the mask didn’t help me much; I guess no mask ever will. My busted nose stuck out from underneath it, and above it were my screwy white eyebrows that start up from the middle, then throw a fit and swoop down at the ends like bent-pin fishhooks. The blondish, nearly white hair that I kept about an inch long showed under the tilted rim of my costume hat and finished giving me away to anybody that knew me — and it seemed like there were plenty here that knew me, even if I couldn’t recognize them in their fancy outfits.

I was born in L.A. thirty years back and I’ve spent most of my life, except for four years as a Marine during the most recent World War, right here in L.A. and Hollywood. I sort of grew up alongside the movie industry, and in the process I got to know a lot of the Hollywood boys and girls — from guys on the outside looking in to Harry Feldspen himself, top dog of Magna Studios. Which explains what a private detective was doing at a movie ball.

I’d opened the office — Sheldon Scott, Investigations — in downtown L.A. right after I said a happy good-by to the U.S. Marine Corps. After a few bleak months things picked up and I started making enough money to pay taxes. Then about a year back I’d done a job for Feldspen and he’d remembered me when this party rolled around. He’d been kind enough to phone me and invite me to drop in, unofficially, if I felt like it.

Instead of holding the party on a set or sound stage, Magna had taken over Feldspen’s huge Los Angeles mansion for a masked costume ball. Taken over, that is, at the nod of Harry Feldspen. So right now I was sandwiched in at the bar between Paul Clark, a cutter in one of Magna’s cutting rooms, and Irv Seeley, a make-up artist.

Paul Clark was about five-ten and well built, with an almost square face and a Bob Hope nose. His eyes were brown and alert in a sunburned face. Clark was a sort of casual friend of mine I’d run into around the studios over the last year or so, but I’d known Irv Seeley four or five years. He was a little guy, about five-six, but what he lost in height he made up in belly. I never asked him, but I’ll bet he had his pants specially made so they’d be almost as wide as they were long. He was always neat, though, and smiling genially.

Along the bar I could see four or five people I thought I recognized: a couple of grips, a director, a cameraman or two, and a cowboy star. He didn’t have a horse either, but nobody noticed; the kids were all home in bed.

Lady Godiva was nearing the end of her freedom. And almost everybody at the bar except me had been missing the fun.

“Irv,” I said. “You, too, Clark. Don’t look now, but — “

They looked anyway.

Clark whistled through his teeth. “Wow! She must have had some too many. They’re gonna catch her. Too bad.”

Irv said, “She looks familiar, Shell.”

I didn’t look at him, but I grinned. “Stop bragging.”

“Who’s bragging? She acts familiar. Wonder who she is.”

I shook my head and swallowed the last of my water highball. It could have been anybody of approximately the same size and shape. Everybody in the big mansion — and there were about three hundred of us at the party — was masked, and the masks wouldn’t come off till midnight. Apparently that rule didn’t apply to costumes.

This being a costume ball, I’d discarded my private-eye suit, which was a double-breasted teal-blue gabardine, and climbed into a thing the guy at the shop told me was an exact replica of the dress uniform worn by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I had a mask on, but I still felt silly as hell. When I’d walked up to the bar, Irv and Clark, drinking together, didn’t have any trouble recognizing me and introducing themselves for kicks. After I’d explained that I was here on a special invite from Feldspen and wasn’t here on business or to crash their racket, we settled down to some pleasant drinking. Right now, though, watching Lady Godiva was even more fun than drinking.

Finally a couple of lucky guys caught her and said, “Baby, get on your horse,” or something like that, and hustled her out of the big ballroom where most of us were gathered. I never did find out where the devil they took her.

Clark turned around and said, “Bottoms up,” which seemed appropriate, and added, “I’m celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?” I asked him.

“Promoted. I’m head cutter now. Two days ago. Hell, that’s the only reason I’m here; I’d probably be working otherwise. Most of the other boys are — the ones in feature cutting, anyway.”

By working he meant snipping and slicing around with the film from the last shot on Cry Cry. It didn’t sound like a heck of a lot of work to me, but I’m no expert. About all I know about it is that they cut and splice the features so they run smoothly — chop out a little here and add a little there, then put the thing together and bundle it off to a preview somewhere.

No matter, any excuse was good for another drink. Not that we needed an excuse. Or a drink, for that matter. We’d all been imbibing pretty freely of the free and pretty liquor. So the three of us chewed on more highballs and turned around with our backs against the bar and ogled people.

I’d been ogling one in particular with little luck so far. She was wearing a silver mask that covered her face from forehead to lips but left her lips bare so you could see them. And a good thing, too; it would have been a major crime to cover up lips like those. They were the full, curving kind that you knew said, “Mash me,” in hot whispers, and I was getting increasingly curious about the eyes and the nose and the cheekbones.

The rest of her, from the neck down, was part delightful and part guessing. The guessing part was that covered by a thick, flowing skirt in powder blue with wide hoops that discouraged dancing. The delightful part was the square-cut blouse worn low enough to discourage nothing.

She was costumed as a Southern belle, and I wondered why, if they had belles like that in the South, wasn’t I in Atlanta? I’d just decided to stroll over to her and ask when Irv Seeley nudged me.

“Tie that,” he rumbled. He rumbled because his voice came up out of his stomach and there was plenty of room there for rumbling. Echoes, even. He nodded at a big guy standing near the bar a few feet from us.

I say big because I’m a pretty good size myself, and this guy had two inches and thirty pounds on me. And he was well put together.

“So tie what?” I asked Irv.

“Brane. Roger Brane. You mean to tell me you don’t know the bum?”

“Vaguely, now that you mention his name. Never met him. Doesn’t he have some kind of studio out on the Strip?”

“That’s right. Artist. Very artistic artist. And a stinking, no-good louse if there ever was one.”

I winced a little. Irv’s voice wasn’t a whisper and Brane was only a few feet away.

Paul Clark turned toward us and ran a finger alongside his long, sharp nose. He said loudly, “Irv, you got it all wrong. You should always call Brane a bastard. You know why? Because he’s” — he raised his voice a little higher — “the biggest bastard in Hollywood. And brother, that takes in a lot of bastards.”

Brane turned slowly and I noticed he had his mask shoved up over his forehead. He wasn’t going to play the same way everybody else did; he was going to be different. Undoubtedly that’s how the two with me had recognized him — that and his size. He was dressed like an Italian nobleman of the Renaissance period and he looked a little bit like a Technicolor sunset. He wore a blue puff-sleeved jacket, wine-colored tights that encased his long legs all the way down to his feet, and a black cape lined inside with gray. The cape fastened at his neck and shoulders and hung down his back to the floor, and the jeweled handle of a long knife protruded from a sheath at his left side.

An incongruous touch was a very modern and expensive-looking Leica thirty-five millimeter miniature camera in an open leather case that was secured by a leather strap over Brane’s shoulder.

He rested one big hand on the handle of the knife and swaggered toward us. That’s right, swaggered. As if he were pretty impressed with himself.

He stopped in front of us and examined the three of us with his full lips curling slightly as if we were dirt. His hair was brown and crinkly and both his thin brown eyebrows were raised.

He completed his inspection and said distinctly and with voluminous scorn, “Peasants.”

Then he let his eyes drop to our feet, linger, then rise to our faces again. “Shoes,” he said quietly. “My!” He examined our faces intently, smiling with good teeth, then pursed his lips and said, “Definitely cretin. Depressing. Most depressing. But interesting — to an anthropologist.”

There wasn’t so much that was original in the words Brane used, but his delivery was out of this world. He could have said, “Oh, you kid,” and you’d have heard it for the first time. He dissolved part of each word in acid before he flung its remnant past his well-shaped lips.

Roger Brane was a being from Mars or Olympus; we were just people.

Brane was still speaking. He smiled pleasantly and added in his cultured drawl, “You charming things. You … things.” His smile broadened. “Join me outside, will you? One of you? One of you … things?”

This guy was rubbing me the wrong way, but it wasn’t my argument in the first place. I said, “Mr. Brane. Knock it off. I’ve got no argument with you.” I managed a smile. “In the words of Goldwyn, include me out. As a matter of fact, include us all out. Forget it. We apologize.”

Brane centered his attention on me as if he were getting ready to perform his first autopsy and didn’t know quite where to begin.

“What,” he asked, “I mean who are you?”

“Scott. Shell Scott.”

“You’re interesting,” he said slowly with undue emphasis. “But that’s a disgusting nose. Don’t you think it’s disgusting?”

He referred to the fact that my nose, which got busted during a murder session with the Japs overseas in ‘44, never got set right. It’s a little crooked, but not disgusting.

I said as pleasantly as I could, “Sometimes I can stand it. Good-by.”

I guess he was just getting started. It was sort of between him and me now, though Clark and Seeley stood on each side of me. And they were the guys that set it off. How the hell had I got tangled up in this thing?

Brane said, “I like the way you talk, man. Man?” He let himself look puzzled, then plastered the big white smile back on. I was starting to understand why Paul and Irv didn’t like the guy. I didn’t say anything. He’d had his fun; now maybe he’d beat it. The way I was starting to feel, he’d better beat it.

He didn’t beat it.

He said, “You know, Scott, you talk with rare intelligence. Taking everything into consideration. I wonder if you’d consider donating your brain — oh!” He was apologetic now. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

I could feel my face getting hot. I sat my drink on the bar to my left, stepped up close, and shoved my face at him. “Listen, friend,” I said. “You go play with yourself or something. I told you I didn’t have any argument with you. I didn’t. But it’s not going to last. I can feel it.”

He put his chin down on his neck and stared at me, shaking his head as if I were a naughty boy.

I clenched my fists, then relaxed and got a little grip on myself. A little one.

I said, “Look, Brane. My friends here cracked wise. O.K., they shouldn’t have done it. Now forget it and beat it.”

“But they’re right,” he said agreeably. “Absolutely right. I am a bastard. Quite literally.”

“So who the hell cares?” I said.

Clark, the damn fool, picked that time to bust in again. “That’s not what I meant, Brane. I meant figuratively speaking.”

Hot damn! Good old Clark. I could have mashed his skull. Brane kept smiling, but for the first time the full lips crinkled a little, bent in toward his teeth.

He stepped easily over in front of Paul Clark and said softly, “You didn’t, now. Not really. How would you like to get shoved all the way back to, say, Kansas City, Missouri?”

Then he raised his big right hand, spread the fingers, placed his hand slowly against Clark’s face, and shoved.

Clark’s head snapped back and he stumbled against the bar behind him. I heaved a sigh and waited for him to come out swinging and get dismembered, but he just stood against the bar and glared hate.

The hate didn’t hurt Brane any.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see a few people watching us. It was a big party, and people didn’t pay much attention to a lot of the things that were happening, but this had been going on for quite a while now. I thought I caught a glimpse of the girl with the chest and the hoop skirt and I thought how much more fun it would be to play patty-cake with her.

Then I almost swallowed my tongue.

I’d noticed Brane had stepped back in front of me, but all of a sudden I heard him say pleasantly, “And now, you.”

I didn’t believe it till I saw him actually raising his hand and starting to push it toward my face.

The goddam fool thought he was going to shove my face in!

All the cracks I’d let pass, all the burn I’d cooled off suddenly boiled up and ran down my left arm and into my hand and curled it up into a fist and slammed it hard into his stomach.

He didn’t go down, and that surprised me. His big paw had shoved into my face and pulled a little steam out of the punch, but there was still plenty behind it. There was enough behind it so that he bent over part way like a man stooping for a fraternity initiation, and he gasped a little through his open mouth. His hands came up and pressed against his stomach.

Anyway, they weren’t pressing my face.

He grunted a little, still in the same position, and glared up at me without moving.

I turned to the bar and picked up my drink.

I shouldn’t have done it.

He wasn’t hurt as much as I thought, just waiting, and when I turned and got the glass in my hand he straightened up suddenly and slammed his left fist hard behind my right ear.

I went down. I wasn’t off balance and I didn’t stumble. I just went down. The guy packed a punch like an asteroid. I landed on my hands and knees and got my pretty Mountie suit all dirty, and things were dizzy for a minute. Then I shook my head and everything cleared up except it was red. Mad red. And I was trying to shove my teeth through each other.

I twisted my head and I looked up at him from the floor and I said and I meant it, “Good-by, friend.”

Then I started up after him. Either he was going to kill me or I was going to break every goddam bone in his goddam body.

When I’d landed in his stomach a crowd had started to gather. This was better than an “A” Western. Now a mess of them got between us and there were hands all over Brane and all over me and I think I busted somebody’s finger. Anyway I heard a yelp and one hand let go of me, but two more came out of somewhere and took its place.

I got a hazy glimpse of Seeley’s face beside me. He hissed at me, “Calm down. And watch what you’re saying.”

“Get out of my way!” I roared at him. “And let the hell go of me. I’m gonna kill that smirking jackass with my bare hands!”

Things were muddled and confused for a while, but finally the hands started slipping off me. Then I was all by myself and Brane was nowhere in sight.

But, by God, I was going to find him.

</code>

<code> Chapter Two

I WAS STANDING in front of the bar with my fingernails digging into my palms and breathing like a timorous bridegroom when a soft, warm voice said almost in my ear, “Thanks, Mr. Scott.”

“For what?”^ I swiveled my head around and looked at a silver mask and “mash me” lips. I looked at more than that, but I don’t want to spoil you.

“For poking the leper,” she said.

I blinked.

She smiled and said, “Roger Brane. That’s what everybody calls him. In capitals.”

“Oh? There’s more that don’t like him?”

“A club. Composed of a large part of the Los Angeles City Directory. You’re the latest member. We don’t like him either.”

“But not like I don’t like him.”

“Wrong, Shell.”

“Sure?”

“You are Shell Scott, aren’t you? The private detective?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?” Foolish question, but I asked it.

“Because you’re big — and this stuff.” She ran cool fingers over my brows and mussed my hair. Or tried to muss it.

“Honey,” I said, “there’s nothing I’d like better than to stand here and chat with you about my gray eyes and how did I get so tanned and what keeps your blouse up, but right now I gotta see a man.”

“What was that?” she asked me, indicating the broken glass and wet pool on the floor.

“Bourbon and water.”

She turned and went to the bar and came back with two filled glasses. She handed one to me.

“For luck,” she said. “You can have one with me, can’t you?”

I hadn’t forgotten anything, but my temperature was down almost to normal by now, so I said, “O.K. I guess my party can keep.” And it seemed like a good idea to cool down a little more before I chased after Brane. I was still too mad at the guy to think straight, and I like to know what I’m doing. Besides, I figured I could grab Brane any time, and I didn’t want this dish to get away from me.

I took a good look at her now that she was up close, and she was really something. Her legs were hidden by the billowy hoop skirt, but from the rest of her I knew they’d be front and center in any musical. She was about five-five, and the top of her skirt squeezed what looked like a twenty-two-inch waist. Her lips I’ve mentioned, and even through the mask I could see she had violent violet eyes. They were that kind of mist-flecked indescribable color that violet covers better than anything else. Her teeth were white and perfect, and when she smiled a slow, easy smile my spine turned to liquid latex and started gurgling somewhere down around my Mountie boots.

She had thirty-six inches that wasn’t muscle under the opaque blouse and I couldn’t understand why the blouse didn’t fall the rest of the way down and gather around her waist, which was a nice place to gather. I took a good look and decided there were two reasons why it didn’t fall down. Two excellent reasons.

One of the longest trips in my life was getting back up to her face, but what was there was worth it. Even if all I could see was a pair of wonderful lips and a vague promise of the rest.

“What’s under the mask?” I asked her. “Who are you?”

She shook her head. Her hair just missed being blonde, but it couldn’t be called brunette either. Light and fluffy and shoulder-length, it swayed a little across her bare skin as she said, “Nope. Not till midnight. I’d rather keep you guessing.”

“Well, O.K. Dance?”

She smiled and my spine slid around some more. “All right,” she said. “But you’ll have to be careful.”

I leered at her like Vincent Price. “I’ll be careful.”

She batted her eyes at me. She batted a home run. My home.

“Of my dress,” she said. “The skirt. If you get too close and push against it, it goes up in back. The harder you push, the higher it goes. Hoops.”

“Hoops?”

“Hoops. They’re stiff.”

“My minuet’s a little rusty.”

“Well, try. Try hard.”

I took her left hand in mine and put my right hand on her waist and shuffled my feet. We didn’t cover much ground, just shuffled a little and looked at each other.

She said, “Hope you didn’t mind my butting in.”

“Mind? You crazy?”

“I noticed you were looking at me. I thought you started walking toward me just before — before the first round.”

“First round’s right. It won’t go fifteen. But I did start over to see you.”

“Anyway, I wanted to thank you. Besides, I was curious.”

“About what?”

“Well, the party’s for the cast and company and so forth from Magna. What’s a private detective doing at a movie ball? You making a movie?”

“Uh-uh. I’m laughing.” I laughed.

“Well,” she said, eyeing me, “you could play mean-looking villains.”

I shook my head. “I did a favor for Feldspen about a year back. He barely knows my name, but he told me I could bust in here if I wanted — might get some kicks.”

“Are you? Getting some kicks, I mean?”

“I am now.”

We shuffled our feet around a little more and I said, “I see I’m not the only outsider. There’s Sweetness.”

“You mean Brane. He’s usually around things like this,” she said. “Acts like a frustrated extra.” She smiled beautifully. “I hear he took a screen test when he first came out here. But he stank. Maybe he likes to come to parties and dream. And he knows lots of wheels, I guess.”

“How long’s the guy been around?”

“Close to three years, I suppose. Maybe not that long.”

“Enough,” I said. “Let’s talk about you.” I pulled her in closer.

“Hoops!” she squealed. “Careful!”

I chuckled, then glared at a guy behind her with his eyes twirling. “Sorry,” I said to her. “Why’d you wear that damn thing?”

She smiled up at me, then said seriously, “Because I didn’t think anyone else would. The costumes are a big secret, you know. Nobody knows who I am. Maybe I’ll win a prize.”

“You’d win them all if I passed them out,” I told her. But I knew what she meant. In Hollywood, even more than most places, the gals like “originals.” Costume parties included. Antoinette Aphrodisia might pull off her wig if she showed up on the street or at a party in the same getup as Betty Bedpan. So the outfits here were top secret. The masks helped ensure that there’d be less favoritism shown in the awarding of prizes, which focused a little more attention on the winners.

In Hollywood, any kind of attention is good.

I wondered who the devil I was dancing with. Star? Extra? Script girl? Not that it made any difference, but this luscious doll was building a powerful curiosity in me.

I said, “How about meeting me at midnight when the masks come off? I’m at a disadvantage; you already know who I am.”

The music stopped just as she said, “All right, Shell. How about at the foot of the stairs?”

We were in a big ballroom that would hold all of the three hundred guests and more, but a few of them were wandering around the landscaped grounds or upstairs. The stairs she mentioned were a wide, curving flight that started at the side of the ballroom and curved up to the second floor like a De Mille movie set. I hadn’t been up them, but I knew there were bedrooms and baths and maybe even a museum at the top. The place was big enough.

“Foot of the stairs,” I agreed. “Midnight sharp.”

We stopped shuffling our feet and she said, “See you,” and walked away, the powder-blue hoop skirt swaying gently.

I sighed and picked up another drink at the bar, then started wandering around. Fun’s fun, but I had me a score to settle with Roger Brane. I moseyed around but couldn’t get a sight of Brane’s curly head or flowing black and gray cape.

It was some place to wander around in. Magna’s one of the top studios in Hollywood, and some of the highest-bracket stars in town were trotting around the floor in masks and capes and skirts and sarongs and what not. And there was sure a lot of skin showing — even male. One guy was decked out in a leopard skin and nothing else, like Tarzan. Hell, maybe it was Tarzan.

There were also several apes, but not in hairy costumes. There were going to be a lot of squeals at midnight when everybody found out who everybody else was. Some of them you could recognize from distinguishing characteristics like pinheads, but not many of the total crowd. Guessing was supposed to be part of the fun.

A straight-up-and-down gal who probably played character parts but who was dressed like Cleopatra glommed onto my arm just as I noticed that a guy at a mike across the room was starting the awarding of prizes for the various classes of costumes.

I watched the proceedings from across the room while Cleopatra babbled at me. She was pretty drunk. Finally I got what she was burbling: “Wild Party.” You know, the thing in verse about a party that’s quite a ball itself. She must have spent a lot of lonely nights memorizing that one.

I didn’t pay too much attention to the awarding of prizes because I didn’t win anything — and I’m not pouting. I perked up, though, when sweet little Silver Mask walked up and accepted something from the M.C. So she had won a prize. I bet I knew what it was for.

I didn’t hear much of what was said, because the damn gal on my arm was going into the stretch on “Wild Party.” It was getting pretty good, but Cleo never said a word of conversation, just babbled on in a slipshod singsong, with gestures. Maybe she thought I was a producer.

By the time I shook Cleopatra off, Silver Mask was lost again. I wandered around for half an hour or so without seeing anybody that interested me, then looked at my watch. Eleven p.m. and I was a little tired of the whole business. The only reason I stuck around was for midnight and the foot of the stairs. And Brane, of course.

I’d just turned and started back toward the bar when I heard it. Everybody heard it.

Just a little high-pitched yelp at first, coming from somewhere at the top of the wide flight of stairs. But then it got strength from somewhere and let go about C above high C in a blood-curdling scream like Dracula meeting Frankenstein in the House of Mirrors.

A quick shiver flashed along my spine, then I took off in a run toward the stairs and sprinted up them. A woman, mouth stretched wide and still screaming, came hurtling out of the dimness above me and tried to go down the stairs eight at a time. It can’t be done.

She got to the edge of the steps and took off like one of those comic divers you see at swim shows, with her legs still churning the air and landing on nothing. She did land, though, a few steps above me, and I tried to slow down and grab at her as her ankle twisted. But either I was too slow or she was too fast. She spilled out, sprawling like a busted marionette, and rolled with her arms, legs, and clothes flying clear down to the bottom of the stairs, where a couple of guys grabbed her.

From the first bounce to the last jiggle her mouth was pulled wide open. She never stopped screaming till she hit bottom.

I ran the rest of the way up and stopped at the landing.

A couple of people were there ahead of me. Three, really, but even from ten feet away I could tell. It looked like I’d come to the party as a civilian, but now I was back in the wars. The guy on the floor was dead.

</code>

<code> Chapter Three

HE LAY ON HIS BACK. The two men leaned over him making small futile sounds with their mouths. Kind of gagging sounds.

He had on the blue jacket and wine-colored tights, but his black and gray cape was gone and it was Roger Brane, all right. It had been Roger Brane. It looked like the first round was all I’d get with him now. He wouldn’t be out for the second; he wouldn’t even hear the bell.

A few feet from his head was a small but heavy-looking statuette of Mercury that somebody might have used to hit him with, but now that was incidental. It was easy to understand why the screaming gal had been screaming. I didn’t blame her. Roger Brane’s jeweled knife wasn’t in its sheath any more; it rested on the carpeted floor at his side. But sometime between the sheath and the floor it had detoured long enough to raise red hell with Brane’s throat.

The flesh was laid open in the kind of great gaping slash that you never believe till you see it. I believed it. His heart had kept pumping for a little while, and there was blood, blood, blood all over him, and on the little camera still around his neck, and on the soft carpet.

I’d seen men dead, and I’d even had to put a few away myself, but I’d never seen them this kind of dead before. I hope to God I never see it again.

I didn’t feel for his pulse or even touch him. That would have been like folding a dead man’s hands: just a movement, a ritual. There wouldn’t have been any point to it, and it wouldn’t have done him any good. He was just another dead man now, and his personality was the universal one common to corpses.

I’d been bent over peering down at him; now I straightened up. Somebody had kissed him off but good. And I couldn’t help wondering who. In a way, it was already my business.

I was still wondering while more people started gathering around. Then somebody said, “Hey! What the hell’s this?”

I walked over to where the guy was standing. He bent over and picked something up: a wide, billowing skirt in powder blue. With hoops.

My stomach kicked up a little, but I told him, “Hang onto that. Help me get these people away from here.”

We spent a busy five minutes keeping the crowd from storming up the stairs and I managed to get in touch with Bill Parker, Feldspen’s right-hand man, and had him get somebody to check all the doors. It was probably too late now, but nobody else was going in or out till the Homicide boys got here.

Then I found an upstairs phone and called police headquarters. I got Captain Samson, working late at Homicide.

“Sam,” I said. “Shell.”

“I thought you were in high society tonight,” he growled. His voice was a little muffled and I knew he’d be chewing a long black cigar. He might bite the end off in a minute.

“Yeah, Sam,” I said. “Dead society.”

“Huh? What you pulling?”

“Nothing.” I gave it to him in a couple of sentences and waited.

He said, “Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus H. Christ.” Then he was quiet for a few seconds. “O.K., ten minutes.”

“Sam,” I said. “Any chance you’ll be out yourself?”

“What for?”

“I just happened to think. A little while ago I — I took a poke at the guy.”

Samson chewed on his unlighted cigar and growled at me, “Why the hell don’t you just cut your own throat?”

I frowned at him. “You don’t think…”

He squinted brown eyes at me. “No, stupid. But you’re sure a mess of trouble. And what I think might not be too important.”

Samson. Detective Captain Phil Samson of the Los Angeles Homicide Division. A big, nice guy with gray hair that got that way during his eighteen years on the force. Especially the last thirteen — the Homicide thirteen. And the last thirteen years probably helped make his cast-iron jaw a little firmer, a little tougher.

“Well,” I said, “that’s all of it. All I know, anyway.”

He rubbed one hand along the side of his pink, clean-shaven face. “Messy. Good thing you got somebody on the doors. Probably a lot took off anyway.” He pulled the cigar out of his wide mouth and looked at me. “This skirt,” he asked. “What’s with this skirt?”

I shook my head. “Dunno, Sam. I told you, I don’t know who she was. Nobody else here seems to, either.”

Samson stuck the cigar back in his mouth and clamped down on it as Lieutenant Rawlins, a young, good-looking cop in his late twenties, came up.

“Found this at the door, Sam,” he said. “Door leads to stairs outside. Stairs go down and bye-bye.”

He held out a long, limp mask with eye slits and a bump for a nose. It was painted silver.

Sam grunted and looked at me.

I nodded. “The same. Goes with the skirt.”

“You sure? Could there have been a couple like her?”

I grinned, but not very happily. I didn’t feel a bit like grinning, but I gave it the light treatment. “No soap, Sam. It was Hot Lips. She won a prize.” Then I added, thinking, “Besides, she was in a class all by herself.”

I couldn’t help wondering what this gimmick meant, or being puzzled by it. Whether I liked it or not, I had got interested in the girl in the silver mask, and here were her mask and skirt. There was no doubt that they were the same ones, and the girl wasn’t around. It didn’t look good, and the idea that such a luscious tomato might be mixed up in murder went square against the grain.

L.A. and Hollywood are full of beautiful women and I’ve known a lot of them. Casual things, usually, but every once in a while one would start getting under my bachelor’s skin, and I knew the symptoms. Right now I had the symptoms. Hell, maybe it was just the mystery of the mask and the wondering who she was. And the meet-me-at-midnight-by-the-old-wishing-well business. Maybe, but I couldn’t quite make myself believe it.

Sam looked at me, but didn’t say anything. I knew him well; he was a good friend of mine and he knew when to open his yap and when to button it. Smart. One of the reasons he wasn’t pounding a beat. Only sometimes, to keep from busting, he opened his yap when he knew he should keep it shut. One reason why there was always a chance he’d get a beat back. Anyway, he didn’t say anything now.

I asked him, “O.K. if I blow, Sam?”

He dug around in his pants and hauled out a big kitchen match. “Yeah. Beat it,” he said. He fired up the cigar and blew a cloud of choking smoke at me. “Get out of my hair. The boys are getting a list. Christ! Three hundred and some suspects. Plus the ones that got away. Plus you, damn it.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Sam. See you tomorrow.”

He rolled the cigar from one side of his wide mouth to the other, then he said gruffly, “Look, Shell. I know you got nothing to do with this, but there’s lots more on the force besides me. You better come in for a talk with the boys. You did threaten the guy.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll be in first thing.”

“Say ten o’clock, Shell.”

“Ten it is. See you in the morning, Sam.”

Downstairs I looked around at the line of people giving names, addresses, and so on to the uniformed gentlemen of the police department. Hardly anybody had a mask on now; the party was a bust.

Now that the masks were off I could recognize a lot of faces that, up till now, I’d seen only in movies. The place looked like a Who’s Who of Hollywood. I spotted Peter Storey, the Magna comic who is also one of the top radio names, and right next to him was one of the hottest and brightest of the Magna stars, Constanza Carmocha, a Mexican emoter who singes you from twelve feet away. I walked down the line toward the door, past a few other faces I recognized, till I came to Irv Seeley and Paul Clark together.

I stopped and said, “Cheers, boys. Now you happy?”

Clark turned his head, and it looked like his whole square-shaped face was frowning. He snapped at me violently, “You nuts?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m nuts. Hi, Irv.”

He rubbed his hands nervously over his big belly. “God, it’s awful, huh? He’s not much loss, but — God!”

I knew what he meant. We tried small talk for a while, but it didn’t go well. It was a double line, the people lined up two by two, and a couple of rows ahead of us I saw a beautiful dark-haired gal put her hand on her forehead and shake her head.

She turned to the man with her and I heard her say, “Mark, get me something to drink. Please. I … I feel a bit faint.”

I could see her profile as she turned her head toward the man on her left. Then her face turned more toward me, the eyes rolled up in her chalk-white but beautiful face, and she fell over in a dead faint.

She hadn’t been kidding.

I started to jump for her as she hit the floor, but a woman was in my way, and besides, the guy on her left already had her. He picked her up and carried her over to a couch and a cop went over. There was a little buzz of conversation, but that was all.

“Who was that?” I asked.

Irv said, “Wandra Price. She hasn’t been around long enough to get toughened up. Small-town girl before she hit Hollywood. I guess the excitement was too much for her.”

“Looks like it,” I agreed. I knew the gal’s name, but not much more. She was one of the newest and best-publicized of the Magna stars, and her first picture, Shadow of Love, had just been released. I hadn’t seen it yet, but I decided I was going to.

She had a beautiful face and she also had a pleasant figure. She wasn’t built quite so well as Jane Russell, but she had what counts where it counts if you count up to two. But I wondered about Wandra; she’d hit the floor pretty hard, and they’d barely jiggled.

That’s the way it goes in Hollywood.

I said to Irv and Clark, “I’m gonna take off. Looks like tonight was a bad night for you guys to start calling people names.”

Clark said, “Ah, go to hell.”

Irv rubbed a hand over his belly again. “One thing I’m glad of, Shell. I didn’t take a poke at the guy.”

Smart boy. I couldn’t think up a quick answer.

He reminded me that I’d not only slugged Brane just a little while before he was found dead, but I’d also yelled almost at the top of my lungs that I was going to kill the guy. That was dandy. It was so dandy the police wanted to ask me questions about it.

I nodded good night with a very weak grin on my face, checked with the cop at the door, and went out, my little gray cells gyrating.

Mountie, maybe you’d better get your man.

I parked my distinctive Cadillac — I say distinctive not because it’s beautiful, but because it’s a ‘41 convertible painted a God-awful yellow — across the street from the Spartan Apartment Hotel. I smoked a cigarette while I worried, then flipped the butt carelessly in the general direction of the well-kept grounds of the Wilshire Country Club. That’s how mean I felt.

Then I went up to my room. I snapped on the desk lamp inside the door of my apartment on the second floor and walked over and looked at the fish. When they’d got used to the illumination, I flipped on the overhead lights and went back and looked at them some more. They’re the prettiest darn things you ever saw. The fish, I mean. Tropical fish, and every color of the rainbow. Red ones, blue ones, striped ones, dotted ones, and big and little ones. I’ve got two tanks in the living room — a guppy tank and a tank for the other tropicals — and a ten-gallon aquarium downtown in my office, complete with a dozen guppies.

