“I mean she’s the original jealous and vindictive female that all the others are copied from; she’s had her spurs in him ever since they were married.” Bill finished his coffee. “She was a plenty bad actor when I knew her back in Chi, and she’s had her nose full of junk for the last couple years — that makes her three times as bad...”
I said: “Heroin?”
Bill bobbed his head.
I said: “I didn’t know about that...”
Bill grinned, said: “You don’t get around very much. You’re the kind of bug they publish the fan magazines for.”
I had an idea. It turned out to be my only good idea for the day, which isn’t saying a hell of a lot for it. I went back over to the hotel and called the cameraman Gleason from downstairs. I asked him if Sheila Dale had come back with the rest of the company.
Gleason said: “Huh-uh. We finished all the scenes she was in yesterday — she flew back last night.”
I went up to my room and got Tony’s automatic. When I went back downstairs Fraley had come over from the Derby and was talking to the girl at the cigar counter. I asked him if he had any idea who Dale got her stuff from and he said he supposed it was Mike Gorman, or at least Gorman would have a line on it. I looked up Steinlen’s home address in the telephone book and went out and got into a cab.
On the way out to North Hollywood I stopped at the apartment house on Highland Avenue where Gorman lived. A blonde gal in a green kimono came to the door and said Mike was asleep. I said it was important and went past her into the bedroom. Mike was lying on the bed with his clothes on. He was pretty drunk.
The blonde had followed me into the bedroom; I told her I wanted to talk to Mike alone and she made a few nasty remarks and went out.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and asked Mike if he’d been peddling junk to Dale. He laughed as if that was a very wild idea and shook his head and said: “Certainly not.”
I said: “Listen, Mike — something big is going to break and you’re going to be roped into it. If you’ll be on the level about this with me I can fix it.”
He shook his head again and said: “I haven’t sold any stuff for six months. It’s too tough...”
I got up and looked down at him and said: “All right, Mike — I tried to help you.”
When I started out of the room he sat up and swung around to sit on the edge of the bed. He said, “Wait a minute,” and when I turned around and went back he said: “What’s it all about?”
I used a lot of big words and asked him again about Dale and he hemmed and hawed and finally said he wasn’t Dale’s regular connection but he’d sold her some stuff a few times. He said he’d never done business with Dale personally — it was always through her maid, a German girl named Boehme.
I told Mike I’d see that his name didn’t get mixed up with what I referred to mysteriously as the “Case” and went back out to the cab.
On the way out through Cahuenga Pass I had one of those trick hunches that I was being followed but I couldn’t spot anybody and I wasn’t trusting my hunches very much by that time, anyway.
It was pretty dark. The Steinlen house was lit up like a Christmas tree upstairs. I told the driver to wait and walked up the driveway and around to the back door. A big Negress opened the door.
I said: “I want to see Miss Boehme. It is very important.”
The Negress told me to wait and in a minute a very thin, washed-out woman with dull black hair and very light watery blue eyes came to the door, said: “I am Miss Boehme. What do you want?”
I stepped close to her and spoke in a very low voice. I told her I was a friend of Gorman’s, that Gorman had been picked up and that his address-book with her name in it as a customer had been found by the police. I told her Gorman had sent word to me to reach all his customers and tell them to get rid of any junk they had around.
She acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about for a minute, but I pressed it and she finally said okey and thanked me.
Then I told her I had an idea how she could beat the whole business and get her name out of it and said I wanted to use the phone. I went past her into the kitchen when I asked about the phone because I didn’t want to give her a chance to stall out of it. I wanted to get into the house.
She looked pretty scared in the light. She took me through the kitchen, through a dark hall, into a little room that was more a library than anything else. I asked her if there were any servants in the house that might be listening in at any of the other phone extensions and she said only the cook — the Negress. She said Mrs. Steinlen was upstairs lying down.
The phone was on a stand near one of the windows. There was a big chair beside it and I sat down and picked up the phone. There wasn’t very much light in the room: there were two big heavily shaded floor lamps and one small table lamp on a desk in one corner. There was enough light though to watch the Boehme woman’s face.
I dialed a number and then I pushed the receiver-hook down with my elbow so that the call didn’t register and then I let the hook up again. I was turning my body to watch Boehme when I clicked the hook — she didn’t see it. She was standing by the table in the middle of the room, staring at me and looking pretty scared.
When I’d waited long enough for somebody to have answered I said: “Hello, Chief. This is Red. I’m out at the Steinlen house — I’ve got Boehme and it all happened the way we’d figured... Yeah. Mrs. Steinlen flew back from Phoenix last night. She’d had some kind of steer that Steinlen was cheating so she didn’t let him know she was coming she thought she might walk in on something. She did... she walked in on the telephone call from Mae Jackman and listened in on the phone downstairs. She got Mae’s address from that and sneaked back out and jumped in her car and went over there... Sure — she killed Mae...”
I was guessing, watching Boehme. She’d turned a very nice shade of nile green; she was leaning against the table and her eyes looked like the eyes of a blind woman.
I went on, into the phone: “Steinlen didn’t know anything about it — he went over and waited for Mae on the corner of Rosewood and Larchmont and she didn’t show so he came home about four. Mrs. Steinlen hid out some place — probably with a friend or at a trick hotel where she wouldn’t be recognized — Steinlen didn’t even know she was back from location till this afternoon. Then she went to the studio and either scared Steinlen into his number or killed him herself and made it look like suicide — and I’ll lay six, two and even she did it herself... Uh-huh — a nice quiet girl...”
Boehme straightened up and turned slowly and started for the door.
I raised my head from the phone and said: “Wait a minute, baby.” I took Tony’s gun out of my pocket and held it on my lap.
Boehme stopped and turned and stared at the gun a minute without expression. Then she swayed a little and sank down to her knees, leaned forward and put her hands on the floor. I put the phone down and stood up and took two or three steps towards Boehme.
A woman’s voice said: “You’re a very smart man, aren’t you?” The voice was very soft, with a faint metallic quality underneath, like thin silk tearing.
Boehme toppled over sidewise and lay still.
I turned my head slowly and looked at the doorway on my left. There was a woman there in the semi-darkness of the hallway. As I looked at her she came forward into a little light; she was a very beautiful woman with soft golden hair caught into a big knot at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were large, heavily shadowed; her mouth was very red, very sharply cut. She wore a close-fitting light blue negligee and she held a heavy nickel-plated revolver very steadily in her right hand, its muzzle focused squarely on my stomach.