Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 31, No. 1 — January, 1948)

It was old stuff for Carmody, the henpecked sleuth, to be part of a shadowing operation, but he was usually on the tail-end of the deal. It was a new twist to find his own tracks dogged — and by a beautiful blonde at that.

Chapter One

That part of Hollywood Boulevard lying between North Ivar and Highland Avenue is either eight or nine blocks long, depending on which side of the street you’re on. And there are, at any given hour of the day, three screwballs per block, either side of the street! I counted them once.

For instance, when I came around the corner from my office building — which is on Ivar — a silver-blonde girl wearing dark glasses, purple slacks and a mink coat sailed past behind two over-sized greyhounds in harness. I wondered why she didn’t just get a cart and let those beasts work for her. They were as big as a team of horses anyhow.

Watching them I nearly ran into a small man who quacked at me like a real duck. It scared the hell out of me. You don’t expect to encounter a duck on a busy street.

Before I’d recovered, a woman in a hand-me-down blue hat with cherries put a tract in my hand. “Peace, brother,” she said, “Read this and awaken.” The tract had a big heading: the truth shall make you free. Deciding I’d read it the next time I had a free moment, I put it in my pocket. In the next block an uninhibited youth with rosy cheeks blew past me singing Italian opera, half in a lusty baritone and half in a very lovely soprano, all for his own amazement. Either way, he sounded better than my bathroom rendition of Chloe.

Brooding about this, i didn’t pay much attention to the wiry little man who was planted in my path with a large camera. He leered at me. “Ya just been screen-tested, buddy.”

The yellow card he pushed into my hand informed me that for fifty cents I could have an unposed candid photograph of myself, postcard size. The scarcity of film had kept the streets clear of this particular pest during the war, but now they were crawling out of their hollow logs. I dropped the card carefully into the gutter. I thought I could live without an unposed candid photograph of myself.

A little further on I saw a girl standing in a safety zone waiting for a street car. She wore very brief shorts and a peasant blouse that had slipped down off one shoulder. She was reading a magazine, oblivious to the traffic that swished past on both sides of her. For one reason or another, most of the drivers were missing the traffic lights at that corner and there were a lot of squealing tires. She wasn’t anything you’d look at three times — on the beach.

I took one look at her legs and remembered I was on my way to the lobby of the Hollywood-Roosevelt to pick up Margaret O’Leary for lunch. It was nearly twelve-thirty then, so I gave up counting screwballs for the time being. At the corner before Highland Avenue I crossed to the south side of the Boulevard where there was a shoeshine stand in the vestibule of a building. I thought that Maggie, who was out of a job at the moment anyway, wouldn’t mind waiting another five minutes in the interests of good grooming. I’d recently blossomed out as a well-dressed young man, including a pair of thirty-dollar shoes, due to a case which had paid off better than a thousand bucks.

A colored boy pointed me to the last seat away from the street. This stand was against the right-hand wall of the vestibule, facing a long mirror on the opposite side. The angle of vision was such that I could see diagonally across the intersection of Hollywood and Highland. Without the mirror I couldn’t have seen around the corner of the vestibule. Without the mirror I wouldn’t have discovered I was being tailed!

There wasn’t any doubt about it. That face had been in the background just a little too casually and a little too often during the last two or three days. I’d noted it unconsciously and then dismissed it. But this time there was nothing casual about it. My tail was peering intently across the intersection and nervously smoking a cigarette while waiting for me to appear.

Maybe it isn’t such an unusual switch for a private detective to find himself being shadowed. I’ve had it happen to me before, once or twice. But never like this. This was one more screwball for my list. My shadow was about as gorgeous a blonde as you’ll find, even on Hollywood Boulevard!

I thought it over while the boy put a high sheen on my new shoes, and decided I’d better look into this. There was something decidedly unfriendly about it, although I wasn’t working at the moment. In fact my only prospect was a letter that’d come this morning from a doctor in East Peoria — and he hadn’t said a word about luscious blondes. I wondered if somebody was fixing to get even with me for something in the past, but I couldn’t think who or what. I’d just have to ask her.

When I emerged into the bright glare of the street I didn’t look toward the blonde. I moved on to the corner and waited till the traffic light let me cross Highland. Now we were parallel, with the Boulevard between us, and, sure enough, the blonde began drifting along with me.

But I fooled her. I turned abruptly into the drugstore on the corner. Now I could see her through the glass door, out in the bright sunshine, while she couldn’t see me in the comparative gloom of the store. She reversed herself, came back to the corner, then started across. She wasn’t losing any time either, in case I was trying to shake her. Little did she know.

When she was almost to the curb, I slipped quietly out the side entrance onto Highland.

That had her completely befuddled. When I walked in the front door again, she was standing about halfway back to the phone booths with a blank expression on her beautiful pan. She was trying to figure out where I’d vanished to. I came up close behind her and said brightly: “Here I am!”

She whirled around so suddenly she walked all over my brand new shoe-shine. “Oh!” she gasped. “Where... I thought—” Then she caught up with herself. “What in the world are you talking about?”

“It’s been fun,” I said. “Really it has. I always did enjoy this particular game but, honest, I’m in a hurry right now. Why in blazes are you following me around?”

“Following — you?” She laughed with a great and phony delight. She was a big girl, nicely proportioned, with large blue eyes in a face that had to be compared to an unusually beautiful cow. Bovine was the word, in the very nicest sense. “Why in the world would I be following you?”

“Now, that’s just what I’ve been asking myself. But you were. You were in the lobby of my office building yesterday and I think the day before that when I came out at noon. You ate lunch at the same place — two different restaurants,” I added quickly, to squelch any rebuttal on that point. “And you followed me back to the office both times. Today you’ve been sniffing my footprints all the way down Hollywood Boulevard. Sister, I give up, what is it that you want from me?”

She made a few dramatic gestures, strictly from Stanislavsky, to register complete exasperation, and looked around for someone to give her strength. But the only person paying any attention was a soda jerk, handsome enough to be a leading man. His interest was sincere, but academic.

“I’m sure,” the blonde stated frigidly, “I don’t know what you can be talking about. And I wish you would cease annoying me.”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll cease. But let’s find a cop and get this straightened out. I’ve got a jealous girl friend who takes a very dim view of my having blondes tail me around. Personally, I like it, but she’s narrow minded. So let’s get it settled right now.”

I was bluffing with a busted flush, because no cop in the world would be silly enough to take my word against this doll’s, and anyhow what did I have to complain about? But I just wanted to see how she would react to the mention of police. I found out. She shoved past me, in a slightly undignified rush, for the exit, stepping on one of my shoes again. And did I mention she was a large girl? The last I saw of her she was going out the front door, her blonde hair bobbing on her shoulders.

The handsome soda jerk clucked commiseratingly, “That’s the way it goes, pal. Some days you just can’t lay up a cent!”

“Ain’t it the truth!” I agreed. I started to tell him I had something even nicer waiting for me in the lobby of the Hollywood-Roosevelt, but I saw it was now five to one, and I wasn’t sure Maggie would be waiting.

Now that she was unemployed and couldn’t afford to be independent about things like a free lunch, she had, of course, become very independent. I hurried outside and did the last couple of blocks to the Hollywood-Roosevelt at a modified dogtrot, causing two mid-western school teachers to stare down their noses at me and murmur something about, “These Hollywood screwballs!”

I found O’Leary sitting on a divan reading a newspaper. All I could see of her were her legs, but I’d know them any place, any time. Bar none, they are the most gorgeous legs in Hollywood. They are an argument for slacks on all other women. I ogled them fondly until a dowager sitting nearby cleared her throat disapprovingly. Maggie lowered the paper.

“Why, Margaret,” I exclaimed. “I didn’t know it was you behind that paper. I’ve been searching the whole lobby for you.”

“Ever since twelve o’clock?” she said coldly. “You are a stinkin’ liar, Willie. You’ve probably been chasing a blonde.”

I had a fast answer for that one on the tip of my tongue, but I held it. It could only lead to trouble. I sat down on the divan beside her. “What’s in the news?”

She opened the paper up again, cutting off the dowager’s view, so I gave her a kiss on the cheek. She blushed all over her pretty Irish face. “Not here!” she said. “Behave, Willie. I want you to read about the burglary at Lida Randolph’s.”

