Masters’ hard black eyes got wide and empty. His thick neck swelled. Aage came away from the wall a few feet and stood rigidly. After a moment Masters snapped his teeth, spoke very quietly: “That’s a honey, copper. Tell us about that one.”
Delaguerra touched his smeared face with the tips of two fingers, looked at the fingers. His eyes were depthless, ancient.
“Imlay is dead, Masters. He was dead before Marr was killed.”
The room was very still. Nobody moved in it. The four people Delaguerra looked at were frozen with shock. After a long time Masters drew in a harsh breath and blew it out and almost whispered: “Tell it, copper. Tell it fast, or by God I’ll—”
Delaguerra’s voice cut in on him coldly, without any emotion at all: “Imlay went to see Marr all right. Why wouldn’t he? He didn’t know he was double-crossed. Only he went to see him last night, not today. He rode up to the cabin at Puma Lake with him, to talk things over in a friendly way. That was the gag, anyhow. Then, up there, they had their fight and Imlay got killed, got dumped off the end of the porch, got his head smashed open on some rocks. He’s dead as last Christmas, in the woodshed of Marr’s cabin…Okey, Marr hid him and came back to town. Then today he got a phone call, mentioning the name Imlay, making a date for twelve-fifteen. What would Marr do? Stall, of course, send his office girl off to lunch, put a gun where he could reach it in a hurry. He was all set for trouble then. Only the visitor fooled him and he didn’t use the gun.”
Masters said gruffly: “Hell, man, you’re just cracking wise. You couldn’t know all those things.”
He looked back at Drew. Drew was gray-faced, taut. Aage came a little farther away from the wall and stood close to Drew. The blonde girl didn’t move a muscle.
Delaguerra said wearily: “Sure, I’m guessing, but I’m guessing to fit the facts. It had to be like that. Marr was no slouch with a gun and he was on edge, all set. Why didn’t he get a shot in? Because it was a woman that called on him.”
He lifted an arm, pointed at the blonde. “There’s your killer. She loved Imlay even though she framed him. She’s a junkie and junkies are like that. She got sad and sorry and she went after Marr herself. Ask her!”
The blonde stood up in a smooth lunge. Her right hand jerked up from the cushions with a small automatic in it, the one she had shot Delaguerra with. Her green eyes were pale and empty and staring. Masters whirled around, flailed at her arm with the shiny revolver.
She shot him twice, point-blank, without a flicker of hesitation. Blood spurted from the side of his thick neck, down the front of his coat. He staggered, dropped the shiny revolver, almost at Delaguerra’s feet. He fell outwards towards the wall behind Delaguerra’s chair, one arm groping out for the wall. His hand hit the wall and trailed down it as he fell. He crashed heavily, didn’t move again.
Delaguerra had the shiny revolver almost in his hand.
Drew was on his feet yelling. The girl turned slowly towards Aage, seemed to ignore Delaguerra. Aage jerked a Luger from under his arm and knocked Drew out of the way with his arm. The small automatic and the Luger roared at the same time. The small gun missed. The girl was flung down on the davenport, her left hand clutching at her breast. She rolled her eyes, tried to lift the gun again. Then she fell sidewise on the cushions and her left hand went lax, dropped away from her breast. The front of her dress was a sudden welter of blood. Her eyes opened and shut, opened and stayed open.
Aage swung the Luger towards Delaguerra. His eyebrows were twisted up into a sharp grin of intense strain. His smoothly combed, sand-colored hair flowed down his bony scalp as tightly as though it were painted on it.
Delaguerra shot him four times, so rapidly that the explosions were like the rattle of a machine gun.
In the instant of time before he fell Aage’s face became the thin, empty face of an old man, his eyes the vacant eyes of an idiot. Then his long body jackknifed to the floor, the Luger still in his hand. One leg doubled under him as if there was no bone in it.
Powder smell was sharp in the air. The air was stunned by the sound of guns. Delaguerra got to his feet slowly, motioned to Drew with the shiny revolver.