I like fish. In the aquariums they get born, and grow up, and make love fish-style, and die, right under my eyes. And sometimes they kill each other, just like people. But they never choose up sides, say a couple of mollies and a red swordtail against all the rest, and have a little war to decide who gets the left side of the tank. Which makes them smarter than people. Sometimes I wonder if it’s Homo sapiens or Homo insapient.

I turned away and Amelia, the garish, yard-square nude that jolts your eye from over my fake fireplace, brought me back from the relaxing little fish world and reminded me of the party I’d just left.

I sank down in the deep leather chair that’s my own sprawling spot, propped my boots on one of the three hassocks that get kicked around my living room, and thought about Brane’s gaping throat, Silver Mask’s gaping blouse, and three hundred and some costumed people, any of whom could have committed murder.

The only thing I was sure of was that I hadn’t done it. I’m a private eye, so called, and this peculiar caper piqued my professional curiosity. But that wasn’t nearly so important as the fact that I’d hauled off and hammered the guy — and worse, I had a hunch business wasn’t going to be booming at the office downtown till I was clear out from under this thing. Probably there were plenty of movie folk, and maybe cop folk, that figured me as a choice suspect — maybe the choicest. It was a brand-new feeling for me, being on the wrong side of a fisheye, and I wanted to get rid of the odd sensation quick.

I wondered who had pulled it off and why. Motive, opportunity, means, and the rest of it. The knife had done the actual job; that much was easy. But who out of all that mess of men and women had pulled the knife across Brane’s throat? And why had he done it? Or why had she? Brane had seemed like a guy who needed killing, maybe, but — Skip it, Scott. You might have a big day tomorrow.

I got up and went into the bedroom and took off my Mountie suit and hung it in the closet. I jumped into the shower in the bathroom and soaped up, thinking partly about the whole party, but mostly about the sweet and lovely girl wearing the hoop skirt and the silver mask.

She bothered me and I couldn’t figure where she fitted into this mess, what her angle was, or why she’d run away. Or apparently run away. I still hadn’t figured it out when I crawled between clean sheets and tried to get some sleep. I lay awake for a while thinking about the girl, thinking it was too bad I didn’t know who she was, where she’d gone, how she was mixed up in the murder. Because she was beautiful, and shapely, and had seemed like fun. And because I’d sure have liked knowing little Silver Mask a lot better.

Then, remembering Brane’s ghastly throat, I wondered.

</code>

<code> Chapter Four

I WOKE UP as the two alarm clocks went off one after the other and it was crisp and clear outside, but I felt about as crisp as a dunked doughnut and my head was clear like a sloppy gin fizz. It was also fizzing like one.

I groaned out of bed, eased my feet down on the black carpet, and smacked my gooey mouth disgustedly at nothing. A lousy, stinking world. Morning.

I crept into the kitchenette, put coffee on, and stuck toast in the pop-up. Breakfast coming up. You may not be kidding, Scott.

This was a morning just like every other morning. Horrible. Mornings are always horrible, seems like, but this a.m., hung over a little, it was worse. In the first place, I’m not one of those madmen who leap from bed, race around the room, throw open a window, and stick their heads outside and breathe deeply.

I barely breathe.

The toast popped up with a shattering roar and the coffee bubbled in the metal percolator like lava. I poured the coffee, buttered the toast, and then, suddenly, the details of last night’s party came back to me.

I poured the coffee in the sink, dropped the toast in the garbage, and said nuts.

I made the Los Angeles City Hall just before ten o’clock and went up to Homicide. I didn’t see Samson, and the boys I did see were quite pleasant and not at all rough, but I didn’t know them and I got the creepy feeling that they didn’t believe me. I admitted I’d threatened Brane, but it was all in fun, I told them. Cheerfully at first. Good clean fun. They couldn’t understand that and wanted to know if I’d slugged him in good clean fun. It went like that for almost two lousy hours and I was sweating when I left. This goddam mess wasn’t a bit cute.

I felt empty by now, but the grilling I’d gone through hadn’t left me much appetite. I managed a hamburger and malt at a Spring Street cafe, then found a spot between Third and Fourth on Broadway to park my sick-yellow Cadillac. I squeezed into the slot, stuck a nickel in the parking meter, and walked ten steps to the Hamilton Building wherein resides Sheldon Scott, Investigations, one flight up.

One flight up I peeked into the office, where nothing was stirring but guppies. I turned the light on over the tank, dropped some food in, glanced at mail that wasn’t important, and walked down the hall to the employment agency.

Hazel was at the PBX. “Sweet stuff,” I said. “I’m here.”

“Well, good for you. Shall I stand on my head?”

That would have been something. She was little and cute and about thirty-three. “Please,” I said.

“Go on with you. What do you want now?”

“I have a slight ache. I’ll be down in Pete’s if anybody wants me.”

“Getting drunk?”

“I don’t get drunk at noon, sweet stuff. I’m after Pete’s hangover cure.” I cleared my throat. “Not that I really need it.”

She wiggled her head, “Oh no. A big strong man like you.”

I headed for Pete’s, but I was delayed.

Pete, incidentally, made the best hangover remedy extant. He’d never tell me what was in it, but it tasted like Worcestershire sauce, straight bitters, and gall bladders. But it did the trick.

Pete’s place is right next to the Hamilton Building on the west side of Broadway, which makes it convenient. I was just starting to push open the door when a car skidded around Fourth, took a left into Broadway, and slid to a stop in the middle of the block.

A gal with beautiful legs leaped out of the car and started running like a sprinter in high heels toward the Hamilton Building. Then she spied me and veered in my direction.

I thought, What the hell?

She hit the sidewalk and ran up to me, gasping. She stood in front of me, looking up and gasping some more. I caught something like “Help me. Got to help me, Shell.”

I said, “Slow down. What’s the trouble?” I couldn’t make out who this cookie was or what was giving her fits.

Then there was an echo of the scream her tires had made and a monstrous black limousine ripped around the corner and headed toward us.

The gal got frantic. “Please, Shell. You’ve got to help me. I didn’t know where else to go. Hurry! Hide me!”

I was still a little numb, but I shoved open the door into Pete’s and pushed her inside. Luckily the place was empty except for Pete and us. The door swung shut and I said, “Help you? I don’t even know who you are.”

“Last night,” she gasped. “Party. Mask on.”

She put her hands up over her eyes and nose and I finally got it. Little Silver Mask, who’d left her clothes lying by a dead man.

“Oh,” I said after a moment. “It comes back. You didn’t meet me.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Did you — ” She didn’t let me finish. I could hear footsteps outside, charging across the street.

“I didn’t kill him,” she sobbed. “I didn’t, didn’t, didn’t! Shell, help me.”

It was the same girl, all right. I looked at the lips and I was sure. I looked farther and I was surer. And the rest of her was just as nice. She had on a dark skirt and high-heeled pumps, and a black pull-over sweater, and she looked good, but her face was drawn and tired as if she hadn’t had much sleep. She was close to hysterics.

She had the lapels of my coat in her white hands and she looked up at me, her face twisted. She said, “I didn’t kill him. Help me, Shell?”

The feet scraped right outside the door and I had to make up my mind.

“O.K., honey. Get in a booth. Quick!”

Here you go again, Scott. You jerk. A sucker for the damsel in distress. But I wanted to believe this damsel. I took one step to the bar and perched on a stool just as the door swung open behind me.

I said loudly, “Pete, mix me that sudden-death thing you make for my head.”

Pete waddled down the length of the bar, wiping his hands on a white apron. “Sure, Shell. Single or double?”

“Single,” I said.

Then I turned and got a good look at the guy who’d come in, and changed my mind.

“Pete,” I said, “I meant double.”

The guy filling up the door with monstrous shoulders that were him and not padding was Garvey Mace. An even six feet tall, but with shoulders that had to be a lie, and muscles in his brown mustache. He had long legs ending in a flat stomach that swelled into a thick chest you knew had hair growing all over it like weeds. He was real good-looking if you like King Kong.

He stood inside the door for a moment and gave me a quick, uninterested glance, then turned his big head toward the girl.

She was sitting in a booth, her eyes staring straight ahead of her toward the back of the bar, not looking at Mace.

He sighed and walked over to her. “Don’t be coy, doll,” he said in a deep bass. “Don’t give me trouble.”

She turned her head and tried to look unconcerned, but her eyes didn’t make it. She said, “Oh! Mr. Mace!” like she’d expected a friendly child.

“Why’d you run, doll? No good running from me.”

“I wasn’t running. I didn’t even know you…” Her voice dribbled to a stop.

She looked plenty scared and I didn’t blame her. Not too much about Mace gets into the papers, but he’s the top-rung racket boy of sunshine-and-palm-tree land. I knew he was “like that” with most of the bigwigs at Magna Studios, and even more so with Wandra Price, Magna’s lush…

Wandra Price? I blinked at Mace’s monstrous back. She was the gal who’d tossed the whing-ding at Feldspen’s last night — the gal who’d said, “I feel faint,” and then fainted. This thing was getting screwier. I knew Wandra was rising fast and that Magna was booming her for big things. Maybe Mace had something to do with that, but I couldn’t figure what he was working on right now.

He was shaking his big head at the girl. He said quietly, “Let’s you and me talk about a picture. But maybe we’d better not do it here.”

The girl ran her tongue over her lips and shrank away from him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me alone. Go away.”

He laughed deep in his chest. “No soap, doll. You better come with me.” He reached out a big paw and latched it around her wrist. Her face twisted up and she flashed a frightened, pleading glance at me.

At me, Shell Scott, who used to like damsels in distress.

Well, here we go. Garvey Mace was associated with a lot of Magna bigwigs, true. But he was also associated with dying like flies.

I had no desire to die like flies.

So I walked over to him, tapped him politely on one of his enormous, stupid shoulders, and sweetly told him to blow.

“Blow,” I said in a brave squeak.

He let go the girl’s wrist, but didn’t turn for a moment. Then he straightened up and turned around and I was looking down at his puzzled blue eyes. Down at his eyes. Well, that was something.

He cocked his head on one side. “What did you say?”

“Blow.” It came out like a robin’s egg exploding.

He laughed. Oh, boy, this was comical.

He asked me, not very politely, “Who the goddam hell are you?”

“Shell Scott.”

“All right, you’re Sh — Oh. Yeah. The boy scout. The pretty peeper. Look, don’t annoy me.”

He turned back to the girl. He was all through talking to me.

I said, a full octave lower, “No kidding. Don’t annoy the lady. You may not believe it, Mace, but I mean it.”

He swung around with his brown mustache twitching a little and his jaw muscles jiggling like me flexing my biceps. He said, “Maybe you don’t get it, Scott. I’ve got business with the lady. Personal business. Now you beat it, sonny. Before I paddle.”

Sonny. Paddle. That all they’ve got to do. Get me burning a little and I’m stupid as the next guy.

He’d started to turn again, but I grabbed his arm and hauled him around. He didn’t haul easy, but I got him around without tearing my ligaments.

I said, “So have I, Mace. The lady’s my client. Now you run along before I paddle.”

He said, “Client? You mean she’s got herself a private dick?” Mace looked down at the girl. “He kidding?”

She hadn’t said a word while we were chatting. Now she looked at Mace and nodded her head.

He looked back at me and pursed his lips. “Well, how about that?” he sighed.

“Mace,” I said, “the lady’s my client. She doesn’t want to talk to anybody but me right now. Now blow.”

Then he shocked me silly. He said mildly, “Sure. Sure, peeper.” And he blew.

I didn’t get it, but I didn’t think I’d scared him. I’m not little and I keep myself in shape. I’ve knocked around a lot and I’ve been in brawls, and out of all the guys I’ve bumped into around L.A. and Hollywood, there are maybe three that I figure could lay me down and sit on me without busting a seam. Garvey Mace was at the top of the list. Some things a guy’s got to admit, even to himself.

He was just a pile of muscles. He was outsize, and he was smart. But I tell him to blow, and he blows.

Anyway, I was thinking, I knew one thing: I’d rather tangle with two big dumb guys any time than one big smart guy like Mace.

You know what? I must be psychic.

</code>

<code> Chapter Five

THE DOOR had barely closed behind Mace, and I hadn’t had a chance to talk to the girl any more, when the door swung open again and two goons walked in.

One of them, a heavy, slow-moving guy with a soft, squishy look, stopped by the door. The other one walked briskly over to us at the booth. He didn’t look a bit soft; he didn’t look like there was a soft spot anywhere on his body except maybe the top of his head.

He ignored the girl for a moment and concentrated on me. Concentrating on anything would always be trouble for this boy. He was about five-ten and thickset, with a vapid face and eyes like snails.

Neither of the two goons was near Mace’s size. Who is? But even better, they didn’t seem like they were the intellectual type. And they didn’t act too sure of themselves, as if they weren’t used to working in daylight. Mace must have simply told them to get the girl, without telling them how. He should have given them explicit instructions like walking to the door by putting one foot in front of the other, opening the door by putting one hand on the knob, and so on. They were good for lifting things up, but not at figuring out what to do then.

The husky guy with snail eyes looked me up and down and said in a gritty, flat voice, “Excuse me. You’ll have to excuse me.”

“Sure,” I said pleasantly. “Sure thing.”

That puzzled him. Not much, but a little. He was all ready to be tough and probably looking forward to it.

“Gonna take the girl,” he said. “Got to.”

“I know,” I told him. “Fine.”

He didn’t seem to think that was the right answer. He squinted and said, “Huh?”

“Fine,” I said. “Fine and dandy.”

“Huh?”

“Well, so long,” I said. I turned and winked down at the frightened girl in the booth. Her eyes looked stricken, but the lines eased a little when I winked. Now she probably felt better than I did.

Neither of the boys had any artillery in sight. This was Broadway, downtown L.A., and even if we were inside a bar, it was only five blocks from City Hall and police headquarters. The boys weren’t bright, obviously, but they weren’t that dull. You could bet, though, that they had artillery just in case.

Maybe Pete, the bartender, had a sawed-off under the counter, but I’d never know. He was the peaceable type. He stood at the middle of the bar with both his hands on top of it in plain sight, and gazed with great interest at a spot on the ceiling.

Me? I own a gun. A nice one. A .38 Colt Special with a two-inch barrel and a one-pound trigger pull. I’ve done work on it myself, given it loving care, and spent a lot of time on the police pistol range. I can draw it with real speed, if I do say so, and I’m a pretty good shot. And right then the gun was in the top left drawer of a beautiful mahogany desk in my office.

The blank-faced guy was still staring at me after his last “Huh?” so I said, “Sure thing, pal. You sure got here in a hurry.”

He said, “Guess we did.” He chuckled halfheartedly. “Didn’t have far to come.”

“Plenty fast, though,” I congratulated him. “That’s what I like to see. Captain Samson send you?”

“Captain who?”

“Samson. Detective Captain — Hey!” I got real suspicious. “Aren’t you the cops I called?”

All of a sudden he was happy; he was going to make the smartest play of his life. He’d talk about this caper for the next twenty years.

“Cops?” he said gaily. “But of course we is cops.”

I was still suspicious. “You act funny,” I said. “How do I know you’re cops? You got a badge? You carry a gun?”

He frowned, then he brightened. “What else? All us cops carry guns.” He proved it. He peeled back his single-breasted plain-clothes suit and showed it to me.

He turned his head a little and called, “Hey, Sarjint, show — “

Then I popped him. I grabbed at the gun with my left hand and swung my right fist from my hip and then I had the gun awkwardly in my fingers and he was sliding on his fanny, looking glazed at me like I was Judas.

He lay back all the way and rolled his head a little, then shook it and sat up. The guy at the door had his hand under his coat, but he was too slow. I grunted at him, “Uh-uh,” and he froze like that with the gun in my fist pointed at him.

“Out empty,” I said, and he brought out five fingers with nothing in them.

The guy on the floor looked toward the door and snarled, “Get ‘im, Flem. Shoot him. Shoot the bastard.”

Flem didn’t move. He said slowly, “Not me, Dutch. Think I’m stupid?”

Dutch sat on the floor and swore at me, using a lot of words the girl behind me shouldn’t have listened to, then he climbed to his feet and started toward me.

I waved the gun at him. It felt heavy and cool in my hand — a big .45 automatic with, of all things, mother-of-pearl inlaid on the grip. I said, “Slow down. Now beat it. Both of you.”

I waved the gun again. Like a wand. It worked like a wand.

Flem went through the door and Dutch stared at the pretty gun in my hand for a couple of seconds, then walked to the door, too. He said, “Gimme my gun.”

“You nuts?”

“Gimme my gun!” His voice was gritty and harsh.

“Sure. So you can use it on me. Get lost.”

“You bastard!” he yelled. “I’ll get it. I’ll get it back.” He stood with the door behind him, his vapid face red and twisted as he spoke. Spittle was wet at the corners of his mouth.

I grinned at him and said, “Sure, Dutch. Over my dead body.”

He grinned then. Like he’d just discovered you could pull the wings off flies. He said, “What’d you think I meant?” and went out.

I sank down into the booth opposite the girl where I could keep an eye on the door. I heaved a big sigh, and I took a long, long look at her. Here, right across the little table from me, was the excitingly curved lady I’d gone to sleep wondering about. Even tired and worn she looked better than I’d imagined she would without the silver mask covering up her face, but it seemed to me she was living a little too dangerously. Maybe she liked it, but there was plenty she’d have to let me in on before I’d be up to date. I didn’t even know who she was.

I said, “You’d better do some explaining. Those weren’t very nice boys.”

She smiled a little at me and blinked those violent violet eyes. She said, “Thanks, Shell. Thanks an awful lot. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you, but I was scared. I’m still scared.”

“Why? And why the runout at the party last night? What about Brane? And these goons?”

Just then Pete came up to the table and slid his foul concoction under my nose as if nothing had happened. I paid him, tossed the awful stuff down, offered the girl a drink, which she refused, then said to her, “Who are you? What’s your name?”

“Hallie. Hallie Wilson. I’m an actress at Magna.”

“O.K., Hallie. Let’s climb up to my office. I want some answers out of you.”

She got up and I went ahead of her and looked outside. Everything seemed to be quiet, so we took off and got to the office with no trouble. Nobody there, either.

Inside, I pulled a chair up by the desk for her, then locked the office door and climbed into the swivel chair behind my desk. I got my .38 out of the desk drawer and strapped on the spring shoulder holster. I’d been on a kind of vacation from business for a week or so and hadn’t needed the gun. I figured I might need it now. I locked the fancy pearl-handled gun I’d taken from Dutch in the top left drawer, leaned back, and waited for Hallie Wilson to start explaining.

She shook her head and said, “Where’ll I start?”

“Last night.”

She swallowed and started in. “I … I found him.”

“Brane?”

“Yes. Dead. He was — ” She shuddered. I knew what she meant. It made me shudder, too. “Go on,” I said.

“Well, I don’t know if anyone saw him before I did or not. I’d won one of the prizes for costumes, and I went up to put it in Miss Feldspen’s room.”

“You know Feldspen’s daughter?”

“Not personally, but her room was set aside as a sort of lounge. You know, you could rest there or leave your wrap or coat. But I never did get there. Brane was just a little way from the top of the stairs, on his back. I almost stumbled on him. It scared me and I knew I had to get out of there.”

“Why didn’t you just tell someone about it?”

“I thought of that, but I was afraid. I was afraid they’d think I did it.”

I looked at her, puzzled. “Why the devil would anyone think you killed him?”

She frowned and mashed those beautiful lips together. “I … He had a picture of me. He wanted money, but I didn’t have enough to — to pay him for it.”

“This picture. What’s so cute about this picture?”

“It’s a photograph of me, and I — well, I don’t have anything on. I’m — naked.”

I almost whistled, but caught myself in time and hardly puckered. That picture must have been a work of art, I was thinking. I stopped thinking like that and asked Hallie, “Where’s the picture now?”

“I have it. At least I have one print of it; Brane probably kept the negative. He mailed me a big glossy print, then phoned and asked me for money. I gave him what I could.”

I pulled out cigarettes, gave her one, lit both hers and mine, and squinted at her. “You said something a minute ago about not having enough money. How about that?”

She sighed deeply and I sighed, watching her sigh. It was a sigh for sore eyes. She ended the beautiful thing and said, “I didn’t have all the money he asked for, so he made me pose for him.”

“Pose? For another photograph?”

“No. A painting.”

I raised an eyebrow and looked sideways at her.

She nodded. “Uh-huh. It was also a nude.”

“He was a funny duck,” I said. “Why the painting?”

“I don’t know. But you can see why I was scared, can’t you, Shell? I’m not a big star at Magna, but I’ve done several bits and a couple of supporting roles. Things are starting to break for me, but if Brane had circulated that photograph of me — well, there probably wouldn’t have been much left in Hollywood for me. I might as well start looking at want ads.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Not good. The police would think you had a pretty good motive for killing Brane. I could even think so myself.”

She looked at me and worried her lower lip a little with white teeth. “You don’t, though, do you, Shell? You don’t think I killed him?”

“No. I guess not.” And I didn’t No good reason; it’s just easy to believe a beautiful woman. But there were some more things I wanted to know.

I said, “That skirt you wore. And the mask. They were found close to the body. What was the idea of that?”

She took a deep breath and said rapidly, “When I saw Brane, all I wanted to do was run, get out of there. I turned around and started to go down the stairs, and there were some people coming up. I was pretty sure nobody at the party knew who I was, but if they found me by the body, then — well, everything would’ve come out. They were standing on the stairs for a moment, talking, but they looked up and saw me. They couldn’t see my face, but they saw my mask and costume. I didn’t know what to do. I knew they’d remember seeing me if they walked up and found the body right away. I’d noticed Brane’s cloak was near him, but not on him. Like it’d been pulled off.”

“Some kind of struggle? A fight, maybe?”

“Could have been. Anyway, I figured if I could get home, nobody would know I’d been at the party. At least if I left the costume, nobody could prove it was me there. I live alone and I don’t think anyone saw me leave the house dressed up.” She sighed and shook her head. “Well, I jumped out of the skirt, wrapped Brane’s long cape around me to cover myself up, and left. I didn’t think about the mask till I was right at the door. I dropped it there.”

I thought about it. “Kind of a risky deal,” I said.

“I was scared, Shell, panicky. I just acted on impulse when I saw those people coming up. I just ran. The whole thing didn’t take more than a few seconds.”

“O.K. What then?”

“My car was parked a couple of blocks away and I thought if I could get to it I’d be all right. That’s not the way it worked out.”

“Somebody saw you?”

“Yes.”

I had a pretty good idea by now what was coming next, but I asked it anyway. “Who?”

“Mace. Garvey Mace, of all people to see.”

“Where? I mean where did he see you? Just leaving or what?”

She shook her head. “No. I was clear out of the house and on the sidewalk. I was walking fast and someone in a big black car parked at the curb called me.”

“By name?”

“Yes. Just ‘Hallie.’ It startled me and I turned my head and saw Mace standing by the car. Then I kept on going. I didn’t say anything to him and he didn’t follow me.”

“You think that’s why this business down in Pete’s? In the bar downstairs?”

“It must be, Shell. I went home right away last night, but I didn’t get any sleep. I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing Brane.”

That I could understand. I asked Hallie, “How’d this deal start this morning?”

She leaned over and ground out her cigarette in the tray on my desk. “I was wide awake and dressed about noon or so when I saw that big car parked in front. Mace got out and started up the steps of the porch. I didn’t want to see him; I didn’t want him asking me about last night. So I ran. I went out the back way and started my car and remembered you. They followed me, but I got here before they did. You know the rest.”

“Yeah. Guess that brings me up to date. What’d you do with Brane’s cape?”

“I threw it away while I was driving home. It can’t be connected with me.”

Something had been puzzling me and I asked her about it. “Why the devil is Mace so interested — if last night’s what he wants to talk to you about?”

She frowned, puzzled. “Golly, Shell, I don’t know. I hadn’t stopped to think about it.”

“Another thing. What was Mace doing conveniently out in front of Feldspen’s place last night?”

Still frowning, she said, “I don’t know that, either. Maybe he was waiting for Wandra — Wandra Price. She was at the party and it’s no secret they’ve been seeing a lot of each other.”

“Uh-huh, I know.” The whole thing wasn’t making a lot of sense yet, but there didn’t seem to be much else I could get from Hallie. She looked about ready to drop.

I said, “Hallie, you’d better get some sleep. We’ll go over this again later, when you’re rested. Maybe you’ll think of something else.”

“I doubt it; I think that’s about all. But I am tired. Awfully tired.”

I knocked it around a minute. “If you don’t want to run into Mace again, you’d better not go back to your place. We can find a hotel room for you somewhere. O.K.?”

She nodded. “Good. Someplace where I can relax and sleep. I’m supposed to go to Magna today, but I wouldn’t be worth a darn. They’re just going to have to get along without me.” She managed a trace of a smile. Just a trace was terrific.

I got up, patted my .38 for luck, and unlocked the office door. “Let’s go,” I said.

The Georgian Hotel was clean and out of town a bit, on Hoover Street near Venice Boulevard. I’d made sure we weren’t followed, and Hallie registered as Miss Amelia Banner. The Amelia was my idea. I went up with Hallie, got a leer from the pimply bellboy that cost him a quarter, and plopped into a chair for a minute after he left.

Hallie sprawled on the bed and stretched full-length. “Oooh,” she sighed, “this feels good.”

“Stop it,” I said. “I’ll be gone in a minute.”

She rolled over on her side and blinked violet eyes at me sleepily. “No hurry, Shell,” she said softly. “I — I appreciate your helping me.”

“I’m helping myself, too, Hallie. My neck was out already. We’re just in the same mess together, sort of.”

“I’m kind of glad. I feel better already.” She blinked her eyes slowly at me some more. “You’re a good man, Shell.”

“Uh-huh. I know. They’re hard to find.” Then, like a damn fool, I changed the subject. I guess I changed the subject. “You ought to be safe here,” I said. “I’ll start checking and let you know what I find out. Anything you want me to bring you?”

She chuckled throatily, but didn’t say anything.

I got up. “You get a good sleep, Hallie.” I grinned down at her. “Get your strength back.”

“I’m no weakling, Shell. Come here.” She held out her left hand and wiggled the fingers.

I swallowed, debated, stopped debating, and walked over.

She took my hand in hers and squeezed. “See? See how strong I am?” She smiled and my spine tangoed, or tangled, or something.

“Sure,” I said. “Strong.”

She got serious then. “Honest, Shell, you’re a good egg. Thanks for helping.”

“Get,” I gulped, “your strength back. ‘By.”

It was like pulling five teeth with no anesthetic, but I untangled my hand.

She let my fingers go, but in the same movement she wriggled over on her back and stuck out both arms toward me. She breathed deeply a couple times, her mouth open, red lips glistening.

I was watching her like I was paralyzed. Hell, I was paralyzed.

She wiggled her fingers again. Both hands. That’s not all she wiggled. She said, “‘By, Shell. Kiss me.”

“Huh?”

“Kiss me. Kiss me good-by, for luck.”

I should argue? I bent over and her arms went around my neck and she either pulled herself up or me down. I can’t remember. I’ll never remember. But my arms went around her and my lips mashed hers and the conversation died a sudden death.

I kissed her, all right. And I got out of there. I did what she said: I kissed her good-by. But I damn near made a mistake.

Another five seconds and I’d have kissed her hello.

</code>

<code> Chapter Six

I SAT IN my Cadillac and breathed for a couple of minutes, then wheeled the buggy around and headed back downtown. We’d stuck her car in a parking lot; I didn’t want to be explaining away a ticket on a car registered to Hallie Wilson and parked in front of my office.

On the way back to City Hall I tried to unfuzz my brain and get a peek at what was in there. I could still feel Hallie’s kiss on my lips and it felt good, but I wondered if I was doing the right thing in hiding her from Garvey Mace and his thugs. I could also be hiding her from the cops, and I’ve always played square with Samson, just as he’s always been on the square with me. I’ve held out a few things from him in my time, but never murderer. Or murderess. I didn’t think I was now, but Sam wouldn’t much like it if my personal feelings about a lovely, lovely doll put him on the fire. But what the hell; this was the first time I’d been a first-class suspect in a murder case, myself. Maybe none of my close friends would think I’d slugged Brane and then casually slit his jugular, but I know a lot of people who aren’t my close friends. And some of them were on the force.

I used another nickel in a lousy parking meter and went up to Homicide for the second time that day. Samson was there, and he leaned back in his chair when I came in.

“How’s the divorce business, killer?”

We had a running gag about divorce cases, which I don’t handle, but this was the first time he’d ended his remarks with “killer.”

“Knock it off, Sam.”

“Sure. But it’s all over the force that you had a rhubarb with Brane just before he got his throat cut.”

“Christ. Don’t I know? I spent two hours with some doubting characters this a.m. I hope nobody’s fool enough to think I actually did it.”

Samson frowned. “Probably not,” he said vaguely. “Shell, Lieutenant Kerrigan requested assignment to the case.”

“Kerrigan, huh? Dear old stinking Kerrigan. My bosom pal. Is he on it?”

Sam nodded and scratched his gray hair. “Yep. I think I’d have put him on it even if he hadn’t asked. Everybody in Homicide knows we’re friends, Shell. No sense my trying to pull anybody here off your back.”

“Wouldn’t look good, I guess. Besides, that’s the way I want it. I wanted the pleasure of meeting Brane again last night, but not like I found him. Only trouble is, Kerrigan’ll concentrate on me, and the sooner the right person’s found, the sooner I’ll feel better.”

I wasn’t kidding. This wasn’t the worst news Sam could have given me, but it certainly wasn’t good. I know a lot of the L.A. cops and I get along all right with all of them except Kerrigan. He’s the only one on the force that I positively dislike, and he hates my guts. Just one of those things; we’d rubbed each other the wrong way every time we got within ten feet of each other. To begin with, Kerrigan doesn’t like me simply because I’m a private detective and that’s synonymous with jerk in his limited language. Then, too, when I’d first opened an office in L.A. after the war, it seemed like every time I turned around Kerrigan was in my hair or I was giving him trouble. Finally he’d learned to dislike me with a passion. He was a good cop, conscientious, but he had a cyanide personality and he’d have given his eyeteeth and maybe his badge if he could put me out of circulation.

Sam said, “Sergeant Haynes is on it too. You know him. He’s a good boy, honest, knows his job. So’s Kerrigan, for that matter, even if you two don’t get along. You’ll be all right.”

“Yeah. What’s new on the thing?”

“Not much. Brane was slugged with that statuette of Mercury before he was killed. He was killed with his own knife. No prints anywhere; just smudges. Had a little bruise on his chin that he probably got falling.”

“I’ll bet he had a bruise on his stomach, too,” I said. “About the size of my fist.”

Sam grunted. “You should brag.”

“Who’s bragging? The guy knocked me down.”

“I heard.” Sam wiggled his big chin. “Man, you sure dealt yourself in on this one. What do you do now?”

“You got me, Sam. Anything else you can give me on Brane? Who might not like him and so forth?”

“I never heard of him till last night. Wish I’d never heard of him. But it looks like he wouldn’t win any popularity polls. One thing, Shell, he had about twenty grand stashed away that didn’t go on his income-tax forms. You know.”

“I know. Same old story. But where’d he get twenty thousand?” Even as I asked it I was thinking about Hallie Wilson and the story she’d given me about Brane and his passion for somewhat erotic photography.

Sam shook his head and I got out a cigarette and lit up. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Somebody busted into Brane’s studio last night.”

“Out on the Strip? When was this?”

“Dunno for sure, Shell. Boys got out there around two a.m. Just a routine check. Seems he lived out there behind his studio. Window was busted in back and a desk in his room was jimmied open.”

“What’d they get?”

“Don’t know. We’re still checking, but it seems like Brane was the only person who knew what he had out there. No way to know what’s gone. Mess of pictures still around the place, though.”

“Pictures? You mean paintings or photographs?”

“Paintings. He was an artist, you know.” Sam squinted at me, dug out a cigar, and started peeling the cellophane from it. “Why you ask about photographs, Shell?”