“I read it,” I told her. “For breakfast. What about it?”

“There might be a job for you!” she said impatiently. “Or have you quit the detective business since you made a couple of hundred dollars?”

“Eleven hundred and eighteen dollars,” I said indignantly. “The only thing I’ve quit is taking any business from movie stars. From here in I’m legitimate.”

“Are you already working on something?”

“I’ve got a client — in East Peoria — but I need help on it. I’ll tell you about it while we’re having lunch.” We got up and left the lobby, with the dowager shaking her head sadly at O’Leary for letting herself get picked up so brazenly.

While we waited for the waiter to bring our shrimp salad, I reread the letter from Doctor Henry Bressette. I’d given it only a glance when it came in the morning’s mail because it didn’t sound like a big fee, and anyhow it was more in O’Leary’s line. The doctor wanted a confidential report on a Felix DeCoudre, a movie producer, and as O’Leary used to be a fan magazine writer, she’d probably know all about him.

It was an oddly worded letter, I noted now, reading it aloud to O’Leary, very guarded and reticent but with an undercurrent that I couldn’t quite grasp. Or maybe I was imagining it all. One sentence seemed significant: “Anything unusual or questionable concerning this man I would like to have immediately, in advance of your complete report. Please contact me at once if you learn anything of a disturbing nature...”

He ended the letter with the explanation that he’d come across my name in a syndicated movie column. He said, too, that he would be happy to pay my regular fee for a job of this kind. That made us both happy.

“If he’s connected with the movies,” I told O’Leary casually, “you’ll do a better job anyway. Why don’t you rack your brain and then whip up a long report on DeCoudre. We’ll charge the good doctor twenty-five dollars or so. You’ll be doing me a favor, Maggie.”

“Stop being subtle, Willie,” she said. “You’re trying to lend me money again. Are you afraid I’m not eating regularly?”

“Somebody has got to worry about that,” I said. “And if you won’t borrow money, you can work for it. I can’t stand skinny girls anyhow.”

She got out a handkerchief and blew her nose. Her long black eyelashes blinked rapidly. “You’ll have my mascara running, baby. It didn’t occur to me you were really worrying. When I... I think of a big oaf who doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain worrying about me, I get all s-squishy inside!”

The waiter brought our lunch before she broke down and blubbered. I said kindly: “I do that to all women. Killer Carmody I was known as in my younger days. You either got it or you haven’t.”

“Like dandruff,” O’Leary said tartly, her old sweet self again. “DeCoudre used used to be a big producer with Coronet. He got into a mess two or three years ago and dropped out of the picture business. That’s about all I know.”

“What was the mess?”

She shook her head. “Something about a girl who died at a party — I never heard any of the details. It was hushed up... Give me a nickel. I’ll get the details.”

I gave her the nickel. “I’ll put it on the expense account.”

She was gone about ten minutes and she had a thoughtful look on her face when she came back. “This might be harder than I thought. The girl who died was named Elaine Jordan, but I couldn’t find out anything more than that about her. DeCoudre’s contract expired a few months after her death and Coronet dropped him like a bar of soap in a shower. I guess it took all his money to get it taken care of. There were no charges laid, but no other studio would touch him after that. He’s supposed to be all washed up in this town.”

“Supposed to be?” I asked.

“Well, there’s been rumors of his making a comeback with an independently produced picture. Of course there’re always rumors like that, but I think there might be something in it this time. It comes from a pretty good source. And recently he’s opened an office on Vine Street.”

“None of that sounds like it would interest a doctor in East Peoria,” I pointed out. “He wouldn’t have any connection with the Jordan girl or he wouldn’t have waited this long to investigate it. What do you think?”

“I think you ought to forget it and go to work,” O’Leary said flatly. “I got my information from Lida Randolph, and I casually mentioned the matter of the burglary. She wants you to get in touch with her.”

“I wouldn’t get close enough to the lady to touch her with a ten-foot pole. Figuratively speaking, of course. She’s a well-turned bit of femininity.”

“If you care for the middle-aged type,” O’Leary said coldly. “The first movie I was allowed to see as a child, she was in it.”

“She carries her age well. But I’ll forget about her, if you insist.”

“Well, I don’t insist! It’s a job, and a good one. She told me she’d lost two fur coats and a lot of other stuff. She’d pay plenty to get that back.”

“Baby, I’ve already got more money than brains.” I got up. “I just remembered — I’ve got to make a phone call, too.” I knew that she’d browbeat me into taking the job unless I got busy on something else. And Bressette might consider, this information disturbing enough to want to know about it immediately. Maybe I could promote the doctor into retaining me on something big that had nothing to do with movie stars. With that thought in my busy little brain, I put in a long distance call to East Peoria, Illinois.

Chapter Two Hollywood Headlights

Doctor Bressette sounded like a nice, small town physician; in a quiet, grave voice he thanked me for being so prompt with my services and so thoughtful as to phone him. I told him what O’Leary had known about Felix DeCoudre.

After a moment’s silence, he said: “I see. I was afraid it would be bad, but not this bad. Mr. Carmody, I... I need some additional help. Would you consider handling another matter for me?”

I told him I thought I could.

“It has to do with my daughter, Laurie. She’s in Hollywood now, has been there for seven months. Recently I learned she was employed by a concern with a very doubtful reputation. In her letters she said she was working for this man DeCoudre...”

Laurie, it seemed, had come to Hollywood to — naturally — break into pictures. Apparently, she was an adopted daughter, spoiled and headstrong, with a surefire device of always getting her own way. All she’d had to do was suggest that if she were their own daughter she would be permitted to go to Hollywood. Bressette didn’t say that — in fact, I didn’t think he was aware that she even used the gag. But Laurie came to Hollywood.

“Didn’t you let her know about DeCoudre’s reputation?”

“Of course, but it was a mistake. For the past three months we’ve had only brief notes from her, and she ignores any direct questions.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Doctor Bressette sounded just faintly embarrassed. “I want my daughter to come home, Mr. Carmody. I don’t know how that can be accomplished, but I wish you would talk to her. If that fails, perhaps a talk with DeCoudre will help.”

I said: “It sounds more like a job for Dorothy Dix than for a private detective.”

“I know it does, but somehow I feel you can do it.” He said something to the effect that my fast work on DeCoudre’s past had given him a great deal of confidence in me.

I made modest sounds into the receiver, but in the face of such faith I had to agree to hunt up Laurie Bressette and give her a fatherly little talk. The only address the doctor had was a P.O. number, but I knew I could get in touch with her through DeCoudre’s new office on Vine Street. Then I thought of something. “What does your daughter look like?”

“She has dark hair and brown eyes. Small, around a hundred pounds. A very lively, reckless girl.”

“O.K.” I said. It would have been too good to be true. Even a Hollywood make-up man couldn’t make a big blue-eyed blonde out of that. I told the doctor not to worry about a thing, I’d have a report for him in a day or two at the latest.

He thanked me and hung up. He sounded like a very nice guy. He’d talked for nearly fifteen minutes long-distance without worrying about the charges we were running up. That suggested he would pay my fee without quibbling...

I went back and joined O’Leary. “I just got hired to shepherd a wayward daughter back to East Peoria. She’s under contract to DeCoudre and the family doesn’t like the idea. That knocks out the Randolph job.”

O’Leary said: “Why don’t you go out and clinch Randolph’s job first? Then you could let it slide until you had more time. She said she lost at least ten thousand dollars worth and you’d get ten per cent. That would be a thousand dollars.”

“I’ve already got a thousand dollars.” I reached for the check to show her that the subject was closed. I was not going to fool around with any more movie stars. I didn’t see what I’d ever accomplish anyhow. Somebody had prowled Randolph’s Beverly Hills’ mansion one night when she was out and if there were any clues, the cops would have them. Besides, it was one of a long series of burglaries by the same gang apparently, and the police ought to be getting a pattern by now. They’d do Randolph a lot more good than I would. I said: “You dig up some more dope on DeCoudre in case I have to argue with him. I’ll split the fee with you.”

“I refuse to accept your charity,” O’Leary said haughtily. “I have my pride.” She left me standing in the bright warm sun on Hollywood Boulevard, scratching my skull. Now what had I done? Sometimes I find women, even Mrs. O’Leary’s nice daughter Margaret, a difficult proposition.

