Tully laughed. The lawyer looked at him sharply.
“What was that for, Dave?”
“Nothing.” A woman of refinement and good reputation, Tully thought. Wait till the prosecution gets hold of that Lodge shack-up!
“The hell you say. Dave, if there’s something you’re holding back...”
Tully shook his head. He could not, he could not talk about Ruth and Cox and those three days at the Lodge two years before. Not now. Not yet.
Ollie Hurst continued to study him. Finally, he shrugged. “If you are, Dave, you’re being a very foolish guy. Well, we’ll have to trust your judgment. Isn’t there anything new you can tell me?”
“Yes,” Tully said. “We may find help in an unexpected place.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve had a session with that witness — the woman, Maudie Blake. She told me something she didn’t tell Julian Smith.”
“Oh?”
“She and Crandall Cox were old buddy-buddies. He shacked up with her whenever he was on his uppers, or in trouble. The last time he was sick, he let her take care of him till he could get back on his feet, then he lifted some money she’d left around and took off for here. And she followed him. That’s how she came to be in the next room at the Hobby.”
“She told you all this?”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” the lawyer said softly. “That’s interesting. How come she told you, Dave, and not the police?”
“They didn’t pay her. I did.”
“She asked you for money?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“A hundred dollars. I only had seventy-eight with me. She took it.”
The bald lawyer frowned. He got up and began to walk around the kitchen, pulling his nose, scratching his ear, frowning.
“I don’t know, Dave,” he said slowly. “That’s pretty valuable information to sell for seventy-eight dollars. Unless she’s stupid and cheap as hell—”
“She is.” Tully wondered what he would say if he knew what else Maudie Blake had sold for the same seventy-eight dollars.
“Did you tell this to Lieutenant Smith?”
“No. Anyway, she said if I told the police she’d simply deny the whole story and stand pat on her original testimony.”
Hurst kept shaking his head. “I still don’t like it. If she’s telling the truth she can deny her head off — the facts can be dug up. She can’t be that stupid. Dave, you’re not telling me the whole story.”
“All right, I’m not,” Tully burst out. “But don’t ask me to talk about the rest — not yet, Ollie. The point is, she can be bought. In fact, I was intending to see her again this morning after you left. I think she knows a hell of a lot more than she told even me.”
“You may be getting into something you can’t handle, Dave,” the lawyer said. “I’d better go with you.”
Tully hesitated.
“Maybe I ought to put it this way, Dave,” his friend said gently. “If I’m going to help you, I can’t do it in the dark, and I’m certainly not going to get a man with Vinzenti’s reputation into a case where the defendant’s husband is withholding information. Am I in, or out?”
Tully was quiet.
Then his shoulders drooped and he said, “All right, Ollie.”
They went in Ollie Hurst’s car. Ollie drove, and neither man uttered a sound all the way.
The lawyer parked in the lot beside Flynn’s Inn and they got out and went into the dust-dancing lobby.
The same seedy clerk was behind the desk, picking his teeth with a green plastic toothpick while he read a comic book called She-Cat of Venus.
“Miss Blake,” Tully said. “Maudie Blake?”
“So?” the clerk said.
“She in?”
“Mm-hm,” the clerk said, turning a page. “At least I ain’t seen her come down. She’s one of those afternoon getter-uppers, I guess.”
They walked up to the second floor. Tully led the way to the woman’s door and rapped. He rapped again.
“She must be sleeping off a drunk,” he said to Hurst. “She was tying one on last night when I saw her.” He rapped again, shook his head, tried the door. It was locked, and he rattled the knob. “Miss Blake? Maudie?”
“When she ties one on it stays tied, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe we’d better come back later, Ollie.”
“Let’s not and say we did,” the lawyer said grimly. He banged on the door with his fist. “Miss Blake!”
There was no response.
“How about asking the desk clerk to ring her room?” Tully suggested.
Ollie Hurst hurried downstairs. A moment later Tully heard the muffled ringing. It kept ringing. Finally it stopped.
Tully began to nurse an uneasy feeling. Ollie was coming back up the stairs with the clerk. They were arguing.
“But I ain’t supposed to do that, Mr. Hurst,” the clerk was protesting. Apparently Ollie had told the Venusian enthusiast who he was.
“She may be seriously ill,” Ollie said. “Suppose she’s in a coma or something?”
“Coma my eye,” the clerk grumbled; he had a key with him. “This broad’s been lappin’ it up like a camel since she got here. If I get into trouble over this, boy—”
“You won’t,” Tully said. “Open it up.”
The clerk unlocked the door, pushed it open a bit, and poked his head into the room.
“Miss Blake—?”
His head retracted like a turtle’s. He made a gagging sound and rushed down the stairs.
Tully kicked the door wide.
She was lying in an impossible position on the bed, twisted like a contortionist from the waist down, head hanging far over the side. She was wearing the skintight slimjims with the enormous pink rose design and the knit blouse, just as she had been dressed when he had seen her the day before. The only change was that her feet were bare; one shoe lay near the bed, the other was half under the radiator near the window. Apparently in an alcoholic collapse she had fallen across the bed, kicking her shoes off as she did so.
A three-quarters-empty bottle of whisky was lying on its side near her right hand. Only a little of it had soaked into the bed.
Neither man made a move to enter the room; they could see only too well from the doorway.
Her synthetic gold hair hung straight down, almost touching the floor; at the roots it was a dirty brown. There was a fish-belly gray-blueness about her stiffened face, a brownish crust at one corner of her open mouth. Her eyes were open, too, staring at infinity.
“That,” Tully said with a laugh, “is what you might call dead to the world. How lucky can I get?”
“Dave.” Ollie Hurst grasped his arm.
“Don’t worry. I have no intention of going in there.”
“Dave,” the lawyer said again. Tully stepped back and stood slackly in the hall. Hurst reached in, grasped the knob, and pulled the door to. “We’d better notify the police.”
11
It was 2:00 P.M. before Julian Smith got back to his office.
Tully was seated near the lieutenant’s desk. The tailored Homicide man stopped and looked at him. “Why are you still here, Dave?”
“Where else do I have to go?” Tully was slumped on his tail, his long legs stretched way out, his big hands clenched over his belt.
“How about your office?” Smith went briskly to his desk. “Your business must be going to the dogs.”
“Julian, I want to talk to you.”
“Sure, Dave,” the detective said, glancing through a pile of reports and memoranda. “But right now I’m pretty busy—”