I almost told Sam about the photo — or alleged photo — Hallie had talked about, but I didn’t. I figured that would keep a little longer till I had an idea what was going on. I said, “No particular reason. You said pictures; you didn’t say what kind. Besides, Sam, you probably know Brane was a candid-camera nut. He even had a Leica strung around his neck at the party.”

“Yeah, I know about that.”

“You develop the film?”

“Sure we did. Nothing on it of any importance, though. A few drunks is all. Nothing important, though, believe me.”

I took a drag on my cigarette and said, “I’ve, uh, nosed around a little, and it looks like Brane might have been squeezing some people. Just a thought. He might have been a little too cute with that Leica. Maybe he got some shots, sort of compromising shots, of people who might pay him off.”

Sam fixed his brown eyes on me. “You nosed around a little, huh? You wouldn’t maybe be knowing more than you’re telling, would you, Shell?”

“Not much. Let me nose around some more. But that’s something to think about; might explain that extra dough Brane had. Oh, yeah — how about a list of the party guests last night?”

Sam grunted and bit off the end of his cigar. He pulled some thin sheets of paper from his pocket and slid them across the top of his desk. “Here,” he growled. “All ready for you. What the hell would you do if I hated your guts?”

“Dunno, Sam.” I stuffed the list in my pocket, grinned at him, and got up. “Thanks. Something else. Why would Garvey Mace be hanging around outside Feldspen’s when Brane got it?”

Sam frowned, shaggy gray brows drawing together. “Mace? What about Mace? First I’ve heard about him in this.”

“I picked it up. I suppose the source is reliable. Anyway, it goes he was outside right about the time Brane got his throat opened. Not inside, but out front.”

“So? This reliable source. What’s this source?”

I grinned at him.

He didn’t grin. “O.K., Shell. Play games. But it’s your neck, my fine private dick. Don’t stick it out too far. It wouldn’t look pretty with stitches.”

I ran a finger under my collar. “Guess not, Sam. I’ll see you around.”

Sam chewed viciously on his cigar and I went to the door. Then I remembered something and stopped.

“Almost forgot,” I said. “I suppose you’ve got a man out at Brane’s studio?”

“Yeah. So?”

“I’d like to look around out there if it’s O.K. Can you fix it so I can get in?”

He sighed wearily. “I suppose so, Shell. I suppose.”

I was going to answer him when right in my ear the whine started up high and then slid down to about a soprano.

It was a voice I knew. “Well, well,” it said. “If it isn’t the killer right in our midst. He confess?”

I turned and stared into the surprisingly mild blue eyes of Lieutenant Kerrigan. His thin lips curled as he looked at me and said, “You give yourself up, Scott?”

“For what?” I asked him as calmly as I could.

“Cutting Brane’s throat, naturally. I’m sure glad you did that, Scott. I’m sure glad. Now I won’t be bothered with you no more.”

I ignored him and turned to Samson. “Thanks, Sam. I’ll see you later.”

I turned to go and Kerrigan grabbed my arm. He knew better than that, but he was probably just too happy to care. He was fat and about five inches shorter than I, so I had to look down into his eyes when I turned. I hate like hell to have anybody grab me. Any male, that is.

I looked down at Kerrigan’s pale blue eyes and I said, “Let go my arm, Kerrigan, and right now. Or so help me, cop or no cop, I’ll step on you.”

He grinned happily, but he let go. “Boy,” he said. “You got a temper.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But I guess I shoulda known — after last night.”

I think in another second I’d have slugged him, even though I knew damn well that would have pleased Kerrigan almost as much as proving a murder rap on me. Any excuse to toss me in the poky.

But Samson said flatly from behind me, and there was no arguing with the tone in his voice, “That’s enough of that, you two. And lay off that stuff, Kerrigan; what’d you want? And, Shell,” he said to me, “take off.”

I said over my shoulder, “O.K., Sam. Just one thing, first.” Then I turned to Kerrigan and said, “Look, Jason Peter Kerrigan. Let’s get something straight. I don’t like you worth a damn, and if you fell out the window I’d laugh. But lay off until you’ve got something on me. I popped off to Brane last night, but I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even see him after our trouble.”

He butted in. “Which trouble?”

“You know goddam well which trouble. But I didn’t cut the guy’s throat.” I looked down at him a minute and added, “Funny, I’ve got no use for you, but I didn’t think you’d go after a guy who isn’t guilty.”

He looked right back up at me and said loudly, “Scott, you know damn well I wouldn’t. And what you bet I get you back here before you can spit?” He turned and waddled on bandy legs toward Sam’s desk like a penguin on a hot sidewalk.

The louse actually thought I’d done it. I glared at him and left, still burning, and with the funny feeling that I’d come out second best in our little exchange.

</code>

<code> Chapter Seven

MAGNA STUDIOS covers two or three hundred acres off San Vicente Boulevard on the outskirts of Hollywood. It’s big and bustling, and in order to get inside you have to pass three guards at three different gates. The first two aren’t so tough, but the last one is a dilly if you don’t have an appointment. I didn’t have any appointment, but luckily I’d known the third guard, an ex-cop, for almost five years. His name was Johnny Brown, he was short and thin and about fifty years old, and he looked at me funny when I walked up.

“Hi, Johnny,” I said. “How you been?”

“O.K., Shell. You hear about — uh, last night?”

“Yeah. You heard about it?”

“Who hasn’t? I — uh, I’ve wanted to poke the guy myself. Hear he clubbed you one.” He licked his thin lips.

I leaned on his little counter and said slowly and pleasantly, “That’s right, Johnny. And I poked him. But that’s all I did. So get rid of the fisheye.”

“Sure, Shell, sure. Hell, I know that. Don’t get excited, man.”

“How about letting me inside?”

“Well, I guess. You — I don’t suppose you got an appointment with someone?”

“No. I want to see Irv Seeley and Paul Clark. That’s a start, anyway. Maybe Feldspen. How about it?” I didn’t want to see Feldspen, but it was the biggest name I could think of, so I used it. Johnny hadn’t seemed happy to see me like he always had before.

Johnny licked his lips again and scribbled on a sheaf of green papers. He handed me a slip. “Here’s a pass, Shell. How long you be in?”

“Half an hour or so. Maybe an hour. Thanks.”

I went on inside. Johnny still looked at me funny and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it worth a damn.

I found Irv Seeley putting pancake make-up on a black-haired man and I waited for ten minutes till he finished. Irv had a little room all to himself in Building Four, which houses the make-up department, and there were little brushes and boxes of color and powders on a long, well-lighted table beside him. The smell in the room was a little sweet, as if fine granules of powder you couldn’t see were hanging in the air.

Seeley worked swiftly, and when he finished, the black-haired guy leaned toward the mirror, wiggled his eyebrows, and moistened his lips. Then he gave me a big smile as if he were practicing, and went out.

When we were alone I said to Seeley, “You got a minute or two, Irv?”

“Sure. What brings you out? As if I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. The Brane mess. I never saw the guy before last night. What can you give me on him?”

“You mean who might have wanted to kill him besides you?” He laughed gleefully, his potbelly jiggling.

“Can it,” I said. “That gag wears thin fast.”

“Right, Shell. Well, nobody I know of liked the guy. And there were probably a lot of them glad he got killed — include me. But I don’t know who might have done it.”

“I hear he was real cute with a camera,” I said. “What about that?”

“Right again. You know his studio out on the Strip?” I nodded vaguely and he went on, “Big windows in front. Every once in a while he’d stick a glossy print in the window — some star or director or wheel. Turned out embarrassing lots of times. Made him enemies, but he didn’t seem to mind. It got him a lot of publicity.”

I batted that around a little. “Irv,” I said, “how about this? Could the guy have snapped people off guard — you know, people fairly well known around town — then given them the choice of buying the thing from him at a fat price, or else seeing the thing in his display window?”

Seeley frowned. “Could be,” he agreed finally. “Could be. I’m just guessing, but I wouldn’t put it past the louse. You mean a kind of minor-league blackmail, right?”

“Not necessarily minor-league. If he worked a deal like that, there’d probably be some pictures he got paid for.”

Seeley grinned at me. “Them’s the ones I’d like to see.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. “Got any other angles on him?”

He shook his head. “Nope. He was just a louse; a leper, they called him.”

“Irv. Why were you so hot at him last night?”

“Me hot?” He grinned some more. “No hotter than usual. Like I said, I just didn’t like the guy.”

“Just general principles?”

“Sure. Oh, hell, he stuck a shot of me in that window of his once. That didn’t make me like him any better.”

“What kind of shot?”

“I got plastered. Man, I was drunk as a lord. Sitting on the curb right at the corner of Hollywood and Vine with a bottle of beer in my hand. Nothing so terrible, but not my best profile.”

“He try to get any money out of you?”

“Nary a red cent. I just heard it was there at his shop and took a look. Called him a name or two, but he just laughed at me. I sure wasn’t going to poke him. Sticks and stones is more my line.”

“Sure. Well, thanks, Irv. I’ll take off.”

“Right.” He reached over and tapped me on the shoulder. “And, Shell,” he said. “Just for the record, I didn’t kill him. Thought I’d better mention it.”

I grinned at him. “I didn’t think you did, Irv. Thanks for the dope.” He was washing make-up off his hands when I left.

I didn’t get into the cutting room where Paul Clark was now head cutter, but I got word in to him and he came out.

He shook hands warmly, scratched his Bob Hope nose, and said, “You catch him yet?”

“Catch who?”

“The killer. Guy that finally paid Brane off. That’s what you’re up to, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks. You mean you don’t think maybe I did it? That’s a relief.”

“You seem smarter than that,” he said. “I’d hardly left-hook a guy I meant to knock off later.”

“Wouldn’t make much sense,” I admitted. “Which reminds me — you didn’t poke the guy.”

“Certainly not,” he agreed cheerfully. “And I’m glad I didn’t. So I crawled a little and what difference does it make now?”

“None, I guess. Say, Clark, you got a little spare time?”

“Few minutes. Why?”

My stomach was rumbling like there was something alive in it and I remembered there was almost nothing inside. I said, “I’m starved. Can we grab something at the cafeteria while we talk?”

“Sure.” He led the way to the studio’s Velvet Room, a plush spot where I was able to get a hot beef sandwich. Clark got coffee, and when the stuff arrived and I’d dug into it I said, “Look, Clark, I’m real interested in finding out who did the job on Brane’s throat. Anything you can give me? Anything at all?”

He shook his head. “Not any reasons why somebody would actually kill the guy. You don’t just up and kill a guy because you don’t like him.”

“You ever hear of Brane blackmailing anybody?”

“Blackmail? Uh-uh. Was he?”

“Could have been; I’m guessing mostly. How about those candid shots he stuck out at his studio?”

“I’ve seen those,” he said. “Not many of them looked like blackmail stuff. He had one of a director once, though, with another man’s wife. Quite a stink, but I never heard of anybody paying Brane off.” He smiled broadly, his teeth white against his red face, and added, “Until last night.”

“One other thing,” I said. “What was your big gripe at Brane? You seemed to think he was poison last night.”

He frowned at me. “This a private eye’s third degree?” Then he shrugged. “Look, you need to ask? You saw him last night, didn’t you? He griped you enough in two minutes so you took a poke at him. I’ve known the guy a lot longer than you, and he was on his good behavior last night. He was — what’s the word? — insufferable. All the time antisocial. Seemed like he didn’t like people. How you suppose people got to calling him the leper?”

“I see what you mean,” I told him. “Nothing else you could give me?”

“Sorry. Can’t think of a thing that would help on this.”

I was grasping at straws, so I asked, “How about this director? What was his name?”

“Sorenton. But it’s no good. He died six months ago of a heart attack.” He grinned. “It wasn’t Sorenton.”

Straws was right. I told Clark, “Apparently not,” swallowed the last of my hot beef, thanked him, and left.

On my way back out to the gate I was letting a few ideas drag around in my mind. How the hell was I going to narrow the field down? Almost anybody at the party could have killed Brane; everybody was milling around, almost all of them masked. There was opportunity all over the place. It looked like maybe I should concentrate on motive. If Brane had a blackmail photo of Hallie, there were probably others. Hallie … I wondered if she could possibly have cut a man’s throat. And what was Mace doing outside Feldspen’s while Brane was being murdered? That is, if Mace was outside. There was always a chance I could get a little information out of Mace’s sweetie, Wandra Price, and that was a call I filed for later. Nuts. All I had was a jumble of odds and ends.

By the time I reached the gate where Johnny Brown was, I’d got to the point where there was the faint glimmer of an idea. The party at which Brane had been murdered had been attended almost solely by personnel of Magna Studios. There were maybe three or four outsiders like Brane and me, but the rest were all from Magna. It followed logically that, a hundred to one, somebody from Magna had killed him. And that somebody must have had motive. Add motive to extortion to high-income brackets to an artist with a Strip studio and a candid camera and you get what? I didn’t know, except it ended with a red throat on a dead man, but I worked on it anyway.

I asked Johnny when I got to the gate, “One more favor, O.K.?”

“If I can, Shell.”

“Here it is. Can you find out for me — or have somebody find out — if anybody didn’t show up today? Or if anybody flipped on the sets? You know, like if some leading man suddenly lost his dinner when people started talking about Brane.”

Johnny stared at me, then nodded slowly. “See what you mean. You think maybe there’ll be one person jittery as hell after last night, huh?”

“That’s about it. Can you get it for me?”

“Think so, Shell. I can get it myself. Tomorrow too late?”

“I’d rather have it today.”

He looked at his watch. “It’s already after three. I gotta stay on the gate a couple hours, but I can check after that. I know where to go and who to see about this, Shell.”

“Have to do, I guess. When?”

“Call me here in the morning. Or come by.”

“O.K., Johnny, and thanks. It’s just an idea.”

“Sure, Shell. So long.”

He didn’t look at me quite so fishily when I took off, but there was enough left so it still smelled. I got into my yellow Cad and drove up toward Sunset with the top down and the sun warm on my head.

The sun was the only thing about my head that was hot. My brains were like cold gravy and ideas limped through the mush like sluggish cripples. So far it looked like I was going nowhere, and making lousy time.

</code>

<code> Chapter Eight

MY THINKING didn’t pick up any speed, but I tromped on the hundred and fifty horses under the Caddy’s hood and headed for the Sunset Strip and the studio of Roger Brane, artist-blackmailer, deceased.

I parked at the curb and looked the place over. You know the Strip — curving, dotted with small but high-priced palaces like the Mocambo and Ciro’s, and a lot more expensive than they look. Places like Jacques’s, where they don’t put any signs on the Men’s Room or the Ladies’ Room or any place else so that the habitues of the place can enjoy that intime feeling that they’re part of the club that knows its way around. At least around Jacques’s. That’s really something, isn’t it? They know how to find the can.

Ah, the Sunset Strip. You can get a baked potato for a buck if you’re lucky, but if you’re hungry or thirsty you head in the opposite direction unless you belong to a strong union. Same for everything else out there. You don’t get charged for your steaks and highballs; you get penalized.

And that’s where Roger Brane had his studio. Or had had it. It was flush with the sidewalk next to Patti’s Parlour, about a block from the Sirocco Room. There was a small sign over the door, “brane,” with no capital letter and in a fancy, flowing script. Big window on the right with one oil painting inside, and a smaller window on the left with one photograph placed slightly off center behind the glass.

I walked up and took a look at the photo first. It was a glossy eight-by-ten of somebody sitting at a bar; a girl with her back to the camera and her head twisted slightly so you could barely catch her profile. Her legs were bent awkwardly against the rungs of the bar stool and her stockings were a little wrinkled, the seams wavering like worms. Not pretty, of course, but nothing to get excited about. I supposed this was an example of Brane’s peculiar hobby of catching people off guard. Somebody else might have recognized the gal, but not me.

The picture itself wasn’t important, but I could see how Brane might have used the small window display to pique people’s curiosity so they’d stop and look, then gravitate to the other window, where Brane displayed his serious paintings. Not a bad idea, at that, but it would take a pretty callous guy to dream up that kind of publicity stunt — and maybe it was also a cover for more damaging photographs that Brane sold for black money. I didn’t know.

But I did know I liked the painting in the other window. It was a portrait of an old woman, white-haired, wrinkled, a black shawl loose around her narrow shoulders. It wasn’t just gobs and daubs in oil, a reasonable facsimile of a woman; it was a woman.

That’s why I liked it. If I look at a picture of a house, I like to see a house, not a bolt of polka-dotted lightning and a horse’s north end titled, “House of My Pater.” O.K., so I’m simple, but it’s like that. And I liked the old woman in the painting. The shadows on her lined face were luminous, with flesh underneath them, not just blobs of darkness on painted canvas, and the wrinkles on her brown cheeks looked like they’d smooth out momentarily if you pressed them with your hand, then slip back to the worn path they’d rested in for years. I may not have liked Roger Brane, himself, but I liked what he did with a brush.

There was a tall, heavy-jowled police sergeant inside, so I made a little noise and he came out.

I said, “I’m Shell Scott. Did Captain Samson get in touch with you?”

He looked me over good. I’d never seen this one before, or he me, apparently. Then he grunted. “He got in touch. You want in, huh?”

“That’s right. Just to look around a little.”

His lips twitched slightly. He must have heard all about the party. “Come on, then,” he said coolly. “You know the captain better than I do. So you’re Scott, eh?” There wasn’t any awe in his voice.

“Yeah. Any objections?” I wasn’t awed either.

His face got a little grimmer. “Would it make any difference, Scott?”

“Mr. Scott,” I said. “And it wouldn’t.” I went on in past him.

Inside, the sharp turpentine smell and the heavy odor of moist oils filled my nostrils. The front room was a neatly furnished office or waiting room with chairs, a couch, and magazines on two small tables. The smells came from a room beyond. I went in through the adjoining door and found myself in the studio itself. Overhead skylights let light fall into the middle of the room and onto an unframed canvas resting on a large easel near the center of the room. The canvas was the half-finished portrait of a middle-aged man with a receding hairline. There was one job Brane wouldn’t finish.

There were a couple of other canvases, unframed, resting against one wall, and a thick stack of them in a corner. A table stood at the left of the easel, covered with partly filled tubes of pigment. A palette, colorful with oil paints, lay on the table as if Brane had temporarily tossed it aside. I glanced around, noticed another room beyond this one, and went in. It was the third room in a row extending back from the street. First the office, then the studio, then the third and final room, which turned out to be living quarters. It wasn’t a large room to begin with, and it was made smaller by the inclusion of a heavy desk, shower, one chair, and an unmade double bed. But that was all; no pictures, no photographs, no nothing.

I was getting a little better picture of Brane now: a strange, twisted character; illegitimate, if what he’d said the night of the party wasn’t just a gag; antisocial and solitary; mad at the world and pouring out his emotions onto brilliant canvases; working in a fairly spacious studio on Hollywood’s upper-bracket mile, and living in a cramped single room in back; a candid-camera sadist and probably a blackmailer. Not much use analyzing the guy now; he was none of those things any more.

I took a look at the desk and could see where the thing had been pried open, so I rummaged around inside but didn’t find anything. There was a busted window in the wall over the bed and I looked out briefly. Not much to see, just a narrow passageway between buildings leading out to the street. I walked back to the sergeant.

“Say, Sergeant,” I asked him, “what time was it when the police got out here after Brane was found?”

He pursed his lips as if he were considering whether or not to answer. Then he must have thought of Samson’s request again and said, “About two a.m. It makes a difference?”

“It might. Just curious.”

“That fast enough for you, Scott?”

I hesitated, then said pleasantly enough, “Sure. It suits me.”

“Maybe you’ve got suggestions? Maybe every time we get a dead body we should send a squad to their house, their office, their favorite bars? You like that?”

“Love it,” I said. “You’re sweet.”

I turned around and went back into the studio. I looked around the studio like a detective for a while, which means I just looked around, then I went through the paintings. I didn’t expect to find anything important there, but I remembered Hallie’s saying she’d posed for a nude and sometimes I’m kind of lecherous.

For a minute I thought I’d found it and I took a deep breath and blew hot air out between my lips. Then I saw it wasn’t Hallie after all. But it was a nude.

If I’d liked the old woman in the front window, I forgot all about her now. You would have too. Anybody under eighty would have. Make it ninety. It was half life-size and damn near three-dimensional, with flesh that was flesh, and skin that was warm and soft and alive. I didn’t get to the face right away. The breasts were full and swollen, the waist slim and strong, the hips swelling, and the legs long and gracefully curving. She lay on her side, propped on one elbow, with her head turned looking at you, and long black hair dangled against her shoulders.

The face was beautiful, too, and it seemed vaguely familiar, but it was no one I could place. And it could have been wishful thinking. Whoever she was, I knew I’d like to meet her. I’ve got that bright nude in my apartment in Hollywood — Amelia. I’ve always liked Amelia, but it looked like we’d come to the parting of the ways. I’d never feel the same about Amelia again.

I sighed, glanced at the rest of the studies, still lives, and portraits, and sighed again. In the corner of the studio, taking up a space about six feet by eight feet along the wall, was another little room that was locked. I thought I knew what it was; but I wanted to look. So I got the key from the sergeant and went in.

It was a darkroom, and well equipped. I turned on the overhead light and went over the place pretty carefully. There were developing trays and brown glass bottles of developer and hypo and other chemicals. There was a thirty-five-millimeter film tank and an enlarger on the little table by the sink, which was fixed up with running water. There were a lot of other things a guy who did his own work would use: trimmer, shears, printer, white rags, and towels. The place was small, but neat and compact. He’d had a nice setup.

There were a couple of exposed rolls of thirty-five-millimeter miniature-camera film, but they were a disappointment. I looked the developed negatives over, but there was nothing to get excited about. No more nudes; nothing that could possibly be construed as blackmail stuff. And you could tell Brane had developed the negatives himself; they weren’t too sharp and clear, and in a couple of spots I could see where he must have accidentally splashed hypo on the film and little spots hadn’t developed. But the negatives themselves weren’t of any importance to me whatsoever.

I doused the overhead light and turned on the safe-light over the sink, then went through all the packs of printing and enlarging paper. They were all blank. No prints or enlargements around.

Finally I gave up after learning nothing, went out, and locked the door again. I grinned at the sergeant as I gave him back his keys. He glowered, and I went outside, jumped into the Cad, and headed toward downtown L.A.

At the PBX, Hazel was just getting ready to go home. She told me there’d been nobody in for me since I’d left and was I in Pete’s all that time? I told her to stand on her head, and went down to the office. I stood and watched the guppies cavorting in their ten-gallon tank on top of the bookcase while I thought about Brane and who might have killed him and what the hell I was going to do about it.

I usually keep about a dozen guppies in the office aquarium, but right now there were thirty-three, as near as I could count. I couldn’t be sure of the number because one of the females had brought forth a flock of babies, alive and wiggling, about three days before, and the little things were already too full of life and energy for me to count them right. I didn’t get any bright ideas watching them, so I climbed behind my desk and sat down for a little futile meditation. While I was at it I checked the drawer where I’d stuck Dutch’s pretty pearl-handled gun earlier. It was still there. I wondered just how soon I’d be meeting Dutch and Flem again. And Garvey Mace.

I put my Cordovans very carefully on the desk and pulled the French phone over into my lap. I say “very carefully” because the desk is still gleaming mahogany, just as good as new, and I’m proud of it.

I’m proud of the whole office, for that matter. I got a five-grand fee a while back, and the office, which had been a bit plain before that, suddenly blossomed. I put in a dark blue wall-to-wall carpet, stuck the desk with its swivel chair and two other deep leather chairs on top of the carpet, and added two filing cases against the wall. The guppies sit in their tank on top of the bookcase, which contains Who’s Who, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and three volumes of a four-volume set of Frank Harris’ My Life and Loves. Behind the big mahogany desk, at my back, is a wide window from which I can watch the citizens bustling up and down Broadway. It’s a pleasant place for relaxing or for working.

I looked up the number of the Georgian Hotel and put in a call for Amelia Banner. I heard the phone ring, then the sound of the receiver going up slowly on the other end.

“Amelia, my sweet Amelia,” I said. “This is Shell Scott.”

“Oh, hello.” Her voice was sleepy. “Hello, Shell. How’re you?” She yawned into the mouthpiece.

“You bored already?” I asked her.

“Don’t be silly, silly. You woke me up.”

“You get some sleep?”

“Guess so. What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “After five. Is everything all right?”

“Oh. Oh, yes. I just remembered, Shell.” Her voice was sharper now, more wide awake. “You find out anything?”

“Nothing important. There are a few things cooking. I should know more tomorrow.”

“Shell.”

“Yeah?”

“You coming up?”

“I — I don’t think so, Hal — Amelia. You go back to sleep. You’ve only had four or five hours, and you looked a little worn. I just wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

She said softly, “I’ve got my strength back.”

I didn’t have a ready answer for that.

“Shell? You hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“Well?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Stinker.”

“That’s what I am. A stinker.”

“Or don’t you want to tuck in a murderess?” Her voice was a bit thinner.

“Stow that. And don’t you be silly. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Hell, she knew better than that. I guessed she did.

“All right, Shell. ‘By.”

“Good night, Amelia. Get a good night’s sleep. I’ll call again.”

“Drop dead.” She hung up in my ear.

I hung up and leafed through the phone book looking for Garvey Mace or Wandra Price and found just what I expected. Nothing. The operator couldn’t give me any help, either, so I called Homicide. Who should come on with the inevitable nasal whine but Kerrigan, my dear friend.

“Yeah?” he asked, sliding down the scale.

“I want Captain Samson.”

“Sorry, he’s gone for the night. Well!” His voice changed and lost any semblance of a courteous reply. “Seems like I recognize that virile voice,” he said. “If it isn’t Shell Scott, the bloodthirsty detective, I’ll cut my throat.”

I could have answered that, but I didn’t. “Give me someone else,” I told him.

“No good, Scott. Talk to me if you want something.”

“I’m surprised you’re at Homicide. I figured you’d be hanging around so you could tail me — as if you could tail anyone but a small child.”

“All right, what the hell you want?”

I was damned if I’d ask him for anything.

I said, “Hold the phone,” hung up quietly, and headed for home. A double order of prime ribs and a good night’s sleep might make tomorrow more productive. I didn’t know of what it might be more productive, but I had the feeling it wouldn’t be dull.

Back at my hotel I had a drink with Dr. Paul Anson, who has an apartment two doors from mine and keeps a supply of good bourbon on hand, then walked down to my own apartment.

Inside, I glanced at Amelia with something approaching distaste. Up till now she’d dominated the living room of my three rooms and bath, but remembering the lush job at Brane’s studio, Amelia seemed just a little too garish now. She’s on the right wall as you come in, over the fake fireplace, and her bold eyes look slyly down at the huge chocolate divan that sits on the thick shag nap of my yellow-gold wall-to-wall carpet. The things she’s seen, it’s time I got rid of her, anyway.

In the bedroom I hung up my suit, stuck shoe trees in my Cordovans, and tossed everything else in the laundry bag. In a hot tub I relaxed and soaked and thought about Kerrigan on my tail, convinced — or nearly convinced — that I’d killed Brane. I thought of the fisheye Johnny Brown had given me, and a few other fisheyes I’d caught turned my way. I thought of Dutch swearing at me, and Garvey Mace growling at me.

It looked like no matter how many baths I took, how much deodorant I used, how carefully I brushed my teeth and shined my shoes, it was going to take some doing to make me a popular boy.

</code>

<code> Chapter Nine

I HIT THE OFFICE about eight-thirty in the morning, ready for a big day. I barged right in and stopped and stared and swore.

It was a big day already.

I swore softly at first, then louder, till I was yelling at the walls. You know that beautiful office of mine? The one I’m so proud of? It was wrecked; it was really wrecked.

Whoever went over the place had done a good job. It looked like three or four of L.A.‘s juvenile moron gangs, sometimes called rat packs, had taken turns going over the place. It was thorough. I didn’t have an office any more; I just had the walls and the floor and the ceiling.

The filing cabinets were tipped over and banged up, and papers were all over the floor. My beautiful mahogany desk was on its side with the legs busted and the top slashed and scarred, and the swivel chair was in two pieces beside it. The two leather chairs that had looked so good yesterday had been slashed with a knife and the cushions’ stuffing tossed on the carpet. Or, rather, on the rugs. It wasn’t a carpet any more; it was just strips of dark blue cloth.

It didn’t look like there’d been a search for anything in particular. It looked more like vandalism; sheer wanton destruction.

I was mad, sure. But I was more surprised and shocked than anything else. Anger was just licking at the edges of my mind. While it was licking, I got over a little of the shock and started thinking. I walked over to the desk and looked at the busted drawers on the left side. The drawers on the right side were still locked, but the left ones yawned open, empty.

The gun I’d taken from Dutch was no longer part of the furniture. Neither, for that matter, was the furniture.

Dear old Dutch, you son of a bitch, you got your gun back, didn’t you? Well, friend, you’re not going to like being a cripple.

The burn was starting to bust out now, bust out good. Then I turned around and saw what I should have looked for in the first place. It stopped me, and for a minute I wasn’t even mad. Just a little jumpy in the bottom of my stomach.

The bookcase was tipped over, its sides kicked in, and the Britannica, Who’s Who, and Frank Harris were ripped and torn, the pages scattered.

And the dead guppies lay on the floor in the broken glass of the aquarium. They were already stiff and dried, and they looked a little like toy fish that had been given a protective coat of thin lacquer. Well, I could count them now.

I didn’t flip my lid like I might have, but I could feel the hot core of the burn down inside me ready to pop out. I looked around the office once more and walked over to the phone and dialed Samson’s number. I wanted an address, and I wanted it fast.

Dialing was a laugh, too. I should have know the phone would be dead. I could see where the cord had been pulled loose from the wall or cut. I didn’t look to see which. I was standing by the busted desk with the phone in my hands, trying to mash it together, when Hazel stepped up in front of the doorway.

“Good God!” she gasped. “What happened, Shell?”

I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth right away; I was afraid I’d yell at her.

She said, “Who did it? Do you know?”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Hazel, you better go down to your office. I’m not a fit person to talk to right now.”

She turned around and beat it.

In a few seconds I dropped the phone, followed Hazel down the hall, and had her put a call through the PBX switchboard to Samson at Homicide.

“Sam. Shell. One big favor, Sam.”

“Trouble?”

“Just a personal thing. I want you to get me Garvey Mace’s home address if you’ve got it. It’s not in the phone book and I don’t want to waste time.”

“We got plenty on him, including the address, I think. What’s the hurry?”

“I just want to see him.”

“Before nine o’clock in the morning?”

“Right now.”

I could hear him sigh heavily. “O.K., Shell. You’ll give me more gray hairs.”

“Sam, something else. You know a guy named Dutch or one called Flem? Two of Mace’s hired helpers?”

“Not offhand.”

“O.K. Mace’ll do.”

He went off and came back in a few minutes with the address: 2038 1/2 Whitley Terrace, a swank section just a few blocks from downtown Hollywood. I thanked Sam, turned the PBX back to Hazel, and headed for the Cad. I’d wanted to see Mace, anyway, but now I could combine business with pleasure.

It was a big brown house on Whitley Terrace near Grace Avenue, set back from the curving road almost at the top of the hill. The steeply slanted roof of the house reared up from behind a lot of lawn that had a big kidney-shaped swimming pool planted in the middle of it. The front door looked the size of a hotel entrance.

And of all the damn times for a party to be going on, this was it. Not that nine or so in the morning is such a bad time for a party, but it didn’t fit in with my plans. It didn’t look like the brawl was just beginning; it looked like it was midway or staggering to a close.

There were half a dozen tables on the lawn, loaded down with bottles and plates of food, and I could see maybe twenty people tottering around dressed in sports clothes or swim suits. I got out of the car and started walking across the lawn. I almost stepped on a cute little brunette lying curled up on her side on the grass. Her skirt was up over her knees and she snoozed quietly. Probably gathering her strength. I stepped over her and walked up to a couple of droopy-eyed redheads grabbing sandwiches off one of the tables. I looked around, but didn’t see Mace, so I stepped in front of the two gals, which was an excellent place to stop no matter what my reasons.

