He smiled now. The smile hung at the corners of his mouth like cobwebs in the corners of an old ceiling. He didn’t even know it was there. «You interest me,» he said. «I am going to kill you, I think, but you interest me.»
I pointed to the electric sterilizer. «There arc a couple dozen medicos like you around Hollywood — needle-pushers. They run around at night with leather cases full of loaded hypodermics. They keep dopes and drunks from going screwy — for a while. Once in a while onc.of them becomes an addict and then there’s trouble. Maybe most of the people you fix up would land in the hoosegow or the psycho ward, if you didn’t take cane of them. It’s a cinch they would lose their jobs, if they have jobs. And some of them have pretty big jobs. But it’s dangerous because any sorehead can stick the Feds onto you and once they start checking your patients they’ll find one that will talk. You try to protect yourself. Part of the way by not getting all of your dope through legitimate channels. I’d say Conned got some of it for you, and that was why you had to let him take your wife and your money.»
Dr. Austrian said almost politely: «You don’t hold very much back, do you?»
«Why should I? This is just a man-to-man talk. I can’t prove any of it. That slipper Matson stole is good for a buildup, but it wouldn’t be worth a nickel in court. And any defense attorney would make a monkey out of a little squirt like this Greb, even if they ever brought him back to testify. But it might cost you a lot of money to keep your medical licence.»
«So it would be better for me to give you pant of it now. Is that it?» he asked softly.
«No. Keep your money to buy life insurance. I have one more point to make. Will you admit, just man to man, that you killed your wife?»
«Yes,» he said. He said it simply and directly, as though I had asked him if he had a cigarette.
«I thought you would,» I said. «But you don’t have to. You see the party that did kill your wife, because your wife was wasting money somebody else could have fun spending, also knew what Matson knew and was trying to shake Conned down herself. So she got bumped off — last night, on Brayton Avenue, and you don’t have to cover up for hen any more. I saw your photo on her mantel — With all my love — Leland — and I hid it. But you don’t have to cover up for her any more. Helen Matson is dead.»
I went sideways out of the chair as the gun went off. I had kidded myself by this time that he wouldn’t try to shoot mc, but there must have been part of me that wasn’t sold on the idea. The chair tipped over and I was on my hands and knees on the floor, and then another much louder gun went off from the dark room with the examination table in it.
De Spain stepped through the door with the smoking police gun in his big right hand. «Boy, was that a shot,» he said, and stood there grinning.
I came up on my feet and looked across the desk. Dr. Austrian sat there perfectly still, holding his night hand with his left, shaking it gently. There was no gun in his hand. I looked along the floor and saw it at the corner of the desk.
«Geez, I didn’t even hit him,» De Spain said. «All I hit was the gun.»
«That’s perfectly lovely,» I said. «Suppose all he had hit was my head?»
De Spain looked at me levelly and the grin left his face. «You put him through it, I will say that for you,» he growled. «But what was the idea of holding out on me on that green-slipper angle?»
«I got tired of being your stooge,» I said. «I wanted a little play out of my own hand.»
«How much of it was true?»
«Matson had the slipper. It must have meant something. Now that I’ve made it up I think it’s all true.»
Dr. Austrian got up slowly out of his chair and De Spain swung the gun on him. The thin, haggard man shook his head slowly and walked over to the wall and leaned against it.
«I killed her,» he said in a dead voice to nobody at all. «Not Helen. I killed hen. Call the police.»
De Spain’s face twisted and he stooped down and picked up the gun with the bone handle and dropped it into his pocket. He put his police gun back under his arm and sat down at the desk and pulled the phone towards him.
«Watch me get Chief of Homicide out of this,» he drawled.
NINE
A GUY WITH GUTS
The little chief of police came in springily, with his hat on the back of his head and his hands in the pockets of a thin dank overcoat. There was something in the right-hand overcoat pocket that he was holding on to, something large and heavy. There were two plainclothes men behind him and one of them was Wccms, the chunky fat-faced man who had followed me over to Altair Street. Shorty, the uniformed cop we had ditched on Arguello Boulevard, brought up the rear.
Chief Anders stopped a little way inside the door and smiled at me unpleasantly. «So you’ve had a lot of fun in our town, I hear. Put the cuffs on him, Wccms.»
The fat-faced man stepped around him and pulled handcuffs out of his left hip pocket. «Nice to meet you again — with your pants down,» he told me in an oily voice.
De Spain leaned against the wall beyond the door of the examination room. He rolled a match across his lips and stared silently. Dr. Austrian was in his desk chain again, holding his head in his hands, staring at the polished black top of the desk and the towel of hypodermic needles and the small black perpetual calendar and the pen set and the hero doodads that were on the desk. His face was stone pale and he sat without moving, without even seeming to breathe.
De Spain said: «Don’t be in too much of a hurry, Chief. This lad has friends in L.A. who are working on the Matson kill night now. And that kid reporter has a brother-in-law who is a cop. You didn’t know that.»
The chief made a vague motion with his chin. «Wait a minute, Weems.» He turned to De Spain. «You mean they know in town that Helen Matson has been murdered?»
Dr. Austrian’s face jerked up, haggard and drawn. Then he dropped it into his hands and covered his whole face with his long fingers.
De Spain said: «I meant Harry Matson, Chief. He was bumped off in L.A. tonight — last night — now — by Moss Loncnz.»
The chief seemed to pull his thin lips back into his mouth, almost out of sight. He spoke with them like that. «How do you know that?»
«The shamus and me picked off Moss. He was hiding out in the house of a man named Greb, the lab man who did a job on the Austrian death. He was hiding there because it looked like somebody was going to open up the Austrian case wide enough for the mayor to think it was a new boulevard and come out with a bunch of flowers and make a speech. That is, if Greb and the Matsons didn’t get took care of. It seems the Matsons were workin’ together, in spite of being divorced, shaking Conried down, and Conried put the pencil on them.»
The chief turned his head and snarled at his stooges. «Get out in the hall and wait.»
The plainclothes man I didn’t know opened the door and went out, and after a slight hesitation Weems followed him. Shorty had his hand on the door when De Spain said: «I want Shorty to stay. Shorty’s a decent cop — not like them two vice squad grafters you been sleepin’ with lately.»
Shorty let go of the door and went and leaned against the wall and smiled behind his hand. The chief’s face colored. «Who detailed you to the Brayton Avenue death?» he barked.
«I detailed myself, Chief. I was in the dicks’ room a minute or so after the call come in and I went over with Reed. He picked Shorty up too. Shorty and me was both off duty.»