“They ought to pen up their goats once in a while,” chuckled Kearny’s companion. “They stink.”
More wooden steps in the fog. They paused where a narrow path led off into the grayness.
“Catfish Row,” muttered the stocky detective in Kearny’s ear. “My man ought to be around some—” He broke off as a short dark shape materialized at their elbow. “Dick?”
“Right.”
“She’s still inside?”
“Right.”
The newcomer pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the fog from his sharp-featured irritable face. Kearny got a vagrant whiff of scent.
“We’re going in,” breathed the stocky detective. “If the Bannock girl comes out, stick with her.”
“Right,” said Dick.
They started along an uneven brick path slippery with moss, then began climbing another set of narrow wooden steps which paralleled those on Filbert.
“Your man is talkative,” said Kearny drily.
“Canadian,” said the other. “A good detective.”
“But you don’t trust him in this.” Kearny then asked the question he hadn’t asked back in the office. “Why?”
Wright shrugged irritably. “I’ve got enough to do without having to watch him.” He didn’t elaborate.
They stopped and peered through the gloom at a three-storied narrow wooden house that looked egg-yolk yellow in the fog. Dripping bushes flanked it both uphill and down. There was a half basement; the uphill side had not been excavated from the rock. Myra Bannock must have entered by one of the blacked-out windows which flanked the gray basement door.
The two detectives climbed past it to the first-floor level. Here a small porch cantilevered out over the recessed basement. The front door and windows were decorated to echo the high-peaked roof of the house itself.
A big black man answered the bell. The hallway behind him was so dark that his face showed only highlights: brows, cheekbones, nose, lips, a gleam of eyeballs. He was wearing red. Red fez, red silk Nehru jacket over red striped shirt, red harem pants with baggy legs, red shoes with upturned toes.
“As-salaam aleikum,” he said.
“Mr. Maxwell, please,” said Wright briskly.
The door began to close. The dumpy detective stuck his foot in it and immediately a gong boomed in the back of the house. Kearny’s companion sank a fist into the middle of the red shirt as Kearny’s shoulder slammed into the door.
The guard was on his hands and knees in the dim hallway, gasping. His eyes rolled up at Kearny’s as the detectives stormed by him.
A door slammed up above. They climbed broad circular stairs in the gloom, guns out. Their shoulders in unison splintered a locked door at the head of the stairs. The room was blue-lit, seemingly empty except for incense, thick carpets, and strewn clothing of both sexes. Then they saw three women and a man crowded into a corner, a grotesque frightened jumble, all of them nude.
“Topless and bottomless,” grunted Kearny.
“But no Myra,” said Wright in a disgust that was practical, not moral. “Let’s dust.”
As they came out of the room, feet pounded down the stairs. They’d been faked out — drawn into the room by the slamming door so that someone who was trapped upstairs by their entrance could get by them. Peering down, Kearny saw Raymond Edwards’ head just sliding from view around the stairs’ old-fashioned newel post. Edwards. The real-estate promoter who didn’t promote real estate.
Kearny went over the banister, landed with a jar that clipped his jaw against his knee, stumbled to his feet, and charged down the hall. He went through an open doorway to meet a black fist traveling very rapidly in the other direction. The doorkeeper.
“Ungh!” Kearny went down, gagging, but managed to wave Wright through the door where Edwards and the black man had just disappeared.
There was a crash within, and furious curses. A gun went off. Once more. Kearny tottered through the doorway, an old man again, to see another door across the room just closing and the stocky detective and the guard locked in a curious dance. The black man had the detective’s arms pinned at his side, and the detective was trying to shoot his captor in the foot.
Kearny’s Luger, swung in a wide backhand arc, made a thwucking sound against the black’s skull. The black shook his head, turned, grabbed Kearny, who dropped the Luger as he was bounced off the far wall. A hand came up under his jaw and shoved. He started to yell at the ceiling. His neck was going to break.
The black shuddered like a ship hitting a reef. Again. Again. Yet again. His hands went away. Wright was standing over the downed man, looking at his gun in a puzzled way.
“I hit him with it four times before he went down. Four times.”
“Edwards?” Kearny managed to gasp.
“That way.” He shook his head. “Four times.”
The door was locked. They broke through after several tries and went downstairs to the empty cellar. But there was another door; the durable detective kicked off the lock. A red glow and a chemical smell emerged.
“Darkroom,” said Kearny.
A girl came out stiffly, her eyes wide with shock. It was Myra Bannock. A solid meaty girl in a fawn pants suit with a white ruffled Restoration blouse. Square-toed high heels made her two inches taller than either of them.
“Did you kill him, sister?”
“Y — yes.”
Over her shoulder Kearny could see Edwards on the floor with one hand still stretched up into an open squat iron safe. He was dressed in 19th Century splendor: black velvet even to his shirt and shoes. Once in the temple, a contact wound with powder bums. Kearny looked at his watch automatically. They’d been in the house exactly six minutes. Six minutes? It seemed like a weekend.
“Why’d you come here tonight?” demanded the other detective.
“Pic-pictures. I wanted—” Her jaw started to tremble.
“What kind of scam was Edwards running?” Kearny wondered.
“Cult stuff, I’m sure,” said Wright. “Turning on wealthy young matrons to the Age of Aquarius or something. Getting them up here, doping them up, taking pictures of them doing things they’d pay to keep their parents or husbands from seeing.” He turned sharply to the girl. “What kind of pictures?”
“Ter-terrible. Nasty things. We — he would give us ‘sacred’ wine to drink. It — distorted — able to see beyond… beyond the shadow. At the time everything seemed right.” A long shudder ran through her flesh like the slow roll of an ocean wave.
“You and Ruth both?”
“Yes. Both. Together, even. With my own sister, with Irma—” She drew a ragged breath. “I sneaked in to get the negatives. I found the safe — but it was locked. Then Raymond ran in. I was behind the door.” She suddenly giggled, a little girl sound. “He opened the safe, and I saw the pictures inside, so I walked up and — and I shot him. Just shot him.”
Without warning she started to cry, great racking sobs that twisted her face and aged her. The stocky detective was on his knees at the safe, dragging out a thick sheaf of Kodacolor negatives and a heavy stack of prints.
“Where’d you get the gun?” he asked over his shoulder.
“On Third Street,” she got out through her sobs. “We pawned our jewelry to pay for the pictures.”
“Same gun your sister was killed with?” asked Kearny.
“Does this have to go on and on?” she demanded suddenly, with an abrupt synthetic calmness. “I killed him. Just take me in and—”
“We’re private,” snapped Wright. “Hired by your father to find you girls. Tell us what happened up on Mount Diablo.”