It was a balmy morning and the sun was already warm, and both girls were in bathing suits, almost. The farthest one was wearing a one-piece strapless black suit, but the one near me had on the more interesting outfit. It was a red-and-white striped two-piece thing that would probably have been called a French bathing suit, and it would have been brief on the Riviera. If she bought it in a store she probably asked for the Amour, or the Oui-Oui, but my guess was she’d made it herself. A little metal ring like the kind you grab on merry-go-rounds joined the two halves of the bra in front, and the bottom part, what there was of it, was joined on each hip by a large metal ring to which the cloth was tied. It didn’t leave much to the imagination, and you could see she had an even tan all over.

I asked the interesting one where Mace was.

She pivoted around, steadied herself against the table, and batted her eyes at me.

“Woo-hoo,” she piped. “Where has you been at?” A little-girl voice went with the big-girl body, and she was well on her way to being plastered.

I said, “Where’s Mace?”

“You is a cutey. Who is you?”

“Where the hell is Mace?”

“Gimme a big kiss.”

“Lady, I’m looking for a man. Name of Garvey Mace.”

“Little kiss? Jus’ a little one?”

Under other circumstances I could have enjoyed this party fine, but I had more strenuous activity in mind. Well, I had other activity in mind.

I walked away from the osculatory redhead just as she started toward me like an octopus. I almost went back, but I kept on going toward the pool. And then I spied him.

He was sitting at the edge of the water, dangling his big feet, and if I’d thought he was a large man before, I upped my estimate now.

He was wearing nothing but a brief pair of Hawaiian bathing trunks, and honest to God, he looked like a shaved ape. That is, except for his chest, where masses of hair sprouted like clumps of brownish steel wool. He wasn’t fat and flabby as he might possibly have been under his tailor-made suits. He had knotted muscles like cold-rolled steel, and he looked like he was strong enough to pick himself up.

I walked over behind him and said, “Mace, I want to talk to you.”

He looked up at me from the edge of the pool and splashed his feet a little in the water like a playful elephant. An expression of quiet rapture spread over his face and his thick brown mustache wiggled a little bit.

He was drunk as a man going down for the third time in bourbon.

He smiled loosely and said, “Good. Glad you could come. Water’s fine.”

“Mace. Damn it. I want to talk to you. Now.”

He frowned a little but kept smiling, then climbed up to his feet and smiled at me some more. “Glad you could come,” he repeated.

He stuck out a great big horny hand like the rear end of a dynamited stump and I grabbed it and started pumping it up and down. The hell I did.

I just grabbed it and hung on. He did all the leading. He’d always do all the leading. It was shaking hands with five soldering irons.

Finally I got loose and growled at him, “For Christ’s sake, Mace, will you sober up a little? I’m Scott. Shell Scott. You don’t like me. I wasn’t invited.”

He frowned a little more this time and stopped grabbing at my hand. A little recognition grew in his blue eyes and they got less friendly. “Scott? The dick?”

“The same. And what the hell happened to my office?”

“Office?” He shook his head roughly, then looked back at me. “Just a minute.”

He turned and hit the water in a flat racing dive, then went under and came up close to the near edge of the pool. He snorted and ducked under the water again, shaking his big head. Finally he pulled himself easily from the pool, bunched muscles rippling, and stalked over to a table with a shining coffee urn on it. He started swilling black coffee.

I waited, standing by the pool, and ten minutes later he came back. He wasn’t sober yet, but he was O.K. He could carry on an intelligent conversation or break my arms.

He stopped in front of me. “All right now,” he rumbled in his booming bass. “What the hell is this?”

“That’s what I want to know. What the goddam hell’s the idea of telling your goons to mess up my office? Either you or your boys better make it good, Mace. Somebody’s going to pay for it.”

He stared at me. “What office?”

“My office. What do you think I said?”

He answered quietly, “I don’t know a thing about your office.”

“Mace, don’t give me any guff. I’m not kidding.”

A quick flash of anger raced across his face, then went away. “Mister, you want me to throw you in the pool? I told you I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You think if I did know I’d tell you I didn’t, then run and hide?”

I was still so griped I didn’t worry about the pool business, but he made sense. I said, “O.K., Mace. No reason you should lie about it. But I know it was your boys.”

“What boys?”

“Dutch and Flem.”

“I don’t know any Dutch and Flem.”

Some people had started to wander over toward us, intrigued by the possibility of watching me drown. Mace looked around at them and roared, “Beat it! Go on, get lost. Party’s over.”

They just sort of dissolved and Mace and I were all alone by the pool. Nobody was going to get to watch me drown.

I said, “You know them. They’re the same boys you had with you yesterday morning.”

Mace glanced around and made sure nobody was listening, then he shrugged his shoulders. It was gruesome.

He said, “You could get to be a bother, Scott. O.K., so they’re my boys. Let me get this straight. They’re supposed to have messed up your office?”

“Not only supposed, they did. I want those boys, Mace.”

He ignored that. “Why would they get so smart?”

“I took a gun away from Dutch. He said he’d get it back. He did. Just for kicks he ripped up my stuff.”

Mace said quietly, “Dutch generally does what he says he will. He’s sort of stupid, though; one-track mind. Not a good boy to have mad at you.”

I suddenly remembered vaguely some remarks Dutch had made about my dead body. Looked like he was still mad at me.

Mace went on, “You shouldn’t have taken his gun. He’s mighty attached to it.”

“He won’t be for long.”

“Look here, Scott,” he said. “I like a man with some backbone, but I don’t like anybody in my hair. Not anybody. Now you leave me in peace.”

I shook my head. “This is something between me and Dutch and Flem. You just better decide to lose two boys.”

He ground his teeth together a little. Then he surprised me. “Where’s the girl?”

“What girl?”

“What girl! Hallie Wilson. Where you got her?”

“Uh-uh. I don’t know where she is, Mace.” It was true enough; all I knew was where I’d left her.

He let it go. “I’ll catch up with her.”

I asked him, “Why are you so interested in her?”

“That’s my business.”

“It’s also mine. She’s my client.” It struck me a little funny as I said it. I was interested in the case mainly on account of my own skin, but also because of Hallie, though there’d been no talk of money or a fee. It looked like I’d been retained by a pair of frightened eyes and two beautiful red lips. Among other things.

Mace and I had been standing face to face, glaring at each other. Now he motioned to a couple of chairs at the side of the pool. “Sit down, Scott. You and me better talk a little more.”

I wondered what was coming, but I grabbed a chair. He sat down facing me, then got up and came back with cigarettes. He lit one and tossed me the pack and matches.

While I lit up he asked me, “So she’s really your client? I heard all about that costume brawl and you and Brane. Seems like you’d want to get the person that fixed Brane, just so you’d look pretty again. Right?”

“Naturally I want to get him.”

“Him? Why a him?”

“Why not?”

He blew smoke out through his nose. “Hallie’s your gal,” he said. “She fixed Brane up.”

I stared at him, blinking. “I don’t believe it.”

He grinned. “She’s real cute, isn’t she?”

“That’s got nothing to do with it.”

“No?”

“No. You got any proof?”

“Nothing cops could use. Enough for me. But I don’t give a damn if she fixed Brane. Good riddance. But she’s also playing around with blackmail.”

I didn’t say anything for a minute; things were coming too fast for me. And I not only didn’t believe what he was saying, I didn’t want to believe him. Fine private detective, huh? Sometimes it’s like that.

I said, “Maybe you’ve got your reasons, Mace, but it doesn’t spell for me. Give me something definite and I’ll think about it.” I breathed on my cigarette while he shook his head.

“That’s all,” he said. “All you get from me. I got my reasons, though.”

“You could be covering up. I understand you were out at Feldspen’s when Brane got killed.”

“I was.” Just like that. No details, no nothing.

“You’re big enough to have cut his throat,” I said.

He grinned. “So’re you, Scott. And I’m not the only one that’s said that. But I don’t think it was you. Another thing, you don’t have to be very big to cut a throat. A midget could do it if he had a knife and could get high enough.”

He tossed his cigarette in the pool and it went out with a little hiss. “Besides,” he continued, “I was never inside the place. Like you said, I’m big. Don’t you think I’d have been seen by somebody?”

He had something there. Even among some of the big-chested, broad-shouldered guys strutting around Feldspen’s that night, Mace would have stood out like a man among the boys. I asked him, “What were you doing outside, then?”

“Frankly, Scott, that’s none of your business.” He hesitated, then continued, “But I’m going to tell you because we might do some business. You know Wandra Price?”

“Not personally. She’s a new Magna star. I know that much.”

“I know her. Personally. As a matter of fact, I’ve got what you might call a protective attitude about her. See what I mean?”

I nodded. “I see. Mustn’t touch. But, Mace, Miss Price was at the party, too.”

“That’s what I’m getting at. I was out there waiting for her to take her home when the storm blew up. I had to wait around a while longer for her to get out, but I finally saw her. Thing is, she was a little jittery. Not pleasant in there, you know.”

“Uh-huh, I know.”

“Well, like I said, I’m sort of protective about Wandra. Wouldn’t want her to have any more trouble. Now, Scott, seeing how you’re a little mixed up in this yourself, I figure you’ll be working pretty hard to clean up the murder. Right?”

“Right. What’re you getting at?”

“Well, I got a little money. From various investments of mine.”

I grinned.

He grinned too and went on, “I’d like to see you clean this up fast and that way have no more trouble for Wandra.”

“Any reason why she might be in for more trouble?”

He looked surprised. “Of course not. I just like sure things. It’s worth five thousand to me.”

“What, exactly, is worth five thousand dollars?”

“You clear up this kill and see Wandra stays real clean and you get the five G’s.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. I won’t cover for anybody.”

“Hell,” he growled, “I don’t want you to cover for anyone. Wandra’s clean. I want it to stay that way.”

I thought about what he’d said, wondering where this new angle fitted in. And I wondered just how serious Mace was. As I’ve said before, he not only had muscles, he had a brain. And why all this sudden harping on Wandra Price?

I said, “Mace, I remember something about the night of the party. I was just leaving when one of the gals in line up and fainted. Guess who?”

“I know who.”

“Uh-huh. Miss Price. She must have had something on her mind to make her pass out. Funny she’d faint a little while after Brane’s body was discovered.”

“What’s so funny about it, Scott? She’s a delicate little doll. Murders don’t happen that close every day. It upset her, that’s all. Don’t worry about it — it’s an extra five G’s for you.”

Maybe he was giving me straight dope, and maybe he wasn’t. But I was getting more and more sure of one thing: Wandra Price was one woman I was going to have to have a long talk with.

Mace said, “And I don’t want anybody bothering her. Particularly, I don’t want you bothering her.”

“You what?”

“Just stay away from Wandra, Scott.”

This could lead to complications. I’d make a big splash in the middle of the swimming pool.

“I can’t promise anything like that,” I said. “How am I supposed to clear this thing up if I don’t talk to the people concerned?”

“Wandra isn’t concerned.”

“Your proposition says different.”

That quick flash of anger ran across his face again. He said grimly, “If I say she isn’t, Scott, she isn’t.”

I shrugged. “Where will I find Dutch and Flem?”

He shook his head. “Where will I find Hallie Wilson?”

It looked like we were at an impasse. Even if I didn’t have Dutch, though, I had plenty to think about. I said, “Guess I’ll have to find them myself, Mace. I’ll see you around.”

“You probably will. Remember what I said, Scott — and think about my offer. It’s still open. Have you got a pencil?”

I fumbled one out of my pocket and tossed it to him. He scribbled on the inside of a match book and passed it over to me.

“Here’s my phone number. Call me if you change your mind.”

I walked back toward my Cad. I walked across the wide lawn and past the cute little brunette, still snoozing. She was sure going to be surprised when she woke up all alone.

At the car I glanced over my shoulder at the pool. It was smooth and glistening in the bright morning sun. Not a single ripple marred its surface.

It sure looked good that way.

</code>

<code> Chapter Ten

THE SHAMBLES of my office and the chat with Mace hadn’t left me a bit sleepy. I stopped at the French Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard and ordered a rare sirloin steak.

Somebody had left a morning paper on the counter, so while I started digesting the sirloin I caught up on the late news and read the story about Brane’s murder, which occupied a prominent position on page one. It had made a big splash because so many prominent people from the movie industry had been around at the time of the murder. The story hinted at a lot of things, but was careful to say nothing damaging to any movie moguls. It went on to say that the murderer was at large, but that the police expected to have the killer in custody within twenty-four hours.

The only thing I learned that I hadn’t known before was that, shortly before Roger Brane’s body was found, there had been a terrific hand-to-hand combat, apparently of titanic proportions, between Brane and an unnamed but well-known Los Angeles private detective who lived in Hollywood. They did everything but say, “Shell Scott of the Hamilton Building on Broadway.”

That spoiled my plans to order a second sirloin. I swore silently to myself, then read the funnies. They didn’t help. It was no good getting griped at any more people; I had enough gripes to last me a long time. I finished my coffee, paid the check, and took off for Magna Studios.

I wanted to check with the guard, Johnny Brown, and Mace or no Mace, it was high time I chatted with Wandra Price.

Johnny said cheerily, “Hi, Shell,” when I walked up.

“Hi, Johnny. You do me any good?”

“Yup.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.

“Well,” I said, “so it paid off? Which one of the boys got the jumps?”

“Not boys.”

I wiggled my eyebrows a little. “Which one of the girls, then?”

“It wasn’t one.”

“Huh? It wasn’t? If it wasn’t a man or a woman, what was it? Lassie?”

He grinned. “That’s not what I meant. I mean it wasn’t one woman. It was four.”

“Four!”

“Yep. Four of ‘em had fits or something. Here’s the list.”

He handed me the list of names and I started at the top and worked my way down. Hallie Wilson was right at the top, but I knew about her and should have expected her name. Then there were two big feminine stars: Constanza Carmocha and Barbara Faun. Both of them up at the top and always good for a line in front of the theatre box offices.

But it was the last name that blasted me. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it did. You way ahead of me?

Wandra Price.

Uh-huh, Wandra “I’m protective about her” Price. This was getting better, and maybe there was a way out of the fog I’d been living in. Or maybe just out of the living.

“Johnny,” I said. “Let me use your phone. I want to check the other studios — the big ones. See if they had fits over there, too.”

He beamed. “You forgot I was a cop, Shell. I already did it for you. No soap.”

“Business as usual?”

“Business as usual. You like it?”

“I like it fine, Johnny. Thanks a hell of a lot.”

“Glad to do it, Shell. I — uh…”

I grinned at him. “Looks like you’re back on the team.”

“True,” he said. “I’m a cluck.” He stuck out his hand and I shook it, and it felt good.

“Here. Gimme the slip,” he said. “Why these four are listed is this.” He pointed at the top name. “Hallie Wilson just didn’t show up.”

“I know. How about the rest?”

He slid his finger down. “Neither did Barbara Faun. Don’t know if the studio’s heard from her or not, I just know she didn’t show. That was yesterday. But none of ‘em is here today, either.”

“All four gone today?”

“Right. This Constanza, she was here yesterday, but she must of threw a fit right in the middle of a take. She says she can’t work with such a stupid director, but he hasn’t even said hello to her. Maybe means nothing; she’s done it before.”

“Temperament?”

“Yup. That’s the way we spell temper here. She’s a Spanish tomato. With chili peppers in her ears.”

“I’ve seen her pictures.” I grinned at him and gnashed my teeth.

He leered and got a vacant look in his eyes for a minute, then said, “Wandra Price come out but said she was sick. They let her go home. Guess she didn’t look so good.”

“Fine, Johnny. One more favor if you can. I’d like their addresses. I’m curious to see why they all came down with hysterics right after Brane got it.”

He fumbled around behind his counter, wrote down the addresses opposite the stars’ names, and handed me the slip.

“Thanks, Johnny. You need anything, drop down and see me.”

“Sure thing, Shell. Let me know how it goes.” He frowned and paused a moment. Then he said slowly, “Say, Shell, I — uh — I hope you didn’t want it kept a secret I was getting this dope.”

“I didn’t think much about it,” I said. “It was just an idea when I asked you for the stuff. Why?”

“Well, I had to do quite a bit of checking to find out who all was mixed up. You know. Anyway, it’s no secret what dope I been getting for you. Might be somebody wouldn’t be happy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I see what you mean. It’s O.K., though, Johnny. And thanks.”

He had a point there. If I was stirring up trouble for somebody, there was an excellent chance they’d be happy to do the same for me. With that thought I started to take off for the Cad. I started to, but I suddenly remembered something that should have puzzled me before, something I’d heard and absorbed and paid no attention to. I turned around and walked back to Johnny.

“How about letting me inside for a few minutes?” I asked him.

“O.K. You forget something?”

“Uh-huh.” I took the pass, thanked him, and went inside. I found Paul Clark at the cutting room again and we went to the Velvet Room for coffee.

When we were settled, I asked him abruptly, “Didn’t you give me a song and dance yesterday, Clark?”

His brown eyes stared at me from his sunburned face. “What the hell you talking about?” he asked.

“You said you couldn’t tell me any more than you had about Brane. You knew him a while back, didn’t you? Before Hollywood?”

He swallowed and fingered his long, pointed nose. “So? Where did I know him?”

“Kansas City.” I was taking a chance of making a fool of myself, but it might pay off with something. With what, I didn’t know, but I’ve made a fool of myself before.

Clark said harshly. “So I knew the louse in K.C. How’d you find that out?”

“Part guessing,” I said agreeably. “When Brane was popping off at you Tuesday night at the party, he mentioned something about shoving your face clear back to Kansas City, Missouri.”

Clark frowned and ran fingers through his hair. “He say that? Guess I don’t remember.” Then he shrugged. “Well, what about it?”

I said, “You told me you couldn’t tell me any more about the guy.”

He shook his head and grinned. “Scott,” he said, “you’re sure persistent. But that’s not what I told you. I said I couldn’t tell you anything that would help you in figuring out why he was killed. And I still can’t.”

“But you did know Brane back in Missouri?”

“Sure. Four, five years ago,” he said resignedly. “That’s where I come from. Brane lived there for a while.”

That was news. I said, “You two chummy back there?”

“Hell, no.” He shook his head. “He was just as big a bastard then.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday when I was here, Clark?”

He sighed. “More third degree. Look, Scott, I told you all I knew of any importance yesterday. Why should I say I knew him before? After all, I was at the damn party too. Brane didn’t fall off a curb; somebody murdered the crumb. I’m not going to say any more than I have to — and neither is anybody else you talk to.”

This time I sighed. There was a lot of truth in what he’d just said. And I wondered how long I’d be getting partial answers or no answers at all. That reminded me of the three Magna stars I was going to talk to and I thought of something else I hadn’t checked yet. I still had the list of suspects that Samson had given me and I took it out and compared it with the list I’d got from Johnny Brown. Sure enough, it was what I’d guessed. Barbara Faun, Constanza Carmocha, and Wandra Price were all listed as being present at the party. The only one of the four who wasn’t on Samson’s list was Hallie Wilson — for the simple reason that she’d taken a powder. I stuck the lists in my pocket and said to Clark, “How long you been around Hollywood?”

“Almost four years. Ever since I left Missouri.”

“Why’d you leave?”

He drained his coffee, set the cup on the table, and glared at me. “For a guy who isn’t a cop, you sure ask a lot of personal questions.”

I grinned. “I know. Maybe this thing’s got me worried. Forget it.”

He held up a hand. “It’s all right. You must be getting a riding, and it’s partly my fault. Cops talk to you yet?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“They’ll get to me pretty quick,” he said. “Just so I answer all your questions, I left Missouri like a lot of other guys. Hell, why not? Truman did. I was going to make some big money in Hollywood. Besides, I felt like a change of climate and scenery.” He grinned widely. “I’m single and still young. Where’s a better place to be?”

I saw what he meant. “O.K.,” I said. “Thanks again. You’re apt to get tired of me.”

He blinked and grinned slightly. “Scott, I’m tired of you already.”

“Then I’m gone. See you around.”

I went back to the gate, gave the pass to Johnny, and climbed into the Cad. There didn’t seem to be any sense hanging around Magna any longer. All the people I wanted to see now were home. Or at least they weren’t at the studio. I checked the list of names and addresses of the stars. Following the shortest route, I’d call on Barbara Faun, then on Constanza Carmocha, and finally on Wandra Price, who lived clear out in the San Fernando Valley.

I decided against phoning and drove the Cadillac up to Santa Monica Boulevard, then left toward Barbara Faun’s home in Beverly Hills. I was ringing the doorbell in fifteen minutes, but for a while all I got was echoes. I hated to be so damn noisy with a doorbell, or rather door chimes, but this business was pretty important to me. So I leaned on the bell and let my finger get tired. If anybody was home, they were going to get tired, too.

Finally a window upstairs opened and blonde hair tumbled into the sun as Barbara Faun stuck out her head. I knew it was she; I’d seen three or four of her pictures, and she’s a beautiful blonde of about twenty-five or so and well put together.

She called tensely, “Stop it! Go away. I can’t stand it!”

I craned my neck up at her. “Miss Faun, I’m Shell Scott. I’m a private detective, and — “

She let out a little squeal that didn’t sound like she was glad to see me, yanked her head inside, and slammed down the window. The way she did it I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was upstairs piling furniture against the door.

I felt like a louse, but damn it, leaned on the bell some more.

Finally I heard footsteps. Success.

Oh, yeah?

She came to the door, all right. And she opened it. And she stuck a great big disgusting gun right in my kisser.

“Go away!” she almost screamed at me. “Go away! I don’t want to talk to you. To anyone. Go — “

I didn’t really hear the last part very well because I was fifty feet away grinding the starter in my Cad. That gal was just about ready to blow off the one ear I’ve still got in one complete piece. Or maybe my head. She’d blown her top already and mine looked like it was next in natural progression. I said good-by, softly, from two blocks away.

I headed for Constanza’s place on Doheny Road, a couple of miles or so from where I was, but I wasn’t as eager as I’d been a few minutes before. If Constanza had a gun, I’d better go in waving my white handkerchief.

About half a mile from her place I figured that I’d just drive up, park, and walk up like a traveling salesman, grinning and looking as pleasant as possible. I’d make it quick and be out of there in fifteen minutes. I was anxious to get to Wandra’s.

There was a little hitch in my plans.

I turned off Sunset and was almost at the end of curving Loma Vista Drive where it meets Doheny Road at the big Doheny Ranch, when the windshield splintered and little cracks radiated out from the center. At first I didn’t get it — just for a fraction of a second. Even with all my thinking about guns, I had to see the little round hole in the windshield before the idea penetrated all the way. There were so many ideas whirling around in my brain about all the people in this cockeyed kill that even as I heard the crack of the gun and the slap as the bullet smashed through the glass, the words came slowly, crowding others out of the way as they formed in my mind.

Somebody just tried to kill me!

</code>

<code> Chapter Eleven

I YANKED at the wheel of the car and slid over to the right of the road, slamming on my brakes. My .38 was out of its holster and in my right hand before the car stopped. I ducked down out of sight and glanced at the cracked glass, but it didn’t tell me much more; the top was down on my car and the bullet hadn’t dug into the upholstery or metal anywhere, so it must have come from down low. But where low I had no idea.

I kicked open the right door of the car and waited a few seconds, gathering my legs under me. There was a thick cover of brush along the right of the road, past the curb, and even crouched down at the bottom of the car I could see the heavy wire fence that paralleled the road, set back about six feet from it. Beyond the fence I could make out a lot more brush and shrubbery and the tall trunks of eucalyptus trees. The shot must have come from in there somewhere, and a few feet behind where the car now stood.

There weren’t any more shots, so I grabbed a lungful of air, held my breath, and dived out the door of the car. I sprinted for the meager cover of the brush and vines, my eyes trying to find any movement on my right, and my gun ready in my hand.

I made it to the foot of the wire fence and flopped on my stomach without running into any more opposition, and my breathing slowed down a little. Whoever let fly at me could have taken off in a hurry without waiting to see what was up, or could still be somewhere close by, probably inside that damned wire fence, which was higher than my head and had some barbed wire across the top. But before I climbed up over the fence I was going to make sure whoever used me for target practice wasn’t on the same side of it as me. If so, there’d be a beautiful chance I’d get a bullet in me while climbing the fence or plodding around inside.

It took me about five minutes, trying to look eight ways at once, but when I got through I knew whoever shot at me was either inside the enclosure or long gone. Probably long gone, but I was going to find out.

It seemed like I was up on top of the fence for an hour waiting for somebody to plug me, but I finally got over and dropped down to the soft earth inside. It was longer dropping down than climbing up because the earth slanted steeply downward inside the fence. I stood behind one of the eucalyptus trees for a minute, looking around, but all I could see was more eucalyptus trees and brush. Finally I made out a house or building of some kind visible through the trees, but nobody seemed to be moving around it.

As a matter of fact, nobody seemed to be moving anywhere, except me, but there was always a chance somebody could be waiting for me to start looking. Somebody with malice aforethought, and I’m chary of my blood. So I skipped from tree to tree, like a sprite, and finally I was up against the fence on the other side, and there was another road beyond it. Doheny Road. Somebody who wanted to pot me could have wheeled up Hillcrest — the next road down Sunset from Loma Vista — turned at Doheny, and then waited for a yellow Cad. Or somebody could simply have been waiting. Or a lot of things. The only thing I was sure of was that it wasn’t one of my good friends.

I wandered around for another fifteen minutes and found out only that nobody was home at the little house. Nothing else happened. I’d been playing tag with somebody who was probably miles away having a beer. I tramped around a little more and went back to the Cad, tearing hell out of my trousers getting over the fence again.

Constanza, here I come. If you’ve got a gun, I’ll bat you with it.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twelve

CONSTANZA CARMOCHA, red-hot star of Magna Studios and chili-hell on wheels, didn’t have a gun.

She didn’t need one. She had all the weapons that have ruined men from time immemorial. Or time immoral, I forget. She was a Mexican mamma from Cuernavaca, or so her studio biography read, and she’d never lost her delightful Spanish accent. Her voice wore a Spanish accent, too, but you weren’t listening, you were looking.

I parked in front of the house and walked up the flagstone path across the lawn and rang the bell and she opened the door and looked out and I thought, Ay-ay-ay-ay!

She’d looked good on the screen, but this was different. This was in all three dimensions. She was two feet away, but I felt like she was crowding me. This was almost as dangerous as getting shot at.

I said, “You’re Miss Constanza Carmocha?”

“Sure, pops. Why the hell?”

I licked my lips. “Uh, I heard you were sick.”

That didn’t seem like the way to solve a murder, so I tried again. “I was at Magna Studios. I’m Shell Scott.”

She frowned a little. She had lips that wouldn’t keep still. They wiggled and fashioned little smiles and little frowns all the time, and her eyes were wide and a deep, dark brown. Finally she said, “So what, pops?”

“It’s about Roger Brane. May I come in?”

She started to swing the door shut, then stopped and looked out at me for a minute. Then she pulled the door wide and said, “Hell, you’re here. Guess I gotta face it.”

“Face what?”

“What you mean, face what?”

“You have to face what? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You kidding?”

I shook my head. “Nope. I would like to ask you some questions, though. I suppose you’ve read the papers. I … There’s some people who think maybe I did more than hit Brane.”

Her eyes lit up then. “Ho, you’re the one what popped him? Come in, brother. Any enemy of Brane’s is a friend of mine. I popped him myself once. With an easel. The weasel.” She laughed merrily. “Easel-weasel. Come on in. Hell, you’re in practically already.”

I went in and she stood aside to let me pass, and there wasn’t really enough room, but I didn’t complain. She pointed to a big easy chair. I sat down. She went across the room and draped herself on a couch.

“Fire,” she said.

“What?”

“Fire. Ask me something. What you want? I figure I might as well get with this over.”

“Sure. Well, Miss Carmocha — “

“Constanza.”

“O.K., Constanza.” So far, so good. Now if I just knew what questions to ask her. “Well, I’m interested in finding out who killed Roger Brane.”

“Who isn’t?”

I went on, “I’m sort of playing a hunch. Actually it’s a little more than that, but I’ll need your co-operation.”

“Maybe I co-operate. We’re gonna see.”

“Good. Here it is. Brane was murdered Tuesday night. Yesterday, Wednesday, four stars or starlets either didn’t show up at Magna for work or walked off the sets. You were one of them. Could be, as far as you’re personally concerned, there’s no connection between Brane’s being killed and your leaving the lot yesterday. If there is a connection, that’s what I’m curious about.”

It was a hell of a thing to say, but the way I had it figured, I might get an answer from someone who wasn’t too scared.

She got up and started pacing back and forth in front of me; I almost forgot what I’d come for. Then she said, “That’s all you wanna know?”

“Absolutely all.”

“You don’t want money?”

“Not a cent.”

“Maybe you even help me a little? If I tell you?”

“I will if I can.”

She made up her mind. “Bueno. You got it. Brane was squeezing me.”

“Which?”

“You know, putting on the squeeze. He was giving me an extort.”

“Blackmail, huh?”

“That’s the one. Blackmailing.”

“Can you tell me how he managed it?”

“He had a picture of me. It was pretty or not, depending how you look at it, but I wouldn’t like it all over the town. Hot stuff.”

“Hot stuff?”

“Baby,” she said, “you said it.”

“Did you pay him?”

“Close to seven thousand dollars. The dirty extorter!”

The dirty extorter was right. Hallie, and now Constanza, and a lot more, I had the feeling. And here was the explanation for at least seven thousand of the twenty grand or so that Samson told me Brane had stashed away. I’ll bet he had fun in that little dark room of his.

Constanza went on, “And he still had a copy or copies of the picture.”

“Probably the negative, too.”

“Maybe. But he hadn’t bothered me lately and I figure maybe he’d lay off me for a while. Now he gets killed. Maybe somebody else starts it all over again. Or worse. See why I’m worried?”

I saw. “Yes, I do. Look, Miss — Constanza. If I can get to the bottom of this, you’ll have no more trouble. I can’t promise but I’ll do the best I can.”

“I hope you fix it. I been very worried. You wanna see?”

“See what?”

“See the picture. I got a copy.”

“Well…” I hesitated, but I sure wasn’t kidding anybody.

“You wait,” she said.

I waited while she went out of the room and got whatever she was after. Then she came back with a large photograph in her hand.

Before I peeked at the photograph, I took another look at Constanza. She was about five-six or five-seven, and black hair hung loose down her back. I guess she’d been out in the sun before I called, because she was wearing a pair of abbreviated white shorts and a halter affair that looked like a bright silk bandanna looped over one, then brought around her neck and looped over the other one and tied somewhere in back. You get the idea? I got the idea too. I got a lot of ideas. It left just enough to the imagination.

I was starting to imagine more when she said, “You gonna bite me?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry, I — “

“Don’t be sorry.” She looked at me with her full lips doing that kind of nervous wiggle, then she handed me the picture.

It was a glossy eight-by-ten the same size as the one I’d seen in Brane’s window, but not at all like it. I didn’t think he’d ever have stuck this one in the window, but if he had, there’d have been crowds all day. I won’t attempt to describe it, but it left less to the imagination than her present costume, and it was undoubtedly Miss Constanza Carmocha.

When I looked up again she was smiling down at me. I squirmed a little in the chair and said, “My.”

“Pretty?” she asked, her lips doing a rumba.

“Indeed,” I said. “Sure is.” I coughed politely.

She giggled. “Wanna drink?”

A drink sounded delightful. “Thanks,” I said. “Drink would be fine.”

“Bourbon?”

“With water, thanks.”

She went off and mixed a couple. She didn’t take the picture. She should have taken the picture. When she came back and handed me my drink, I handed her the photo.

“You’d better take this,” I said.

She smiled. “Now you know what to look for, Mr. Scott.”

“Shell.”

“Shell.”

I said, “I sure do. I mean, yes, I will.”

She laughed lightly. “Now, don’t misunderstand me, Shell.”

I shook my head. “Oh, no. I mean I’ll try to take care of it for you — get the pictures back. The negative.” I laughed dismally.