“Your party, Commissioner. Is this anything like what you wanted?”
Drew nodded slowly, white-faced, quivering. He swallowed, moved slowly across the floor, past Aage’s sprawled body. He looked down at the girl on the davenport, shook his head. He went over to Masters, went down on one knee, touched him. He stood up again.
“All dead, I think,” he muttered.
Delaguerra said: “That’s swell. What happened to the big boy? The bruiser?”
“They sent him away. I—I don’t think they meant to kill you, Delaguerra.”
Delaguerra nodded a little. His face began to soften, the rigid lines began to go out of it. The side that was not a bloodstained mask began to look human again. He sopped at his face with a handkerchief. It came away bright red with blood. He threw it away and lightly fingered his matted hair into place. Some of it was caught in the dried blood.
“The hell they didn’t,” he said.
The house was very still. There was no noise outside. Drew listened, sniffed, went to the front door and looked out. The street outside was dark, silent. He came back close to Delaguerra. Very slowly a smile worked itself on to his face.
“It’s a hell of a note,” he said, “when a commissioner of police has to be his own undercover man—and a square cop had to be framed off the force to help him.”
Delaguerra looked at him without expression. “You want to play it that way?”
Drew spoke calmly now. The pink was back in his face. “For the good of the department, man, and the city—and ourselves, it’s the only way to play it.”
Delaguerra looked him straight in the eyes.
“I like it that way too,” he said in a dead voice. “If it gets played—exactly that way.”
13
Marcus braked the car to a stop and grinned admiringly at the big tree-shaded house.
“Pretty nice,” he said. “I could go for a long rest there myself.”
Delaguerra got out of the car slowly, as if he was stiff and very tired. He was hatless, carried his straw under his arm. Part of the left side of his head was shaved and the shaved part covered by a thick pad of gauze and tape, over the stitches. A wick of wiry black hair stuck up over one edge of the bandage, with a ludicrous effect.
He said: “Yeah—but I’m not staying here, sap. Wait for me.”
He went along the path of stones that wound through the grass. Trees speared long shadows across the lawn, through the morning sunlight. The house was very still, with drawn blinds, a dark wreath on the brass knocker. Delaguerra didn’t go up to the door. He turned off along another path under the windows and went along the side of the house past the gladioli beds.
There were more trees at the back, more lawn, more flowers, more sun and shadow. There was a pond with water lilies in it and a big stone bullfrog. Beyond was a half-circle of lawn chairs around an iron table with a tile top. In one of the chairs Belle Marr sat.
She wore a black-and-white dress, loose and casual, and there was a wide-brimmed garden hat on her chestnut hair. She sat very still, looking into the distance across the lawn. Her face was white. The make-up glared on it.
She turned her head slowly, smiled a dull smile, motioned to a chair beside her. Delaguerra didn’t sit down. He took his straw from under his arm, snapped a finger at the brim, said: “The case is closed. There’ll be inquests, investigations, threats, a lot of people shouting their mouths off to horn in on the publicity, that sort of thing. The papers will play it big for a while. But underneath, on the record, it’s closed. You can begin to try to forget it.”
The girl looked at him suddenly, widened her vivid blue eyes, looked away again, over the grass.
“Is your head very bad, Sam?” she asked softly.
Delaguerra said: “No. It’s fine…What I mean is the La Motte girl shot Masters—
and she shot Donny. Aage shot her. I shot Aage. All dead, ring around the rosy. Just how Imlay got killed we’ll not know ever, I guess. I can’t see that it matters now.”
Without looking up at him Belle Marr said quietly: “But how did you know it was Imlay up at the cabin? The paper said—” She broke off, shuddered suddenly.
He stared woodenly at the hat he was holding. “I didn’t. I thought a woman shot Donny. It looked like a good hunch that was Imlay up at the lake. It fitted his description.”
“How did you know it was a woman…that killed Donny?” Her voice had a lingering, half-whispered stillness.
“I just knew.”
He walked away a few steps, stood looking at the trees. He turned slowly, came back, stood beside her chair again. His face was very weary.
