Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 30, No. 2 — July 1947)
- Автор: Голт Уильям Кэмпбелл, Rischer Bruno
- Год: 1947
- Язык: английский
- Год: Fictioneers / Popular Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 30, No. 2 — July 1947)». Краткое содержание книги:
I nodded, stood up, touched the side of my head, winced. A lump the size of a robin’s egg had risen behind my left ear. It burned under the pressure of my fingers.
“What did hit me?” I asked.
The big blond man grinned sheepishly again as he pulled a leather covered pocket sap out of his coat. He held it up for me to look at. “Me,” he admitted.
“What in hell for?” I snapped.
“Duke tells me you’re a private dick,” Zarsella said silkily.
“Yeah, and he used to be a cop,” I growled. “Also it might’ve been a nice day today, except it rained. So I get hit in the head.”
“A good dick needs a cool head,” Zarsella remarked dryly.
“Is that so?” I snarled. “Well, mine’s been O.K. so far.”
“Take it easy, boy,” Mazonik said earnestly. “I had to do it.”
“A good dick should control his temper better,” Zarsella said. He sat down behind the big walnut desk. Mazonik dropped the sap back in his pocket, showed me the palms of his hands and shrugged at me. I rubbed my head and winced again.
“Mr. Harvey Costain spends a great deal of money here,” Zarsella said, almost musingly. Among other things, the desk had a hand-beaten copper humidor on it. He lifted the lid, plucked out a thick cigar, rolled it gently between his fingers, sniffed at it, replaced the lid. “In my business, it doesn’t pay to let roughnecks maul the heavy spenders.”
“So that’s it,” I said nastily. “So Harvey Costain can blow his nose on the crap tables all he wants to, as long as he blows plenty of the long green along with what else comes out. And if he feels like it, he can push his lady friend in the face, too, huh?”
“He never pushed her in the face,” Mazonik said, in a bleak tone of voice.
“He pushed her,” I said harshly. “What do you want — blood?”
“It was his lady friend,” Zarsella drawled. “It never pays to mix in other people’s troubles, Dillon.”
“You guys make me sick,” I sneered. “Let me out of here.”
“Gosh, don’t be sore at me, boy,” Mazonik pleaded. His face was flushed. His eyes looked almost angry. Hard lights glinted in them.
“Where’s the fire escape?” I growled. “I smell smoke.”
Zarsella smiled thinly, shrugged. Mazonik stared bleakly at me and turned his head, finally, and jutted his chin at one of several doors the room had. I walked over, yanked it open and went out.
Closed doors with nothing but thick silence behind them lined the hallway on both sides. It was still too early for the sporting crowd to show. The hallway ended at a wide carpeted stairs. A chubby, pink-faced man wearing a tuxedo sat at the PBX switchboard behind the lobby desk. He raised his eyes and watched me come down the stairs. The hard-faced head waiter was standing in the dining room archway watching nothing.
In the dimness behind him, rumba notes still fluttered around like bats in the rafters. I slapped my hat check down so hard the slot-eyed check girl almost lost her haughty manner. She handed me my hat without dropping it. The tall Negro opened the door for me with the same smile and delicate flourish as before.
A sudden gust of wind almost blew me off the veranda. It was raining again. Hunger still gnawed inside me. My stomach felt as if it had shrunk to the size of a dried prune. I settled my hat around my ears, hunched up my coat collar and lunged down the veranda steps.
The light on the high pole was almost invisible and the graveled path was an inch under water now. I reached the heap in a hurry and stopped dead in my tracks.
Clutching my left door handle for support, the girl in the pale dinner dress was just standing there, staring into the long black convertible with the light-colored top. Her other hand clutched some sort of wrap, or coat, which dragged on the ground. The rain had plastered her hair to her head and the sides of her face. Her dress was soaked. It looked as thin as paint.
I peered into the convertible. Harvey Costain was in there, hunched over the steering wheel, out cold. I jerked my door open, grabbed the girl by the arm. She shuddered. A whimpering noise gurgled in her throat. She dropped the wrap. I picked it up.
“Inside, fast,” I barked. “You’ll have six kinds of pneumonia. I’ll get you home. Hurry it up.”
She didn’t move, or speak. I threw the wrap into the heap and pushed her in after it. Then I slammed the door and turned back to the convertible, climbed inside.
Something cold that wasn’t rain water trickled down my spine when I touched Costain. I shook him, put a hand under his chin, heaved him against the back of the seat. He was all dead weight. Half of the whites of his eyes showed starkly beneath his partially lowered eyelids. His coat lapels were parted enough for me to see the dark stain on his white shirt front.
He was not drunk. He was dead.
I let go of him. He flopped forward onto the steering wheel again. His nose hit the chromium horn ring. The horn let go, blasting the whispering quiet of the parking lot into shreds. I jumped at him, pushed his face off the wheel. The horn quit.
I found the dash-light switch, gave it a twist. I couldn’t find any guns, large or small, so I doused the switch and got out of the convertible.
The girl didn’t look at me as I slid under the wheel of my own car. Her large, dark, frightened eyes stared straight ahead through the windshield. She was shaking like a last lost leaf in a storm. Her breath came and went noisily between chattering teeth.
“Who killed him?” I asked sharply, pressing the starter.
She didn’t answer. I switched on my lights, backed out of the slot, shifted gears. “O.K.,” I said. “Where do you live?”
Still no answer. She looked half dead herself. I gunned the motor.
Chapter Two
Shower of Death
A youngish man wearing thick-lensed eyeglasses, with a stethoscope protruding from the side pocket of his white jacket, came into the small waiting room. There was a printed form card in his hand.
I picked my shirt, dry now, off the steam radiator and put it on and began buttoning it up.
“Shock and exposure,” the man said. “What’s her name?”
“Gail Tremaine,” I told him. “That’s what the registration holder in her car had on it. I forget the address.”
“A couple of fanny bruises,” he said, in a dry professional voice. “Otherwise she doesn’t seem to have been hurt. What happened?”
“Another car sideswiped her, up near the pass on Cahuenga. I don’t think she was hurt much, either. A tire blew out on her car. That’s hell, a night like this.”
He nodded and stared thoughtfully at me, flicking a corner of the form card with his thumbnail. I finished buttoning my shirt and tucked it into my pants.
“I have to make some kind of a report,” he said. “How close were you?”
“To the accident?”
He nodded again.
“Fifty yards or so. I passed her and then had to back up. The other car didn’t stop. I wasn’t the other car, if that’s what you are thinking.”
He shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “I’d like to have your name, though — just for the records.” He unshipped a pen.
I dug a card out of my wallet — not one of mine. I didn’t even remember the face of the man who had given it to me. The medico read it, placed it carefully on the table beside the form card and began copying the name. When he had done that, he waved the form card in the air to set the ink. I shrugged into my coat, buttoned that, and reached for my hat.
He re-read what he had written. “A. A. Steele, Insurance Indemnity Limited, eh? Canadian?”
“Not me,” I said. “I’m just their L.A. contact.”
“I see. No idea where she lives, eh?”