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:
“No idea,” I said, truthfully.
He frowned, faintly. “She must have friends,” he said. He chewed his lip, thought, then shrugged and said: “She ought to be all right by morning. I don’t suppose we’ll have to bother you about anything.”
“Thanks,” I said. He gave me back the insurance man’s card. I stuffed it into my pocket and went into the corridor and along it to big glass doors at the end.
I stood outside, under the sheltering canopy, to light a cigarette and watch the rain for a moment. The night air had a smell of dead leaves and moist earth. A thousand drops hit to form wet little humps on a lighted square of pavement. Water gurgled in the gutters. I shrugged up my collar again and dashed out from the shelter.
The door of my car opened before I touched it. A gun muzzle poked itself into my face. A gruff voice said: “Get in before you drown.” The gun receded. I slid in under the wheel, pulled the door shut. The face beside me was just a vague blur in the depths of a raincoat collar under a pulled-down hat brim.
There was nothing vague or blurry about the gun. It was like a rock in his hand. “Where to?” I asked him.
“Drive on,” he grunted. “Turn when told.”
The car was pointed north, toward Hollywood Boulevard, so I tooled away from the curb and we crept forward. A starter whined, behind us. Headlights came on and crawled along on our tail. At the boulevard, I got a grunt and a wave of the gun, so I turned left and drove west.
The tag hung on about thirty yards back. Two more turns put us on Santa Monica, going west again. A traffic light stopped us. The tag closed in and became a close harsh glare on my wet rear windows. “Friends?” I asked.
No answer.
A block and a half beyond the La Cienega intersection, where the inter-urban car tracks split the street into a double right-of-way, there was a wide, empty lot beside an abandoned store building. The gun nudged my ribs. “This is it, bo,” the gunman growled. I swung into the empty lot.
We parked in the darkness of a dilapidated storage shed at the rear. “Out,” he said. I got out on my side. He followed me with the gun. The tag didn’t come into the shed. I saw its lights cruise past the empty lot. Then the wall of the store building cut them off.
Rain drummed on the roof of the shed, leaked through here and there and dripped steadily into ground puddles. The gunman stepped close to me, patted me over. I wasn’t wearing a gun, but before heading for Ventura that day, I had tucked one into the stash-away holster up under the dash panel of my car, just above the steering shaft. He made no move to search the car.
“Mind telling me what this is all about?” I asked him.
“Keep the lip buttoned and nobody gets hurt,” he growled.
“That’s nice to know,” I said. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Naw,” he grunted. “Go ahead.”
I dug out another cigarette. Even in the match flare, I couldn’t see much of his face. I lit the cigarette, smoked quietly until I had finished it, dropped it and stepped on it. About five minutes more passed and then another pair of headlights came along the street, the way we had come, turned into the empty lot, but did not come back to the shed. They blinked off and the motor of the car died. Its door opened. A figure climbed out of it and plodded toward the shed.
The gunman raised his voice enough to reach the figure.
“All set?”
“Yeah.” The figure halted and spoke in a muffled tone.
The gunman dangled my ignition keys in front of my face.
“These’ll be out there on the sidewalk,” he said. “Don’t try no funny stuff until we’re gone.” His gun covered me while he backed out of the shed. The other man made a low-voiced remark. The gunman turned and the two of them ran.
I jumped for my car, shoved my hand up under the dash panel. The stashed holster was still there — empty. The gun was gone. Out in front of the store building, a car motor roared briefly and faded. After that it was quiet again and lonely and there was only the whisper of the gusting wind and the rain beating on the roof of the shed.
My keys were on the city sidewalk all right. By the time I found them in front of the store. I was soaked to the skin. I went back into the side lot and walked over to the other parked car. It was Harvey Costain’s convertible. I opened the door for a brief moment, saw him still in there, still very very dead, and closed it again. Then I went back and got my car out of the shed and drove home.
A long hot steamy shower took the ice out of my bones. I stood in it until my pores were all open and the perspiration was oozing freely. In a little while my muscles all felt long and loose and limber. I spent a quick minute under cold water and turned it off. When I was dry again, I made a loin cloth of the towel and padded into the kitchenette for a drink.
One shot out of the flat bottle called for two. I was thinking about having a third when the phone rang. I padded back into the living room to answer it.
“Dillon?” a voice asked. I grunted and thought about the voice, trying to place it. I didn’t sound anything like my gunman friend or the figure who had driven Costain to the empty lot on Santa Monica. This voice had a nasal twang to it.
“Missing any guns?” It asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “One. You have it, huh?”
“You bet. It’s been fired, too.”
“Uh-huh. Now tell me Harvey Costain was killed with it some time tonight.”
“You guessed it, wise guy. The cops’ll be looking for it. All you got to do is forget you ever heard of Costain. Keep away from his girl friend, too. That way you got nothing to worry about.”
“Suppose I talk in my sleep some night?”
“The cops get the gun, sucker. So long.”
There was a dry faraway click on the line. I listened to wire hum for several seconds before recradling the phone. The hands of the electric clock on the radio table pointed almost to 3 A.M.
A wave of giddiness passed over me. I cackled out loud. To hell with the hard boys. To hell with Harvey Costain. To hell with the cops. Two drinks and I was higher than the birds that fly. I was big and hard and tough and hadn’t a worry in the world. Nothing solid had gone into my stomach for almost fifteen hours. I decided to look in the refrigerator.
I looked. The refrigerator held five eggs. That was all. The breadbox was empty. I broke the eggs into a tall glass. Then I emptied what whiskey was left in the flat bottle, almost half a pint, on top of the eggs. I stirred the mixture in the glass with a kitchen knife, turned out the lights and took the glass into the bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed with it and guzzled until it was empty. I reached for a cigarette, thought about lighting it.
Sunlight smacked my eyes, when I opened them, and all but petrified my eyeballs. I was flat on my back, crosswise on the bed, with an empty egg-smeared glass in one hand and an unlighted cigarette in the other. The night lamp beside the bed was still on. The bedroom windows were closed but the shades were up. My mouth felt as if it was full of dry moldy cotton.
I sat up. My brain came loose from the back of my head and rolled forward and bounced against the inside of my forehead. When the throbbing died down a little, I set the egg glass on the night table under the lamp and reached a match and lit the cigarette. It tasted like old socks burning in my mouth. By sheer will power and cautious footwork I made it into the bathroom.
Another long hot shower followed by a quick cold one put enough strength in my arms to lift a safety razor. I shaved and dressed and drove down to the boulevard for a lumberjack’s breakfast in a place near the building my office is in. After that I bought a newspaper and went up to the office to read it.
Harvey Costain’s murder was on page one. His body had been found about four o’clock in the morning when a patrol car squad stopped to investigate a parked car in an empty lot out on west Santa Monica Boulevard. A slug from a thirty-eight automatic had been extracted from his left lung. The gun from which the slug had been fired had not been found.