“We had great times together—the three of us. You and Donny and I. Life seems to do nasty things to people. It’s all gone now—all the good part.”
Her voice was still a whisper saying: “Maybe not all gone, Sam. We must see a lot of each other, from now on.”
A vague smile moved the corners of his lips, went away again. “It’s my first frame-up,” he said quietly. “I hope it will be my last.”
Belle Marr’s head jerked a little. Her hands took hold of the arms of the chair, looked white against the varnished wood. Her whole body seemed to get rigid.
After a moment Delaguerra reached in his pocket and something gold glittered in his hand. He looked down at it dully.
“Got the badge back,” he said. “It’s not quite as clean as it was. Clean as most, I suppose. I’ll try to keep it that way.” He put it back in his pocket.
Very slowly the girl stood up in front of him. She lifted her chin, stared at him with a long level stare. Her face was a mask of white plaster behind the rouge.
She said: “My God, Sam—I begin to understand.”
Delaguerra didn’t look at her face. He looked past her shoulder at some vague spot in the distance. He spoke vaguely, distantly.
“Sure…I thought it was a woman because it was a small gun such as a woman would use. But not only on that account. After I went up to the cabin I knew Donny was primed for trouble and it wouldn’t be that easy for a man to get the drop on him. But it was a perfect set-up for Imlay to have done it. Masters and Aage assumed he’d done it and had a lawyer phone in admitting he did it and promising to surrender him in the morning. So it was natural for anyone who didn’t know Imlay was dead to fall in line. Besides, no cop would expect a woman to pick up her shells.
“After I got Joey Chill’s story I thought it might be the La Motte girl. But I didn’t think so when I said it in front of her. That was dirty. It got her killed, in a way. Though I wouldn’t give much for her chances anyway, with that bunch.”
Belle Marr was still staring at him. The breeze blew a wisp of her hair and that was the only thing about her that moved.
He brought his eyes back from the distance, looked at her gravely for a brief moment, looked away again. He took a small bunch of keys out of his pocket, tossed them down on the table.
“Three things were tough to figure until I got completely wise. The writing on the pad, the gun in Donny’s hand, the missing shells. Then I tumbled to it. He didn’t die right away. He had guts and he used them to the last flicker—to protect somebody. The writing on the pad was a bit shaky. He wrote it afterwards, when he was alone, dying. He had been thinking of Imlay and writing the name helped mess the trail. Then he got the gun out of his desk to die with it in his hand. That left the shells. I got that too, after a while.
“The shots were fired close, across the desk, and there were books on one end of the desk. The shells fell there, stayed on the desk where he could get them. He couldn’t have got them off the floor. There’s a key to the office on your ring. I went there last night, late. I found the shells in a humidor with his cigars. Nobody looked for them there. You only find what you expect to find, after all.”
He stopped talking and rubbed the side of his face. After a moment he added: “Donny did the best he could—and then he died. It was a swell job—and I’m letting him get away with it.”
Belle Marr opened her mouth slowly. A kind of babble came out of it first, then words, clear words.
“It wasn’t just women, Sam. It was the kind of women he had.” She shivered. “I’ll go downtown now and give myself up.”
Delaguerra said: “No. I told you I was letting him get away with it. Downtown they like it the way it is. It’s swell politics. It gets the city out from under the Masters-Aage mob. It puts Drew on top for a little while, but he’s too weak to last. So that doesn’t matter…You’re not going to do anything about any of it. You’re going to do what Donny used his last strength to show he wanted. You’re staying out. Goodbye.”
He looked at her white shattered face once more, very quickly. Then he swung around, walked away over the lawn, past the pool with the lily pads and the stone bullfrog along the side of the house and out to the car.
Pete Marcus swung the door open. Delaguerra got in and sat down and put his head far back against the seat, slumped down in the car and closed his eyes. He said flatly: “Take it easy, Pete. My head hurts like hell.”
