«All right,» I said. «He carried mc up. Now what do we do?»
Shorty said: «I don’t get why he went to all that trouble.»
«Sapping a guy ain’t trouble,» De Spain said. «Pass oven that heater and wallet.»
Shorty hesitated, then passed them over. De Spain smelled the gun and dropped it carelessly into his side pocket, the one next to mc. He flipped the wallet open and held it down under the dashlight and then put it away. He started the car, turned it in the middle of the block, and shot back up Arguello Boulevard, turned east on that and pulled up in front of a liquor store with a red neon sign. The place was wide open, even at that hour of the night.
De Spain said over his shoulder: «Run inside and phone the desk, Shorty. Tell the sarge we got a hot lead and we’re on our way to pick up a suspect in the Brayton Avenue killing. Tell him to tell the chief his shirt is out.»
Shorty got out of the car, slammed the rear door, started to say something, then walked fast across the sidewalk into the store.
De Spain jerked the car into motion and hit forty in the first block. He laughed deep down in his chest. He made it fifty in the next block and then began to turn in and out of streets and finally he pulled to a stop again under a pepper tree outside a schoolhouse.
I got the gun when he reached forward for the parking brake. He laughed dryly and spat out of the open window.
«Okay,» he said. «That’s why I put it there. I talked to Violets M’Gee. That kid reporter called me up from L.A. They’ve found Matson. They’re sweating some apartment house guy right now.»
I slid away from him over to my corner of the car and held the gun loosely between my knees. «We’re outside the limits of Bay City, copper,» I told him. «What did M’Gce say?»
«He said he gave you a lead to Matson, but he didn’t know whether you had contacted him or not. This apartment house guy — I didn’t hear his name — was trying to dump a stiff in the alley when a couple of pnowlics jumped him. M’Gce said if you had contacted Matson and heard his story you would be down here getting in a jam, and would likely wake up sapped beside some stiff.»
«I didn’t contact Matson,» I said.
I could feel De Spain staring at me under his dark craggy brows. «But you’re down here in a jam,» he said.
I got a cigarette out of my pocket with my left hand and lit it with the dash lighten. I kept my right hand on the gun. I said: «I got the idea you were on the way out down here. That you weren’t even detailed on this killing. Now you’ve taken a prisoner across the city line. What does that make you?»
«A bucket of mud — unless I deliycr something good.»
«That’s what I am,» I said. «I guess we ought to team up and break these three killings.»
«Three?»
«Yeah. Helen Matson, Harry Matson and Doc Austrian’s wife. They all go together.»
«I ditched Shorty,» De Spain said quietly, «because he’s a little guy and the chief likes little guys and Shorty can put the blame on me. Where do we start?»
«We might start by finding a man named Grcb who runs a laboratory in the Physicians and Surgeons Building. I think he turned in a phony report on the Austrian death. Suppose they put out an alarm for you?»
«They use the L.A. air. They won’t use that to pick up one of their own cops.»
He leaned forward and started the can again.
«You might give mc my wallet,» I said. «So I can put this gun away.»
He laughed harshly and gave it to me.
SEVEN
BIG CHIN
The lab man lived on Ninth Street, on the wrong side of town. The house was a shapeless frame bungalow. A large dusty hydrangea bush and some small undernourished plants along the path looked like the work of a man who had spent his life trying to make something out of nothing.
De Spain doused the lights as we glided up front and said: «Whistle, if you need help. If any cops should crowd us, skin oven to Tenth and I’ll circle the block and pick you up. I don’t think they will, though. All they’re thinking of tonight is that dame on Brayton Avenue.»
I looked up and down the quiet block, walked across the street in foggy moonlight and up the walk to the house. The front door was set at night angles to the street in a front projection that looked like a room which had been added as an afterthought to the nest of the house. I pushed a bell and heard it ring somewhere in the back. No answer. I rang it twice more and tried the front door. It was locked.
I went down off the little porch and around the north side of the house towards a small garage on the back lot. Its doors were shut and locked with a padlock you could break with a strong breath. I bent over and shot my pocket flash under the loose doors. The wheels of a car showed. I went back to the front door of the house and knocked this time — plenty loud.
The window in the front room creaked and came down slowly from the top, about halfway. There was a shade pulled down behind the window and dankness behind the shade. A thick, hoarse voice said: «Yeah?»
«Mr. Greb?»
«Yeah.»
«I’d like to speak to you — on important business.»
«I gotta get my sleep, mister. Come back tomorrow.»
The voice didn’t sound like the voice of a laboratory technician. It sounded like a voice I had heard over the telephone once, a long time ago, early in the evening at the Tennyson Arms Apartments.
I said: «Well, I’ll come to your office then, Mr. Greb. What’s the address again?»
The voice didn’t speak for a moment. Then it said: «Aw, go on, beat it before I come out there and paste you one.»
«That’s no way to get business, Mr. Gneb,» I said. «Are you sure you couldn’t give mc just a few moments, now you’re up?»
«Pipe down. You’ll wake the wife. She’s sick. If I gotta come out there —»
«Good night, Mr. Cncb,» I said.
I went back down the walk in the soft, foggy moonlight. When I got across to the far side of the dark parked car I said: «It’s a two-man job. Some tough guy is in there. I think it’s the man I heard called Big Chin over the phone in L.A.»
«Gecz. The guy that killed Matson, huh?» De Spain came over to my side of the car and stuck his head out and spat clear oven a fireplug that must have been eight feet away. I didn’t say anything.
De Spain said: «If this guy you call Big Chin is Moss Lorcnz, I’ll know him. We might get in. On maybe we walk ourselves into some hot lead.»
«Just like the coppers do on the radio,» I said.
«You scared?»
«Me?» I said. «Sure I’m scared. The car’s in the garage, so either he’s got Grcb in there and is trying to make up his mind what to do with him —»
«If it’s Moss Lorenz, he don’t have a mind,» De Spain growled. «That guy is screwy except in two places — behind a gun and behind the wheel of a car.»
«And behind a piece of lead pipe,» I said. «What I was saying was, Greb might be out without his can and this Big Chin —»
De Spain bent over to look at the clock on the dash. «My guess would be he’s skipped. He’d be home by now. He’s got a tip to scram out of some trouble.»
«Will you go in there on won’t you?» I snapped. «Who would tip him?»
«Whoever fixed him in the fist place, if he was fixed.» De Spain clicked the door open and slid out of the car, stood looking oven it across the street. He opened his coat and loosened the gun in his shoulder clip. «Maybe I could kid him,» he said. «Keep your hands showing and empty. It’s our best chance.»
We went back across the street and up the walk, up on the porch. De Spain leaned on the bell.
The voice came growling at us again from the half-open window, behind the frayed dank green shade.