Presently, I gave up and walked over to Vine Street to do some fast work on finding Laurie Bressette. I’d swallowed all the nice things her old man had told me about being a good detective, a human bloodhound. Ten minutes later I was William Carmody again, a second-rate private eye...

At DeCoudre’s office a secretary, with shell-rimmed glasses and a coax-me-to-take-them-off look, said Laurie’s option had expired months ago and she was no longer under contract to DeCoudre. Furthermore, she hadn’t the least idea where Laurie might be now. With a little bit of urging she did hunt up the file and discovered that Laurie had gone to work in a film rental library on Selma Avenue. That was the best she could do. I said thanks, and left without coaxing her to take off her glasses. I wanted to talk to Laurie before she left for the evening.

I walked seven blocks to the address on Selma. I should have saved the wear and tear on my new thirty-dollar shoes. The Anselmo Film Library was out of business. The windows were covered and the furniture had been taken out. I stood there and muttered a few dirty words under my breath. Maybe there was a fast way of locating Laurie, but all I could think of was to cover the P.O. box in the Hollywood post office and that could turn out to be a very long and very dull vigil.

Not very hopefully I went next door, which was a bar. A fat, curly-haired barman said immediately and positively that he knew nothing whatever about the Anselmo Film Library. I said: “Did a little dark-haired, brown-eyed girl ever come in here?”

“Yeah. At least fifty of them.”

“From next door?”

“I wouldn’t be knowing,” he said. “Maybe she did. I just wouldn’t remember. Care for anything to drink?”

I said no, and went back to the phone booth. The yellow telephone directory listed the Anselmo Flm Library: 16 mm Sound and Silent — Travel — Educational — Religious — Operators Furnished With Complete Equipment.

But Anselmo’s first name wasn’t given, so I couldn’t get his home address. In disgust I went back to my office.

After I had killed the remaining two inches of whiskey in a pint I kept stashed away in the file cabinet, my cares lightened slightly. I carefully set the bottle on the floor and debated the question of going out for another one and really latching on to a real binge.

Then the phone rang. I thought it was O’Leary calling to apologize for being so shirty with me. Instead, a voice as cold and implacable as a grave digger’s spade said: “A word to the wise, Carmody. If you want to live, forget about Laurie Bressette. You can’t do anything for her now!”

Then the phone started humming in my ear again. My hands were suddenly wet with perspiration, but the office was cold. I could have used another pint of liquor right then. That voice was straight out of my worst nightmare. I’d never before heard anything so menacing. Not that I was scared — I told myself. But when I stood up, my foot accidentally knocked the empty bottle clattering across the floor and I damned near fainted.

I spent the following forenoon in the United States Post Office, Hollywood Station, waiting for Laurie to show. There was a letter in her box — probably from Doctor Bressette — so she’d likely be in some time today. If she were coming. That voice on the telephone yesterday had given me a bad night.

What worried me most was how he’d gotten on to me so fast. I’d only taken the job a couple of hours before he called. There was a leak somewhere.

But all I could do was stand there in the post office and stew. I couldn’t do anything for her now, he’d said. Maybe that meant she’d never come. But there wasn’t anything I could do but wait.

At twelve o’clock she hadn’t come, so I stepped out to a drugstore. I had a sandwich and a cup of coffee. All the time I was watching the post office entrance through the window. Nobody resembling Laurie Bressette’s description went in. I took a chance and had a shoeshine in a barber shop before going back.

The moment I entered the P. O. again, my sixth sense told me I’d pulled a boner. Laurie had been there and gone, my bones told me. Mumbling some bad words, I went over and peered into Box 4972... A sixth sense is a valuable asset to the successful private detective — if he has it.

I didn’t have it. The letter was still there. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or scared.

A post office, I discovered, is not an entertaining place to spend a day. After awhile you get tired of watching screwballs; counting the number of boxes; or doodling on the backs of money order forms. Finally, to keep from jumping the rails altogether, I sat down at the United States Army Recruiting desk and let a sergeant give me his pitch. I still think I’d have ended up back in the Army if the girl hadn’t come for the letter in Box 4972.

And even then I nearly missed her. I watched her go up to the box, open it, take out the letter, glance at it, and start to leave. I’d been waiting for a small girl, with dark hair and brown eyes. This girl was a large blonde with the face of a beautiful cow. She was outside again before I realized it was my playmate of yesterday.

I got a lot of satisfaction out of following her this time. I was better at it, too. She took a couple of glances behind, as if to make sure no one was on her tail, but I made sure she didn’t see me. I hung on behind like she was towing me, until she turned into an apartment house near Hollywood High School.

With my hat down over my eyes, I pulled up close enough to see what apartment she entered. Then I gave her five minutes to read the letter. When she answered my knock, I said: “Well, here I am again!”

I got the feeling she wasn’t glad to see me; only fast footwork kept the door from being slammed in my face. And what that did to the new shine on my thirty-dollar shoes made me wince. She was a pretty husky gal but I outweighed her by fifty pounds. When I put my shoulder into it, the door came open. “What do you want?” she demanded indignantly. “Leave here immediately or I’ll call the manager. Who do you think you are, breaking into people’s apartments!”

“Turn it off, sister,” I told her. “I followed you here from the post office.”

She cringed away at that, eyes big, the back of one hand pressing against her mouth. Every gesture right out of the book, and not very good. Summer stock in a barn theater, I thought. I might have developed that line into something sharp, but she didn’t give me a chance.

All at once she stopped retreating, took two steps toward me, and flung herself into my arms. I think she was portraying passion and abandonment, and with a good leading man, it might have been effective. But I wasn’t quite expecting it, and she damned near knocked me down. She was too big for that sort of stuff.

Back on my heels, all I could do was grab her and that really put us in a clinch. Her full lips mashed themselves against mine and like it or not, I got well kissed. I liked it all right. She had on enough lipstick to paint the side of a barn, and she was pretty awkward getting in close but after that she did all right. No complaints.

When I got my wind back, I said: “I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but we’ve got to talk about it sooner or later. If you’ve got any more tricks for stalling, we’ll rush through them and then get down to business.”

“Won’t you just go away,” she pleaded. “Don’t ask any questions, just go.” Even her dramatics didn’t hide the fact she was scared. I would have felt sorry for her, if I didn’t have Laurie to worry about. And I was worried. I’d liked her old man’s voice on the phone and he was worried, so I was too.

“There’re questions that have to be asked,” I told the blonde. “Either by me or the police, and I’m easier to get along with.”

Chapter Three The Golden Dome

She let go of a long breath. I was better than the cops. “What do you want to know?”

“Where’s Laurie Bressette?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Three months ago.” She got out a compact and a piece of tissue and wiped some of the lipstick off her face. It had gotten pretty well smeared around. “Three months and a week.”

“Did you know her well?” I asked.

She nodded, reaching for a cigarette. “We shared this apartment.”

“Tell me the story,” I said.

Without any more dramatics, she smoked and talked, and this was the gist of it: Her name was Eva Vaughn, and she was a singer in a little night club on Melrose while waiting for the movies to discover her, just like Laurie Bressette. Laurie had been under contract to some producer for a while — DeCoudre obviously — but it had lapsed. Then she’d taken a job as a clerk in a film rental library — Anselmo’s. She had a boy friend named Danny Lawson, a sometime radio actor. That was the background, and that was all.

Three months and one week ago, she hadn’t come home. One small suitcase was gone. Eva hadn’t seen her nor heard from her since.

“Her family in East Peoria have been hearing from her,” I said.

Eva flushed and stared down at her cigarette. “I wrote those letters. I typed them on a machine in a typing class at Hollywood Evening High School and signed Laurie’s name.”

“Why?” I asked, not being very bright today.

She handed me the letter she’d taken from Box 4972 a few minutes ago. There were a couple of sheets from Laurie’s mother, which I didn’t read. From her father was a check for a hundred and fifty dollars.

“There’s been one of these every month,” she said. “I wasn’t stealing the money. I was just borrowing. When the first one came I was out of a job and I couldn’t meet the rent. I knew Laurie wouldn’t want me to lose the apartment, no matter what. So... I endorsed the check and cashed it. After that, the checks always seemed to come just when I needed money...”

