De Ruse drew on a cigarette he held cupped inside a hand. He said: «Who fingered the job, and how did you know Candless was up here?»
Zapparty said: «Mops told me. But I didn’t know he was dead.»
Nicky laughed and snapped the flash several times quickly.
De Ruse said: «Hold it steady for a minute.» Nicky held the beam steady on Zapparty’s white face. Zapparty moved his lips in and out. He opened his eyes once. They were blind eyes, like the eyes of a dead fish.
Nicky said: «It’s damn cold up here. What do we do with his nibs?»
De Ruse said: «We’ll take him into the house and tie him to Candless. They can keep each other warm. We’ll come up again in the morning and see if he’s got any fresh ideas.»
Zapparty shuddered. The gleam of something like a tear showed in the corner of his nearest eye. After a moment of silence he said: «Okey. I planned the whole thing. The gas car was my idea. I didn’t want the money. I wanted Candless, and I wanted him dead. My kid brother was hanged in Quentin a week ago Friday.»
There was a little silence. Nicky said something under his breath. De Ruse didn’t move or make a sound.
Zapparty went on: «Mattick, the Candless driver, was in on it. He hated Candless. He was supposed to drive the ringer car to make everything look good and then take a powder. But he lapped up too much corn getting set for the job and Parisi got leery of him, had him knocked off. Another boy drove the car. It was raining and that helped.»
De Ruse said: «Better — but still not all of it, Zapparty.»
Zapparty shrugged quickly, slightly opened his eyes against the flash, almost grinned.
«What the hell do you want? Jam on both sides?»
De Ruse said: «I want a finger put on the bird that had me grabbed … Let it go. I’ll do it myself.»
He took his foot off the running board and snapped his butt away into the darkness. He slammed the car door shut, got in the front. Nicky put the flash away and slid around under the wheel, started the engine.
De Ruse said: «Somewhere where I can phone for a cab, Nicky. Then you take this riding for another hour and then call Francy. I’ll have a word for you there.»
The blond man shook his head slowly from side to side. «You’re a good pal, Johnny, and I like you. But this has gone far enough this way. I’m taking it down to Headquarters. Don’t forget I’ve got a private-dick license under my old shirts at home.»
De Ruse said: «Give me an hour, Nicky. Just an hour.»
The car slid down the hill and crossed the Sunland Highway, started down another hill towards Montrose. After a while Nicky said: «Check.»
ELEVEN
It was twelve minutes past one by the stamping clock on the end of the desk in the lobby of the Casa de Oro. The lobby was antique Spanish, with black and red Indian rugs, nail-studded chairs with leather cushions and leather tassels on the corners of the cushions; the gray-green olive-wood doors were fitted with clumsy wrought-iron strap hinges.
A thin, dapper clerk with a waxed blond mustache and a blond pompadour leaned on the desk and looked at the clock and yawned, tapping his teeth with the backs of his bright fingernails.
The door opened from the street and De Ruse came in. He took off his hat and shook it, put it on again and yanked the brim down. His eyes looked slowly around the deserted lobby and he went to the desk, slapped a gloved palm on it.
«What’s the number of the Hugo Candless bungalow?» he asked.
The clerk looked annoyed. He glanced at the clock, at De Ruse’s face, back at the clock. He smiled superciliously, spoke a slight accent.
«Twelve C. Do you wish to be announced — at this hour?»
De Ruse said: «No.»
He turned away from the desk and went towards a large door with a diamond of glass in it. It looked like the door of a very high-class privy.
As he put his hand out to the door a bell rang sharply behind him.
De Ruse looked back over his shoulder, turned and went back to the desk. The clerk took his hand away from the bell, rather quickly.
His voice was cold, sarcastic, insolent, saying: «It’s not that kind of apartment house, if you please.»
Two patches above De Ruse’s cheekbones got a dusky red. He leaned across the counter and took hold of the braided lapel of the clerk’s jacket, pulled the man’s chest against the edge of the desk.
«What was that crack, nance?»
The clerk paled but managed to bang his bell again with a flailing hand.
A pudgy man in a baggy suit and a seal-brown toupee came around the corner of the desk, put out a plump finger and said: «Hey.»
De Ruse let the clerk go. He looked expressionlessly at cigar ash on the front of the pudgy man’s coat.
The pudgy man said: «I’m the house man. You gotta see me if you want to get tough.»
De Ruse said: «You speak my language. Come over in the corner.»
They went over in the corner and sat down beside a palm. The pudgy man yawned amiably and lifted the edge of his toupee and scratched under it.
«I’m Kuvalick,» he said. «Times I could bop that Swiss myself. What’s the beef?»
De Ruse said: «Are you a guy that can stay clammed?»
«No. I like to talk. It’s all the fun I get around this dude ranch.» Kuvalick got half of a cigar out of a pocket and burned his nose lighting it.
De Ruse said: «This is one time you stay clammed.»
He reached inside his coat, got his wallet out, took out two tens. He rolled them around his forefinger, then slipped them off in a tube and tucked the tube into the outside pocket of the pudgy man’s coat.
Kuvalick blinked, but didn’t say anything.
De Ruse said: «There’s a man in the Candless apartment named George Dial. His car’s outside, and that’s where he would be. I want to see him and I don’t want to send a name in. You can take me in and stay with me.»
The pudgy man said cautiously: «It’s kind of late. Maybe he’s in bed.»
«If he is, he’s in the wrong bed,» De Ruse said. «He ought to get up.»
The pudgy man stood up. «I don’t like what I’m thinkin’, but I like your tens,» he said. «I’ll go in and see if they’re up. You stay put.»
De Ruse nodded. Kuvalick went along the wall and slipped through a door in the corner. The clumsy square butt of a hip holster showed under the back of his coat as he walked. The clerk looked after him, then looked contemptuously towards De Ruse and got out a nail file.
Ten minutes went by, fifteen. Kuvalick didn’t come back. De Ruse stood up suddenly, scowled and marched towards the door in the corner. The clerk at the desk stiffened, and his eyes went to the telephone on the desk, but he didn’t touch it.
De Ruse went through the door and found himself under a roofed gallery. Rain dripped softly off the slanting tiles of the roof. He went along a patio the middle of which was an oblong pool framed in a mosaic of gaily colored tiles. At the end of that, other patios branched off. There was a window light at the far end of the one to the left. He went towards it, at a venture, and when he came close to it made out the number 12C on the door.
He went up two flat steps and punched a bell that rang in the distance. Nothing happened. In a little while he rang again, then tried the door. It was locked. Somewhere inside he thought he heard a faint muffled thumping sound.
He stood in the rain a moment, then went around the corner of the bungalow, down a narrow, very wet passage to the back. He tried the service door; locked also. De Ruse swore, took his gun out from under his arm, held his hat against the glass panel of the service door and smashed the pane with the butt of the gun. Glass fell tinkling lightly inside.