«You don’t walk like no drunk,» the cop said. «What’s the matter? No brakes?» The other cop had got the bumpers free and was climbing back under his wheel.
I took my hat off and bent my head. «Just an argument,» I said. «I got hit. It made me woozy for a minute.»
McCord made a mistake. He started running when he heard that. He vaulted across the parkway, jumped the wall and crouched. His footsteps thudded on turf.
That was my cue. «Holdup!» I snapped at the cop who was questioning me. «I was afraid to tell you!»
«Jeeze, the howling — !» he yelled, and tore a gun out of his holster. «Why’n’t you say so?» He jumped for the wall, «Circle the heap! We want that guy!» he yelled at the man in the sedan.
He was over the wall. Grunts. More feet pounding on the turf. A car stopped half a block away and a man started to get out of it but kept his foot on the running hoard. I could barely see him behind his dimmed headlights.
The cop in the prowl car charged at the hedge that bordered the bridle path, backed furiously, swung around and was off with screaming siren.
I jumped into McCord’s coupé, and jerked the starter. Distantly there was a shot, then two shots, then a yell. The siren died at a corner and picked up again.
I gave the coupé all it had and left the neighborhood. Far off, to the north, a lonely sound against the hills, a siren kept on wailing.
I ditched the coupé half a block from Wilshire and took a taxi in front of the Beverly-Wilshire. I knew I could be traced. That wasn’t important. The important thing was how soon.
From a cocktail bar in Hollywood I called Hiney. He was still on the job and still sour.
«Anything new on Skalla?»
«Listen,» he said nastily, «was you over to talk to that Shamey woman? Where are you?»
«Certainly I was,» I said. «I’m in Chicago.»
«You better come on home. Why was you there?»
«I thought she might know Beulah, of course. She did. Want to raise that bet a little?»
«Can the comedy. She’s dead.»
«Skalla —» I started to say.
«That’s the funny side,» he grunted. «He was there. Some nosy old — next door seen him. Only there ain’t a mark on her. She died natural. I kind of got tied up here, so I didn’t get over to see her.»
«I know how busy you are,» I said in what seemed to me a dead voice.
«Yeah. Well, hell, the doc don’t even know what she died of. Not yet.»
«Fear,» I said. «She’s the one that turned Skalla up eight years ago. Whisky may have helped a little.»
«Is that so?» Hiney said. «Well, well. We got him now anyways. We make him at Girard, headed north in a rent hack. We got the county and state law in on it. If he drops over to the Ridge, we nab him at Castaic. She was the one turned him up, huh? I guess you better come in, Carmady.»
«Not me,» I said. «Beverly Hills wants me for a hit-and-run. I’m a criminal myself now.»
I had a quick snack and some coffee before I took a taxi to Las Mores and Santa Monica and walked up to where I had left my roadster parked.
Nothing was happening around there except that some kid in the back of a car was strumming a ukelele.
I pointed my roadster towards Heather Street.
Heather Street was a gash in the side of a steep flat slope, at the top of Beachwood Drive. It curved around the shoulder enough so that even by daylight you couldn’t have seen much more than half a block of it at one time while you were on it.
The house I wanted was built downward, one of those clinging-vine effects, with a front door below the street level, a patio on the roof, a bedroom or two possibly in the basement, and a garage as easy to drive into as an olive bottle.
The garage was empty, but a big shiny sedan had its two right wheels off the road, on the shoulder of the bank. There were lights in the house.
I drove around the curb, parked, walked back along the smooth, hardly used cement and poked a fountain pen flash into the sedan. It was registered to one David Marineau, 1737 North Flores Avenue, Hollywood, California. That made me go back to my heap and get a gun out of a locked pocket.
I repassed the sedan, stepped down three rough stone steps and looked at the bell beside a narrow door topped by a lancet arch.
I didn’t push it, I just looked at it. The door wasn’t quite shut. A fairly wide crack of dim light edged around its panel. I pushed it an inch. Then I pushed it far enough to look in.
Then I listened. The silence of that house was what made me go in. It was one of those utterly dead silences that come after an explosion. Or perhaps I hadn’t eaten enough dinner. Anyway I went in.
The long living room went clear to the back, which wasn’t very far as it was a small house. At the back there were french doors and the metal railing of a balcony showed through the glass. The balcony would be very high above the slope of the hill, built as the house was.
There were nice lamps, nice chairs with deep sides, nice tables, a thick apricot-colored rug, two small cozy davenports, one facing and one right-angled to a fireplace with an ivory mantel and a miniature Winged Victory on that. A fire was laid behind the copper screen, but not lit.
The room had a hushed, warm smell. It looked like a room where people got made comfortable. There was a bottle of Vat 69 on a low table with glasses and a copper bucket, and tongs.
I fixed the door about as I had found it and just stood. Silence. Time passed. It passed in the dry whirr of an electric clock on a console radio, in the far-off hoot of an auto horn down on Beachwood half a mile below, in the distant hornet drone of a night-flying plane, in the metallic wheeze of a cricket under the house.
Then I wasn’t alone any longer.
Mrs. Marineau slid into the room at the far end, by a door beside the french doors. She didn’t make any more noise than a butterfly. She still wore the pillbox black hat and the burnt-orange tweeds, and they still looked like hell together. She had a small glove in her hand wrapped around the butt of a gun. I don’t know why. I never did find that out.
She didn’t see me at once and when she did it didn’t mean anything much. She just lifted the gun a little and slid along the carpet towards me, her lip clutched back so far that I couldn’t even see the teeth that clutched it,
But I had a gun out now myself. We looked at each other across our guns. Maybe she knew me. I hadn’t any idea from her expression.
I said, «You got them, huh?»
She nodded a little. «Just him’,» she said.
«Put the gun down, You’re all through with it.»
She lowered it a little. She hadn’t seemed to notice the Colt I was pushing through the air in her general direction. I lowered that too.
She said, «She wasn’t here.»
Her voice had a dry, impersonal sound, flat, without timbre.
«Miss Baring wasn’t here?» I asked.
«No.»
«Remember me?»
She took a better look at me but her face didn’t light up with any pleasure.
«I’m the guy that was looking for Miss Baring,» I said. «You told me where to come. Remember? Only Dave sent a logan to put the arm on me and ride me around while he came up here himself and promoted something. I couldn’t guess what.»
The brunette said, «You’re no cop. Dave said you were a fake.»
I made a broad, hearty gesture and moved a little closer to her, unobtrusively. «Not a city cop,» I admitted. «But a cop. And that was a long time ago. Things have happened since then. Haven’t they?»
«Yes,» she said. «Especially to Dave. Hee, hee.»
It wasn’t a laugh. It wasn’t meant to be a laugh. It was just a little steam escaping through a safety valve.
«Hee, hee,» I said. We looked at each other like a couple of nuts being Napoleon and Josephine.
The idea was to get close enough to grab her gun. I was still too far.