“But what about Laurie?” I demanded. “Didn’t you wonder where she was, or if she was all right?”

“Not at first. It wasn’t the first time she’d been away for a few days. I thought she was with Danny Lawson, her boyfriend. I’d cashed the first of the checks before I saw Danny.”

A sick feeling was settling in my stomach. “What did he say?”

“He didn’t know a thing. They’d had a fight and he hadn’t come around for a couple of weeks, so he didn’t know she’d gone.”

“How about Lawson — could he have done something to her?”

She shook her head emphatically at that. “Danny is nuts about her and he’s been worried silly ever since.”

“But that’s been three months!” I yelled. “Good Lord, didn’t he do anything?”

“What could he do?” Eva shrugged her shoulders. “He thought she’d gone home to her family in Peoria. And he didn’t have their address, so he couldn’t write to them.”

And as long as those checks were coming in Eva wasn’t telling him. I made myself calm down. “Have you got Doctor Bressette’s letters to Laurie?”

“Yes.” She got them out of a drawer.. “Look, Mr. Carmody, don’t think I haven’t been worried silly about Laurie. She’s kinda wild, but a sweet kid. But look at the position I was in — I could be arrested over those checks. I’ve been waiting until I could save up enough money to pay it back before I did anything. You see that, can’t you?”

“Oh, sure!” I said. “I suppose Bressette mentioned me in one of his letters?”

She nodded. “I knew then I was in for trouble, so I thought if I went to you and talked it over, you’d give me a break. But... I lost my nerve every time and just followed you around. Then you caught me yesterday, and I was so scared I couldn’t tell you.”

She came up close and I braced myself in case she tried throwing herself again. I was relieved when she didn’t. By this time I didn’t like her very well. God knows where Laurie Bressette was now — probably dead in a ditch somewhere, taking the Voice’s warning at face value — and all the blonde thought of was those monthly checks.

“What are you going to do, Mr. Carmody? Are you going to arrest me?”

“Not me.” I said. “I’m going to find Laurie, if I can. What she might want to do, or her father, I wouldn’t know.” I took Bressette’s letters and walked to the door. “Where can I find Danny Lawson?”

“I don’t know where he lives,” she said, in a subdued voice. “Maybe they’ll know at the Golden Dome. That’s a bar they hung around a lot.”

I said: “Don’t cash that last check,” and went downstairs.

I walked over to the Boulevard and got the address of the Golden Dome out of the phone book in a drugstore. It was just a saloon without any dome, golden or otherwise. The only other customer was a horse-player going over a form chart spread out on the bar. The bartender wore gold-rimmed glasses and looked like a bookkeeper. I asked him if he knew Laurie Bressette.

“Little dark-haired girl?” he said. “Sure. Used to come in her a lot. She and a young feller named Danny something.”

“Hasn’t she been in recently?”

He shook his head regretfully, as if he’d missed her. “Not for months. Guess she went back home to the folks. Nearly broke Danny’s heart, I guess. He used to get crying drunk telling me about it.”

I ordered a beer and when he brought it I asked: “What is Danny like?”

“Mild little guy, works at NBC or CBS or one of the radio stations. He was crazy about that girl. She used to give him a rough time — not that she didn’t seem to like him a lot! But she was always doing things that upset him.” He leaned closer, confidentially. “One night a bunch of them were in here and somebody wanted to know why we didn’t have a floor show. Well, do you know what Laurie did?”

“You better tell me.”

“She put a nickel in the juke box and started to do a strip tease, right out there on the floor. Yessir! She got about half her clothes off before Danny made her quit. Of course, I was trying to talk her out of it,” he added righteously, “but cripes, how do you handle a dame like that?”

“How did Danny handle her?” I asked.

“I dunno — just said, Please don’t do that, Laurie. And right away, she quit it. She stopped for him. I could never figure out why she went away without telling him goodbye even.”

“Does he still come in here?”

“Not so much lately. If he’s coming though, it’ll be just about now.”

I thought I’d like to have a look at him, even though he didn’t sound like anyone who’d be responsible for any harm coming to Laurie. I waited about ten minutes, but my patience had been used up waiting all day at the post office. I told the barman to tell Danny about me if he came in. I left my office phone number.

Then I started back to the office, too worried to pay much attention to the screwballs. They were out in full force though. In front of the Egyptian Theatre a couple of little newsboys were trading a lot of wild punches. Nobody paid much attention except a pair of sports who were putting their money down on the outcome. I circled around them and went on. A street photographer took my picture again and I carried the yellow coupon — that with fifty cents would get me an unposed, candid photograph of myself — for three blocks, without realizing it. When I got to the corner of Ivar I straightened out long enough to throw the coupon away.

In front of my office building somebody called my name and I saw O’Leary sitting in her car waiting for me. I motioned her to move over, and I slid under the wheel. She caught a flash of my face and said quickly: “What is it, Willie. What’s wrong?”

“Trouble, I’m afraid,” I said. “I’m looking for a girl who’s been missing for three months. Nobody knows where she went, or why. Her roommate is the only one who knows she’s missing, and she’s so busy covering up for herself she hasn’t had time to care.”

I told her the whole story, and showed her the packet of letters from Doctor Bressette to his daughter. “This is all I’ve got to go on.”

“Let’s go through them,” O’Leary said. “He might refer to something — or someone — that Laurie mentioned in one of her letters.”

“That’s what I had in mind.” I split the pack in two and we started reading. The sun was warm on the back of my neck, and it was no day for trouble. But I had it...

O’Leary found the only important lead. In a letter dated about the time Laurie disappeared, the doctor had written:

“That ties up one loose end,” I admitted. “I wondered how he knew about DeCoudre. But I don’t know whether he was referring to DeCoudre, the Anselmo Film Library, or someone else.”

“I guess the next step is for you to get in touch with this Bill Phipps,” O’Leary decided. “That ought to clear up some of the mystery. But it sounds to me like Mr. DeCoudre.”

“He’s got a very bad reputation,” I agreed. I started to push my hat back off my forehead, when someone reached in and tipped it down over my eyes. I thought it was a wise guy, until something hard rammed into the back of my collar. I left the hat where it was. And I wasn’t interested in the caliber of the gun.

And then a voice — that Voice — said: “You’ve had one warning, Carmody. You don’t get any more. Forget about Laurie Bressette.”

A lot of things have scared me in my time, but I’ve never had cold chills from listening to a voice before. I swear I broke out in goose flesh, and it wasn’t the gun in the back of my neck, it was that voice. At the same time I was aware of the incredible fact that this was happening on a busy street in Hollywood, with people streaming by within two feet of us. From under the brim of my hat I could see O’Leary’s face, as white as a cigarette paper, just staring at me. I found out later that she couldn’t see him because of my head. He was carrying a top coat over one arm in such a way that it concealed the gun. And his mouth, just inches away from my ear, said: “Keep looking for her, Carmody, and you’ll find her — a piece at a time. You’ll get her ears in the mail, to start with!”

The gun went away from my neck. The icicles started melting on my spine. With a shaky hand I pushed my hat brim up and got my head out the window.

“My Irish grandmother!” O’Leary gasped. “That voice would scare Lucifer!”

The street was crowded. I caught a flash of his back, and that was all. It could have been anybody’s back. Blue coat, gray hat. Then just as he swung around the corner I saw his hand go up and a piece of yellow paper flutter out. For a second that didn’t register and then abruptly the ubiquitous past, the street photographer, crossed my vision. I gave a little yelp and lunged out of the car. Women and children were practically trampled in the rush. But I got the coupon. For fifty cents I’d soon have a candid, unposed photograph of the man with the voice.

On the way back to O’Leary’s car I handed the photographer a dollar. He took it, but by the look on his face I knew he thought I was another Hollywood screwball.

“That’s the second time,” I told O’Leary bitterly. “He knows what I’m doing as soon as I do it. How does he do it!”

She looked just as white as I felt. “I don’t know, Willie.”

“Here,” I handed her the coupon. “Send this in, so we’ll get a picture of him. I want to know him if I see him again. I’m getting tired of this game.”