She shook her head vigorously. That made her shoulders wiggle. Her lips weren’t the only things doing a rumba. She said again, huskily, “Mmmm, don’t misunderstand me.”

I looked up at her. I felt crowded again. Well, I never minded crowds.

She leaned forward a little. “You help me, Shell,” she said. “I’m very grateful. You are strong-looking. That I like. I think I like you very much.”

“Fine. Good. Well, I’d better be going.”

She pushed gently against my shoulder as I halfheartedly started to get up. “Don’t go,” she said. “I like you. Shell, I been alone all day.”

“All day?”

“All day. Is terrible. Talk to me a while.”

“Well, O.K. How’d Brane get in touch with you for the bite?”

“The bite.” She sat down on my lap.

I swallowed. “I mean the blackmail. You know, the extort.”

“Oh, that. He sent me the picture, then called me up for some money. Don’t talk about that; it’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“Talk about you and me. I think you are beautiful.”

She thought I was beautiful. That was news. I’ve never been called beautiful before. I said quickly, “Miss Carmocha — “

“Constanza.”

“Constanza. Uh, you were born in Cuernavaca, huh?”

“Baloney. All baloney. That’s the studio stuff. I was born in the Virgin Islands. My father was a Roshon general and my mother was the best damn red-hot singer in the whole damn Virgin Islands — where there ain’t no virgins. Not after twelve, anyway.”

“Not after twelve? Years?”

“Midnight.” She giggled again and shifted a little on my lap. She started playing with the hair on the back of my neck.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve gotta run. You’ll — “

“Shhh,” she said. “I like you very much. I’m not gonna let you get away. Not yet. Don’t you think I’m hot stuff?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t ma’am me. Put around your arms.”

“Oh, well, now. Look — “

“Shell.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna do something.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m gonna you.”

I said, “Whaaat?”

“I’m gonna you.”

There. She’d said it again. She was going to asterisk me. This was a new experience. I’d met a lot of women, but none of them had ever been quite like this.

I said, “You serious?”

“I’m serious. Stop arguing.”

“Who’s arguing?”

I kept telling myself I had work to do. Murders to solve. See Wandra Price. Lots of things. Suddenly all that seemed like last week.

But I’m strong. I got up.

I planted Constanza on the floor in front of me and looked down at her. “Baby,” I said, “I didn’t know what I was getting into.”

“Oooh!” she cooed. “What you’re saying!”

“No, no,” I said.

“Yes, yes,” she said.

Boy, oh, boy. This tamale had personality. She exuded personality. I was exuding nothing but perspiration. Even my eyeballs must have been sweating.

I blinked at her. “Gotta go,” I said. “Gotta run. Ha-ha. Well — “

She said, “You’re simple. Mr. Scott, you are very simple.”

“No,” I said. “Complex. I’m a mass of complexes.”

“Watch.”

“Watch?”

“Watch. You watch me, Shell. I show you something.”

She wasn’t kidding. She showed me something. You ever watch one of those oriental snake charmers? Where the snake wiggles and glides and the charmer blows on a little flute and has the situation well in hand?

That’s what she was like. No, stupid, like the snake.

She went back a few feet, then started toward me, putting one foot in front of another like she was doing a jig; sort of a double jig.

Man! It was something. You could almost hear the jungle drums bonging around inside her. Bum, diddle-dedum and then whomp. Bum, diddle-de-dum, then another whomp. There was a little roaring in my head.

She didn’t stop, but she said huskily, “I’m gonna cremate you.”

She wasn’t kidding. It was hot. Even my eardrums must have been expanding in that heat. But you looked at her in those brief shorts and the thin bandanna and you stopped thinking about heat and began wondering about fever.

She got up to me and she grabbed me and she latched on.

I said, “Slow down, sister, don’t you blow your top,” and those were the last sensible words she got out of me.

She lunged at me and got me by the mouth and mashed her lips down like hot jelly. Her lips felt like they were a yard wide and she acted like she was trying to swallow me.

After ten seconds I didn’t care. I didn’t care if I got digested.

Later I told her good-by, but I don’t think she heard me. I couldn’t hear very well, myself. I think my eardrums were ruined. She was sure some tomato, that Connie.

</code>

<code> Chapter Thirteen

ON THE WAY OUT to Wandra Price’s house in the Valley I tried to figure out where she fitted into the murder picture. She’d been present at the studio party, with Garvey Mace waiting for her outside, and she was among those missing from the Magna lot after Brane’s death. Tough boy Mace was keeping a protective wing around her and had offered me five grand to keep her clean — and had also told me to stay the hell away from her. But there was too much tying her into this thing; I had to see her.

She’d made a spectacular rise in Hollywood, I knew that much. Magna had picked her out of a department store or somewhere similar, tested her, liked what she had, and started training her, grooming her for the top. She’d made only one picture, Shadow of Love, but already she was drawing down a fat salary with automatic boosts if the studio picked up her options. It looked as if she were all set, barring trouble.

I wondered if Brane had somehow got his hooks into her, too, and it suddenly occurred to me that so far the only people that I knew Brane had blackmailed had been women. If that meant anything, you could have fooled me.

Wandra lived in a house that was modest for the district, and I parked in the middle of a graveled drive that swept around in back of the house. I went up and pushed the button that set off the chimes inside. Nobody used plain old doorbells any more, apparently.

I glanced at my watch as I heard the click of what sounded like high heels inside the house. It was three-thirty in the afternoon.

The door opened about two feet and someone looked out at me. I couldn’t tell who it was for sure, as her face was in shadows, but she wasn’t dressed for me.

She wore a thin robe that hadn’t been designed to keep her warm, and I could see open-toed sandals like slippers with heels under the hem of the robe. The outline of the legs was eye-catching, and the hips and waist were wonderful, but I lost interest when I came to breasts like potato pancakes, and remembered I was a sleuth. If this was the gal who’d tossed the faint night before last, no wonder they hadn’t jiggled.

“Well?” she asked in a pleasant low voice.

“Good afternoon. You’re Miss Price?”

“What do you want?”

“I’m Shell Scott. I’d like very much to talk to you, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t believe we have anything to talk about, Mr. Scott.”

“It’s about Roger Brane.”

“So?”

“You are Miss Price, aren’t you? The movie star?”

“Yes. What has that to do with you? Please state your business, Mr. Scott.” She edged back farther behind the door, but I didn’t mind as long as she didn’t close it altogether.

I said, “The day after Roger Brane was murdered, some of the Magna employees didn’t show up, or else went home early. I think there could be a connection.”

“You’re very impertinent, Mr. Scott.”

“I don’t mean to be. If it sounds like that, I’m sorry. I’m simply trying to get to the bottom of the murder. It might be of help to both of us if you’d let me come in. We can’t talk very well like this.”

“I’m sorry. I have nothing to discuss with you.” Her voice was like a cold wind. “I was feeling ill, so I left the studio. That’s all there was to it. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” She started to shut the door.

I didn’t like it a bit. I wanted to talk to this gal and I felt sure she was more worried than ill, but the door was closing in my kisser and I couldn’t just bust in.

“Miss Price,” I said sharply. “There’s something else.”

The door slowed just before it slammed shut, then widened a few inches.

“What is it?” she asked.

Remembering Hallie’s talk of blackmail, and the picture of Constanza Carmocha, I said, “It’s about a picture, Miss Price. May I come in?”

The door opened wide, but Wandra wasn’t there.

Garvey Mace was, though. He looked bigger than I remembered. He always looked bigger than I remembered him, but now I think he was holding his breath. I know I was.

“Yeah, Scott,” he growled deep in his silly chest. “You may come in.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. I went inside, though, and Mace slammed the door and leaned back against it. He went on in his rumbling voice, “Scott, I told you I didn’t like guys in my hair — and that’s not all I told you. Looks like you don’t hear good.”

I asked just like I felt brave, “You Jesus?”

He covered five feet, I think, in one stride, and glared up at me. “Before we get into personalities, what was that crack about a picture?”

I remembered then that when Mace had barged into Pete’s after Hallie, he’d said something about a picture. “Oh, that,” I said.

“That. What about it?” He grabbed the front of my double-breasted coat in his hand and started to pull me toward him.

One thing I can’t stand is for anybody to grab me and start trying to waltz me around. Mace could probably do it, but I didn’t give a damn right then.

I slammed my open hand against his chest and shoved. I braced my legs for trouble and said quietly, “Mace, don’t do that. So help me, you’d better let go.”

He let go. He wasn’t scared; he just wanted some answers and I guess he figured I couldn’t talk unconscious. He untangled his fingers and asked me again, “What was the picture crack?”

“Picture of Wandra,” I said, guessing.

“Where is it, Scott?”

“I don’t know.”

“The hell you don’t know. Stay healthy, Scott.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, Mace. That’s straight.”

He frowned, his forehead ridging like a washboard. “What’s it like, this picture?”

I wished to hell I knew, but I could keep on guessing.

I held my hands eight or ten inches apart and waved them around a little so it wouldn’t be too definite and said, “Oh, it was so big, glossy — “

“Beat it.”

That was a surprise. “What?”

“You heard me. Beat it.”

This I didn’t get. One minute he’s banging questions at me; the next I’m supposed to scram. I glanced over my shoulder at Wandra standing a few feet way.

I didn’t expect her to tell me anything, but she did.

She didn’t say anything, but her face was in the light and it was puzzled. But even wearing a frown, I knew where I’d seen that face before, and I finally tumbled. Here, at last, was the naked gal from Brane’s studio — the nude I’d decided would replace Amelia.

I shook my head, bewildered. Seemed like everybody I ran into in this Hollywood madhouse, from the time of Brane’s murder till now, got undressed sooner or later. There were sure a lot of bodies in this bedlam, and it seemed like all of them but the corpse were naked.

I was still staring at the face of Wandra Price when Mace grabbed my arm and pulled me around. I think my ulna fractured, but I didn’t even object.

“Scott — ” Mace began grimly.

“Wait,” I said. “I remembered something.”

He grinned. “Now you remember.”

I shook my head. “It’s not what you think, Mace. I know where that picture is. I didn’t when you asked me, but I do now.”

“Don’t pull my leg.”

“I’m not. I was thinking about photographs. I didn’t even think of a painting. I saw the thing, but I didn’t recognize Wandra. Not till I saw her just now. And let the hell go of my arm.”

He grimaced. He didn’t like me any better because I’d lamped the picture. That was all right; I had a feeling he wasn’t wild about me before.

He unclamped his fingers. “Where is it?” he asked.

“Brane’s studio. But it’s guarded.”

He didn’t say anything, just glanced over at Wandra, then back at me.

I said, “O.K., Mace. I’ve told you something you wanted to know. Now what’s it all about?”

“Here’s what it’s about, Scott. You just go home and go to bed and forget all about it.”

“Uh-uh.”

“You like living?”

“Sure. But there’s a murder I’ve got to find out about. Brane’s murder. I’m not clean on that one, myself, and I intend to be before I get through.”

“There’s a thing about dead guys. It’s not a nice thing to be, Scott. You agree?”

I agreed, but I didn’t say so. He was probably just showing off in front of his girl.

Mace said, “Wandra and me got nothing to do with Brane. Don’t even try to change it.”

“If you’re clean, you’ll stay clean.”

“We’re clean. But leave us alone now.”

“You worried about the painting, Mace? I haven’t got it; I don’t want it. It’s where I said it was, under police guard with a flock of other canvases.” I thought for a minute. “How’s this? I know Brane was a blackmailer. He’s got a painting of Wandra she wouldn’t want public. Neither would you like it. But he could have used the threat of that painting as — “

Mace butted in, squinting at me, “Be careful, pal.”

I knew I was sticking my neck out, but try getting information while you’re home in bed. It doesn’t work that way. Sometimes you’ve got to get out amongst ‘em, and sometimes you’ve got to say foolish things.

I said a foolish thing.

I said, “If Brane tried to blackmail Wandra Price — a big star just getting on a solid foundation in the movies — with a nude painting of her, you’d start to burn, wouldn’t you, Mace? No telling what you might do.”

Mace said softly, “You know, Scott, I don’t want any trouble about that picture. I don’t want any more trouble about this Brane business. And I don’t want any more trouble with you.” He spoke quietly, but it was as if he were shoving the words through a block of granite.

We were still standing a few feet inside the door, facing each other. He had his feet spread wide and was glaring at me while he talked. And he reached for my coat lapels again.

I slapped his hand aside as he said, “Just to make sure you don’t give us more trouble — ” and he looked down at his hand as if he was surprised I’d dared to touch him.

He grinned and leaned forward on the balls of his feet and whispered, “Any more in my hair, Scott — any more trouble from you — and you’re dead. Follow? Comprehend?”

Then he balled up the hand I’d slapped away, made a fist the size of a small boulder out of it, and cocked it like he had all the time in the world. Maybe he did.

As he lifted his big arm I said, “You can go to hell.”

Then he launched the fist at me like a runaway express and I ducked and jerked my head to the side just in time. His knuckles caught my ear and started a fire in it, but while he was still a little twisted around from the blow, I whirled back up at him and swung my left fist into his side. He jerked his big head around and I shoved my left foot forward, pivoted, and jammed my right fist into the middle of his mouth. He staggered back one step, blood welling on his lips, then rocked back toward me, his beefy left arm swinging.

I stepped inside the roundhouse swing, brought up my left, and caught him on the side of the chin with my fist. It hurt him, and his face showed it as he grunted, and I felt real good about it until everything went black.

Where it came from, I don’t know. It wasn’t Wandra swinging a sap; I could hear her yelping and squealing halfway across the room. It was Mace, all right, and it was one of the outsize hams he used for fists, but where the hell it came from I’ll never know for sure.

It just came up from limbo and kissed me, and with it came the darkness.

I was supposed to be the captain of this damn rocket ship, and I was sure going to clobber the guy that tied me out on the nose of the thing. Here we were going through space a million miles an hour and we were pointed right at the moon and we were going to crash for sure and my head wasn’t that hard. I had a pretty good idea what would happen when the moon and I met head on.

I scrunched back against the nose of the ship and I gnashed my teeth and I opened my eyes and I was trying to crawl backward through the door of the San Fernando Valley home of Wandra Price.

Son of a bitch. When am I going to finish a fight?

I wiggled my head gently, then my jaw, then me. I was all of a piece, but somewhat tender in spots, particularly along the side of my head. I could navigate, though, and I got up off my fanny and looked at my watch. It was running better than I was and it told me it was a few minutes after four in the afternoon. As far as I knew, it was still Thursday.

I thought of myself being hauled by the armpits and propped up against the front door and I damn near exploded. I didn’t really see much future in it, but I reached over and leaned on the doorbell. Maybe it’s like taking another plane up right after you crash. Anyway, Mace and I still had some unfinished business.

I rang the bell for a while, then banged on the door, but there wasn’t any response. Obviously Mace and Wandra had gone for a ride somewhere. I could hear her saying, “Oh, my big strong man!”

I looked out in back, but if Mace had parked his car there, it wasn’t there now. On a thought I grabbed under my left arm and felt for my .38 Colt. No Colt.

I wondered why Mace had taken my gun. Bullets probably wouldn’t go through that damn skin of his. I felt a little naked without the gun; all I had left now was my fists. Stop laughing.

Someday I’m going to buy another gun. I only own the one because that’s usually all I need, being right-handed and not able to draw two guns at the same time. I’m pretty fair, but I’m no Billy the Kid.

I walked over to the Cadillac, which Mace had left for me, sweet fellow, climbed in, and looked around.

The sun was bright and beaming, there wasn’t any smog out here, and white, puffy clouds drifted lazily in the blue sky.

It was one lousy, stinking day.

</code>

<code> Chapter Fourteen

I DROVE BACK to Constanza Carmocha’s. I could handle her even if I was unarmed.

She was glad to see me. “Oh, you man, you,” she gurgled. “You miss me?”

“I’ve been asleep,” I said truthfully. “Will you do me a favor?”

She grinned, her lips wiggling. “Sure thing, pops. Come on in.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” I told her. “Do you know Barbara Faun?”

Connie’s eyes narrowed. “What about her?”

“You know her?”

“I know her. What’s the trouble?”

“No trouble, Connie. I’d like you to call her if you know her number.”

“I know her number. I don’t know if I call her. What do you — “

I butted in, “I just want to ask her some questions, but I’m afraid she might shoot me.”

Her eyes widened. “What the hell you gonna ask her?”

I grinned. “You got it wrong. How about calling and asking her if I can see her for five minutes? That’s all I want. Tell her I’m a nice guy who won’t hurt her. I went by her place earlier and she popped out with a gun and waved it at me. Call her so she doesn’t do that again. She seems to be all unstrung.”

“Sure, pops,” Connie snorted. “And you want to string her.”

I reached out and patted her under the chin. “Nope,” I said. “I want to help her if I can. While I’m helping myself.”

She laughed. “Hey, you kill me. Damn if I won’t. Come on in.” She took everything I said wrong, but I went in anyway.

I sat down while she used the phone and got put through to Miss Faun’s place. After a little female chatter she told her why she’d called, then argued a little.

Finally she looked up at me. “How soon you see her, Shell?”

“Right away. Five minutes.”

She said into the mouthpiece, “He’ll be over in about an hour, he says.”

“Hey!” I yelled. “None of that. I’m in a hurry.”

“You sure.”

“Honest.”

“Stupid.” But she turned to the phone and told the gal I’d be right by. When she hung up I got to my feet.

“Thanks, Connie,” I said. “I’ll do something for you sometime.”

“Sometime, hell. You can do something for me right now.” Her dark eyes sparkled.

“Connie, relax. I tell you I’m in a hurry. Really. There’s been a murder, you know.”

“There’s maybe gonna be another.”

“Cool down, chicken. I’ll see you later.” I went to the door and started to open it.

“Hey!” she yelled. “Wait a minute.”

I turned around and she was just a couple of steps away, her lips wiggling, her hips wiggling, everything wiggling.

“Baby,” she said, “I’m gonna cremate you.”

I’d heard that before, and I’d seen the dance she started to do, snapping her fingers.

I got the hell out of the place.

Barbara peeked out the door and I said, “I’m Shell Scott, Miss Faun, a private investigator. Constanza just called you. You tried to shoot me this morning, remember?”

She smiled wanly and opened the door wider. “Come on in. I was pretty jumpy, but I really wouldn’t have shot you, Mr. Scott. I didn’t want anyone bothering me, that’s all.”

“I’ll remember that next time,” I said, and walked in. She guided me to the couch and sat down beside me. She appeared tired, but she was a sweet-looking thing. About five-two, slim, with a pretty and fragile face. She played demure and innocent types, usually, and she averaged at least one proposal in the mail each week, I’d heard. She’d been married twice and divorced twice and right now she wasn’t interested in proposals.

“I won’t take much of your time,” I told her. “Just listen to what I’ve got to say and tell me yes or no. Or simply kick me out if you want to. I’m checking the death of Roger Brane.”

She winced a little, but that was all. I kept on, “He was blackmailing some people. Usually people, from what I’ve gathered, who had quite a bit of money. There’s a chance he was putting the bite on you, Miss Faun, and if he was, I imagine he used a picture of you to make you fork over the dough. If he was, and if that’s the only thing you’re worried about” — I paused a moment, thinking how silly this was if she’d cut the guy’s throat — “I won’t let it get any farther than me. And maybe I can help. Now, am I on the right track at all?”

She sat quietly for a moment, then sighed wearily and nodded. “Yes, he had a picture. He was getting money from me. It wasn’t too much and I didn’t miss it so much it hurt, but it counted up — a little like withholding tax.” She gave me a dim smile. “When he was … murdered, I — well, I got worried about the picture he had of me. I’ve been so worried about it ever since that happened I haven’t been able to sleep.” She glanced up at me. “Sorry I was so nasty this morning, but I’ve been jumpy as can be. And I never know when that picture might turn up — or somebody come out and ask me for money and start it all over again.” She stopped talking and was evidently all finished.

I got up. “Thanks very much, Miss Faun. If I find out anything important, I’ll let you know.”

She sat listlessly on the couch. I let myself out, closed the door quietly, and walked out to the Caddy. I sat there a minute with all sorts of ideas flitting about my skull. This bum Brane had really been a busy little man, and a first-grade louse, from all reports. I was getting together a lot of information, but there were still three hundred and some people who’d been at the costume ball, and any one of them could have killed Brane. Or I could have talked pleasantly with the killer in the last couple of days. Possibly even the last few minutes. I was still getting nowhere, but there were glimmers.

I started the car and headed back toward Hollywood, squinting through the cracked windshield and keeping a sharp eye on the rear-view mirror. I didn’t like running around without a gun when somebody within the last few hours had tried to put a bullet through me.

I stopped at the Vine Street Brown Derby and had a beer and some chow, then used a pay phone to call the Georgian Hotel. I asked for Amelia Banner again.

This time there wasn’t any answer.

I had the clerk keep ringing for a while, but there was still no answer, so I hung up and headed for my car in a hurry. I was just about to climb in when I noticed the newsboy on the sidewalk, and the papers he had under his arm.

I gawked at them, and for a minute I couldn’t believe it. I had a loose dollar bill in my pocket, so I tossed it to the kid and grabbed one of the papers and took it back to the car.

I sat in the car, stared at the front page, and said damn it to hell. I wasn’t looking at headlines, but a cold wind trickled along my spine and I automatically tapped my empty clam-shell holster.

Some enterprising photographer must have got a flash camera into Brane’s studio and sneaked a shot that was going to sell more papers than the death of Stalin. There on the front page, for all the lusting world to see, and naked as an undressed oyster, was Wandra Price.

</code>

<code> Chapter Fifteen

SUDDENLY I wished I hadn’t given the newsboy that extra ninety-three cents. Could be I was going to need it. There on the front page of the newspaper was good-by to a possible $5,000 that Garvey Mace had once talked about. Thinking of Mace a little longer, though, made that dollar seem relatively unimportant; it was my blood I ought to be worrying about. I hadn’t had anything to do with the damn picture on the front page, but I had an idea Mace would be hard to convince.

The reproduction of the painting had been censored a little so that the societies composed of old maids and frustrated fairies wouldn’t scream quite as loudly as they might have otherwise — and also, perhaps, so the little newsboys wouldn’t take off, screaming, down the streets. But there was still plenty there, and the societies would still give out with some high-pitched yelps.

And even in half-tone, it was Magna’s Wandra Price. I didn’t take time to read the accompanying article, but just glanced at the front-page photo, jammed the car into gear, and headed for Hoover Street, burning up the road.

At the Georgian Hotel I sprinted inside, up the steps to the second floor, and down to Room 225. I banged on the door with a sick feeling inside me, wondering where the devil Hallie was. I heard footsteps inside, then the lovely, warm voice of Hallie Wilson, and I stopped feeling sick.

“It’s Shell, Hallie. I mean Amelia. Let me inside.”

She opened the door right away and turned on the voltage in those violent violet eyes. “Shell,” she asked, “where have you been?”

“Where have I been? Where the devil have you been? I called a few minutes ago and there wasn’t any answer.”

She frowned, then flashed her white teeth in a smile. “Were you worried, Shell? About me?” She led me over to a chair, then curled up on the bed, her legs tucked up underneath her.

“You’re darn right I was worried. Mace’s goons might have found you here.” I hesitated and added, “Or you could have taken a powder.”

She fashioned those perfect lips in another smile. “That’s what I did: I took a powder. I also took a bath. You know, this isn’t the swankiest hotel in Los Angeles, Shell. The bath’s down at the end of the hall. I just got out of the tub.” Her smile widened. “And I did take a powder — all over.”

Then I noticed for the first time that she wasn’t dressed. Not in clothes. She was wearing a skimpy blue robe made out of thin cloth and the thing didn’t fit right. That is, it fitted right on Hallie, although it was way too small. The way it hugged the lush, full curves of her magnificent body, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I asked her, “Where’d you get that robe? You go out?”

“No. I had the bellboy get it for me — same one who brings me my food. That’s why it doesn’t fit.”

I grinned. “It fits just right, Hallie.”

She pursed her lips and stared at me for a moment, then she asked, “What brings you here? You want to see how strong I am?”

“Uh-uh. I’ve been checking on the Brane thing and there are a lot of loose ideas floating around. Thought maybe you could help me pin some of them down.”

“If I can. You know how anxious I am to see the thing settled.”

“Sure. Hallie, you told me that when you left the party Tuesday night, Mace recognized you and called to you. I know you had Brane’s cape around you and you’d left your mask inside. So your face was visible. But how did Mace recognize you? You didn’t say anything about knowing him before.”

“I did know him, though.”

“That’s rough company.”

“It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t a friend of mine. I just happened to meet him at Brane’s studio.”

“At Brane’s?”

I hoped Hallie had been giving me a straight story from the beginning. I wanted her out of it, completely out. She was as beautiful as they come — and I could still almost feel her lips moving on mine. But at the same time, there were a lot of funny angles. And I remembered, too, the cracks Mace had made about her being a murderess and blackmailer. Not that I was paying too much attention to the things Mace had spouted.

While we talked, Hallie was curled up on the bed. With one hand she held the thin robe together in front of her, but like I said, it was just too small for that much luscious woman. I was having a hard time keeping all my mind on the conversation.

I said, “What about Brane’s studio? How’d that happen?”

She lifted a little on the bed, lost her grip on the front of the robe, grabbed at it, missed, then grabbed it and pulled it together. I almost said the hell with these stupid questions.

But she pulled the robe tight and said, “You remember I told you Brane made me pose for a nude.”

I nodded, my eyes a little glassy.

“Well, one day Mace came in. Just walked in — you know what he’s like.”

“Yeah. He wouldn’t knock; he’d just walk in or bust the door down.”

“Anyway, he came in. I grabbed my coat and got into it and Brane introduced us.”

“Brane knew Mace?”

“Only slightly, I think. Through Wandra.”

“Wandra Price?”

Brane’s studio looked like the gathering of the clan. I said, “Where the dickens does Wandra fit in?”

“She was posing for Brane, too. He was a louse, Shell, but he could paint. One of the best in California, I imagine.”

“Agreed. What was Wandra posing for? Another nude?”

She shook her head. “It was a picture she was going to give her sweetie, Mace. They’re pretty thick, you know. It was a portrait. That’s why Mace had come to the studio — looking for Wandra.”

I sighed, settled back in my chair, uncrossed my legs, and crossed them again. “So? She was posing for Brane right about then? For a portrait?”

“That’s right.”

I sighed some more and cussed at myself. I guess I’d just been hit on the head too many times in the last couple of days. I sent a message to my brain saying, Where you at? Then I said, “Hallie, do me a favor. Take off your robe.”

She gasped a little, but she didn’t seem angry. She said, “What? Take it off?”

She was lying stretched out on her side, right elbow propping her up and her left hand holding the robe together. She looked wonderful.

I said, “Uh-huh. Off. Right where you are.”

She smiled a little. “What is this, Shell? Rape?”

“Business.”

She laughed deep in her throat. “Some business. I thought you were a private eye.” Then she frowned a little. “Golly, when I’m working on the sets with a hundred people standing around, a little nudity doesn’t seem so shocking. But with just you…” She let her voice trail off. Finally she shrugged and let the robe slip from her shoulders.

I almost nibbled through my cheek. She slipped her white arms from the robe’s sleeves, then pulled the robe clear off her body.

“Like this, Shell?” she asked softly.

She was back in the same position, propped on her right elbow, naked. I could see little white streaks where she’d powdered her skin. I even imagined I could smell the scent of the powder. But I couldn’t answer her except in squeaks.

I nodded. “O.K.,” I squeaked. “‘Nuff.”

She reached for the robe. She didn’t put it on, but held it in front of her.

I said, “That’s how you posed for Brane, isn’t it? Almost the same position?”

Her brows furrowed a little. “Why, yes. What in the world — “

“Be right back,” I said. I scooted toward the door.

“You what?” she yelped. “You’re leaving?”

“Only for a minute, Hallie. Hold tight. I’ll be back in a minute.”

You’re darn right I was going to be back in a minute. I hurried downstairs, out to the car, and grabbed the newspaper I’d bought in Hollywood. Things were starting to make a little more sense and a couple of things that had been puzzling me weren’t quite so baffling any more. There was a lot still baffling me, but every little bit helps.

Back up in the room I folded the paper so the head in the picture didn’t show, and held it in front of Hallie’s eyes.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” I asked her. “Isn’t that the painting you posed for?”

She looked at it and her mouth dropped open all the way. She completely forgot about holding the robe in front of her and jumped to her feet and grabbed the newspaper out of my hands. The robe dropped to the floor.

This was sure a pleasant case.

Finally she gasped, “Why, that’s me! That’s me! Oh, my goodness, what — ” Then her eyes fell on the face of Wandra Price on her own voluptuous body. She snorted, “What is this?”

“More of Brane’s work,” I said. “That’s why he wanted you to pose for a nude. Probably Wandra commissioned him to do a portrait and he had a sudden bright idea — being the kind of louse he was. He’d put Wandra’s head on somebody else’s naked body and have Wandra where it could hurt. That’s where you came in. He already had you in hot water enough so you’d have to co-operate, and he wanted somebody who wasn’t a professional model, and who’d keep her mouth shut. That’s the way it looks, and you’d almost have to keep still about it — ” I broke off.

My voice was getting weaker and weaker and I was running out of saliva. “For God’s sake,” I said. “Get some clothes on.”

She blushed suddenly, turned her back to me, and slipped into the robe. Then she sank down on the edge of the bed and shook her head in amazement. “Well, I’ll be darned,” she said.

“Me too. Looks like Brane didn’t have any hold on Wandra, but he had an idea how to get it. She was in a bad spot, on her way up and the dough starting to pile in. But it would be a good spot for Brane if he could worm his way in. She wouldn’t pose for him nude, but he makes a switch and there she is.” I indicated the newspaper. “That’s a shot of the painting at Brane’s studio. At least I guess it’s still out there. And I’ll bet Wandra was either paying plenty to get the painting, or about to start paying big chunks.”

I stopped and let that sink into my own brain. Hallie glanced up at me.

“Maybe…” she started.

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe anything. There are too many angles to this thing. But she was at the party. Honey, looks like there were a lot of people besides you at the party that got plenty upset when Brane was cooled.”

She shuddered. “But I found him, Shell. I — I almost stepped on him.” Her beautiful face twisted with distaste. “It just scared me silly.”

“Sure, honey. Relax. It’s going to work out all right.” They were just words; I didn’t know what I was talking about.

But she looked up at me and blinked the big dreamy eyes slowly. “Thanks, Shell,” she said simply.

I said, “Something else, Hallie.”

“What now?”

“You said you didn’t know for sure why Mace came out to your house the morning after he spotted you at the party, or why he followed you downtown.”

“That’s right. I’m still not sure.”

“Look at it this way,” I said. “Brane finished the fake nude of Wandra — Mace’s sweetie, remember — and he had probably already put a bite on her. Could be he threatened to stick the painting in his studio window or something like that. Naturally Wandra would know it wasn’t her body in the painting, but it wouldn’t help her much if the painting became public property. Mace, if he’d seen the painting, knew too, undoubtedly.

“Now. On the night of the murder, Mace was outside waiting for Wandra. He saw you hurry out and away and you didn’t stop when he called you. Then he learns Brane is dead. He’s a smart boy — and he’d previously walked in on you while you were posing for a nude Brane was doing. Could be that Mace put two and two together and figured correctly that you were the body in the painting. But he also might have gone further and figured you and Brane were in the blackmail business together. That follows naturally enough. Anyway, it makes sense that the next day he’d check to find out where you lived, then go out and call on you.”

I hesitated a minute, then went on, “You might as well know that Mace thinks you not only were in on the blackmail schemes with Brane, but that you also killed the guy.”

She frowned for a moment. “That’s just silly,” she said violently. Then she sighed, “But it makes sense that way. I guess I couldn’t blame Mace for thinking like that. Or — or you either, Shell.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t think like Mace does.”

