The lights tilted down, got brighter. They were coming down the slope of the dirt road into the bowl. I could hear the dull, idling sound of a small motor now.
Halfway down the car stopped. A spotlight at the side of the windshield clicked on and swung to one side. It lowered, held steady on some point I couldn’t see. The spot clicked off again and the car came slowly on down the slope.
At the bottom it turned a little so that its headlights raked the black sedan. I took my upper lip between my teeth and didn’t feel myself biting it until I tasted the blood.
The car swung a little more. Its lights went out abruptly. Its motor died and once more the night became large and empty and black and silent. Nothing — no movement, except the crickets and tree frogs far off that had been droning all the time, only I hadn’t been hearing them. Then a door latch snapped and there was a light, quick step on the ground and a beam of light cut across the top of my head like a sword.
Then a laugh. A girl’s laugh — strained, taut as a mandolin wire. And the white beam jumped under the big black car and hit my feet.
The girl’s voice said sharply: «All right, you. Come out of there with your hands up — and very damned empty! I’ve got you covered!»
I didn’t move.
The voice stabbed at me again. «Listen, I’ve got three slugs for your feet, mister, and seven more for your tummy, and spare clips, and I change them plenty fast. Coming?»
«Put that toy up!» I snarled. «Or I’ll blow it out of your hand.» My voice sounded like somebody else’s voice. It was hoarse and thick.
«Oh, a hard-boiled gentleman.» There was a little quaver in the voice now. Then it hardened again, «Coming? I’ll count three. Look at all the odds I’m giving you — twelve big fat cylinders to hide behind — or is it sixteen? Your feet will hurt you though. And anklebones take years to get well when they’ve been hurt, and sometimes —»
I straightened up and looked into her flashlight. «I talk too much when I’m scared, too,» I said.
«Don’t — don’t move another inch! Who are you?»
«A bum private dick — detective to you. Who cares?»
I started around the car towards her. She didn’t shoot. When I was six feet from her I stopped.
«You stay right there!» she snapped angrily — after I had stopped.
«Sure. What were you looking at back there, with your windshield spotlight?»
«A man.»
«Hurt bad?»
«I’m afraid he’s dead,» she said simply. «And you look half dead yourself.»
«I’ve been sapped,» I said. «It always makes me dark under the eyes.»
«A nice sense of humor,» she said. «Like a morgue attendant.»
«Let’s look him over,» I said gruffly. «You can stay behind me with your popgun, if it makes you feel any safer.»
«I never felt safer in my life,» she said angrily, and backed away from me.
I circled the little car she had come in, An ordinary little car, nice and clean and shiny under what was left of the moon. I heard her steps hehind me but I didn’t pay any attention to her. About halfway up the slope a few feet off to the side I saw his foot.
I put my own little flash on him and then the girl added hers. I saw him all. He was smeared to the ground, on his back, at the base of a bush. He was in that bag-of-clothes position that always means the same thing.
The girl didn’t speak. She kept away from me and breathed hard and held her light as steadily as any tough old homicide veteran.
One of his hands was flung out in a frozen gesture. The fingers were curled. The other hand was under him and his overcoat was twisted as though he had been thrown out and rolled. His thick blond hair was matted with blood, black as shoe polish under the moon, and there was more of it on his face and there was a gray ooze mixed in with the blood. I didn’t see his hat.
Then was when I ought to have got shot, Up to that instant I hadn’t even thought of the packet of money in my pocket. The thought came to me so quickly now, jarred me so hard, that I jammed a hand down into my pocket. It must have looked exactly like a hand going for a gun.
The pocket was quite empty. I took the hand out and looked back at her.
«Mister,» she half sighed, if I hadn’t made my mind up about your face —»
«I had ten grand,» I said. «It was his money. I was carrying it for him. It was a pay-off. I just remembered the money. And you’ve got the sweetest set of nerves I ever met on a woman. I didn’t kill him.»
«I didn’t think you killed him,» she said. «Somebody hated him to smash his head open like that.»
«I hadn’t known him long enough to hate him,» I said. «Hold the flash down again.»
I knelt and went through his pockets, trying not to move him much. He had loose silver and bills, keys in a tooled leather case, the usual billfold with the usual window for a driver’s licence and the usual insurance cards behind the licence. No money in the folder. I wondered why they had missed his trouser pockets. Panicked by the light, perhaps. Otherwise they’d have stripped him down to his coat lining. I held more stuff up in her light: two fine handkerchiefs as white and crisp as dry snow; half a dozen paper match folders from swank night traps; a silver cigarette case as heavy as a buggy weight and full of his imported straightcuts; another cigarette case, with a tortoise-shell frame and embroidered silk sides, each side a writhing dragon. I tickled the catch open and there were three long cigarettes under the elastic, Russians, with hollow mouthpieces. I pinched one. It felt old, dry.
«Maybe for ladies,» I said. «He smoked others.»
«Or maybe jujus,» the girl said behind me, breathing on my neck. «I knew a lad who smoked them once. Could I look?»
I passed the case up to her and she poked her flash into it until I growled at her to put it on the ground again. There wasn’t anything else to examine. She snapped the case shut and handed it back and I put it in his breast pocket.
«That’s all. Whoever tapped him down was afraid to wait and clean up. Thanks.»
I stood up casually and turned and speared the little gun out of her hand.
«Darn it, you didn’t have to get rough!» she snapped. «Give,» I said. «Who are you, and how come you ride around this place at midnight?»
She pretended I had hurt her hand, put the flash on it and looked at it carefully.
«I’ve been nice to you, haven’t I?» she complained. «I’m burning up with curiosity and scared and I haven’t asked you a single question, have I?»
«You’ve been swell,» I said. «But I’m in a spot where I can’t fool around. Who are you? And douse the flash now. We don’t need light any more.»
She put it out and the darkness lightened for us gradually until we could see the outlines of the bushes and the dead man’s sprawled body and the glare in the southeastern sky that would be Santa Monica.
«My name is Carol Pride,» she said. «I live in Santa Monica. I try to do feature stories for a newspaper syndicate. Sometimes I can’t get sleepy at night and I go out riding — just anywhere. I know all this country like a book. I saw your little light flickering around down in the hollow and it seemed to me it was pretty cold for young love — if they use lights.»
«I wouldn’t know,» I said. «I never did. So you have spare clips for this gun. Would you have a permit for it?»
I hefted the little weapon. It felt like a Colt.25 in the dark. It had a nice balance for a small gun. Plenty of good men have been put to sleep with.25’s.
«Certainly I have a permit. That was just bluff about the spare clips though.»