She took the coupon and left. I went upstairs and started telephoning. Getting in touch with sailor Bill Phipps was involved, but not difficult. He was in Los Angeles on a twenty-four hour pass. I called the service club in Pershing Square and got his buddy there. The buddy promised to have Phipps in my office in two hours, if he had to carry him.

I didn’t get the significance of that until a baby-faced blonde girl showed up at three-thirty towing the Navy, which was obviously in distress. He was just drunk enough to be belligerent, a beardless, peach-skinned kid with unhappy blue eyes and nice teeth. He was all of nineteen. “Your name Carmody?” he demanded. “I’m Bill Phipps — Seaman First Class. My buddy says you wanted to see me.”

“That’s right, Bill. I—”

“Look,” he interrupted with a serviceman’s resentment of any civilian authority, real or fancied, “I got nothing to talk about. I never heard of you before.”

I said: “It’s about Laurie Bressette, Bill.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s different.” He straightened up abruptly, not nearly as drunk as he’d pretended. He turned to the baby-faced blonde. “Look, sugar, take a walk around the block. I’ll pick you up later.”

She didn’t like the idea so well, but apparently she didn’t want to get involved with a detective of any kind. When she’d slammed the door behind her, Bill gave me a nod. “O.K. now. What’s with Laurie?”

I told him about Doctor Bressette’s letter and our phone conversation. He interrupted once to clear up one point. He’d never heard of Felix DeCoudre. All he knew was that Laurie was working for some wrong people and he’d tipped off the family.

“She’s a nice girl,” he explained. “I never knew her very well, but I knew she oughtn’t be doing what she was doing.”

“That’s why I called you, Bill. How did you find out about her — and what?”

His fresh, clean face got red. “That’s kind of a story,” he said. “Maybe I’d better tell it to you from the start... Y’see, during the war I was on the Saratoga and one of our petty officers was a guy who’s in the movies. He never had such big parts, but I guess he did pretty good just the same. Well, me and my buddy got to know him pretty well before he got his discharge a year ago. He invited us to visit him in Hollywood some time, said he’d show us a good time. So about three months ago we did.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

He looked embarrassed. “I guess I’d rather not tell you that. He doesn’t have anything to do with Laurie. Not directly... Y’see when we went to his house one day, he threw a pretty good stag party for us. There were a half dozen other friends of his there. Well,” he got red in the face again, “we all got pretty high and then — this actor — he had a movie for us. One of these home-sized jobs.”

I thought I could fill in the rest, but I let him tell it.

“Maybe you’ve seen one of those films.” He couldn’t quite meet my eyes. “It was worse than any peep show or burlesque I ever saw and I’ve seen some hot ones! It was...”

“I know the kind,” I said. “And you recognized Laurie in the particular picture.”

He nodded. “She was the only one. A strip tease....” He left that hanging. “It got me, seeing a nice girl from your own home town doing something like that. I couldn’t go for that stuff.” He must have remembered the baby-faced tramp he’d brought in with him then, for he burned like an electric heater. “You know how it is with sailors,” he said defensively. “People expect that sort of stuff. But cripes, the Bressettes are damn nice people!”

He hadn’t wanted to squeal on Laurie, he explained, but he felt he had to do something. So he wrote to Doctor Bressette and mentioned, casually, that he’d heard bad things about the outfit she worked for. That was how he phrased it, not knowing about the Anselmo Film Library — or DeCoudre either for that matter. But the doctor immediately assumed the reference was to DeCoudre, because Laurie was presumably still under contract to him.

Well, that completed the circle eliminating DeCoudre, and pointing the finger at Anselmo. I thought I knew practically everything now — except where Laurie was.

I took a chance on Bill and told him about her disappearance. He couldn’t give me the slightest bit of help.

“That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?” he asked. “What can we do?”

I told him what we could do. “You’ve got to call your actor friend. He’s the only lead we have on this Anselmo film place. We’ve got to locate the people who run it. Unless I’ve guessed wrong, your friend rented the film from Anselmo, so he might know where they moved to after they left the place on Selma. It’s all we have.” I pointed to the phone. “I’ll take a walk around the block while you find out all you can about Anselmo. We’ll leave your friend out of it.”

“O.K.,” he said, and I took a walk. I debated, briefly, going to the police. Then I voted against it. I had an idea Doctor Bressette would rather I handled the matter. Once the cops came into it, the story of that dirty film would come out. The doctor wanted his daughter back — but not with all the lurid details in every newspaper from Los Angeles dailies to the East Peoria Weekly Gazette.

Chapter Four Black Line or White?

When I walked back into the office, Bill had Anselmo’s number written down on the desk pad. His full name was John R. Anselmo, and the number was unlisted, so I couldn’t have found it in the phone book. I dialed and a man’s voice — just a voice — said: “Yes?”

“Mr. Anselmo?”

“Speaking.”

“My name is Carmody. There’s something I want to talk over with you. Where can we meet?”

“Talk about it now,” he suggested.

“It’s very confidential. You name the time and place.”

“In the Rose Bowl some New Year’s.” He hung up without waiting for the laugh. It was all right; he didn’t get one. I dialed him right back.

“I’m not going to waste time with you, Carmody.”.He sounded sore. “I don’t know how you got this number.”

I said: “Laurie Bressette told me.”

This time he didn’t hang up. After a time-out, he said: “Just what did you want?”

“Not a home movie,” I assured him. “Where do you want to meet me?”

“Will my shop on Selma be satisfactory?”

“Yeah. In an hour?”

He said: “I’ll try to make it in an hour,” and hung up.

Bill Phipps watched me with worried eyes. “What do you think?”

“He’s scared. I don’t know why.”

He fidgetted, then blurted it out. “Mr. Carmody, do you think Laurie is — well, could this be a white slavery thing?”

I gave him a cigarette before answering. I thought I knew what bothered him so. Laurie didn’t mean a thing to him, as a girl, and Doctor Bressette was probably just somebody he knew in his home town. But he was young enough to draw a broad white line between right and wrong, good and bad. The Bressettes, including Laurie, were good, decent people. He could console his own conscience that a sailor was supposed to act like the popular conception of a sailor. But having Laurie involved in something sordid was to have dirt seeping over that white line into the right and good. He wasn’t a very complicated person; but he was a darn good kid.

“I don’t know. Bill,” I said. “But believe me, I’m going to find out. In any case it might be a good idea if Doc Bressette never does know all the details. I talked to him on the phone today and I know he’s a nice guy. So if I can get Laurie on a train for East Peoria, that ought to be enough. Right?”

He nodded but he was still worried. “How about the film?”

“I think I’ll be able to get that, too.” I didn’t know how, but it seemed as though it was the crux of the affair. It might cost some money — unless I acted fast and smart.

I looked at my watch. “I guess I’d better get moving, Bill, I have a date, you know.”

“Want me to come?”

“I don’t think so. Call me tomorrow and I’ll let you know what happened.”

He got up, and I swear, he looked at least three years more grown up. “If you need any help satisfying Doc Bressette, let me know.”

He left then. I watched him from the window as he came out on the street. He headed directly for a street car going downtown. That’s where the Sixth Street Terminal was, where he’d catch a train back to Long Beach. I wondered what his baby-faced blonde pick-up would think at being deserted.

I didn’t lose weight worrying.

The Anselmo Film Library looked just the same. The windows were still fogged over and the door locked as tight as ever. I rattled the knob, but nobody answered. I smoked a cigarette while waiting out the hour. Before it was up, I spotted a shine stand half a block down and across on the other side of the street. Now seemed a good chance to repair the damage done by Eva Vaughn’s door. And I could keep an eye on Anselmo’s door from there.

The chocolate-colored boy with a magnificent smile and spring fever in his bones was just starting on my second shoe when a tall figure turned into Anselmo’s doorway. I could only see his general outline but he looked well over six feet and, like six o’clock, straight up and down. He wore a long top coat without any drape to it, so that his length and thinness was emphasized. Under a dark hat, his head looked small. His jaw was square jutting with no suggestion of a double chin. The late sun was behind him, and the shadow he laid down was twenty-feet long and drawn with ruler-straight lines.

I told the boy to shake it up.

Anselmo emerged from the doorway, looked both ways, hesitating a moment. Then he shrugged narrow, square-shoulders and started up the street toward me. I thought I could get my shine and still intercept him at the corner. He wasn’t hard to keep in sight, towering above the other people on the street.