There was quiet for a moment or two, both of us thinking. Hallie had dropped the paper on the floor when she put on her robe. I picked it up, went back to my chair, and ran through the article for the first time. Wandra’s name wasn’t mentioned at all, but the reporter played up the finding of the painting as a new development in the Brane case. Even without names, there was going to be hell to pay. And, somehow, it didn’t seem like I was headed for heaven.

The way it added up so far, I’d already seen two of the pictures Brane had used in his blackmail play. One was the glossy eight-by-ten of Connie; the other was the composite painting wearing the head of Wandra Price. Versatile, this Brane. I hadn’t taken the time or got nosy enough to peek at the shot of Barbara Faun, but Hallie had mentioned having a copy of the photo Brane had threatened her with. That I wanted to see, and it’s not what you think.

“Hallie,” I said, “hop into some clothes.”

“Do I bother you, Shell?”

“And how you bother me. But we’re going to take a ride and you can’t go like that.”

“Lover’s Lane?”

“Uh-uh. Your place.”

“You’re a screwy one, Shell. First you tell me to take off my clothes, then you tell me to get dressed. Don’t you know what you want?”

I grinned at her. “I know what I want. Right now I want to see that photograph Brane had of you. It’s at your place, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. That why we’re going to my place?”

“Uh-huh.” I thought about it for a minute. I’d brought Hallie to this hotel so she wouldn’t have to stay at her house or even go near it. I didn’t want Mace’s goons to get their hands on her, and I didn’t much like the idea of taking her back there while there was even a chance her house was being watched.

I said, “Look, Hallie. I want a peek at that photo, but maybe you’d better wait here. Could be trouble for you if you went back.”

“I’m going with you,” she said definitely. “You’d never find the picture by yourself. I’ve got it locked up and the key hidden. And besides, I’m darned tired of sitting around in this two-by-four room.”

I shook my head. “It might be dangerous, Hallie. I — I don’t want to get you in more trouble.”

Her face softened, but she said, “No good. I won’t tell you where the picture is. You can’t get it without me. I’m going along.”

She didn’t sound like she was kidding. And actually Mace’s thugs, if they had been planted at Hallie’s, were most likely not there now. If anything, they were probably chasing around looking for me.

I said, “I don’t like it.”

She smiled. “You’ll just have to like it. What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “Six o’clock. Why?”

Her perfect lips twisted as she grinned mischievously. “If you’re afraid someone might see us, maybe we’d better wait a while. Till it gets dark.”

“Till” — I cleared my throat — “it gets dark?”

“Uh-huh. Less chance of someone seeing us. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours.” She paused and looked at me through half-lowered lids. Then she patted the bed at her side. “Shell, come over here.”

“I, uh, I’d better not.”

“Oh, silly. I won’t bite you. Don’t you trust me?”

“Sure. Trust you fine.”

“I’m not going to” — her voice got a little sharper — “cut your throat.”

I swallowed. “O.K., but — ” I left it unfinished and walked over and sat beside her. I said, “Maybe the best approach would be the bold one.”

“Wheee!” she squealed.

I cut her off. “I mean, just barge up to your house in the daylight. Element of surprise. Yes?”

“No. Shell, you’ve been awful sweet, helped me a lot. And you’re still helping me. But you act … Shell, tell me honestly. You don’t really think I had anything to do with — with what happened to Brane, do you?”

I didn’t answer with my head. I said and meant it, “No. I don’t think you had anything to do with it at all.”

“Thanks.” Her voice was just a soft, scented rustle. She reached up as if she were going to pat my cheek, then remembered and grabbed the front of her blue robe.

It was too late. The damage had been done.

She spoke again, her voice thick, a little tight, “Kiss me, Shell. Kiss me again. Kiss me like none of this business had ever happened.”

I bent toward her, not touching her with my hands, just leaned forward and pressed my lips against hers. It wasn’t anything like the way Constanza had kissed me. Hallie’s lips were soft and cool and gentle, and she moved her head easily from side to side.

We were like that for long moments, then I felt her arms going around me and I pulled her close.

Son of a gun. I kissed her hello.

</code>

<code> Chapter Sixteen

I SAID, “Hallie, you look wonderful in black.”

“You should see me in black lace.”

I leered at her reflection. “I should live so long.”

She had on the dark skirt and black sweater that she’d worn when she first ran up to me on the morning after the murder. Same clothes, but she looked like a different girl. She was refreshed from the long sleep she’d had here in the hotel and her skin was pink and fresh and glowing. She’d just finished brushing her almost-blonde hair, and now she sat in front of the wooden dresser and peered into the warped mirror, putting the final touches of lipstick on her curving lips.

She turned around and smiled at me. “There. Good as new.”

I just looked.

“Well, say something,” she demanded.

“You’re beautiful, Hallie. You’re amazing.”

“That’s better,” she said brightly. “A woman likes compliments. Tell me some more.”

“Get lost. I’m finished.”

She pretended to pout, then turned back to the mirror and brushed at her eyebrows. “Ready to go? It’s been dark for a while.”

I glanced out the window at the black sky. “I guess. Sure you won’t let me go alone?”

“Not a chance, Shell. Especially not now.”

I walked over behind her, nuzzled her hair aside, and kissed her on the back of the neck. She moaned a little, wiggling her head. “Shell, damn you. Stop it.”

I stopped it.

“Beast!” she said.

I grinned down at her. “Come on. We’ve wasted enough time already.”

Her violet eyes snapped. “Wasted! Well! I like that. Of all the — “

“Whoa!” I yelled. “Kidding, kidding.”

She smiled over her shoulder and got up. “You’d better be kidding.” Then she pursed her lips. “Or maybe you’d better not be.”

I let that ride and we went downstairs and out to the Cad. I held the door for her, then went around and climbed in under the wheel.

The expression on Hallie’s face stopped me for a minute. Her brows were pulled down and her mouth was partly open.

“Shell,” she gasped, “what’s that?”

She was pointing at the hole in the windshield of the car, her finger shaking a little.

“Don’t worry about it, honey.”

“But what is it? Is it a bullet hole?”

“It’s a bullet hole. Like I told you before, these aren’t nice boys. They play for keeps.”

I started the car and pulled away from the curb. Hallie snuggled over close to me as we drove up toward Wilshire Boulevard, and gave me directions to her house on Berendo Street.

Suddenly she said, “Shell, isn’t it funny? I know hardly anything about you.”

“As much as I know about you.”

“I guess so. But tell me about yourself. I want to know all about you.”

“Not much to tell. Grew up around here. Went to sea for a while, worked on the docks, odd jobs. Then for four years my business was murder, then I opened my office here. That about does it.”

“What four years?”

“The war years, honey. I was a Marine during the war.”

“But that’s not murder.”

“It isn’t?”

She didn’t answer for a while, then she said, “What about now? Where do you live? What do you do besides sleuthing?” She squeezed my arm and grinned up at me.

I turned left at Wilshire and headed down toward Berendo. Driving with one hand, I said, “You know where the Wilshire Country Club is in Hollywood?”

“Uh-huh. You live there?”

“Hardly. Across the street in the Spartan Apartment Hotel. On North Rossmore. Come up sometime and I’ll show you my fish.”

“Fish?”

“Uh-huh. Little ones — tropical fish. All kinds. I’ve got a couple of aquariums full of the things.”

“No etchings?”

“With the fish I don’t need etchings.”

She laughed softly. “Let’s go. Right now. I want to see your fish.”

“Shameless wench.”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

“Not now,” I told her. “Business first. But,” I added, “you have a standing invitation.”

“A standing invitation?” She laughed brightly. “I’ll be up.”

“You’ll go up with me,” I said. “So I can keep an eye on you. I’ve got a neighbor two doors down the hall from me. Guy named Dr. Paul Anson with a roving eye and a constant bedside manner. He might waylay you and show you his collection of medical photos. I don’t trust him with you.”

“Will you protect me, Shell? From the leering doctor?”

I squeezed her soft shoulder. “I’ll protect you.”

She snuggled closer as we drove out toward her place.

It was pleasant. I could have kept driving right on by her house and headed for the open road. Down the coast. To Mexico. East to Las Vegas. Anywhere. Just to enjoy life, take it easy, get away from murder and violence and blood. It would have been wonderful to drive along like this with Hallie holding onto my arm and pillowing her head on my shoulder, the cool night air brushing our faces.

But instead, I drove slowly past her house and around the block without seeing any other cars parked nearby. I parked in front of her place and left the motor running. We sat there for two or three minutes, then I said, “Give me your key, Hallie. Got one to the front door?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’m not going in right now. Just going to play a little. Might see if anyone’s hanging around.”

She gave me the key and I walked to the door, unlocked it, and felt for the light switch inside on the wall. I found it, flipped it on, and went back to the car.

“What was that for?” Hallie asked.

“I don’t really think anyone’s watching the place, but if they are they might think someone’s home now. We’ll sit it out for a little longer.”

We waited. I kept the motor purring softly and the car in gear with the clutch shoved in just in case, but nothing happened and we sat quietly in the darkness. The moon was almost hidden by thin clouds that were forming. Finally I said, “O.K., honey. Let’s flash in.”

I shut off the motor but left the key in the ignition, and we went inside the house. “Guess we’ll have to use the lights,” I said. “But let’s not stick around any longer than we have to.”

She nodded wordlessly and headed across the room. “I’ll get the picture,” she said.

I called after her, “Didn’t you say you had no idea how Brane got the shot?”

She turned at the door. “Uh-huh. I suppose he snapped it somewhere. I don’t remember anything like that, though.”

I’d been thinking and asked another question: “We know Brane was a busy boy with a camera, but is there any chance he could have got onto the sets at Magna with his little candid job? You know, for off-guard shots while you were shooting or just sitting around?”

She shook her head. “Not much chance. That’s one thing that’s watched pretty darned close.”

“I can understand that.”

She went out. I hadn’t asked Hallie much about the picture of her before this. It seemed a little nosy to ask how another man had got a picture of her naked. Particularly a guy like Brane. But I felt a little easier about asking her now.

I didn’t feel easy, though, about being here when there was a chance we’d have company. And I didn’t like not having a gun at my left armpit. I was still not liking things when Hallie came back into the room.

“Here it is,” she said.

I grinned. “It’s all right for me to look at the thing?”

“It has to be. Besides,” she grinned herself, “I haven’t got any secrets from you, have I?”

I didn’t answer that one. I took the photo she handed me and looked at it. It was glossy, but the shine wasn’t even all over the face of it, as if the tin hadn’t been properly waxed when Brane ferrotyped it to bring out the gloss. It was obvious that, with the kind of pictures Brane had been playing with, he’d been doing the work himself.

Little things like wax weren’t important, though. Not when I looked at the picture. It was really a beautiful thing, and it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared it might be. It was Hallie, for sure, and she looked even better than in the painting; not that any painting or picture could do her justice.

The photograph was in black and white, but even that way I could recognize her violet eyes and the perfect, bright-red lips. Her hair, which I was used to seeing loose around her shoulders, was in a carefully fashioned upsweep, and I made up my mind she’d have to fix her hair like that for me.

And she was as naked as she could get.

She was looking just to your right, and her lips were lifted a little in a half-smile. Her body was wet and glistening and little drops of water clustered on her smooth shoulders.

The background was a little out of focus and hazy, but there was nothing hazy about Hallie. Every feature was sharp; you could even see the individual drops of water. She was in perfect focus — better focus than my eyes after a few seconds of looking. At her feet was a crumpled towel, loose on the floor.

I said, “Hallie, looks like you just jumped out of the shower. What the devil? Could Brane have been in here? In the house?”

“He never was.”

“How about outside? But what — Could you have been answering the phone or something?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe. The phone’s right there.” She nodded toward the front of the room, where a French phone sat on a little stand beside an armchair. “If I was in the shower and the phone rang, I’d have wrapped a towel around me before I came out. Even if the place was empty. That’s just one of the things a girl naturally does.”

“Yeah?” I grinned at her.

“Yeah,” she said, making a face.

“Looks like this towel was a little loose.”

“Doesn’t it?” She smiled.

I stared at the photo till Hallie said, “What are you trying to do? Memorize it?”

“Uh-huh,” I told her seriously. “Every line.”

We got our heads together over the picture for a while, trying to figure out just where the thing could have been snapped from. I was thinking if Brane wandered around peeking in windows or climbing balconies, he’d sure covered a lot of territory. And, come to think of it, he’d likely been enjoying his little game. Until he got his throat operated on. The more I learned about Brane, the better the idea of cutting his throat seemed.

I was beginning to feel uneasy. We’d done about all we could here and it was high time we took off for more populous areas. At least, different areas.

“Hallie,” I asked, “you don’t happen to have a gun around the house, do you? I’d feel better if I had one.”

“No. I’m afraid of the things.”

I was still standing by the big front window and just about to tell her we’d better get on our horse when I heard the faint squeak of brakes and saw a car pull up in front and turn off its lights.

I pressed the switch at the side of the door, doused the house lights, and looked out at the car. I could see the blobs that the forms of two men made in the near darkness. They got out of the car and I heard the doors shut as the driver came around the front of the car and joined the one on this side. They stood on the sidewalk for a moment.

I turned to Hallie. “This looks like it might be trouble, honey. Beat it out back, and when you hear noises in here, fly out to the Cad and take off. Keys are in the car.”

“No.”

The two guys had started slowly up the walk leading to the porch in front of the house. I couldn’t make out their features or tell for sure who they were. I couldn’t tell, either, if they were carrying any artillery. But I had my own ideas about both counts.

And here was this gal saying no to me.

“Damn it, Hallie, beat it.” I spoke rapidly, my eyes on the two men as they got closer. “Do what I say. No sense both of us getting in trouble — and if you’re clear I can get in touch. Maybe you can help me.”

She shook her head, her eyes worried. “Shell, I don’t want — “

I wheeled around, faced her, and grabbed her by the arms. “Damn it to hell! You beat it.” I fumbled in my pants pockets and dug out a ring of keys. “Here. If you get away you can go to my apartment. Wait there for me. You can play with the fish.”

I was damn serious and she knew it.

“I — ” she started, but I pressed the keys into her hand and gave her a shove. She faded toward the back of the house just as I heard the steps of the two guys on the porch, only a few feet from the door.

Hallie would be at the back now if she’d done as I told her. Maybe she was even outside. If she was, she’d need only a few seconds to get away in the Cadillac. And I was sure of one thing: I didn’t want any holes shot in that luscious body.

I stood at the side of the door, my hand on the knob, and found I was still holding the picture. I tossed it aside. I waited to see if whoever it was outside would just walk in or knock or ring. I was going to feel silly as hell if I jumped a couple of traveling salesmen. But I’d rather feel a little silly than sorry.

I could hear the low voices outside and it wasn’t any traveling salesmen. It was my old pals, Dutch and Flem, come calling. Automatically my right hand strayed up to the empty holster, then I swore silently and reached back and grabbed the doorknob.

I heard the whispered words and one of them said, “Let’s go,” and I knew they were coming in.

I beat them to it. They knew somebody was inside, and maybe they even thought it was me, but they sure as hell didn’t know I was coming out the door right in their faces like I was Citation in the stretch.

I swung open the door and hurtled through with my head low but my eyes wide open and staring and my arms spread out at the sides of my body. I slammed into one of them and sent him spinning backward, slipping off balance and down on his back. My right arm wound itself around the other’s waist. I grabbed. I grabbed the guy on my right and I squeezed him to me like this was my first passion, and I carried him with me in the suddenness of my jump. My feet were driving and I managed to carry the guy with me till we were over the kicking body on the floor of the porch.

I held on, squeezed the guy with both arms, and threw my legs off the floor and in front of me. I lit on top of the man on the floor, my arms still wrapped around the twisting middle of the other, and for a couple of seconds there were arms and legs in a tangled mass like eels. I heard the grind of the Cad’s starter as something hard glanced along the side of my head.

The Cad pulled away from the curb. No matter what happened now, Hallie was on her way. We were still all on the floor of the porch and I was swinging with my arms and knees and feet and hoping I’d get somebody or something where it would hurt the most. My hand grazed skin in a wild swing I made as I scrambled up to my knees, and I brought my elbow back hard and grinned as it landed and somebody yelped.

The guy’s face swayed close enough so I could make out the blank, ugly features of Dutch, and the heat of the fight and my suppressed rage at him bubbled up in me and all I could see was the son that had messed up my office and given me an all-around bad time.

I reached for him, and I got him around the neck with both hands, and I slammed his head down on the porch. His head landed hard and I pinned him down with my left and drew my fist back and slammed it into his face. I could feel something break and grind under my knuckles and I pulled back my fist to do it some more. I was going to fix this bastard but good.

It couldn’t last. Maybe you shouldn’t hit a guy when he’s down. Not when there’s another guy behind you, anyway. I did finish what I’d started. I slammed my fist down again into the thing under me that was starting to get a little pulpy, but the jar of my fist was the last thing of any major importance for a while.

Like I said, it couldn’t last. For the second time this perfectly delightful day, everything went.

I got chummy again, momentarily, with the constellations. Then the darkness floated up and grabbed me.

</code>

<code> Chapter Seventeen

I WAS BACK on that rocket ship, and the moon was coming at me again and it looked like I’d make it for sure this time; at least I was trying. We kept spinning end over end and the moon would flash by closer and closer and the ship was bucking like an untamed bronc. We were having engine trouble and the atoms weren’t busting right at all. The crate kept jerking and bobbing and rattling my spine as if I were in a car on a bumpy road.

Finally it filtered. I was in a car on a bumpy road.

I suddenly remembered everything through the shrieking pain in my head, including what was probably in store for me, and I lay quietly playing possum. Or opossum. Anyway, I played dead, and the way I felt, it was easy.

I kept my eyes closed and figured it out, being real smart and cagey, and I developed a foolproof plan.

All of a sudden I’d let out a horrible yowl, leap up, and grab whoever was in the car and grind them together like hamburger. I figured it in my mind that there’d be one driving and the other one in the back with me, and all I had to do was be quick as Mercury and strong as Goliath and I could mingle their heads together like old eggplants. Then I’d leave them lying on the floor of the car and I’d swing off through the trees giving the cry of the bull ape.

At least it was worth a try. There was very little percentage in just sitting.

Here’s the way it goes, I said to myself. First I peek and see what’s what. Second I pick them up and shake them together. Third I leave them dying and swing off. Brother, was I having a pipe dream! It started out O.K.; I peeked and I’d figured it pretty well. There were three of us including me. Flem was driving and out of the squinted corner of my eye I could see the other — Dutch, it had to be — sitting on the back seat at my left. I said to myself, Scott, old duck, you’d better do this right the first time.

Then I took a deep, quiet breath, thought, Here goes nothing, and took a great big flying leap to the floor of the car.

My head banged up against the back of the front seat and I got a beautiful burn as my face skidded down the upholstery, but it was nothing compared with the burn inside me. The bastards had my hands tied and my legs tied and I was sure going to have one hell of a time bashing heads together.

I landed on my fanny, and I heard Dutch laugh harshly. Then his hand came swishing across the space between us and slapped into my mouth. I could feel my lips puffing and I tasted blood against my tongue. I sat on the back floor of the car and swore at Dutch and Flem indiscriminately until Dutch clipped me again. Only this time he doubled up his hand and used the fist. It jarred me and I shut up. My brain was in bad enough shape already.

But Dutch was in bad shape, too. In the light reflected from the dash I could see his face, and there was no doubt he was the boy I’d been mashing on the floor of Hallie’s porch. His eyes still looked like snails, but one of them was swollen almost shut and there were still traces of blood under his nose. His lips had swelled up like a Ubangi’s, and when he opened his mouth and said something to me I could see a row of snapped and jagged teeth.

I didn’t get as much pleasure out of the sight as I might have, because what he said was, “I’m gonna kill you, Mr. Scott. You’ll have to excuse me, but I gotta kill you.” The words came out thick and blurred through his swollen lips, but not blurred enough to suit me.

I didn’t get to answer him. Flem cleared his throat nervously in the front seat and said, “Dutch, the boss didn’t say to kill the guy. He just said to get him.”

“Shut up!” Dutch snapped at him. “You do like I say, now. The boss said to get him, sure. Well, I’m not very bright, see? I thought he meant kill him when he said get him. No trouble. It makes sense, see?”

I didn’t like this boy at all. Maybe it did make sense in a way, and it looked like I wasn’t going to be around to dispute Dutch’s word. It didn’t look like I was going to be around, period. Dutch had made up his mind he was going to kill me, and with my hands and feet tied I didn’t figure to do much discouraging.

I said to Dutch, “You mind if I get up?”

He laughed. “Sure. Get comfortable. Only first say please.”

“You go straight to — “

I got the back of his hand again. Pretty soon, if I didn’t keep my big yap shut, it was going to be bigger. It was going to look like Dutch’s.

Dutch said politely, too politely, “Excuse me, Mr. Scott. Don’t make me do that.”

I kept my voice down and said, “Do I just sit here, or do I get up?”

“Go ahead, get up,” he said in his flat, gritty voice. “But don’t make me hit you no more. This is supposed to look like suicide.”

“Suicide? What the hell do you mean, suicide?”

He grinned, showing his jagged teeth. “It’s like this, Scott. I got your gun in the car. Not this one; this is the one you thought you’d take away from me.” He wiggled his right hand and light gleamed on the pearl-handled .45 automatic that had once been in my desk drawer. “You do get it, don’t you, sweetheart? You understand I’m gonna kill you? Personally?”

It must have hurt him to stretch those raw lips in a grin, but he was having so much fun he couldn’t help it. He was having a real kick.

“I figure I shoot you with your own gun,” he said. “But if you make me beat you all up it won’t look like suicide, now, will it?”

That was one of those questions you don’t answer. And I knew he was needling me. The ropes around my wrists and ankles were fairly tight and well knotted, but I could move my palms apart and wiggle my fingers, and I could move my feet. I wasn’t going to be dancing, but at least I could move them.

I got my hands on the seat and my feet under me, and started sliding up onto the back seat of the car.

“Don’t get cute,” Dutch snarled. “If you was to make me, I’d have to change my plans. I’d have to shoot you with my own sweet little gun here.” He stuck the sweet little gun under my nose. “So you be careful.”

He didn’t have to tell me to be careful, though maybe it wouldn’t make much difference in the long run. The only good thing about this mess was that my hands were tied in front of me. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach when I realized I considered that a good thing. But at least it was better than having them twisted behind my back. Maybe the boys had been in a hurry.

My head ached like hell, but my thinking was clear, as clear as it ever gets, and this little ride I was taking had started sinking in all the way. I wanted up on the seat primarily so I could get an idea where we were, but I hadn’t yet figured out what good it was going to do me. Not with a torpedo holding a gun on me and my hands and feet tied together. And they weren’t just taking me to the boss; this party was for keeps.

I’d been in plenty of spots before, but never one quite like this. I said, “Dutch, it isn’t going to make Mace happy if you knock me off.”

“It’ll make me happy. And I can take care of Mace.”

I had to chuckle. I’d had one chance already to take care of Mace and I knew damn well this punk couldn’t do it. This punk was taking pretty good care of me, though.

He leaned closer to me. “What’s so funny? I just gave up the suicide idea. I’ll still use your own popgun, but I think I’ll use it on your face first.”

I said, “You had to see Mace to get my gun. Did he say you should knock me off?”

“He said I should get you, Scott. And I told you sometimes I don’t get things just right. Far as I’m concerned, I’m doing just like he says.” He leaned closer. “See this?” He spread his lips and pointed at his broken teeth. “I’m gonna pay you back for that. I always pay guys back. And when I get through with you, you’re gonna be awful.”

I couldn’t help wincing a little. It looked like the boys at the morgue were going to hate to see me wheeled in.

I said, “You’re a great one to pay guys back, aren’t you? You have a lot of fun tearing up my office?”

“Haven’t had so much fun since Grandma got caught in the wringer,” he gurgled. “You’ll learn, Scott; I’m no guy to mess with.”

“Of course not,” I admitted. “Not a big cop like you.”

He slapped me again and I’d have given my teeth to get my hands on the guy for two minutes. But I kept quiet, leaned back against the cushions, and looked around. It was dark outside, the moon still hidden most of the time behind thickening clouds, but in the glow of the headlights I caught a couple of landmarks and knew we were on Benedict Canyon Drive, getting up into the hills. I’d driven here several times before — in happier days — and I knew almost all the road. It was hilly along here and there were steep clifflike drops and sloping ones. Maybe Dutch would let me jump off a cliff. Suicide. I strained at the rope on my wrists, but it was tight.

“Hold still,” Dutch said.

“The damn rope’s cutting off circulation.”

He chuckled. “He’s worrying about circulation. I’m awful sorry, Scott. In just a little while I’ll fix that.”

I shut up. I still couldn’t enjoy his conversation.

Dutch added one parting shot. “I’ve heard about you, Scott. I hear you’ve talked yourself out of some spots before this. Well, sweetheart, this is one spot you don’t talk yourself out of.”

I believed him. I honestly and truly believed him. And if I could talk my way out, the only way out was to do something. What, though, wasn’t even on the tip of my tongue.

Finally I got it. I wasn’t going to get out of it. The bastards were simply going to take me up in the hills and shoot me. Kneel me down, put a gun behind my ear, and blow my brains over the landscape like a prisoner of war in a war with no rules. I was on the wrong side of no man’s land.

Then I wondered. We were up in the hills, but up in the hills where? I took another peek around and remembered this stretch of road. We were beyond most of the big estates now, and I recalled driving up here before, only with a six-foot blonde who’d called me “Bully Boy.” Up ahead about a mile, I remembered, was a little dirt plot about the size of a parking space where we’d pulled off the road and sat and talked about something or other. Schopenhauer, probably. Beyond the dirt plot, the hillside fell off pretty sharply, then slanted steeply down to an abrupt edge with a fifty-foot drop to the earth below. I remembered being very careful to put the car in reverse, that night with the blonde, and pulling the brake on full. Then damned if she hadn’t kicked the brake off.

The road here twisted and curved so Flem was doing only twenty miles an hour or so, and I remembered that where the sparking spot was ahead, the road turned sharply to the left.

I sighed. Well, I thought, here goes nothing some more. If you’re gonna get shot, Scott, it doesn’t make much difference whether it’s behind the ear or in the middle of your back.

I couldn’t help the weak feeling that came over me, though, when I made up my mind. Or the perspiration that started getting clammy on my forehead. My lips were dry when I tried to lick them, but I went through the motions.

“Dutch,” I said. “Light me a cigarette.”

“You’re giving orders?”

“I’m asking.”

“Gettin’ scared, huh? Don’t worry about it, Scott. Not much farther to go.”

He wasn’t kidding. Up ahead I could faintly see the spot where the road swerved to the left, and on the right I thought I could barely make out the lighter spot of the dirt area there at the side of the road. I hoped Dutch got out the cigarettes; if his hands were busy it would help, but if they weren’t, the hell with it, I’d have to try it anyway.

He fumbled with the pack and I could hear the cellophane crackle. There was a flare of a match and it would have been the perfect time for me to make a break if I was going to make one. Right then, while the flare of the light was in his eyes.

But it was too soon; the timing was off. We were still thirty yards away from the only spot that gave me half a chance. A chance to bust my back off a cliff, maybe, but a chance.

Dutch took the cigarette from between his thick lips and extended it toward me. “Have a coffin nail,” he chuckled.

Oh, he was a scream.

I reached for the cigarette with my bound hands as he said, “It’s a Lucky, Scott. Get it? It’s — “

I’d got the weed in my hands, fumbled with it, my eyes turned sideways watching the road. We were just a few feet away.

I dropped the glowing cigarette in Dutch’s lap and said, “Christ! I’m sorry. I’m — “

I never finished it. He batted at his lap and for a second he wasn’t looking at me. I’d edged my rear end over to the right of the seat and even as I dropped the cigarette and was speaking, I let my tied hands swing over and fall on the handle of the door.

We were there. Right outside was the spot where I’d parked, where just beyond the small dirt plot the hillside slanted downward, then plunged steeply down to end at a fifty-foot drop.

A spark flew from under Dutch’s hand and I jammed down the handle of the door and lunged against it. I didn’t make the mistake this time of not knowing my feet were tied. My feet were bunched close to the door, and as the door opened the car started to make the sharp left turn. That helped, but I put everything I had into a shove with both legs and went sailing, behind over teakettle, out into space.

It was like that damn rocket ship again, only this time there was going to be a landing.

I heard a shot behind me as I hit the narrow strip of dirt almost at the edge where it started slanting downward, and I thought for a second I was going out into the blackness again. All the breath went out of me, but right then I didn’t feel any pain in my outstretched hands or even in my chin, plowing through the dirt. I rolled, unable to do anything about it if I wanted to, over the edge of the dirt plot and started sliding down the side of the slope.

I heard the scream of brakes jammed down and tires slipping on the road behind me. I was clawing with my fingers and trying to dig in my heels and I felt my fingernails rip down into the quick as I slowed a little. My hands hit a solid rock as I heard yells behind me on the road and I spread my hands as far as the rope would let them go and squeezed that rock like it was a passport to living, which it was.

Only three or four seconds had passed and I was about six feet under the rim of the road, the car above just pulled to a stop, judging from the sounds. I twisted around and got my heels against the rock. It was about the size of my skull and probably about the same consistency, but there was darn near the same amount of rock buried under the loose earth.

I shoved. I shoved and strained my back and damn near ruptured myself, but the rock came loose and started rolling slowly down the slope. I started rolling too. After I kicked the rock, my legs were pointing straight down the hill and I stuck my arms up over my head and started rolling sideways, parallel to the road above me, through grass and weeds and a couple of small bushes.

I nearly yelled out loud as a sharp twinge of pain lanced through my left shoulder. I must have wrenched it good when I hit the dirt. But I kept rolling. It sounded to me like I was making a hell of a lot of noise, but at the same time I could hear the pound of feet across the asphalt of the street, and the noise of the boulder I’d loosened as it gathered speed and hurtled downward.

I made several turns, rolling, then held still just as the boulder stopped making noise for a moment, then thudded to the earth at the bottom of the drop below. I craned my neck and looked back to the spot on my right where I’d flopped from the car. I dug in with my toes so I wouldn’t slip and held my breath more from excitement than fear that Dutch and Flem would hear me from twenty feet away.

In the faint glow of the car’s lights, pointing in the opposite direction behind them, I could see the outlines of the two men. One of them said harshly, “What the hell?”

Then he started down the hill and stopped. He said, “Flem, get a light out of the car. And snap it up!”

Flem raced back, his feet thudding on the street, then returned with the flashlight. Dutch jerked it away from him and I tried to make myself invisible. After all this, it would be one sweet jolt if they walked over and used me for target practice. And if Dutch spotted me, I knew he’d end it right here and now.

Dutch swept the light swiftly to his left, away from me, then back my way. But he had it pointed just below me on the slope. It seemed like I could see every weed and clod of dirt in the beam of the flash, but it passed a couple of yards below my bound feet.

I heard Dutch say in an angry voice, “Well, come on. Let’s take a look down there. He sure as hell can’t have disappeared yet.”

Maybe they knew about that sudden drop below; maybe they didn’t. But they would pretty quick, and I couldn’t lay on my belly and get my breath back. I was maybe six or seven feet from the edge of the road above me, but it was uphill and I couldn’t move the way mountain climbers should.

And I damn sure didn’t want to kick any more rocks or dirt loose to trickle down to my pals below me. I twisted my head around for a fast look, and the light was about twenty feet down the hill and fifteen or twenty feet farther left than I was.

Come on, Scott. Over the top.

It was like climbing the Matterhorn with my teeth to make those few feet up, but I dug in with knees and toes and broken fingernails, and somehow I got there. A little dirt trickled down the hill, but Dutch and Flem must have been making too much noise to notice. I rolled away from the edge, into the middle of the road, and managed to get up on my feet and start hopping.

I could see the car a dozen yards from me, but I couldn’t make more than two hops without sprawling flat on my face or side. I couldn’t even control the way I’d fall, and each bang on the cement took a little more out of me.

Finally I got smart, stayed flat on the street, and started rolling. I got to the car and I was about done in. I pulled myself to my feet by the door handle and right then I saw the flash of light from over the hill behind me.

