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:
“It’s true,” she said, and the brittleness went out of her voice. “After they carried you out of the bar, Harvey wanted to go. I stopped in the powder room. He went to get the car. Later, I waited outside on the porch. After a very long time, I was afraid he might have passed out, so I went out to the car myself — found him like that. Then, I don’t know how soon, someone came — you, I suppose — and then I was there in the hospital. That’s every bit of it.”
“Not quite,” I said, in a thick strained voice. “He was shot with my gun.”
She gave me a long look that made me want to pick up the big black piano and throw it into the next apartment, and sat down in the deep aqua chair.
“The gun was in my car, right next to his,” I said, still thickly. “I didn’t miss it until later. Too much later. The killer swiped it, used it, and afterwards phoned me at my place to tell me to keep my face shut or the gun would go to the police as evidence against me.”
Something thudded, somewhere in the apartment. This was followed by the sound of paper crackling and something rolling across kitchen linoleum. High heels beat a quick, brief tattoo on the same linoleum and the rolling sound stopped.
“Mina’s back.” Gail Tremaine whispered. I nodded. Sunlight poked through a tree branch near the balcony and shafted through the window to make moving patterns on the aqua rug. I dug out another cigarette, lit it.
“What was Harvey Costain to you?” I asked.
“A friend. A very good friend, once. After that he changed. He began to act as if he owned me.”
“Did he?”
“Did he what?”
“Own you.”
“No.” Anger stiffened her and glittered in her eyes again.
“A joint like this doesn’t go for peanuts,” I growled.
“Singing for Lew Gannon at the Club Borracha doesn’t exactly pay me peanuts either, baby,” she snapped. “I think you’d better leave now.”
I might have jumped a little because she said: “I suppose you thought the lady lived friendless and alone. An easy touch. Well. I have friends who can be as tough as they have to be. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
“Pipes bite my tongue,” I said lamely. “I like them, but they don’t like me. How did Mina get to market and back so invisibly?”
“There’s a back stairs,” she sneered. “So it’s going to put its tail between its legs and sneak home. You fooled me, baby. Those shoulders make you look almost manly.”
“They fool a lot of people.” I said. “I wasn’t thinking about your friends. It’s Keever. I’d like to give him something to worry over. You’d better watch your step with him, too. He may be a slimy wolf, but he’s nobody’s fool. See you later.”
I managed to work up a grin of sorts for her and left her sitting there, big-eyed and wondering, and pushed through a door into a narrow windowless dark serving pantry. The little Jap maid had a starched white apron on and was slicing cucumbers at a gleaming tiled sink.
“Hi, what’s for lunch?” I asked her.
She didn’t answer me.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” I drawled.
“Yes, it is,” she said, without looking up.
“Where’s the secret panel to the back stairs?”
“That door leads to them.” She looked at the door.
“I must be slipping,” I said, and let myself out. I closed the door, softly, and jogged down open wooden steps to a wide concrete alley. At the end of the alley, I halted to look along the street to where my car was parked. I didn’t see Keever anywhere, so I went along to the car and got in and drove away from there.
Chapter Four
Too Bad for Dillon
Out on the Strip, that piece of Sunset Boulevard which is in the County and not subject to city ordinances, the coolness and lack of moisture in the air made it possible to see far out across the flats of West Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, almost to the ocean.
I paid a dollar and three cents for coffee and a hamburger at a drive-in restaurant and left my car there and strolled westward past agency doors looking like foreign embassies, night clubs closed until evening, antique shops where they seat you before mentioning prices and tanned young men sitting under striped sidewalk umbrellas, waiting to guide you past movie stars’ palaces for a fee, in your car.
A black cocker spaniel watched me enter the street bar of the Club Borracha. His leash was tied to the leg of a bar stool. A downy old party in soft gray flannels sat on top of the stool guzzling a martini. He had the glass tilted high, when I came in, and was going after the olive. I didn’t see any bartender and Gray Flannels seemed to be the only customer in the place.
I parked myself at the end of the bar with my back to the end wall and pulled my hat low over my face and glared around from under the brim. The dog picked up its ears, tilted its head a little to one side. I wrinkled my nose and bared my teeth at it. This earned me a low growl.
Gray Flannels jerked his nose out of his glass, frowned down at the dog, then scowled along the bar at me. “I say, must you annoy my dog?” His voice sounded as if the olive had gotten stuck in his throat.
I kept right on glaring at the dog from under my hat brim and didn’t answer him. The dog growled softly again.
“I say, must you?” The voice jumped an octave.
A short, sad-faced barman slid out of a door at the far end of the bar and glided toward us. He put both hands on the inner edge of the bar in front of Gray Flannels and said: “Something wrong, sir?”
“This person deliberately insulted Genghis Khan,” the man complained.
“Pardon me,” I said, nastily. “I just didn’t recognize the disguise.”
The barman swiveled his head around, slowly, almost mechanically, as if a vertical pivot rod held it to his shoulders and a little motor moved it. While he stared at me, his left hand fumbled under the bar. Then he just stood there, with both arms hanging slack at his sides, and watched me.
“You can’t bring a pet into a food or drink place in this town,” I drawled. “The penalties are awful ghastly.”
Gray Flannels whitened under his tan. He raked out a bill, threw it on the bar, yanked the leash loose from the bar stool. He didn’t quite leap out the street door. I could almost feel the floor burns on the dog’s paws and felt badly about that.
“Why?” the barman asked, in a bleak tone. “Why did you have to go and say that?”
“Didn’t you ever hear of the Board of Health?” I growled. “Read the rules.”
“What about the Board of Health?” a new voice asked, from behind me. It was a silky, almost whispering voice. I turned and gave it the tough eye and it tough-eyed me right back.
He was a natty little man in a smartly cut beige gabardine suit, about five-six in height and as lean as a jockey. He had black curly hair above a high forehead, a small, flat nose and a cleft in his chin. A cigarette dangled from one corner of his narrow thin-lipped mouth, lisping smoke, and horizontal wrinkles creased his forehead, as if my answer meant life or death to him, or the smoke bothered his eyes.
“Fine body of men,” I said. “Do a lot of good work.”
“Yeah?” The cigarette bobbled up and down. “So what?”
“So this joint’s had all the bad noise it can stand.”
Smoke fumed downward from his nostrils as he dropped the cigarette and stepped on it, finding it with the sole of his shoe without looking down and pressing it out. The barman sidled closer, watching me and mopping absently with his cloth on a bar-top that was as spotless as a dutch doorstep.
“I don’t follow you, friend,” the natty little man purred.
His voice didn’t have any sort of a nasal twang to it, but a voice on a phone can be disguised, so I said: “Who followed Harvey Costain when he left here last night?”