Marcus started the car and turned into the street, drove slowly back along De Neve Lane towards town. The tree-shaded house disappeared behind them. The tall trees finally hid it.
When they were a long way from it Delaguerra opened his eyes again.
GUNS AT CYRANO’S
1
Ted Carmady liked the rain; liked the feel of it, the sound of it, the smell of it. He got out of his LaSalle coupe and stood for a while by the side entrance to the Carondelet, the high collar of his blue suede ulster tickling his ears, his hands in his pockets and a limp cigarette sputtering between his lips. Then he went in past the barbershop and the drugstore and the perfume shop with its rows of delicately lighted bottles, ranged like the ensemble in the finale of a Broadway musical.
He rounded a gold-veined pillar and got into an elevator with a cushioned floor.
“’Lo Albert. A swell rain. Nine.”
The slim tired-looking kid in pale blue and silver held a white-gloved hand against the closing doors, said: “Jeeze, you think I don’t know your floor, Mister Carmady?”
He shot the car up to nine without looking at his signal light, whooshed the doors open, then leaned suddenly against the cage and closed his eyes.
Carmady stopped on his way out, flicked a sharp glance from bright brown eyes. “What’s the matter, Albert? Sick?”
The boy worked a pale smile on his face. “I’m workin’ double shift. Corky’s sick. He’s got boils. I guess maybe I didn’t eat enough.”
The tall, brown-eyed man fished a crumpled five-spot out of his pocket, snapped it under the boy’s nose. The boy’s eyes bulged. He heaved upright.
“Jeeze, Mister Carmady. I didn’t mean—”
“Skip it, Albert. What’s a fin between pals? Eat some extra meals on me.”
He got out of the car and started along the corridor. Softly, under his breath, he said: “Sucker.”
The running man almost knocked him off his feet. He rounded the turn fast, lurched past Carmady’s shoulder, ran for the elevator.
“Down!” He slammed through the closing doors.
Carmady saw a white set face under a pulled-down hat that was wet with rain; two empty black eyes set very close. Eyes in which there was a peculiar stare he had seen before. A load of dope.
The car dropped like lead. Carmady looked at the place where it had been for a long moment, then he went on down the corridor and around the turn.
He saw the girl lying half in and half out of the open door of 914.
She lay on her side, in a sheen of steel-gray lounging pajamas, her cheek pressed into the nap of the hall carpet, her head a mass of thick corn-blond hair, waved with glassy precision. Not a hair looked out of place. She was young, very pretty, and she didn’t look dead.
> Carmady slid down beside her, touched her cheek. It was warm. He lifted the hair softly away from her head and saw the bruise.
“Sapped.” His lips pressed back against his teeth.
He picked her up in his arms, carried her through a short hallway to the living room of a suite, put her down on a big velour davenport in front of some gas logs.
She lay motionless, her eyes shut, her face bluish behind the make-up. He shut the outer door and looked through the apartment, then went back to the hallway and picked up something that gleamed white against the baseboard. It was a bone-handled .22 automatic, sevens hot. He sniffed it, dropped it into his pocket and went back to the girl.
He took a big hammered-silver flask out of his inside breast pocket and unscrewed the top, opened her mouth with his fingers and poured whiskey against her small white teeth. She gagged and her head jerked out of his hand. Her eyes opened. They were deep blue, with a tint of purple. Light came into them and the light was brittle.
He lit a cigarette and stood looking down at her. She moved a little more. After a while she whispered: “I like your whiskey. Could I have a little more?”
He got a glass from the bathroom, poured whiskey into it. She sat up very slowly, touched her head, groaned. Then she took the glass out of his hand and put the liquor down with a practised flip of the wrist.
“I still like it,” she said. “Who are you?”
She had a deep soft voice. He liked the sound of it. He said: “Ted Carmady. I live down the hall in 937.”
“I got a dizzy spell, I guess.”
“Uh-huh. You got sapped, angel.” His bright eyes looked at her probingly. There was a smile tucked to the corners of his lips.
Her eyes got wider. A glaze came over them, the glaze of a protective enamel.