The punk shifted uneasily. “I don’t get what you’re driving at. It sounds like a lot of hogwash.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Well, how about this? You followed me up to Heinrich’s igloo in the Hollywoodland hills, ostensibly to inform me that Duffy’s corpse had vanished. But I hadn’t told you I was going to the Heinrich stash. I never mentioned Heinrich’s name to you. And you couldn’t have heard me say it when I phoned Lieutenant Brunvig at Headquarters, because Brunvig cut me off before I brought Heinrich into the conversation. Yet you trailed me, found me. How?”
“Why, I – I – that is, I—”
“You were the eavesdropper,” I said. “Not Duffy. You, Peter Warren Winthrop. That accounts for the stethoscope. A stethoscope is a handy listening device. Plug it in your ears and put the diaphragm end against a wall or a door and you can hear whatever is being said inside a room. Know what I think? I think you listened to everything Ronald Barclay told me. You found out who he was. And what he had on Emil Heinrich – which was plenty, from a blackmailer’s viewpoint. You probably wondered how you could make use of the information to line your own pockets. And while you listened, Duffy came upstairs and caught you with your stethoscope to the door.”
He turned a little pallid around the fringes. I had him winging now.
“Poor old Duffy,” I said. “He saw you eavesdropping, and you slugged him to keep him from raising a row. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill him – I wouldn’t know about that. But you did kill him. You crushed his temple. Then you took a powder, leaving his body propped against the door. That was the pressure I felt when I shoved it open. The resistance was Duffy’s dead weight. When I bounced him across the hall he was already defunct, although I didn’t suspect it. And in the gloom and dusk I didn’t notice the depression in his skull.”
“Now see here—”
“Having murdered one guy, you were in up to your ears.” I ignored his attempted interruption. “And you saw a chance for a fortune in shakedown dough. You pranced into the room as I dragged Duffy over the threshold. Ronald Barclay wheeled his chair out of the closet at the same instant. I thought he was the one who slugged me senseless, but now I know it must have been you.
“You bashed me. Then you croaked Barclay. He was a defenseless cripple and you cooled him, pilfered his thirty-eight and the diary. You toted his remainders out of the room to make it look as if he’d left under his own steam.”
The punk made a raucous sound.
“Sheepdip,” he said.
“Sure, sheepdip,” I said. “I swallowed it. Because I found an alcove where he’d experimented in making artificial legs, I actually believed he had walked out. I was a fool. I should have realized that was impossible. He dabbled in prosthetics, yes; but everything he made was junk. Useless.
“So anyhow you came back, perhaps thinking you’d killed me as well as Duffy and Barclay. I surprised you by being alive and on my feet, with a gun aimed at you. I’ll give you credit – you played it smart. I had the drop on you, and you made the best of a bad situation. Later you got a nice break when the cops refused to come to the hotel. That forced me to lone-wolf it out to Heinrich’s tepee. It left you alone, gave you time to arrange new plans.”
“Such as?” he blustered.
“Such as moving Duffy’s corpse, hiding it where you had already hidden Barclay’s,” I said. “I doubt you ever made a telephone call to Police Headquarters.”
Ole Brunvig growled: “Right. He didn’t.”
“Okay,” I said to the punk. “With your two victims stashed out of sight, you trailed me from inside. You also cut their phone line. Then, when we separated, you faked a fracas on the upper level, drew me in and thought you bumped me. Now you had a free hand to intercept Heinrich when he came home. You could demand a hundred grand blackmail for a diary that might convict him of a kill fourteen years ago.”
I paused. “The fact that Heinrich offered to buy it makes me think that he did gimmick the bomb that croaked a prop man and maimed Barclay. I’m not too sorry you knocked him off. If that had been the only murder you pulled tonight I’d be inclined to say the devil with it. But you cooled Duffy and Barclay, and they didn’t deserve it.”
“Can you prove any of this?”
“I can try,” I said, and ankled to a closet on my left, yanked it open.
Two stiffs fell out. One of them wore a hearing aid. Duffy. The other had one arm and no legs. Barclay.
Winthrop’s hand went into the Gladstone he had been packing. It came up with a nickel-plated .38 fowling piece, the rod he had stolen from Ronald Barclay when he glommed the Fullerton diary.
Long before he could trigger the gat, though, Ole Brunvig cut loose with his service revolver. There were two sharp thunderclap barks, spaced so closely together they sounded almost like one. Winthrop yowled like a banshee and slammed against the wall with ketchup spurting from both shoulders.
Brunvig showed his teeth. “Now he knows what it’s like to be maimed. Look at that bag, Sherlock, and see if you can find the diary.”
I found it. And Peter Warren Winthrop took his shattered shoulders to the gas chamber the following month.
Sometimes I wonder if Marian Heinrich still indulges in star baths. One of these nights I’m going up in the hills to see.
FOREVER AFTER
Jim Thompson
It was a few minutes before five o’clock when Ardis Clinton unlocked the rear door of her apartment, and admitted her lover. He was a cow-eyed young man with a wild mass of curly black hair. He worked as a dishwasher at Joe’s Diner, which was directly across the alley.
They embraced passionately. Her body pressed against the meat cleaver, concealed inside his shirt, and Ardis shivered with delicious anticipation. Very soon now, it would all be over. That stupid ox, her husband, would be dead. He and his stupid cracks – all the dullness and boredom would be gone forever. And with the twenty thousand insurance money, ten thousand dollars double-indemnity . . .
“We’re going to be so happy, Tony,” she whispered. “You’ll have your own place, a real swank little restaurant with what they call one of those intimate bars. And you’ll just manage it, just kind of saunter around in a dress suit, and—”
“And we’ll live happily ever after,” Tony said. “Just me and you, baby, walking down life’s highway together.”
Ardis let out a gasp. She shoved him away from her, glaring up into his handsome empty face. “Don’t!” she snapped. “Don’t say things like that! I’ve told you and told you not to do it, and if I have to tell you again. I’ll—!”
“But what’d I say?” he protested. “I didn’t say nothin’.”
“Well . . .” She got control of herself, forcing a smile. “Never mind, darling. You haven’t had any opportunities and we’ve never really had a chance to know each other, so – so never mind. Things will be different after we’re married.” She patted his cheek, kissed him again. “You got away from the diner, all right? No one saw you leave?”
“Huh-uh. I already took the stuff up to the steam-table for Joe, and the waitress was up front too, y’know, filling the sugar bowls and the salt and pepper shakers like she always does just before dinner. And—”
“Good. Now, suppose someone comes back to the kitchen and finds out you’re not there. What’s your story going to be?”
“Well . . . I was out in the alley dumping some garbage. I mean—” he corrected himself hastily, “maybe I was. Or maybe I was down in the basement, getting some supplies. Or maybe I was in the john – the lavatory, I mean – or—”