When he was almost to the corner, he came clear of the crowd for a moment and immediately pulled up short, as if he just remembered something. The thing I noticed most was the way the rigid, ruler-drawn lines of his figure held their form for so long. Then, looking for all the world like one of those tall thin smoke stacks you see being dynamited in news reels, he started to come down.

You’ve seen those shots, the base crumples out, and the whole thing settles down for an instant, still straight and precise. Then even as it crumples, it goes over sideways, majestically, maintaining its shape and form till the last final round...

Anselmo was a crumpled heap on the pavement before somebody screamed high over the rumble of the traffic. Belatedly, I picked the crack of a gun-shot off the sound-screen of my unconscious. The shot and Anselmo’s crumbling had seemed so unrelated I didn’t for a second pay enough attention to realize I’d heard it.

I was down off the shine stand and unaware of it. I started to run, out into the flowing traffic, which had slowed enough to let me get across. The scream had done that.

I’d moved fast, but even so a crowd had formed a tight ring around the man on the street. Out of the babble of voices as I elbowed through I caught the insistent theme: Nobody had seen where the shot had come from! A passing car, a gun in somebody’s pocket on the street, from a window. Nobody knew. I broke through to the front row then, and saw what was left of Anselmo.

Lying face down, he looked seven feet long, and just as thin and straight as I’d thought. One arm was under his forehead. The other was bent at the elbow, with the fingers digging into the concrete as if he were trying to pull himself along. In the V below his arm-pit, a tiny, red river was snaking a course through the dust on the sidewalk. It seemed to be racing for the curb, like something alive trying to get into the gutter and out of sight, shunning the clean light of day.

A cop came pushing through behind me, in the fastest time, I thought, that a cop had ever arrived, when he was needed. Don’t be so cynical, my mind told me. Always criticizing the police department. They do a good job, considering.

And they were something substantial and reliable. They performed certain prescribed acts that had to be done. While other people just stood around and stared, the police proceeded with a time-honored routine. In a moment the cop would tell us to break it up.

“Awright, break it up,” the cop said.

I looked at him with an idiotic grate fulness. I’d been waiting for him to say it, and he’d said it. Everything was going to be all right now. Except that Anselmo was dead. Stone cold dead, I thought. All seven feet of him.

“You, too, buddy,” the cop said, giving me a shove.

It felt good. I beamed at him. I started walking away. I was all the way to Hollywood Boulevard before I knew it. There a nice motherly-looking woman was giving away religious tracts. She gave me one. It said, in neat blue print: Ye Must Be Born Again.

“I don’t think he can manage it,” I said seriously. “Not with a bullet hole in him.”

I was not being smart or sacrilegous. I was just numb. I’d never seen a man get shot down in the street before. It wasn’t good to see. I kept thinking of all the things Anselmo might have had to do before he died, the appointments he had to keep, the people he had to see. Now it was too late; he’d never do anything. He’d never tell me where Laurie Bressette was.

The motherly woman was staring at me as if I were crazy. Probably I was. Or maybe she thought I was kidding her about the tract, and I wasn’t. I was worried about that. I took out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to her.

“A donation,” I said earnestly. “For a good cause... But I just don’t think Anselmo will ever make it. He was murdered.”

Shot, I thought. Shot down a block off Hollywood Boulevard and nobody saw who did it.

O’Leary didn’t know anything about Anselmo’s shooting till she came to my office the next day at noon. I saved her a nickel for a newspaper by giving her an eye-witness account.

“And that,” I said wearily, “is one of my two leads gone. The Voice is the other one. What did you do about the picture?”

O’Leary looked troubled. She made a couple of meaningless gestures. “I went down there this morning and gave them the coupon. I got the picture, all right... Do you think he shot Anselmo?”

“Who else?” I said impatiently. “Let’s see it.”

She tossed it on the desk. “Have a look.”

It didn’t take long to see why she’d been so unenthusiastic. Just as the picture was snapped, the Voice had put his hand up so that the lower half of his face was concealed. It was strictly an accident because he wasn’t looking at the camera, apparently didn’t know he was being photographed. I could see a pair of eyes under the brim of his hat and that was all. I’d stand a better chance of recognizing him from a rear view. At least I had seen the back of his neck.

I said: “Well, that’s that. Now I haven’t got anything to go on! Maybe I’d better just hand it over to the cops and be done with it. They—”

The phone started to ring and I waved at O’Leary to take it. “If that’s the police, I was just kidding.”

“Hello... well, hello, Lieutenant Kissinger!”

I thought she was kidding but she wasn’t. It was Lieutenant Kissinger all right, from Homicide. He wanted to talk to me.

“He isn’t in right this minute, Lieutenant,” O’Leary said, holding up two crossed fingers for me to witness. “Shall I have him call you... Why, Lieutenant, what a thing to say! Of course, he isn’t right here. That rather hurts me, Lieutenant.”

She could have been an actress. She sounded so wounded, Kissinger apologized all over the place. He always did like O’Leary — in a fatherly way. He didn’t care for me in any way. I think he wanted to, for Maggie’s sake, but there were so many things about me he just couldn’t take.

If I were anything but a private dick he might have been a little warmer toward me. But he was simply incapable of understanding any attitude except the police department’s and so he could only believe I was deliberately wilful if we didn’t see eye to eye.

Presently O’Leary finished off her conversation and hung up. “The things I do for you,” she complained. “Telling lies to the police! What are you going to dp, Willie?”

“Give up, I guess. I haven’t a thing to work on.”

“You can still get Lida Randolph’s job. She called me again this morning about you.”

I gave her a sharp scrutiny. “Just why,” I asked, “are you so anxious for me to take that job?”

“Well... it’s... it’s a job. And you need—”

“Save your little white lies for the cops, baby,” I said unpleasantly. “You’re ears get as red as a neon sign when you’re lying.”

“They do not,” she snapped... “Do they really, Willie?”

“Absolutely. You’re doomed to a lifetime of telling the truth. Tell it now.”

“All right,” she grinned ruefully. “Randolph knows DeCoudre well. She will put in a good word with him for me to do the publicity for his picture if you go to work for her.”

“Fine thing!” I said. “Working for a guy like DeCoudre. Have you forgotten about Elaine Jordan?”

“That happened at a party. I’m just going to work for him.” She came around behind me, put her arms on my shoulders and her nose in my hair. “He’s really starting a comeback, Willie. It’s a big chance for me. What difference does it make if DeCoudre is an old lecher. I won’t have anything to do with him directly.”

“Anyway at all I can’t see him.”

“Maybe the president of Standard Oil is a wife beater,” she argued, “but every employee doesn’t walk out on his job, does he?”

I couldn’t win an argument with her if I had a lawyer to help.

Finally I told her to tell Lida Randolph I’d investigate her burglary. But I had my fingers crossed too. I wasn’t going near her. As soon as Maggie got her publicity job Fd call Randolph and say I was stumped, and there was no fee.

“I’m still working on the Bressette case,” I growled at O’Leary. “The police will turn up something on the Anselmo shooting. Somebody must have seen who fired that shot. I figured it out — it had to be somebody on the street.”

O’Leary was reaching for the phone to call Randolph. “Maybe one of the street photographers got a picture of him.”

“Hey!” My yell scared the phone right out of her hand. “That’s it. The street photographer. He was there in the crowd. I remember seeing him now. He could have done it.”

She put the phone down. “You’re just guessing, Willie.”

“Sure, I’m guessing. But look at it: somebody on the street shot Anselmo from behind. Nobody was near enough to him at the time to be able to hit him without aiming. Yet nobody saw him. A street photographer could aim his camera with the gun held against the side, and nobody would ever notice.”

“Well,” O’Leary conceded, “if he was next to the building he would be covered on that side.”

“Sure. And that guy has been under my feet for two days. He was always just a camera before. I didn’t realize until now it was always the same man behind it. He’s been following me.” O’Leary said: “Willie, I think you’ve got it! It has to be him. It fits too perfectly. I’ll bet we can get his name from the picture company.”

“You call ’em,” I told her. “Get whoever you talked to this morning and have him look up the number on the card you turned in.”