They were coming back up!

I pulled myself into the car with what seemed like the last of my strength and wondered what the hell I did now. The car was an old model Buick and I cussed it. I’d have given plenty for a car with fluid drive, but I’d have to settle for what I had. I got the key turned on, pulled the throttle all the way out, shoved the clutch down with both feet, then reached awkwardly under the steering wheel and pulled the gearshift bar into low. Then I looked along the dashboard for the starter button.

There wasn’t any goddam starter button.

Then I remembered I was in a damn Buick and the damn starter was under the damn accelerator pedal. I felt like just relaxing and going to sleep, but I knew I’d never wake up if I didn’t move, and fast. I managed to keep my feet on the clutch pedal, bent down, and twisted far enough to jam my hands on the accelerator — just as the beam of the flash fell full on the car.

Luckily the motor was still warm and it caught right away. The engine, with the throttle full out, started winding up to a roar and I was letting out on the clutch before I even got up where I could see or get my hands on the steering wheel. I banged my head on the wheel and heard a gun crack just as I straightened up. The bullet crashed through the rear window and thudded into the seat on my right as the sudden acceleration of the car threw me backward against the seat.

I didn’t give a damn if I got shoved clear through the seat, just so I got out of there. That’s what I thought then, but I changed my mind in a hurry. It wasn’t going to be much use leaving these goons in my dust if I batted my brains out on the side of a mountain.

The engine was still winding up and it was too late to wish now that I’d only pulled the throttle out part way. The car was still accelerating and there was a sharp right turn ahead and I knew I’d never make it if I didn’t slow down. It was really going to be suicide.

I was trying to steer with my hands tied together and the car was veering from one side of the narrow road to the other and gaining speed every second with the roar of the laboring engine almost deafening now. I was going faster than I’d ever gone in low before and that damn curve was right on me.

I yelled out loud at nobody, grabbed tight to the rim of the wheel, and lifted my legs up off the floor boards. I jammed my feet against throttle, then shoved both feet down toward the brake pedal and twisted the wheel to the right. I hit the brake hard and felt the tires grab and heard them squealing, but I couldn’t see where I was going. The sharp turn threw me against the door and twisted me a little, but I kept my feet on the brake.

I stopped it, all right. I stopped the car and the engine at the same time. The left fender crumpled against the side of the hill and I was at the side of the road with a dead motor. The sudden silence was almost eerie, but not for long. I heard the crack of a gun and the windshield splintered almost in front of my face. My friends back there hadn’t given up yet.

I glanced at the rear-view mirror but couldn’t see anything of the twisting road behind me. But I snapped a quick look over my right shoulder and saw the light bobbing down the road a hundred feet away. As I looked flame jumped from a point near the light and I heard the crack of the gun again, but he missed the car completely. He was getting closer; maybe he’d do better next time.

I went through the whole damn routine again, feeling all the time it wasn’t any use. The left fender of the car was jammed up against the dirt at the side of the road where the hill rose sharply, and I’d have to do some jockeying to get out. I didn’t have time to jockey around, even if I’d been free to move around.

But I got the Buick started after going through all the same motions — only I put the gears in reverse.

I hung onto the steering wheel and twisted around as best I could while the roar of the motor built up till it hammered in my ears. I fed out the clutch, just a little, letting it nibble, and waited.

The guy with the flash — that would be Dutch — was in front, close now, but in the bobbing spray of light from his flash I could see the heavy figure of Flem running close behind him.

When Dutch was fifteen feet from the car I let the clutch out all the way.

I cramped the steering wheel, still twisted around and watching, and the car leaped backward. Dutch couldn’t stop. He was running as fast as he could, with probably only one idea in his head: Get Scott. I saw him fling his hands up in front of him while his mouth widened, then he slammed into the back of the car with an impact that was sickening even to me. But I kept going. I kept going till Flem screamed horribly, his voice high like a woman’s. Then there was a second thud and the scream stopped abruptly.

I managed to get the car stopped without going off the road or killing the engine, then shifted gears and drove ahead slowly. The two bodies lay at the edge of the road on the right side of the asphalt, crumpled, about ten feet from each other. They didn’t move.

I left them there.

</code>

<code> Chapter Eighteen

I TOOK IT SLOW till I got up to Mulholland Drive and I had some distance between me and the guys that brought me up here to murder me. Then I got the car stopped and fumbled with the glove compartment till I got it open. My gun was there, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted a knife or something to get the ropes off my hands and feet.

There wasn’t a knife, but there was a screwdriver with a sharp enough point to worry through the ropes. When I finally got them off and circulation picked up, my hands and feet started to throb with pain.

I was a mass of aches and burns and bruises. My left shoulder was getting stiff and my whole left side burned where I’d skinned myself in the leap from the car. My hands were skinned, too, my chin was sore, my head hurt, and a good gabardine suit was shot. But I was happy; I was alive.

I took the ropes and a couple of rags and worked on the back of the car for a minute, then I sat in the car and enjoyed a smoke. When I’d finished the cigarette I slipped my .38 back in the holster I was still wearing, put the buggy in gear, and headed for Hollywood — glamorous, fun-loving Hollywood.

I was in pretty bad shape, and I knew if I kept riding this merry-go-round I’d have to get some food in me. So I drove to Carpenter’s drive-in and parked on the fringe of the crowd where I wouldn’t be too conspicuous.

A smartly uniformed girl came up to take my order and I swung my head around to face her. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes got wide and I suddenly remembered what my face and clothes must look like by now.

I tried to work up an acceptable grin. “Flying saucer,” I said. “Nothing to worry about. How’s for a hamburger, a steak sandwich, and a bottle of beer?”

“Yes, sir. Uh, onions?”

It struck me funny. I should worry about my breath. “Yeah. Lots of onions.” She started to turn and I stopped her. “One other thing. Can you dig me up a paper? And make that stuff to go, huh? I’m in a big hurry.” I dug a five out of my wallet, flipped it to her, and told her the change was for speed.

She smiled at me and said, “I’ll run all the way. What paper?”

“The one with the picture on the front.”

She knew the one I meant as soon as I said it. She kept smiling, but her lips got a new twist at the covers. Then her eye fell on the bullet hole in the windshield and she stopped smiling altogether and went through the routine with her mouth and eyes again.

“And pay no attention to that,” I said, nodding toward the hole in the windshield. My neck creaked a little. “F.B.I.”

“Oh. Yes, sir.” She took off in a hurry.

She was back in a minute with the newspaper, and I looked at it, trying to think, until the food came. Then I got out of there before the gal decided to call the F.B.I. and report a special agent in lousy condition.

I really didn’t know where I was going in such a hurry, so I parked under a street lamp and wolfed the food. Then I sipped the beer and thought about the past two days. I looked at my watch. The crystal was smashed, but surprisingly enough it was still running, and it said eleven p.m. Just about this time two nights ago I’d heard the scream from upstairs in Feldspen’s mansion where the costume ball was going on. Quite a bit had happened in the forty-eight hours since then, but I still didn’t know who the killer was.

Every time I moved it seemed like I found a new pain or ache, and the more I thought about the shoving around I’d been getting, the more I burned. And the more I thought about Brane and his dirty black racket, the madder I got. But even though I was griped as hell, my head was clearer, and it suddenly seemed not a very nice thing to leave Dutch and Flem lying at the side of a dark road like a pair of dead guppies.

I drove to another drive-in that had a phone booth outside in a corner where I wouldn’t have to wander around among people like something left over from Forest Lawn Funeral Home, and stopped the car next to the booth. I found a dime and dialed Granite 1-4057, the number Mace had written in the match book that morning beside his swimming pool.

Mace, himself, answered.

“Hello, Mace,” I said. “This is Shell Scott.”

“What?” he roared. “Where the hell are you?”

“I’m not dead in a ditch like you wanted, if that’s what you mean.”

There was quiet for a couple of seconds, then he said, “What’re you talking about, Scott? What you mean by that stupid crack?”

“Stupid?”

“Yeah, stupid, stupid.”

“I suppose you’ll tell me how you didn’t send your boys out to pump holes in me.” I was too tired to even make my voice sarcastic.

“What the hell’s the matter with you? Christ, no. I didn’t want holes in you. I wanted to see you is all. About that goddam newspaper. What the hell — “

I cut him off. “Listen, friend, I got a word for you. Next time you want something done with me, don’t send any boys. Come yourself.”

He growled, “Look, chump, I want you down here at my place. You got some explaining to do. Personal.”

I yakked softly into the mouthpiece. “I haven’t got the time or the desire right now, Mace. About the newspaper — I had nothing to do with that, and if you’d use your head you’d know it. Answer me this — “

“Answer hell!” he roared. “You get down here and start explaining.”

I sighed. “You want me to hang up, Mace?”

He growled and sputtered but didn’t reply.

I went on, “Answer me this. You’re pretty chummy with Wandra. And I got a peek at her in a negligee this afternoon just before — ” I paused and groaned inwardly — “just before the lights went out.”

I heard him laughing loudly on the other end of the line and I snapped, “Calm down and listen. You know damn well that isn’t Wandra’s body in the painting they’ve got plastered all over L.A. She just isn’t built that good.”

My eardrum bent inward as Mace yelled he’d tear me limb from limb. I waited till the noise subsided a little and said, “I don’t give a damn if she wears a false bottom; I just want to clear something up. Now will you calm down a minute? This might be important.”

He fumed a minute longer, then said, “O.K., chump. What’s your trouble?”

“You know it isn’t anything but Wandra’s face in the painting. Right?”

“All right. So what?”

“And I’ll bet you know who’s the model for the rest of the painting. Also right?”

“You’re damn right I know. That murdering, blackmailing little Hallie Wilson. Hell, I saw her posing for it. That little — “

I cut him off. “Stop guessing. I haven’t got all night. Does Wandra know who the gal was?”

“Not from me she doesn’t. No sense my telling her. Wouldn’t help any if she knew what angle I was workng on. Besides, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know anything except it’s not her. What’s that got to do with it?”

“Maybe nothing. But Brane was trying to blackmail Wandra with the painting, wasn’t he?”

He spoke slowly, heavily. “I don’t see that’s a bit of your business, Scott.”

“For Christ’s sake, just tell me yes or no, Mace, and maybe I’ll tell you where your boys are.”

“My what?”

“Dutch and Flem. Your boys.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They won’t be home, Mace. Now, how about a yes or no answer? I’ve got my ideas anyway; I just want to be sure.”

He didn’t answer for a minute. Then he said, “So maybe Brane was trying a squeeze. Maybe. What of it? And what’s this about Dutch and Flem?”

“They started out to kill me. Maybe you didn’t know about that; maybe you did. But they’re up at the side of the road on Benedict Canyon Drive. Between four and five miles up the grade.”

“They’re what?”

“At least they were there. I don’t know about now.”

“What?”

I said, “I had to clobber them with their car. I don’t know what kind of shape they’re in, but I hope to Christ they’re dead.”

He sounded more than mildly surprised. “You what?”

“I had to hit them with a car.”

“What? Scott? With a what?”

I hung up, not gently, in his ear.

I went back and creaked into the car and felt lousy. I hadn’t got as much kick out of bothering Mace as I thought I would. Usually on a case I’ve got an idea where I’m going, but this was a cockeyed business. I had leads, sure, and I had some ideas, but I could have been headed up or down or sideways. A lot of the stuff I’d picked up blundering around pointed right at some big, fat answers, I felt pretty sure. But ask me what they were and I’d give you a blank stare. And I didn’t feel happy about it. The answers were trying to get through the muscle in my head, but they couldn’t quite make it. What I needed was a good rest and about ten hours’ sleep. But somehow I had the feeling time was running out. If I was going to get the right answers it would have to be soon. Maybe my subconscious was trying to keep me alive; maybe it was trying to warn me that something was wrong. But whatever it was doing, it was kicking up a hell of a storm. It gave me a creepy feeling like infant mice playing tag on my spine.

I drained the last of the beer and tossed the bottle behind the seat. Then I picked up the paper and ogled it again. It hadn’t changed.

Wandra Price. What did I know about her? Sweet on a racket boy. New Magna star. Actually one of the newest, with her first movie just out. She’d been around the picture city no more than a year. And here she was on the cover of a Los Angeles newspaper. Her head, anyway, on a borrowed body. I had a sort of funny thought right then. Wandra was in a screwy spot. If she denied that was her body in the painting, how the hell would she prove it? And if she did prove it, she’d have to do it with a body that wasn’t half as nice or a fourth as sexy as the one everybody now thought was hers. I could see imaginary headlines: “Potato Pancakes Prove Price Painting Phony!”

Oh, she could put out the blaze the newspapers had built under her. But you might say Wandra Price was between the frying pan and the fire.

</code>

<code> Chapter Nineteen

I OGLED THE FACE of Wandra and the body of Hallie on the front page for a while, chuckling a little, but halfheartedly.

Then I went over everything from the time the messy business had started: Roger Brane, alive and sarcastic, swaggering up to Irv Seeley, Paul Clark, and me at the party; Hallie running from Mace and his boys; me running around asking questions and roaming over the Magna lot; Connie, Barbara, people shooting at me and pounding on me; stars getting jittery and flipping on the sets; and all the rest. I followed a path of blackmail, breasts, and blood clear up to here and now and my musings about Wandra Price and Garvey Mace and his thugs.

And then I lit another cigarette, slowly, while I wondered if, by God, I didn’t have something.

I dragged deep on the weed and started getting a little excited. I tried to punch holes in it and they wouldn’t punch. I didn’t know who yet, but I was getting an idea how. And a little of the why. I forced myself to sit quietly for another minute while my brain clicked along like a well-oiled machine for a change, and I started feeling better. There was plenty I didn’t know yet, that was for sure, but I was starting to get the hang of the thing. And one big, fat angle that had been slapping at my nose all along finally got in front of my eyes.

I mashed out my cigarette and started my stolen Buick, made a U-turn, and tromped on the gas.

Constanza Carmocha slept in what has been called, sometimes quite accurately, the raw. I found that out when she answered the door, peeped around it, then spied me and threw the door wide.

“Hey, popsie,” she squealed. “Ain’t you the nuts? Am I glad to see you!”

“You’ll catch cold,” I croaked.

“Keep me warm, Shell boy.”

“Thank you, no.”

Then she caught sight of the mangled condition of my face and clothes and let out a squawk of alarm. I spent a minute convincing her all was well, then, when she was back to normal, said, “I need a favor, Connie.”

She giggled and jiggled. Finally she stopped vibrating and said, “You came to the right place.”

“The picture,” I said hoarsely. “The picture.”

“What picture?”

“The picture. Of you. I want it. I won’t let it get away from me, Connie.”

She frowned. “What’s it got that I don’t got?” she asked me. “You hurt?”

“No, no. I’d like to borrow the picture. O.K.? I won’t let anybody else get hold of it.”

She shook her head, perplexed. “O.K., but you must be nuts. Come on in.” She turned around and walked away like she had on a Mother Hubbard.

I said, “No. No, thanks. I’ll wait.”

I waited, perspiring in the cool night air, till Connie came back with the eight-by-ten. I took the picture, got her hands off me, and stepped back a yard. She was still close.

I said, “One more favor. Call Barbara Faun again. I’m going by her place.”

She eyed me narrowly. “She got a picture?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You starting a private collection?”

“No. Not at all. I’m sleuthing.”

“Sleuthing,” she said. “Ha!”

“Yes, ha-ha. O.K.?”

She breathed deeply. “O.K. You’re crazy as hell, but O.K.” She slammed the door in my face.

Barbara Faun didn’t come out when I rang. She peeked out as Connie had and whispered, “Mr. Scott?”

“Yes. Connie call you?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

This was embarrassing. I cleared my throat softly and asked, “She say anything about a picture? You told me Brane … blackmail … you said…”

“You want it?”

“Yes, Miss Faun. If you don’t mind too much. I’m — it’s sort of a lead. I may be able to help.”

“Oh, dear,” she sighed. “Oh, dear.” Then she slipped a picture the size of Connie’s out the crack in the door, handed it to me, and shut the door quietly.

I took a quick gander at the photo and imagined Barbara Faun inside, blushing. I felt lousy. I felt like a cad. But I was cooking.

I drove quickly to Berendo and Hallie’s house, and went inside, turning on the lights. The shot of Hallie was on the floor by the door where I’d tossed it before tackling Dutch and Flem. I had me three pretty pictures and I looked them over good, settled in an easy chair in the front room.

I stared at the eight-by-ten enlargements for a while, then burned them and flushed the ashes down the basin. I didn’t want to take any chances on those explosive shots getting away from me on my future travels, this evening. I didn’t think the girls really wanted the things, and it was a hell of a lot better to burn them than to have somebody lift them off me. Besides, in a pinch I could always claim spontaneous combustion.

I went out to the Buick, got in, and headed downtown, having a brainstorm all the way. When I got to a phone booth, I pulled over to the curb, got out a dime, and dialed the number of the Spartan Apartment Hotel. I was anxious to hear Hallie Wilson’s soft, pleasant voice again.

The phone buzzed and Brown, on the desk at night, answered in a bored tone.

“Put me through to my room. This is Shell Scott.”

“Sure enough. You hiding something up there in your room?” His voice was dripping with suggestion.

“Yeah,” I said. “A harem. Mixed nationalities.”

He didn’t say any more, just plugged into my rooms. The phone buzzed, and buzzed some more. What the hell was that gal doing? Taking a bath?

Finally I got a little nervous and jiggled the hook. I got Brown and asked him, “You ringing the right room, chum? Nobody answers.”

“Room two-twelve. That’s your apartment, isn’t it?” His voice was cool.

“Yeah. Try again.”

He did try again, and I listened, straining my ears for the sound of the receiver being raised, but there wasn’t any answer.

I got Brown again and asked him, “Do me a favor? How about running up to my room and seeing if anybody’s there?”

He laughed, pleased. He was unhappily married and he loved to see other guys in trouble with women. He said, “Did your harem stand you up?”

“Cut the gab,” I said sharply, “and get the hell up there. There’s five bucks in it for you, but make it snappy. You got a key.”

He was gone for a few minutes, then I heard his voice saying, “Nobody there. Place is clean empty.”

“You sure?”

“Course I’m sure. I looked all over the joint. Even in the bathroom.”

“O.K. Thanks, Brown. The five’s yours.”

I hung up feeling a little empty and fluttery inside my stomach. I’d told Hallie to go to my apartment I was sure of that. But maybe she’d misunderstood me. The thought jabbed at my brain that maybe she’d really taken a powder this time, flown the coop for good, but that didn’t make any sense at all and I shoved it out of my mind. Could be, I figured, that she thought I meant the office. The office keys were on the ring I’d given her.

I put another dime in the slot and dialed my office phone. I didn’t really expect an answer there, but my spirits got lower and lower, sinking deeper each time the phone buzzed. I listened to the dismal, lonely sounds in my ear for almost a minute before I hung up the phone.

There was another chance — the Georgian Hotel. She could have gone back there. But after I’d checked with the clerk on duty and asked for not only Amelia Banner but Hallie Wilson and anyone answering her description, it sank in that Hallie was nowhere around, and I didn’t know where to find her.

Maybe it didn’t mean anything. I kept telling myself that, but somehow it wouldn’t quite go down.

I dialed Homicide in L.A. I didn’t expect Samson to be on at this hour, but at least I might check with someone there and find out if they had anything that might tie in with my mental gymnastics of an hour or so ago regarding the case of Roger Brane.

Maybe Hallie had even gone down there to police headquarters. Maybe she’d gone for help. Maybe.

I got through to Homicide and I recognized Samson’s voice right away. This was the time of night when he was usually home in bed, but I didn’t think anything about it.

“Hello, Sam,” I said. “Shell on this end.”

“Shell!” His voice was an explosion in my ear. “Sweet Christ, man. I thought you might be dead.”

I chuckled a little. “So did I, Sam. I guess I’m just too stupid to die. You know, only the brave and the fair and the young — “

“Where the hell are you?”

“Out on Santa Monica Boulevard at a pay booth. Thought I’d check and see — “

He cut in again, his voice worried still. “You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m all right Thanks for the concern, Sam. Say, I guess it was a kind of dirty trick calling Mace about his two goons instead of reporting it downtown. I was a little wacky in the head. Besides, it was a kind of personal thing between me and Mace. I thought he sent his boys after me.”

“What boys? What are you talking about?”

I got the first little twinge of fear then, but it didn’t get all the way through, didn’t throw me. I said, “I thought you knew. Why’d you think I’d be messed up?”

“You go around and get bullet holes in your car and you wonder?”

“Oh, that. It was this afternoon, Sam. Seems like a year ago now. Somebody took a shot at me out on Loma Vista Drive. Got away, though.”

“You been walking around bleeding all this time?”

It walked right up and hit me then. It slammed into my mind all of a sudden and I couldn’t say anything for a minute. My hand holding the receiver started to shake, and my stomach twitched and got cold.

“Sam,” I said hoarsely. “Sam. What you talking about? What you mean, bleeding? How’d you know about the bullet hole in my car?”

“Not hole. Holes. Three of ‘em. What’s the matter?”

“Sam. Damn it. Tell me.”

“Well, hell. We got your car, Shell. Three holes in the windshield and blood all over the seat.”

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty

I WOULDN’T let myself believe it. Hallie. Sweet, luscious, out-of-this-world Hallie. It just couldn’t be like that. I thought of her perfect lips and the tiny waist, the swelling breasts and hips, the beautiful long legs. And I thought of her blinking those long-lashed, violent violet eyes at me.

“How is she, Sam? Where is she?” I almost shouted at him.

“Where’s who?”

“Hallie. Hallie Wilson. The girl.”

“Who the hell is Hallie Wilson?”

“Sam. Don’t you get it? She was in my car. That — that must be her blood. I gave her the car. She was in it.”

Sam didn’t say anything for a minute, then he growled softly, “Well, sweet Christ!”

I asked him, “Where is she? Don’t you know?”

“No, Shell. You calm down. The car was empty. I thought it must have been you. No sign of anybody.”

“The car. When’d you find it?”

“Just a little while back, a few minutes. I’ve had half the force looking for you. For you, Shell. Not some woman. I thought you were hurt.”

“Thanks, Sam.” I imagine the guy had been worried. I knew I’d have been sick if it had been him. I was sick the way it was. I asked him, “Where was the car?”

“Out at your place. On North Rossmore. Wasn’t parked very good and it was a little short of the apartments. Thought you must have stopped in a hurry. A Hollywood uniform car saw the way it was parked and checked it, then we got the report. Guess no one noticed the shots themselves.”

I cursed myself silently for letting Hallie drive my car to my apartment in the first place. If I’d had any sense I wouldn’t have let her, particularly after I’d been shot at earlier in the day myself.

But at least nobody had been in the Cad. Or anyplace around it. If Hallie had been killed she’d surely have been in the car. That’s what I told myself. Maybe she was O.K., alive at least.

But if she was injured or dead, it was a mistake. It was supposed to have been me in that bright yellow Cadillac of mine. I sure had me a lot of score to settle with someone, and I was aching to try.

“Sam,” I said, “I’ll be right down.”

I didn’t get much more at Headquarters after Samson got over the shock my battered appearance gave him. But I could see Sam had been worried. In the big glass ashtray on his paper-littered desk there were two well-chewed cigars. One had been smoked only an inch or so down; the other hadn’t been smoked at all, just mangled.

He was mangling another long black cigar between his teeth now. He said, “The Hollywood boys took it, but the word came in here, naturally. I was a little worried.” He tried on a grin. “Hell, I might want a divorce myself sometime.”

He was trying to get a rise out of me, but I felt too damn low thinking about Hallie, I said, “Wasn’t there anything? Any way you could find out what happened to her?”

He scratched his iron-gray hair. “Don’t get excited. Remember, we haven’t had much time yet. There wasn’t anything, but lots of things could have happened. If she was just hurt — you know, not bad hurt — maybe she got to a hospital. We’re already checking that angle, and the taxi companies — all the rest. See, Shell, we weren’t looking for her before; we were trying to find you. Probably something’ll turn up before long.”

I told him sure, with more confidence than I felt.

Suddenly Samson said, “Shell, you sure that would be this Hallie’s blood? I mean, you sure she actually got herself shot at?”

I frowned at him. “What else? What you getting at?”

“Just asking. You seem pretty interested in her.”

“Sure I’m interested. What’s that on the car seat?”

He dug teeth into his cigar and his big jaw wiggled, but he didn’t answer.

I got up. “Guess I’ll run, Sam. Looks like a long night. You’ll keep checking?”

“Sure thing, Shell. You know it.”

I shook his hard hand and left. I was worried sick about Hallie, but I wouldn’t be much good running around looking under beds. The police would cover all the angles and I had my own work to do — maybe killing two birds with one stone. Or one bullet.

There was still a scared killer running around loose.

It took a hell of a time, but I finally got Feldspen, himself, on the other end of the phone. I explained what I wanted and he blew his top. He was still saying no when I broke in.

“Look, Feldspen, this is important. Important to you as much as me. Think about it.” I let him think about it a moment, then I added, “And I’ll appreciate it. I did a little job for you once, remember. O.K., any time in the future you want a man on your side, or a private eye for a job, you got me. No fee, no nothing. You just let me know and I’m your boy in a hurry. Deal?”

He was quiet for a moment, then he said, “Deal. Go on out to the lot. I’ll have it set up by the time you get there.”

“Thanks.” I hung up and was on my way.

I’d never been inside one of these little studio projection rooms before and it was a strange experience. I was all alone in the darkened room; the only other guy around was the still-sleepy projectionist back in the booth. There were seats for maybe fifty people in the small room, but they were empty and shadowy, and the whole place was a little creepy. It was the damnedest feeling to watch a movie in complete silence with no people crunching popcorn or whispering to each other. No rustle of feet or people moving up and down aisles or climbing over you.

And there wasn’t anybody to laugh at the funny lines or to get tense at the dramatic moments. There was just the beam of light from behind me and the flicker of the movie upon the screen and the noises on the sound track.

I was seeing me a free movie at the personal order of the boss, and it wasn’t much fun. But I didn’t care about the plot or the clever lines; I was watching the scenes where Hallie Wilson emoted.

The picture was The General Says No, Hallie’s latest movie, and she had a pretty good supporting role in it. When she first appeared on the screen I got a hard lump in my throat, but I watched the movie all the way through without once getting on the edge of my seat. Finally it was over and the projectionist efficiently changed films and I settled down to watch the hour and a half of Rainbow Sky, Hallie’s previous movie.

It didn’t take an hour and a half. Twenty minutes was more like it, and I got on the edge of my seat this time, staring ahead of me at the screen.

The film was running through the projector behind me at about ninety feet a minute so the shot I was staring at didn’t last very long, but for a second or two there she was. There was Hallie Wilson, lovely as her natural beauty and Hollywood make-up artist and clever cameraman could make her, with her hair in a carefully fashioned upsweep and her beautifully made-up lips lifted in a half-smile. Her eyes were turned just a little to my right and the water still glistened on her skin, bright droplets left over from the shower she’d just stepped out of. A white towel was twisted around her body — and I knew where I’d seen a picture almost like that one before.

I shouted, “That’s all, thanks,” and headed out. I stopped long enough to learn from the projectionist that Rainbow Sky had been finished in September almost two years ago, and released the following March.

I drove in toward town, wind whistling through the bullet hole in the Buick’s windshield, and I thought that there’d sure been a lot of lead tossed around tonight. And I hoped to hell that Hallie was O.K., somewhere.

Anyway, I had my finger on Roger Brane, and I knew what the boy had been up to. There was just one more little thing I needed to find out and I needed somebody from Magna Studios to give me the details. Paul Clark was the best bet I could think of, and I headed for his place on Gower Street in Hollywood, after checking the address in the directory.

I rang and then banged on the door. This was a heck of a time to be calling on people. Finally Clark’s voice mumbled from inside the door, “Whatsa trouble? Who is it?”

“It’s me,” I said brilliantly, then amended it to “Shell Scott. I need some info, Clark.”

There was a long silence during which I figured he was cussing the hell out of me, then finally he said, “Well, come on in. Christ, what a time of night!”

I heard the click of the bolt being shoved back and a light went on inside. I waited for him to let me in, but nothing happened.

Then Clark yelled from inside, “Well, come on in. You gonna stand out there?”

I turned the doorknob and went in.

Clark had a little two-room-and-bath bachelor apartment — half of a small duplex — with the kitchen in back and a combination living room and bedroom in front. There was a wooden dresser against the wall at the right of the door and the door to the bathroom stood ajar on my left. Dim light filled the room from a small lamp on a table at the side of the pull-down bed, between the bed and the door leading into the kitchen.

Clark lay in the bed with the covers up under his neck. His sunburned face was dark against the white pillow and he glowered up at me, wrinkling his Bob Hope nose.

“Hell of a time to be making social calls,” he growled sleepily.

“Sorry, Clark. It’s not exactly a social call. I need some information. Figured you might help me if I could get you awake.” I grinned at him. “You awake?”

“I am now. I’d rather not be. What you want?”

“I’ve been knocking myself out on this Brane kill, you know. Tonight I came up with something that sort of ties things together, but I’m a little hazy on the technical details. Needed somebody at Magna, somebody who works there, to straighten me out.”

“Did you have to get me out of bed?”

I grinned. This guy was about as grumpy as I am when I wake up. “I didn’t have to,” I said. “But I had to get somebody. The thing’s winding up. Maybe tonight, it looks like, if I want to stay healthy.”

He squinted his brown eyes at me. “Good God, what happened to you? I didn’t notice at first; guess I wasn’t awake yet. But, man, you’re a hell of a mess.”

I’d forgotten what a ghoul I looked like; it had slipped my mind. The burns and aches hadn’t, though. They were tagging right along with me.

I said, “I had some trouble. But that’s not what I’m worried about. I think Hallie Wilson got shot tonight.”

“Who?”

“Hallie Wilson. Starlet at Magna.”

His face twisted. “Hallie? Why, I know her. Slightly is all, but she’s a sweet kid. How’d it happen?”

“It’s a long story,” I said wearily. “That’s not what I came out here for. I think I’ve got the gimmick that made Brane so fancy. I came to see you because you work at Magna, and I need a little brushing up on an angle you can square me away on. Besides, you knew Brane back in Kansas City — “

I broke off suddenly. And suddenly I felt silly as hell and a few hundred shivers pranced along my spine. Here I was grinning like an idiot and chatting pleasantly with Paul Clark about Brane’s blackmail caper, and I thought of something that should have been obvious to me an hour before.

Clark, obviously, was the guy who’d murdered Roger Brane.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty-one

“WHAT’S the matter?” Clark asked.

“Huh? Oh, nothing. I was thinking.” I tried to stall for time, gather my thoughts around the knowledge that Clark was the murderer. Not only that, he must have been the one who took a shot at me when I was on my way out to Constanza’s house.

My heart gave a sudden kick as the thought struck me that he must have shot Hallie, too.

I went on as easily as I could, “I was thinking about Hallie Wilson, Clark. Can’t seem to keep my mind off her. She was in my car and must have stopped a slug meant for me. The cops found the car, but didn’t find her. I keep wondering if she’s all right.”

While I talked I watched Clark out of the corners of my eyes, but he didn’t give any sign that my words meant a thing to him. He was in bed, completely covered up, and his arms and hands were out of sight underneath the covers. It seemed like a funny way to greet a caller and I started getting worried.

When I finished speaking Clark said, “Sure a funny deal. How — how are you making out on the case so far?”

I shrugged. “So-so. I’ve got some good leads, but I can’t tell where they’re going yet.”

I fumbled in my coat pocket for cigarettes, careful to make no sudden motions, just in case. I looked at Clark while I drew out the pack and lit up a smoke. I couldn’t tell if he knew I knew or not. He lay quietly, with his head against the pillow, a bored, sleepy expression on his square face. I offered him a cigarette, but he slowly shook his head.

He said bluntly, “What was it you wanted to see me about?”

It looked like I couldn’t stall around much longer. Besides, there were still some things I could learn if I was lucky.

