«The blood and skin under his nails, and the brutal way he handled Lorenz, and the fact that the girl told mc he had been hen sweet and he pretended not to know who she was. What the hell more would I want?»
De Spain said: «This.»
He shot from his pocket with the white-handled gun he had taken from Dr. Austrian. Shooting from the pocket takes a lot of practice of a kind cops don’t get. The slug went a foot over my head and I sat down on the floor and Dr. Austrian stood up very quickly and swung his right hand into De Spain’s face, the hand that held the wide-mouthed brown bottle. A colorless liquid splashed into his eyes and smoked down his face. Any other man would have screamed. De Spain pawed the air with his left hand and the gun in his pocket banged three times more and Dr. Austrian fell sideways across the end of the desk and then collapsed to the floor, out of range. The gun went on banging.
The other men in the room had all dropped to their knees. The chief jerked his hogleg up and shot De Spain twice in the body. Once would have been enough with that gun. De Spain’s body twisted in the air and hit the floor like a safe. The chief went over and knelt beside him and looked at him silently. He stood up and came back around the desk, then went back and stooped over Dr. Austrian.
«This one’s alive,» he snapped. «Get on the phone, Weems.» The chunky, fat-faced man went around the far side of the desk and scooped the telephone towards him and started to dial. There was a sharp smell of acid and scorched flesh in the air, a nasty smell. We were standing up again now, and the little police chief was looking at me bleakly.
«He oughtn’t to have shot at you,» he said. «You couldn’t have proved a- thing. We wouldn’t have let you.»
I didn’t say anything. Weems put the phone down and looked at Dr. Austrian again.
«I think he’s croaked,» he said, from behind the desk.
The chief kept on looking at me. «You take some awful chances, Mn. Dalmas. I don’t know what your game is, but I hope you like your chips.»
«I’m satisfied,» I said. «I’d like to have had a chance to talk to my client before he was bumped off, but I guess I’ve done all I could for him. The hell of it is I liked De Spain. He had all the guts they ever made.»
The chief said: «If you want to know about guts, try being a small-town chief of police some day.»
I said: «Yeah. Tell somebody to tie a handkerchief around De Spain’s night hand, Chief. You kind of need the evidence yourself now.»
A siren wailed distantly on Arguello Boulevard. The sound came faintly through the closed windows, like a coyote howling in the hills.
THE LADY IN THE LAKE
ONE
NOT FOR MISSING PERSONS
I was breaking a new pair of shoes in on my desk that morning when Violets M’Gee called me up. It was a dull, hot, damp August day and you couldn’t keep your neck dry with a bath towel.
«How’s the boy?» Violets began, as usual. «No business in a week, huh? There’s a guy named Howard Melton over in the Avenant Building lost track of his wife. He’s district manager for the Doreme Cosmetic Company. He don’t want to give it to Missing Persons for some reason. The boss knows him a little. Better get over there, and take your shoes off before you go in. It’s a pretty snooty outfit.»
Violets M’Gee is a homicide dick in the sheriff’s office, and if it wasn’t for all the charity jobs he gives mc, I might be able to make a living. This looked a little different, so I put my feet on the floor and swabbed the back of my neck again and went oven there.
The Avenant Building is on Olive near Sixth and has a blackand-white rubber sidewalk out in front. The elevator girls wear gray silk Russian blouses and the kind of flop-over berets artists used to wear to keep the paint out of their hair. The Doncme Cosmetic Company was on the seventh floor and had a good piece of it. There was a big glass-walled reception room with flowers and Persian rugs and bits of nutty sculpture in glazed wane. A neat little blonde sat in a built-in switchboard at a big desk with flowers on it and a tilted sign reading: MISS VAN DE GRAAF. She wore Harold Lloyd cheaters and her hair was dragged back to where her forehead looked high enough to have snow on it.
She said Mr. Howard Melton was in conference, but she would take my card in to him when she had an opportunity, and what was my business, please? I said I didn’t have a card, but the name was John Dalmas, from Mr. West.
«Who is Mn. West?» she inquired coldly. «Does Mr. Melton know him?»
«That’s past me, sister. Not knowing Mr. Melton I would not know his friends.»
«What is the nature of your business?»
«Personal.»
«I see.» She initialed three papers on her desk quickly, to keep from throwing her pen set at mc. I went and sat in a blue leather chair with chromium arms. It felt, looked and smelled very much like a barber’s chair.
In about half an hour a door opened beyond a bronze railing and two men came out backwards laughing. A third man held the door and echoed their laughter. They shook hands and the two men went away and the third man wiped the grin off his face in nothing flat and looked at Miss Van De Graaf. «Any calls?» he asked in a bossy voice.
She fluttered papers and said: «No, sir. A Mr. — Dalmas to see you — from a Mr — West. His business is personal.»
«Don’t know him,» the man barked. «I’ve got more insurance than I can pay for.» He gave me a swift, hard look and went into his room and slammed the door. Miss Van De Gnaaf smiled at me with delicate regret. I lit a cigarette and crossed my legs the other way. In another five minutes the door beyond the railing opened again and he came out with his hat on and sneered that he was going out for half an hour.
He came through a gate in the railing and started for the entrance and then did a nice cutback and came striding over to mc. He stood looking down at me — a big man, two inches over six feet and built to proportion. He had a well-massaged face that didn’t hide the lines of dissipation. His eyes were black, hard, and tricky.
«You want to see mc?»
I stood up, got out my billfold and gave him a card. He stared at the card and palmed it. His eyes became thoughtful.
«Who’s Mr. West?»
«Search me.»
He gave mc a hard, direct, interested look. «You have the right idea,» he said. «Let’s go into my office.»
The receptionist was so mad she was trying to initial three papers at once when we went past her through the railing.
The office beyond was long, dim and quiet, but not cool. There was a large photo on the wall of a tough-looking old bird who had held lots of noses to lots of grindstones in his time. The big man went behind about eight hundred dollars’ worth of desk and tilted himself back in a padded high-backed director’s chair. He pushed a cigar humidor at mc. I lit a cigar and he watched mc light it with cool, steady eyes.
«This is very confidential,» he said.
«Uh-huh.»
He read my card again and put it away in a gold-plated wallet. «Who sent you?»
«A friend in the sheriff’s office.»
«I’d have to know a little more about you than that.»
I gave him a couple of names and numbers. He reached for his phone, asked for a line and dialed them himself. He got both the parties I had mentioned and talked. In four minutes he had hung up and tilted his chair again. We both wiped the backs of our necks.
«So far, so good,» he said. «Now show me you’re the man you say you arc.»
I got my billfold out and showed him a small photostat of my license. He seemed pleased. «How much do you charge?»
«Twenty-five bucks a day and expenses.»