The man at the film company didn’t like the idea of doing all that checking, but O’Leary could charm the rattles off a snake. She got the information.

“Marty Wensel. Hotel Junipero.” She scribbled it down. “Between Fourth and Fifth, on Main. Thanks so much.” She hung up, her eyes shining. “Do you know where that is, Willie?”

“I know. Let’s go.”

We went out and buzzed for the elevator. A big man stepped out as we were getting in. I paid no attention to him but just as we sunk below floor level I saw through the glass door of the elevator that the man was trying my door. O’Leary looked at me. I said, with my lips: “Copper.”

“One of Kissinger’s men,” O’Leary suggested silently.

I nodded. When we reached the ground floor we got the hell out of there before the dick realized he had bulled things up. Kissinger would have his heart on a salver for that.

Chapter Five Frame for Murder

Main street in this city isn’t what you might expect by the name. In the early days it may have been the heart of Los Angeles, but with time and wealth the city had spread out and away from the downtown section. Now Main Street was cheap, garish and loud. If your tastes were earthy, Main Street was the place to go. Burlesque shows, bistros, ten-cent movies, pawn shops, marihuana joints and flop houses. Whatever it was, Main Street had it.

The Hotel Junipero was one cut above a flop house. It was upstairs over a row of shops with the stairway just barely getting through to the street. O’Leary stayed close to my side as we mounted the dim, smelly stairway.

We came out in what had to be called the lobby. There was no one in sight. A small desk, fronting an alcove, held a hand bell and a sign suggesting we ring for the manager. Instead of ringing, I leaned over the desk and found the register on a shelf underneath. Together we went over it. There was no Marty Wensel registered for four months back.

“Either a phony name,” I said, “or he just used this as an address. We’d better ring for the manager.”

“Won’t I do?” I didn’t have to turn around. I’d know Lieutenant Kissinger’s skeptical, slightly nasty voice anywhere. “Nice of you to come down, Carmody. Where’s Packard?”

I turned around anyway. “Who’s Packard?”

“The man I sent to get you.” His sharp eyes got suddenly watchful. “He did bring you, didn’t he?”

“No,” I said. “We’re down here on a personal matter. Maggie’s Uncle Tim has been on a two-week bat and we’re just looking for him.” O’Leary kicked me neatly and unobtrusively on the ankle. “You remember Maggie, don’t you, lieutenant?”

Kissinger said grudgingly: “How are you, Miss O’Leary?” He knew now that she had been lying to him on the phone, and he was hurt. “If you’re all through clowning, Carmody, let’s have the truth. What do you know about this shooting?”

“Nothing. I had an appointment with Anselmo,” I admitted. “But he was shot before I talked to him.”

“Anselmo?” Between the first and third syllable, his voice changed from bewilderment to casualness, but not quick enough for me to sense I’d pulled a bull myself. “Oh, yes. Anselmo.”

“Then it wasn’t the Hollywood shooting you wanted to see me about.”

“No,” he said. “Why did you think it was?”

I nonchalantly reached for a cigarette just to show him I wasn’t bothered. I discovered I didn’t have any left. It wouldn’t have impressed him anyhow. “That’s obvious. Every time somebody gets knocked off out there, you always think I’m involved.”

“And I seldom go wrong! As a matter of fact, Carmody, I’m not on the case. I’ve got a murder down here.”

O’Leary blurted: “Marty Wensel?”

Without a word Kissinger dug out a notebook and a stubby pencil and wrote down the name before answering. “No. A little rum-pot named Pop Kurbee. That’s the name he used on the register. You want to go over to the morgue, Miss O’Leary and see if he’s your Uncle Tim?”

“No, thanks, lieutenant,” O’Leary said weakly.

I asked: “What does Kurbee look like?”

“Thin, white-haired. Little man about sixty-five. Maybe a little older — he was living on the old age pension.” Kissinger regarded me thoughtfully. “Is that Marty Wensel?”

I shook my head. “Marty wasn’t forty. About the same size as you described Kurbee, though. What’s the story, lieutenant?”

“Somebody shot him through the window from the roof next door. That’s all. No motive, no suspects.”

“You must have been demoted, lieutenant. A nice, juicy Hollywood murder and here you are, stuck with a Main Street wino that nobody cares about.”

“We’re democratic, Carmody. We investigate whether it’s a rich man or a beggar.”

“Bull!” I said impolitely. “You wouldn’t give a damn if all the bums on Skidrow got pushed off. You’re in this case for some reason. What is it?”

“I asked to be assigned to it as soon as I saw what we had to work with.” Kissinger didn’t change expressions. “There’s one little clue, Carmody. I’m going to let you see it.”

He dug an envelope out of an inner pocket, opened it carefully and took out a picture. He gazed at it for a second, almost licking his lips, and I had a sinking feeling that Laurie Bressette had had some torrid photographs made. Then Kissinger held it up, and it wasn’t Laurie. It was Mrs. Carmody’s boy, William.

“That’s cute!” O’Leary explained. “It catches Willie’s personality perfectly. Stupid but rather sweet. Can I have it, lieutenant? I don’t have one picture of him.”

Kissinger shook his head. “I’ll try to get it for you when the case is closed. It says here it’s an unposed, candid shot.” He put it back in the envelope. “I don’t believe it. Nobody looks like this without an effort.”

“You two could whip a very funny routine out of that,” I said. “Where did you get it?”

“In Pop Kurbee’s pocket. That’s why I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, Carmody. I was worried about you.”

“I just bet. It probably kept you awake at the office just thinking about it. Well, you’re on the case, what are you going to do?”

“Are you going to tell me how Kurbee happened to have your picture in his pocket?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said, almost happily. “Take you downtown and ask some questions.”

“A piece of hose and some bright lights?” I asked. “A little rough stuff downstairs—”

“I don’t operate that way, Carmody,” he said indignantly.

“Oh, you don’t knock any teeth out,” I said. “You just loosen them. No bruises that show either. No broken bones.”

“No!” O’Leary burst out. “Lieutenant, if you lay a finger on him I’ll go right to the commissioner! I’ll get your badge, lieutenant, if his hair is even mussed.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Miss—”

“I can take it, Maggie,” I said bravely. “I’ve been beat up before. The sight of blood doesn’t bother me... even my own.”

Kissinger yelled: “Carmody, stop it!”

“I’m warning you, lieutenant,” O’Leary said, dangerously. “I’ve written some stories for most of the newspapers in this town and they’ll back me up. I’ll have pictures on every front page in every edition tomorrow if he isn’t returned exactly as he is now. He may not be much of a catch, lieutenant, but he’s my boy and there’s no strong arm cop going to give him the third degree!”

Kissinger was so red in the face I thought he was going to have a stroke. He thought of several answers but after opening his mouth each time he changed his mind. “Get him a lawyer,” he snapped. “Come on, Carmody, you poor little thing. I’d like to work a few cross word puzzles with you — if you’re sure it won’t give you a headache!”

I had to wait till we got outside before I could laugh and then I couldn’t stop, even when we got downtown. Every time Kissinger asked a question I’d think of the look on his face when O’Leary started into him and I’d break out again. I didn’t tell him very much. He finally gave up and told me to get the hell out before he did rough me up. He was almost on the point of taking a swing at me and the hell with the consequences. So I left.

I’d planned to exit laughing, but at the door, he called to me. He had control of himself again. “Maybe you’d like to know why I’m not on the Hollywood shooting, Carmody. Because it’s out of my department. Anselmo isn’t dead. All he has is a furrow across his ribs. Just a scratch.”

Exit, Carmody — definitely not laughing!

An hour later, O’Leary and I pulled up opposite Anselmo’s Film Library on Selma. “I really messed this up,” I told O’Leary. “Obviously Wensel shot Anselmo yesterday and so this morning Anselmo returned the compliment — or so he thought. Wensel was bunking with Pop Kurbee and Anselmo shot Kurbee through the window by mistake.”

“But what could you have done?” O’Leary asked. “The old man was probably dead before you figured out it was the street photographer who shot Anselmo.”

“I didn’t mean that. All the shooting must be over that pornographic film. Anselmo has it and Wensel wanted it. What else could it be? And it was probably in Anselmo’s shop.”

“And so?”