I said slowly, “Well, I know Brane was blackmailing a lot of people. He had that studio on the Strip and he was a candid-camera bug — always snapping pictures of people off guard. He did his own work, which meant he had a well-equipped darkroom out at his studio and he could do developing and printing there.

“It looked like Brane was murdered because of the blackmail photos he had. He was getting dough from some of Magna’s biggest stars, using pictures of them that weren’t the kind they’d like made public. But the thing that bothered me most was how the devil did he get shots of all those stars? I still think he was killed on account of those photos, but I couldn’t figure out how he managed to get them.”

I stopped and jabbed out my cigarette in a metal ash tray. “You got a drink around?” I asked Clark. “My throat’s a little dry.”

He said, “There’s a bottle and glasses on the dresser. Help yourself. Pitcher of water there, too.”

I didn’t like turning my back on a murderer — and one who’d already tried twice to kill me — but I walked to the dresser behind me and picked up the bottle. I could see Clark in the mirror. He didn’t move.

I mixed a drink and asked him, “You want one?”

He shook his head. He didn’t look sleepy at all any more.

“Go on, Scott,” he said.

O.K., I thought, if you’re in a hurry. I said, “Just what goes on in the cutting room, Clark?”

He grinned. I didn’t like the looks of it; he knew goddamned well I knew, now. I swallowed a little of the bourbon and water to ease the dryness in my throat. We were getting about finished with the polite chatter now.

He said softly, “You know about what we do, Scott. We cut the films, splice them, speed up the tempo sometimes. Put the features together so they’re nice and smooth before they get out to the public.”

I said, “And if the star sits up too straight in her bubble-bath, or — ” I hesitated and swallowed — “or accidentally drops a towel? The cameras keep on grinding. What happens to that film?”

He kept grinning. “Oh, we cut it out in the cutting room. Then it’s burned. Wouldn’t do to have that stuff lying around loose.”

“Yeah. I can see that.” I swallowed some more of my drink and said suddenly, “Just what was it Brane had on you, Clark?”

He said easily, “He have to have something on me?”

He said it too easily. He was too unconcerned and I didn’t like it. He acted as if he had the situation completely under control.

I said, “Uh-huh. Probably from back in Kansas City — or you wouldn’t have given him the film.”

“Oh, did I give him some film?” he asked me pleasantly.

“Yeah. Of Hallie Wilson, Constanza Carmocha, Barbara Faun. Maybe a lot of others. You probably got them around the time Rainbow Sky was shooting — and I know there were at least those three.”

“There were about a dozen,” he admitted agreeably. “But those three were the best.”

Well, there it was. Practically the whole thing. I figured there’d been about enough talk. If I’d had good sense, I’d have come in the door with a gun in my hand. But as long as I hadn’t got smart till I was inside, maybe I’d better do something now — get that artillery in my hand quick.

I barely made a motion toward my armpit when Clark spoke again.

“No,” he said. Just the one word, but the way he said it slowed me up.

I stood still for a moment, the drink half finished in my left hand, my right hand at the bottom button of my coat. “What you mean, no?” I asked him.

“Just don’t reach for a gun, Scott. We can quit playing around now. I’ve had a gun under the bed covers ever since you came in. Right now it’s pointed straight at your belly.”

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty-two

THE PLEASANTRIES were all over. It was out in the open now and there wasn’t the slightest doubt any more that Clark was the boy I had to get even with — and had to get, period, if I wanted to keep breathing.

I couldn’t see the gun. His hands were still underneath the covers, but there was a little bulge that could have been made by a thumbnail or the snout of a gun. Clark could be trying to pull a long-shot bluff, but somehow I didn’t think so. He was too relaxed, too composed, and too sure of himself.

Now that I knew Clark was the killer it seemed ridiculously simple — like picking the winning team after the game’s over. And there was still a chance he’d get away with it if he did away with me.

He said with the inevitable curiosity, “Scott, how’d you figure me?”

“You afraid if I figured it somebody else might too?”

“Just curious. But you better tell me.”

“Sure. First, though, what did Brane have on you that made you give him the stuff?”

He laughed. “You trying to trade me? That’s a kick; you’re in no position to trade anybody anything, Scott.” He frowned and went on, “I’ll tell you so you understand something. My name isn’t Clark. What it really is isn’t important. Back in Kansas City, two other guys and me got mixed up in a robbery. The cops got the two other boys and they spilled their insides out, but I got away. Never mind the details, but I got clean away and came out here. Changed my name and got a job in the Magna post office running around with mail. Worked into the cutting room. Then Brane showed up about three years ago. They still wanted me back in Missouri and Brane knew about it. He let it ride for a few months, then one day he threatened to mess up my life out here and turn me in if I didn’t get him the pix. He’d have done it, too.

“I knew he was an artist and I thought maybe he just wanted them to paint from, or for kicks. What difference does it make now? Anyway, I got the damn things for him. Lifted a flock of the juiciest frames before they were burned and turned them over to him to keep him off my back. By the time I learned what he was doing with them there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”

He chuckled a little, not pleasantly. Then he said, “O.K., Scott. How’d you figure me?”

I guess he thought if I told him what I had, he could cover up his tracks better, then kill me and he’d be in the clear. I didn’t mind talking some more — at least till I knew if that gun was pointing at my belly.

I said, “I didn’t figure you at first. You were just somebody else at the party. I had an idea the killer would be nervous the next day and I got tangled up a little with that angle. Thinking about it now, though, it seems like the killer would have made a supreme effort to stay on the job and act normal — like you did. But at least I found out that all the people I knew Brane was blackmailing were women, and they all worked at Magna. That’s what finally started me on the cutting-room angle.”

I drained the last of my drink and set the glass on a chair, moving slowly. I straightened up and said, “And nobody got nervous at the other studios, just at Magna. I’ve got to congratulate you, Clark. You did a good job of picking the frames you gave Brane. They didn’t look like movie shots one at a time. Hazy backgrounds and so on. But I got three of them together after the idea struck me, and it stood out like a light once I knew what to look for. But not till then.”

He said dryly, “Thanks.”

“Anyway,” I continued, “after I’d looked at the enlargements Brane made from the frames you got him, I looked at some movies. One of them had Hallie Wilson in a pose almost identical with one of the blackmail pix, only she had more covering her up.”

He butted in with a twisted grin, “That was the best of the lot. She should have worn some clothes or a bathing suit under that towel.”

I ignored that and said, “That settled the gimmick, the how-it-was-done part, but I still hadn’t settled on you. I knew the shots were supposed to have been destroyed by cutting-room personnel and Brane couldn’t have got them himself, so somebody must have lifted them for him. And they wouldn’t have done it for friendship, and not even for money if they wanted to keep on working in Hollywood. It was too risky. It could have been almost anyone in feature cutting, but you’d known Brane before. Also you were plenty griped at him, but afraid to do anything about it — even when he shoved you around.”

He butted in again. “He griped me, all right, Scott. And I’d have liked it fine if I could have turned him in. The minute I squawked I’m his accomplice — not to mention what Magna would do to me, and that Missouri rap.” He sighed, eyes on me every second. “Anything else set you off?”

“I had a couple of other people in mind,” I said, thinking of Mace and Wandra, “but I found out they weren’t worried about pictures lifted from the cutting room. The gal I was thinking about wasn’t even working when you lifted the frames. Almost all of the rest of the people I had in mind were simply scared there’d be some pictures of them get into circulation.

“Besides the rest — your figuring pretty well to begin with — you were at the costume ball. Could be there were others out of the cutting room there that night, but you said yourself that you were maybe the only one of the feature-cutting crew there. You not only had motive and a good one if you were the guy that got Brane the frames, but you had the opportunity Tuesday night at Feldspen’s. And I knew you hated the guy’s guts. If Brane hadn’t been such a well-hated guy, you might have stood out like a light, but you were right up front anyway.

“Besides,” I added, “you took a shot at me right after I talked to you at Magna earlier today. You’d most likely heard I was checking to see who flipped at the studio and you knew all about the blackmail even if I didn’t then. You saw the list of suspects I had and maybe even the names of the blackmailed stars I had on another list. You knew I was on the right track, but the worst thing was I asked you about knowing Brane in Kansas City. You were smooth; I didn’t get suspicious even then. Not even when you hightailed it out after me and took a shot at me before I could tumble.” I added slowly, “But, Clark, there’s too much of it. It isn’t anything you can cover up.”

He said with utter weariness, “That bastard Brane had me where Mamie wore the beads. And he kept pushing me; he was greedy, and I was sick of the whole mess I’d got into. Then he kept throwing up that Missouri rap and it was driving me nuts.” He sighed heavily. “There was one way that fixed everything. Got the guy off my back, let me breathe easy, take a better job, and maybe keep going up.”

“So you killed him.”

“So I killed him. I didn’t go to that damn party to kill the bastard — I wouldn’t have sounded off if I had. It just happened. I met him upstairs and he knew I’d made head cutter and maybe I’d even be leaving the cutting room for sound work. That’s what I wanted to do. He wouldn’t have it. Said I had to stay where I was, get him more pix. Hell, those things don’t show up very often; I’d just been lucky to get what I did and get away with it. But he couldn’t see it. We argued. There was a little statue thing there and I hit him with that. Well — it just happened.”

There wasn’t the slightest doubt in my mind now that Clark had a gun on me. He wouldn’t have been getting all this off his chest unless he figured I was just a corpse that was still kicking. For a while I’d thought I might feel silly standing foolishly in front of Clark if he didn’t have a gun, and me with a .38 at my left shoulder. I didn’t think like that now.

He went on in a sad sort of voice, speaking quietly, “Funny, isn’t it, Scott, how a guy can just drift into something like murder? It started with that little mess in Kansas City. Not much of anything, really, when you come right down to it. Only damn time I ever stole anything at all. Then a bastard getting me to swipe some pix so he can play with them. And look where it got me. Killed a man and now going to kill another. Now I gotta kill you.”

For a second I thought he was going to blast and I almost dug for my gun. I yelled, “One thing! Tell me one thing. Hallie.”

“What about Hallie?”

“The girl. The girl in my car. What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was you. I knew I missed you in the afternoon so I staked out at your place. I took a couple of shots just before the car parked, then I beat it. What happened after that I don’t know. Shouldn’t make any difference to you anyway, Scott.”

I’d got him to talk a little again, and I did want to know about Hallie, but mainly I wanted a few seconds more. I had to go for my gun and chance it.

I knew he had a gun under the sheets. I was morally certain of it, but I hadn’t seen the thing. And even if I managed to get my revolver out I knew I couldn’t shoot Clark until I was positive beyond all doubt that the guy wasn’t just off his trolley, that he actually wasn’t unarmed. It was one hell of a mess.

That was a problem he settled for me. I guess he didn’t want to shoot a hole in the blanket, and figured he had me anyway, because he moved, pulling the covers down just a little way from the top part of his body, and raised his arms slightly to clear the covers.

He had a gun, all right.

In a split second I noticed the gun in his right hand, and also the fact that he was fully dressed. He’d been dressed when I came and probably jumped into the unmade bed to stall me in case this was a social call — but he’d made the gun part of his outfit in case it wasn’t social.

As his hands cleared the tops of the bed covers, the muzzle of the gun wavered slightly away from my middle and I moved. I leaped to my right, digging for the revolver under my coat. My fingers brushed the butt of the Colt as flame darted from the gun in Clark’s hand.

I hit the floor on my right side, the gun in the palm of my hand, and everything went black. I thought stupidly and incongruously, It’s happened again!

It took me a couple of stunned seconds to realize I wasn’t headed for the, moon again, or for hell; then it made sense. The only light in the room had come from the table lamp by the bed and Clark had apparently yanked the cord and dumped the room into darkness while I’d been flopping onto my side. Even as I realized what had happened and knew that his shot had gone wild, I heard his feet pound across the floor toward the back of the house.

I twisted my right arm up under me and fired awkwardly over the bed, but the bullet smacked into the wall with a lot different sound from the noise it would have made slapping into flesh. I’d missed him a mile and he was through the door and on his way out.

Right now it looked like Paul Clark was more interested in getting away than killing me — or getting killed himself.

I threw my weight on my left arm to push myself up, and pain ran through the wrenched shoulder. The arm buckled and my teeth slammed into the carpet. By the time I got to my feet a door slammed shut in back and I knew Clark was somewhere outside. I sprinted out of the front room toward the faint glow in back where moonlight spilled dimly through the screen of the kitchen door, hoping there was nothing in the way to trip me up. I didn’t stop at the door and peek outside, but hit the screen with my right shoulder and went through it with my legs still driving as the thin door burst open, swung around, and crashed into the wall on my left, then squeaked back slowly into place and shut with a small bang.

I hunched over and ran a few more steps, then stopped and dropped to the ground before I batted my brains out on a wall or fence. I stayed low to the ground so I wouldn’t be silhouetted in the faint, thready moonlight, and listened. I couldn’t hear a sound except a misplaced cricket making a small racket, and the sound of my own breathing.

I stayed like that for a long minute, turning my head slowly and straining to see through the near darkness, before I admitted it: Yes, I’d let the murdering son get away.

At least, that’s what it looked like, but I was a very quiet and cautious man going back into the house. I’ve been shot at before, and I’ve been shot, and it’s no fun either way. I got inside with no trouble and struck a match to locate the phone. I didn’t turn on the lights and I doused the match in a hurry, then I used the phone and called 116, Los Angeles’ emergency number. I gave the quick story to the complaint board, but they’d undoubtedly hotshot the call and the homicide boys would be listening in even as I spilled out the story and gave the details about Clark. I didn’t even want to talk to Samson right now.

I felt pretty goddam lousy.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty-three

HALF AN HOUR LATER I’d done a lot of talking, prowl cars were circulating around the neighborhood, and I was alone in Paul Clark’s house with some bitter thoughts. That was the way I wanted it.

Finally I stopped feeling sorry for myself and beating myself mentally about the head, and wondered what the next move of a lame-brained private detective should be. I stopped standing listlessly with my back against the wall and walked over and flopped down on the pile of covers in the middle of Clark’s bed.

I went, “Ooof!” and my ribs felt like they’d caved in. I jumped to my feet and stared at the middle of the bed. For one wild second visions of rigid bodies under the bedclothes whirled through my mind before the shock wore off and I knew I was being stupid some more. Then I yanked down the covers and stared at the sharp edge of the leather suitcase that had dug into my ribs.

Brother! There were sure a lot of screwy characters in this cockeyed caper: a blackmailing egomaniac, a guy who cuts throats as well as film, a monster with muscles in his mustache, a gal who stole capes from dead men, another gal who was going to asterisk me, and more.

And now a guy who sleeps with suitcases.

I forgot all about looking over my shoulder; this seemed like a case history for Dr. Wilhelm Stekel. I grabbed the bag and tried to open it, but it was locked. I made a trip to the kitchen and five minutes later the suitcase wasn’t much good any more, but it was open.

Inside were neatly folded clothes, a box of .45-caliber cartridges that were undoubtedly for Clark’s gun — and the jackpot.

The jackpot consisted of three things. One of them was a fat bundle of money that I rifled through and guessed amounted to three or four thousand bucks. Not a hell of a lot, but a nice pile of lam money. The cute thing, though, was a passport. A nice, green-covered passport all stamped and legal and ready to go, with Paul Clark’s square face staring out at me from the little two-and-a-half-inch-square photo inside. It looked like friend Paul had been thinking of a possible change of clime.

But the last little parcel was a jackpot all by itself. You guessed it. Sealed in a manila envelope were a handful of short lengths of thirty-five-millimeter film positives, perforated along the edges so they’d run through a movie camera, an equal number of negatives made from the positives, and a dozen glossy eight-by-ten enlargements that were, as the saying goes, pretty as a picture. Here was what Clark had busted into Brane’s studio bedroom to get after he killed Brane and got out of Feldspen’s.

My throat got a little tight when I looked at the picture of Hallie Wilson again, and I wondered again where she was, how she was now. And there were Constanza Carmocha and Barbara Faun, and shots of several others whose faces I knew but whose features still surprised me. There was even a picture of Tarzan knifing a lion, but that one held little interest for me, being the sort of a guy that I am.

And how, I asked myself, do you like this mess?

And I started wondering. There was a lot in that suitcase that was important — important as hell to Paul Clark. Money, a passport to somewhere or anywhere, and a pile of dirty blackmail pix and film that might let a guy with that turn of mind make enough quick dough to live a long time in Buenos Aires or Guadalajara or Algiers, particularly if he was desperate. And I started wondering if maybe Paul Clark might think the stuff was still hidden under the bedclothes, and if it might be important enough to come back for.

It was important enough for him to take to bed with him, and it looked like he’d been dressed and ready to go when I came to the party — and maybe, just maybe, he’d be back. So it was one chance out of ten, but it was a chance.

I put the suitcase back about where I’d found it. Except for the blackmail stuff. That I took into the bathroom and burned and flushed down the toilet before I did anything else. If Clark did come back and anything went wrong from my point of view, I could do that much for the gals, and for Hallie with her violet eyes.

Then I turned out the light, went out and slammed the unlocked door behind me, got in the car I’d taken from Dutch and Flem, and drove away. But I just drove a block away and around the corner on Edmond Street. Then I hotfooted it back to Clark’s.

I went in with my gun in my hand, through the front door again, and walked across the room to the wall by the head of the bed. I couldn’t hear any other sounds in or around the house, so I clicked the button on the bed lamp, then bent over and found the electric cord that had been pulled from the wall by Clark when he was in a hurry. I plugged it in again and breathed easier when the light didn’t flash on, then got up. I had nothing to do but wait. And maybe nothing to wait for.

I stood for a long time, tense, with my gun ready in my right hand and the fingers of my left hand pressed against the button switch of the bed lamp. Finally my breathing was slow and easy, my heart slogged along quietly and steadily, and I started feeling inadequate standing in a dark room and darn near falling asleep.

So I took my fingers away from the lamp and tried to relax against the wall, the gun loose in my hand, and the feeling growing that I might as well crawl into bed and cuddle up to Clark’s suitcase. I must have stood for an interminable hour there in the darkness that would soon be dawn, shifting my weight occasionally and almost groaning aloud at the protesting aches in my bruised and stiffening muscles.

Then I heard a whisper of sound. Just a little scrape from somewhere out in back of the house, and it could have been a stray cat or my imagination, but then I heard it again and I heard the faint squeal of the screen door, and I knew I was through waiting. He’d waited, too, long enough, and Paul Clark had come home.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty-four

HE WAS THERE, close behind me, and I could hear the almost inaudible noises that meant he was easing his body through the door and into the kitchen, getting closer. He took his time; maybe he figured the place was empty, but he was playing it the way he would have if he’d known I was here.

Maybe he did know; I couldn’t be sure. But even that way he couldn’t know where I was in the room — and I didn’t think he really figured on me, but was just being careful as a man will when he’s hunted. I tried to keep relaxed and at the same time hold my body motionless so I wouldn’t make the slightest sound to let him know there was somebody waiting for him. I opened my mouth wide and breathed through it, deep, slow breaths so even my breathing wouldn’t be audible to his danger-sharpened ears. There wasn’t anything I could do about the thudding of my heart. I knew he couldn’t hear that, though it pounded in my ears like a drum and worried me even while I knew the worry was foolish.

For seconds of a longer, hesitant kind of time I heard nothing. He must have stopped and been standing there, his nostrils dilated, ears straining, his own heart pounding, too. I had the better break; I knew he was coming in. He had his imagination to contend with, which was a lot worse than knowing.

Finally I heard him move again and he was at the door. I could hear the palm of his hand brush against the side of the doorframe, but I couldn’t see anything. There wasn’t any light at all in the room, even from the faint moon outside the drawn window shades. But I could feel him near me, not four feet away, and now I did hold my breath.

And as I stopped breathing and my heart pounded faster, the oxygen thinning in my blood, I realized I didn’t have my fingers on the switch of the lamp so I could suddenly flood the room with light and startle him and take him. I started moving my hand a part of an inch at a time toward the lamp, wondering how long I could hold my breath before I’d have to let it out with a rush he couldn’t help hearing — because I could hear his breathing now.

I could barely hear the soft rustle of his breath trickling past his lips and I could have jumped him, slugged him. But I’d let this guy get away from me once tonight and I sure as hell wasn’t going to take a chance on messing it up again. I knew if he got out of this he’d be gone for sure. He wouldn’t have the money or his passport, maybe, but he wouldn’t be sucker enough to try again. He probably wouldn’t get far; he’d be caught by somebody. But it probably wouldn’t be me, and I wanted it to be me. I wanted it bad.

The guy had killed, and no matter if he’d just sort of drifted into Brane’s murder like he’d said, he’d drifted too far when he’d stood at the side of a road and tried to kill me. And maybe Hallie was lying somewhere in the darkness because of him. I wasn’t going to mess it up this time.

I heard the soft, faint brush of his shoe against the carpet somewhere out in front of me as my fingers found the button of the table lamp. I had an idea where he was and I didn’t wait any longer.

I squinted my eyes so the light wouldn’t be too blinding when it came on, leveled my gun where I figured Clark would be, and pressed the lamp switch.

The light blazed on and for a part of a second it was like a movie with no sound track. Just light and movement and not a sound as my eyes saw Clark about four feet away turned more toward the bed than where I was, and the gun in his right hand just starting to swing toward the light and me. Then the quiet was over and I heard Clark let out a strangled cry as I yelled, “Hold it, Clark!” and there was the blast of his gun and flame licking toward me from his hand.

He couldn’t have aimed; he could hardly have known what he was doing in the sudden shock and surprise. But I saw the fire almost in his hand and felt the smash of the heavy slug into my chest. It slammed me back against the wall and the gun in my own hand jiggled crazily in front of my eyes, but I squeezed down on the trigger.

I tried to point my wavering gun at Clark and I kept pulling the trigger and I felt the gun buck in my hand as everything in the room started swimming. It seemed to take a long time; the light got dimmer and dimmer and there were just hazy outlines in front of me, all of them moving, and I could hear the boom of the gun somewhere far off like the thunder of distant surf. I could hear the faint boom and then my right hand would be lifted sort of lazily as if this were all in slow motion. And at last I couldn’t see anything, but I knew I wasn’t clear out yet, and I was trying to get off the floor as, finally, there was only a kind of swirling darkness that was never still.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty-five

THERE WAS A COOL hand on my forehead and there were fingers at my wrist and there was a girl in a white uniform who looked like a nurse. I wondered how I’d got in bed and why everything smelled like medicine.

I started to get up, but the nurse pushed me down gently and said things to me about being quiet, and sharp pain roared through my chest. And I lay back and relaxed and went to sleep.

Then I woke up and Samson was sitting by the bed, his pink, clean-shaven face looking tired and a little older. He wasn’t looking right at me, but everything seemed sharp and clear and I said, “God, I’m starved.”

He swung his head around and his wide lips split in a grin. “You faker,” he said. “Playing possum, huh?”

“Sure. How long I been in this trap?”

“Four days,” Sam said. “You never did go clear out when you got shot, but you went into shock, and there were some complications. You weren’t very healthy.”

I grinned at him. “I got something wrong with my chest.”

He said, “You’re not supposed to talk much. I just stopped in to see how you were.”

I suddenly realized how tired I was. I didn’t feel as if I could lift a finger. But something was bothering me. Something important. I wanted to ask Sam something, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

He said, “Clark’s dead. We pieced it together, how it must have happened.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. I felt as if I were going to sleep again. Maybe they had some drugs in me.

Sam said, “Your gun was empty. Clark only fired one shot. You caught him in the side of the head with one slug. The rest were all over. You shot up some furniture and put two bullets through the floor at your feet. Wonder you didn’t shoot your toes off.”

I said weakly, “The suitcase in Clark’s room?”

“Yeah. We found that. Passport and all.”

I wobbled my head. “He had some blackmail pictures and films — got them from cutting-room stuff. Supposed to be burned but he gave them to Brane. Brane had his hooks into Clark, too, and made Clark give him the pix. I thought for a while Brane took the blackmail shots with his Leica, but the candid stuff was mainly a cover for the blackmail — keep people from catching on to the cutting-room angle. It was good publicity for his Strip studio, too, but mainly it was a red herring. The actual cutting-room stuff — I burned them, Sam.”

“You burned them?” His bushy eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, Sam. If anything went wrong, I didn’t want Clark to get away with those things. They weren’t good. You know.”

“Yeah. I see, Shell. He damn near got away with all of it. But he didn’t.”

“You know he killed Brane the night of the party,” I said. “Hit him with the statuette, then cut his throat. They had a beef upstairs. Clark isn’t Clark. I mean that’s not his real name.”

“Relax. You called all that in on the phone before you got shot up.”

My head was foggy. I couldn’t remember how much I’d reported on the phone.

He said, “We rolled prints off Clark’s body and sent them to the F.B.I. He was wanted in Missouri, all right. Name was really Harold Walker. Not that it makes any difference. Closes another file is all.”

I lay on the pillow and rolled my head over toward him as a white-uniformed nurse came in and whispered to Sam. He got up and said he’d see me again and went out.

I was glad Clark hadn’t got away, but I knew there was something else. Even if I still couldn’t remember what it was, I went to sleep knowing that Clark wasn’t what I’d wanted to ask Sam about.

There was a hazy time after that and an hour or a day or so later I was awake again and I knew what had been worrying me. Because there she was.

She spoke to me and her mouth opened and her perfect lips twisted in a soft, sweet smile. She came over by the bed and she leaned over and kissed me easily and gently. But nice.

I grabbed her hand and I said, “Hallie. Hallie, honey. Christ, I thought maybe you were dead.”

She looked around to make sure nobody else was in the room, then she pulled at the bottom of the white blouse and lifted it free of the gray skirt she wore. She pulled the blouse high up on her body and pointed to her right side, just under the bulge of the pink brassiere, where she’d been wounded slightly by one of Clark’s hastily fired bullets.

I looked where she pointed, and I looked at the pink bra, and I said, “Stop it, honey. Let me get my strength back.”

She laughed and said, “I’ve talked to Captain Samson, so I know it was Clark took the shot at me. I was scared more than I was hurt, but I ran out of the car and behind your apartment house.”

“Where did you go from there? The cops checked the hospitals — “

She broke in, “I stayed in back quite a while, then I went to your place. Not your room — I was a little afraid to — but your hotel. You’d told me that a Dr. Paul Anson lived a couple of doors down the hall from you, so I knocked on his door and he was home and he fixed me up. I wasn’t hurt very bad.”

That made sense, but I thought of Dr. Paul Anson and his clutching hands on that lovely white flesh and I growled through my teeth, “Did Paul — “

“Shut up, silly. He didn’t do anything but bandage me and let me stay there for a while. I told him I was to wait for you and he didn’t call the police right away. But finally he said he couldn’t wait any longer and called them. They were sure surprised.”

“I’ll bet.”

She said, “You’re almost well. That’s what they said. And today you can have visitors for a whole hour. How do you feel?”

I grinned at her. “Stronger.” Actually I did feel about as good as new. A few orders of prime ribs and some rare steaks and I’d be ready to get shot again.

We were talking in low tones about things that are none of your damn business, when the door opened again and who should come in but Wandra Price and Garvey Mace. Hallie said softly to me, “Damn. This hour you get visitors, I suppose they’ll fill up the place.”

Mace looked like a landslide coming in the door and I thought, Oh, Christ! If he knocked me out when I was healthy, what’ll he do to me now?

But he was all smiles. He pulled his lips apart in a grin and the bristles of his mustache stood out like brown spikes.

“Hello, champ,” he boomed, and grabbed my limp hand and wiggled it.

“Champ?” I piped.

“Meet the missus,” he boomed some more.

The missus turned out to be Wandra Price. So they’d gone and done it. She came forward smiling. Everybody kept smiling at me. I felt my face to see if there was anything funny about it. Anything funnier than usual, that is. It felt normal.

Wandra said, “Thanks, Shell.”

“For what?”

“It was in the papers about your — well, taking care of Paul Clark — showing that he was the murderer. And your burning the — you know.” She looked at Hallie sitting on the end of the bed. Apparently she still didn’t know Hallie was mixed up in this blackmail caper, too. That was a laugh. Obviously she didn’t know the gal in the painting she’d been so upset about was Hallie. That reminded me.

I said, “I thought you’d be griped.” I looked from Wandra to Mace. “About the painting, the newspaper, I mean.”

Wandra gurgled, “Oh, it’s just wonderful. There’s simply a mad rush on to see Shadow of Love. Simply everybody wants to see it. I’m famous.” She grinned gleefully.

Famous, hell, I thought. Baby, it ain’t your body that’s famous. I glanced at Hallie.

She gave me a deadpan and dropped one eye in a wink. I almost laughed out loud.

Mace said to me gruffly, “Guess I had me some wrong ideas about that, uh, business.”

“Forget it,” I said. “How’d you people know about me burning that stuff?” I glanced at Hallie. “When was Captain Samson in here?”

“Yesterday.”

“My,” I said, “how time flies.” But that explained it. Sam must have given the sketchy story to the papers. Thinking of papers made me think of the painting that had been on the front page of one and that reminded me again that I wanted the original painting to replace Amelia. Uh-huh. I’m casting Amelia aside like an old shoe.

I opened my mouth to ask where the hell my painting was when Mace said, “By the way, Shell.” Shell it was, not Scott any more. “That five grand is yours. Everything worked out fine.”

I should refuse five grand? “Great,” I said. “Fine. Thanks. About the painting. I’d like — “

“Another thing, Shell. Seeing as it was my boys that ruined your office, I had it put back like it was. All except the Frank Harris. Couldn’t get Harris. But I got you some Henry Miller.”

“The office?” Things were really coming at me. “Well, Mace, that’s real fine. Miller, huh? That’s even better than Harris. But about the painting — “

“Oh,” Mace continued. “About the boys. Dutch isn’t with us any more. He, uh, had a fatal accident. Flem’s in the hospital. They shouldn’t have tried to think for themselves.”

“Guess not. Mace, let’s get it straight about that painting. There’s — “

The door opened and I didn’t see who came in, but I heard, and hearing, I knew.

“Hallo, pops,” she yelled. “How’s my baby?” She walked across the room, hips swaying, her nervous lips moving constantly in and out. Barbara Faun was right behind her, not quite so full of hell, but smiling.

God! I felt like I did have a harem.

Connie had an armful of roses and she tossed them into a chair, helter-skelter, ignored everybody else in the room, and marched over to the bed. She leaned over the bed and clamped down on me and started trying to digest me again. Finally she raised her head and said, “Baby, I love you to pieces.”

I guessed she’d been reading the papers, too, but I didn’t ask her. I was looking smack into a pair of violet ice cubes under Hallie’s frowning brows.

Barbara Faun gave me a little peck that felt like nothing after Constanza’s massage, and I heard Hallie snort as Barbara said a few words about how grateful she was, and how grateful she could be, and I didn’t even stop to figure that one out.

Confusion was the order of the day for a few minutes, then Connie and Barbara took off and Wandra and Mace prepared to go.

Hallie hadn’t budged.

I was damned if Wandra and Mace were going to get out till I’d got it settled about the painting that was going on my living-room wall.

I said, “Hey, what about the painting?”

“What painting?” Mace asked.

“Uh, the one that was in the newspaper.”

He grinned while Wandra blinked at the window. “We got it,” Mace said. “We’re gonna put it on the wall. Not right out front, but in our … bedroom.”

Son of a bitch. They could have the head, maybe, but the rest of it was mine.

They turned to go and I said, “Hey! Wait a minute.”

They paused at the door and turned. I started to tell them what the score was and then I looked at Hallie.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed and the way she was glaring I had an idea she was still thinking about Constanza Carmocha. Her breath came rapidly and her white blouse rose and fell over that thirty-six inches that wasn’t muscle. One small fist rested on each side of her slim waist, and her skirt was tight against her legs, hiked up just to her knees. She looked mad, but she also looked beautiful, wonderful, and immensely appealing.

I glanced at Mace and said, “Skip it. See you,” and they went out.

I looked back at Hallie and had to grin. I couldn’t help it.

After all, what the hell could I do with a painting?

</code>