Kastner twisted on the couch. Suddenly he spoke very rapidly, as if he wanted to say a great many things all at once: “Eddie waited down on the street to give me a buzz on the downstairs bell when you started up. Rose had called Reilly an’ he was all set with three men to make the pinch — two in front an’ one in the alley.”
Kells asked: “How come you sapped Dave?”
“He was putting on an act for the girl so she wouldn’t think he was in on it. He got too realistic.”
Kells looked at Fay, spoke to Kastner: “I thought Reilly was Lee Fenner’s man.”
“He was. He was Fenner’s best spot in the Police Department until Rose started selling him big ideas.” Kastner’s little face was growing very white.
Kells said: “There’ll be a doctor here in a minute — I sent the launch ashore for one.” Then he walked to a port and looked out at the paling sky. He spoke without turning: “Reilly’s the Lou that Rose and O’Donnell were waiting for at the hotel...”
“And he’s the Lou they were waiting for on the boat — so they could let you have it resisting arrest — make it legal.”
Kells went over to the desk. Fay was abstractedly playing with a small penknife; the woman still sat with her face between her hands.
Kells turned his head toward Kastner, asked very casually: “Who popped you?”
Kastner smiled a little. He said: “I don’t remember.”
The woman laughed. She put her hands on the table and threw her head back and laughed very loudly. Kastner looked at her and there was something inexpressibly cold and savage in his eyes.
Kells bent over the desk and took up a pen and wrote a few words on a piece of paper. He took the paper and the pen over to Kastner, said: “It’ll make things a lot simpler if you sign this.”
The little man glanced at the paper and his eyes were suddenly dull, empty. He said: “Nuts.” He grinned at Kells, and then his face tightened and he died.
Kells and Fay sat at a table in Fay’s apartment in Long Beach. The woman, Granquist, was asleep in a big chair. It was about eight-thirty, and outside it was gray and hot.
Kells said: “That’s the way it’ll have to be. None of us is worth a nickel as a witness.”
Fay sipped his coffee and sat still for a little while; then he got up and went to the telephone and called Long Distance. He asked for a number in Los Angeles, waited a while, said: “Hello. This is Grant Fay. I want to talk to Fenner...” There was a pause and then he said: “Wake him up.”
He waited a little while and then he said: “Hello, Lee... There’s a friend of mine here with an idea...”
Fay gestured and Kells got up and went to the phone. He said: “This is Kells... Reilly’s double-crossing you. He and Jack Rose aim to take over the town. They’re importing a lot of boys from the East, and you’re on the wrong side of their list...”
There was a long silence during which Kells held the receiver to his ear and grinned at Fay. Then he said: “My idea is that you reach Ruth Perry right away. She’s incommunicado but you can beat that. Tell her there isn’t any use trying to protect Dave any longer for Haardt’s murder. Tell her that I said so... Then see that she gets bail. When Dave finds out she’s confessed, he’ll have a lot of things to tell you... Sure — he’s guilty as hell.”
Kells hung up and went back to the table. He said: “That oughta be that.” He sat down and poured himself another cup of coffee and inclined his head toward Granquist.
Fay said: “She came out to the boat last night and said she’d been here a week or so from Detroit. She says she’s got a million dollars’ worth of information that she wants to peddle for five grand. She says it’ll crack the administration wide open and that we can call our own shots next election.”
Kells laughed quietly.
Fay went on expressionlessly: “I told her I wasn’t in politics and wasn’t in the market for her stuff, but she thought I was kidding her. She soaked up a couple bottles of Scotch and finally got down to twenty-five hundred. A few more slugs and she’d probably sell for a dollar ninety-eight. She said she needs new shoes.”
Fay’s Negro houseboy came in from the kitchen and cleared away the breakfast things.
Kells stood up. He said: “I’m going to take a nap while the wheels of justice make a couple turns.” He went to the bedroom door, turned and spoke to the boy: “Call me in two hours.” He went into the bedroom.
When the houseboy woke Kells, Fay had gone. Kells asked the boy to make some more coffee, shook Granquist awake.
“How about some Java?”
She said: “Sure.”
They sat at the table and drank a great deal of coffee. Kells sent the boy out for a paper. RUTH PERRY CONFESSES HUSBAND SHOT HAARDT was spread across the front page.
Kells said: “Ain’t nature wonderful!” He got up and put on a suit-coat Fay had given him. “I’m going to town.”
Granquist said: “Me too. Can I ride with you?”
They went down and got into a cab and went to the parking station near the P & O wharf where Kells had left Cullen’s car.
It was very hot, driving into Los Angeles. Kells took off his coat and drove in his shirtsleeves. His face was battered and Fay’s shoes hurt his feet and he wanted very much to get into a bathtub and then get into bed.
He said: “Did you come out with Kastner and O’Donnell?”
Granquist looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, smiled sleepily. She said: “Uh huh.”
“You O’Donnell’s girl?”
“My God, no! I just came along for the ride.” She slid down into the corner of the seat and closed her eyes.
Kells said: “Do you think O’Donnell shot Kastner?”
He looked at her. She nodded with her eyes closed.
He parked the car off Eighth Street and they went into a side entrance of the hotel, up the service stairway to Kells’ room. He said: “I’ll have to go downtown for questioning this afternoon — if they don’t pick me up before. I want to have four or five hot baths and a little shut-eye first.”
He went into the bathroom and turned on the water, took off his clothes and put on a long dark-green robe. When he came out, Granquist had curled up on the divan, was asleep. She had taken off her hat — awry honey-colored hair curved over her face and throat.
The telephone buzzed while Kells was in the tub. It buzzed again after he’d got out. He answered it, stared vacantly out the window and said: “All right — put her on.” Then he said: “Hello, Ruth... Swell... No, I’ve got to go out right away and I won’t be back until tonight. I’ll try to give you a ring then... Sure... Okay, baby — ’bye.”
Granquist stirred in sleep, threw one arm above her head, sighed. Her eyelids fluttered. Kells stood there for a while looking at her.
At one-thirty, Kells got out of a cab and went into the Sixth Street entrance of the Hayward Hotel. In the elevator he said: “Four.” Around two turns, down a short corridor, he knocked at a heavy old-fashioned door.
A voice yelled: “Come in.”
There were three men in the small room. One sat at a typewriter near the window. He had a leathery good-natured face and he spoke evenly into the telephone beside him: “Sure... Sure...”
The other two were playing cooncan on a suit-box balanced on their laps. One of them put down his hand, put the suit-box carefully on the floor, stood up. Kells said: “Fenner.”
The man at the telephone put one hand over the mouthpiece, turned his head to call through an open door behind him: “A gent to see you, Lee.”
The man who had stood up walked to the door and nodded at someone in the next room and turned to Kells. “In here.”
Kells went past him into the room and closed the door behind him.