«Yeah?»
«Hello, Moss,» De Spain said.
«Huh?»
«This is Al De Spain, Moss. I’m in on the play.»
Silence — a long, murderous silence. Then the thick, hoarse voice said: «Who’s that with you?»
«A pal from L.A. He’s okay.» More silence, then, «What’s the angle?»
«You alone in there?»
«Except for a dame. She can’t hear you.»
«Where’s Gneb?»
«Yeah — where is he? What’s the angle, copper? Snap it up!»
De Spain spoke as calmly as though he had been at home in an armchair, beside the radio. «We’re workin’ for the same guy, Moss.»
«Haw, haw,» Big Chin said.
«Matson’s been found dead in L.A., and those city dicks have already connected him with the Austrian dame. We gotta step fast. The big shot’s up north alibi-ing himself, but what does that do for us?»
The voice said, «Aw, baloney,» but there was a note of doubt it. ~
«It looks like a stink,» De Spain said. «Come on, open up. You can see we don’t have anything to hold on you.»
«By the time I got around to the door you would have,» Big Chin said.
«You ain’t that yellow,» De Spain sneered.
The shade rustled at the window as if a hand had let go of it and the sash moved up into place. My hand started up.
De Spain growled: «Don’t be a sap. This guy is our case. We want him all in one piece.»
Faint steps sounded inside the house. A lock turned in the front door and it opened and a figure stood there, shadowed, a big Colt in his hand. Big Chin was a good name for him. His big, broad jaw stuck out from his face like a cowcatcher. He was a bigger man than De Spain — a good deal bigger.
«Snap it up,» he said, and started to move back.
De Spain, his hands hanging loose and empty, palms turned out, took a quiet step forward on his left foot and kicked Big Chin in the groin — just like that — without the slightest hesitation, and against a gun.
Big Chin was still fighting — inside himself — when we got our guns out. His right hand was fighting to press the trigger and hold the gun up. His sense of pain was fighting down everything else but the desire to double up and yell. That internal struggle of his wasted a split second and he had neither shot nor yelled when we slammed him. De Spain hit him on the head and I hit him on the night wrist. I wanted to hit his chin — it fascinated me — but his wrist was nearest the gun. The gun dropped and Big Chin dropped, almost as suddenly, then plunged forward against us. We caught and held him and his breath blew hot and rank in our faces, then his knees went to pieces and we fell into the hallway on top of him.
De Spain grunted and struggled to his feet and shut the door. Then he rolled the big, groaning, half-conscious man over and dragged his hands behind him and snapped cuffs on his wrists.
We went down the hall. There was a dim light in the room to the left, from a small table lamp with a newspaper over it. De Spain lifted the paper off and we looked at the woman on the bed. At least he hadn’t murdered her. She lay in sleazy pajamas with her eyes wide open and staring and half mad with fear. Mouth, wrists, ankles and knees were taped and the ends of thick wads of cotton stuck out of her ears. A vague bubbling sound came from behind the slab of two-inch adhesive that plastered her mouth shut. De Spain bent the lampshade a little. Her face was mottled. She had bleached hair, dark at the roots, and a thin, scraped look about the bones of her face.
De Spain said: «I’m a police officer. Arc you Mrs. Greb?»
The woman jerked and stared at him agonizingly. I pulled the cotton out of hen ears and said: «Try again.»
«Are you Mrs. Greb?»
She nodded.
De Spain took hold of the tape at the side of her mouth. Hen eyes winced and he jerked it hard and capped a hand down oven hen mouth at once. He stood there, bending over, the tape in his left hand — a big, dark, dead-pan copper who didn’t seem to have any more nerves than a cement mixer.
«Promise not to scream?» he said.
The woman forced a nod and he took his hand away. «Where’s Greb?» he asked.
He pulled the rest of the tape off her.
She swallowed and took hold of hen forehead with her rednailed hand and shook hen head. «I don’t know. He hasn’t been home.»
«What talk was there when the gorilla came in?»
«There wasn’t any,» she said dully, «The bell rang and I opened the door and he walked in and grabbed mc. Then the big brute tied me up and asked me where my husband was and I said I didn’t know and he slapped my face a few times, but after a while he seemed to believe me. He asked mc why my husband didn’t have the car and I said he always walked to work and never took the car. Then he just sat in the conner and didn’t move or speak. He didn’t even smoke.»
«Did he use the telephone?» De Spain asked.
«No.»
«You ever seen him before?»
«No.»
«Get dressed,» De Spain said. «You gotta find some friends you can go to for the rest of the night.»
She stared at him and sat up slowly on the bed and rumpled her hair. Then hen mouth opened and De Spain clapped his hand over it again, hard.
«Hold it,» he said sharply. «Nothing’s happened to him that we know of. But I guess you wouldn’t be too damn surprised if it did.
The woman pushed his hand away and stood up off the bed and walked around it to a bureau and took out a pint of whisky. She unscrewed the top and drank from the bottle. «Yeah,» she said in a strong, coarse voice. «What would you do, if you had to soap a bunch of doctors for every nickel you made and there was damn few nickels to be made at that?» She took another drink.
De Spain said: «I might switch blood samples.»
The woman stared at him blankly. He looked at mc and shrugged. «Maybe it’s happy powder,» he said. «Maybe he peddles a little of that. It must be damn little, to go by how he lives.» He looked around the room contemptuously. «Get dressed, lady.»
We went out of the room and shut the door. De Spain bent down oven Big Chin, lying on his back and half on his side on the floor. The big man groaned steadily with his mouth open, neither completely out nor fully aware of what was going on around him. De Spain, still bending down in the dim light he’d put on in the hall, looked at the piece of adhesive in the palm of his hand and laughed suddenly. He slammed the tape hard over Big Chin’s mouth.
«Think we can make him walk?» he asked. «I’d hate like hell to have to carry him.»
«I don’t know,» I said. «I’m just the swampcn on this route. Walk to where?»
«Up in the hills where it’s quiet and the birds sing,» De Spain said grimly.
I sat on the running board of the car with the big bell-shaped flashlight hanging down between my knees. The light wasn’t too good, but it seemed to be good enough for what De Spain was doing to Big Chin. A roofed reservoir was just above us and the ground sloped away from that into a deep canyon. There were two hilltop houses about half a mile away, both dark, with a glisten of moonlight on their stucco walls. It was cold up there in the hills, but the air was clean and the stars were like pieces of polished chromium. The light haze over Bay City seemed to be fan off, as if in another county, but it was only a fast ten-minute drive.
De Spain had his coat off. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up and his wrists and his big hairless arms looked enormous in the faint hard light. His coat lay on the ground between him and Big Chin. His gun holster lay on the coat, with the gun in the holster, and the butt towards Big Chin. The coat was a little to one side so that between De Spain and Big Chin there was a small space of scuffed moonlit gravel. The gun was to Big Chin’s right and to De Spain’s left