“So I should have shaken the place down yesterday. The cop wouldn’t have any cause to open the shop with Anselmo alive. I had a sweet opportunity of getting that film.”

“Maybe it isn’t too late. We don’t know Anselmo is out of the hospital.”

I opened the car door. “I’ll try to get inside and see. You sit here.”

I didn’t wait for her to tell me it was illegal. I knew it was — also practically impossible. First I had to break in... in broad daylight — then open the safe. There was bound to be a safe. Anselmo wouldn’t leave anything like that film lying around for just anybody to pick up. I knew I couldn’t open a safe — half the time I can’t open my own. But I didn’t want to miss any bets that might find some lead to Laurie — or her remains.

I got some tools out of the rear of O’Leary’s car and went up the alley behind Anselmo’s shop. I intended to make like a workman doing a job. I might have bluffed it through, but it wasn’t necessary. All I had to do was follow somebody else’s path. The back window was wide open. So was the door of the safe. It had been souped off. The safe was as empty as Carmody’s head.

I found nothing in the way of film that couldn’t safely be shown to the East Peoria Ladies’ Guild any Saturday morning.

I spent the next two days adding up what I knew and it came out zero. I’d started out to find Laurie Bressette, and after several brilliant strokes of detective work I was still trying to find her. I didn’t know whether she was alive or dead. I didn’t know why she was missing, and I didn’t know who was responsible.

It could be Anselmo, or Marty Wensel. It could be the Voice — unless he was Anselmo or Wensel. And I couldn’t eliminate Danny Lawson, the radio actor, or Eva Vaughn. Or it could be person or persons unknown. Laurie seemed the type who could get picked up by any good-looking male...

Anselmo had been my best bet — and he still was. So I called all the hospitals until I found the one he’d been in. Note the past tense. They had released him yesterday as out of danger. But if he went home, he was keeping it a secret. He didn’t answer his phone. Maybe he wanted privacy.

Speaking of privacy, I wasn’t getting any. Lida Randolph had informed the world that I had agreed to investigate the burglary of her house. That is, the papers, particularly the movies sections, carried a brief mention of it. I could have shot O’Leary. She was up to her old tricks of getting me some publicity. That girl has been in Hollywood too long.

My phone rang for two days. First it was Randolph’s business manager inviting me out to the house for a conference. He was a little hurt when I stalled him.

Next, Western Union had a telegram for me from East Peoria. Doctor Bressette, asking hopefully if I’d contacted Laurie yet and when was she coming home? I simply didn’t have the courage to answer him. I had a sneaking suspicion that Laurie was never going home — except in a box.

A little later O’Leary called to say happily she had already signed to do the publicity on DeCoudre’s new picture.

“In fact,” she said, “I’m releasing our first big story for tomorrow.”

“Which is?”

“Lida Randolph is going to star in the picture.” She said it like she had achieved a personal triumph. “That’s how she could get me the job. I mean that was the condition.”

“I don’t believe it,” I told her. “Why should she make that a condition? DeCoudre might say no, and she’d be out too.”

“I don’t think that would worry Randolph. She owed DeCoudre a picture a year, dating from the time he was a big shot here. This is the last year, so he’s anxious to have her.”

“Well, I still don’t like it,” I said, but I didn’t know just what it was I didn’t like. It bothered me long after O’Leary hung up, but I couldn’t quite nail it down. Then my phone rang again, and I forgot it.

It was Randolph herself this time and she tried to coax me out to see her. By this time I was beginning to wonder. Even on my good days I’m not that good a detective. And I wasn’t having any good days these days. I tried to stall her, but she was insistent. “Can you meet me this evening?” she asked, in her lowdown, sexy voice that fills movie houses all over the country. “I’m doing a broadcast at nine at CBS.”

“All right,” I said reluctantly, “I’ll be there.”

When the phone rang again I almost didn’t answer it. It was probably only the landlord. But a ringing phone is hard to ignore. I reached for it and as I was putting it to my ear my infallible sixth sense warned that it was the Voice calling to scare the pants off me. Then I got mad. Nobody could do that with just a voice.

“Carmody?” It wasn’t a voice I’d ever heard before. I stopped perspiring.

“Yeah.”

“I been reading the papers, Carmody. I see you got a job with Lida Randolph.” I decided I had heard that voice somewhere — but where? “I got something to sell, Carmody. You want to buy?”

“Not a pig in a poke,” I assured him. “What is it?”

“I’ll let you look. You want to meet me tonight — alone?”

I thought it over. “What can I lose? Where?”

He said: “There’s a park off Western Avenue, north of the Boulevard. You cross a little bridge and go up a hill—”

“I’m supposed to do all that in the dark?” I demanded.

“All right,” he said. “Just walk into the park at eight o’clock and keep your eyes open. I’ll flash a light.”

“O.K.,” I said. “But you’d better have something good.”

“It’s hot, Carmody, it’s hot.” He chuckled hoarsely and hung up.

Chapter Six Hold-up Hill

Well, I thought, maybe there is something in this publicity business. I had a lead anyway. If I could recover Randolph’s property for not too much, she might be glad to deal. That would get it off my hands in a hurry. I left the office so I wouldn’t have to answer the phone again. Next time it might be the Voice. He wasn’t scaring me though.

I went for a walk among the screwballs to get my mind off my troubles. In front of the Paramount Theatre I saw, of all people, Eva Vaughn. I wondered if she was tailing me again. If she was, experience had improved her technique because she disappeared into the girdle section of a department store when I tried to trap her again. I had some dinner and went back to the office to sleep until time to go to the park. The phone didn’t ring once.

I got off the street car at Western and started walking north, wishing I’d thought to borrow O’Leary’s car. I had the distinct feeling I was being followed — my good old sixth sense again — and on foot I didn’t stand much of a chance of hiding my trail. I forgot about it when, after climbing a grade about seven blocks long, I came to the park.

A dirt road wound into the park and crossed a small bridge. It was simpler than I’d expected. I found a path and started climbing a steep bank.

Presently, I picked out a blinking light up among the stars and nearly quit right there. It was so far up I’d need a helicopter to reach it in the dark, but neither heat nor cold nor dark of night could stay me in pursuit of my duty. For a small beer I’d have chucked duty on the spot!

The path twisted, up and up. And up. There was no doubt in my mind that it had been laid out by a mountain goat with the blind staggers. It was eight inches wide and during the rainy season it doubled as a drain. Before long I was on my hands and knees, clutching at shrubs and tufts of grass. I got so high I thought my nose had started to bleed.

But it was rain, a light, mean drizzle that was a cinch to soak me through in twenty minutes. And all this time that damn light was winking every now and then somewhere above me, and never any closer. Finally I just sat down and snapped on my cigarette lighter and winked right back at him. He came down to meet me.

“Carmody?” he whispered.

“I’m not a Swiss yodeler,” I assured him. I was puffing so hard I could hardly answer. I thought he seemed vaguely familiar but it was so dark — and damp — I couldn’t see him clearly. “What are you so cautious about?”

“Being cautious has kept me alive, Carmody,” he assured me. “Right now I’m being so cautious that I’ll shoot you dead if you reach for a cigarette.” He snicked on the flashlight to let me see that his hand was full. In the faint illumination I saw his face. “It’s a gun, Carmody.”

“I didn’t think it was a camera,” I said. “Or are you out of that racket now.”

He started. “You got that figured out, eh? Do the cops know?”

“No. I’m the only one.” I wasn’t smarter than the police, I just happened to have seen Wensel and his camera around Hollywood Boulevard once too often. “But I’m a little confused, Marty,” I said. “I thought you were selling Lida Randolph’s loot.”

“Nah,” he said. “I got a fillum. I’m going to have to frisk you, Carmody. Turn around.”

“I never carry a gun.” But I turned around and let him verify it.

“O.K.,” he said. “You got this place staked out?”

“I’m alone,” I said impatiently. “Where’s the film?”

“It wouldn’t do any good if you brought the whole police department,” he said. “I know this park better than anybody. I played here when I was a a kid. One funny move and I can vanish like a gopher.”

Now that he mentioned it, he looked a little like a gopher. “Stop worrying,” I said. “I’m getting wet.”

He shrugged in the dark. “I got this here fillum to sell. I couldn’t take time to talk on the phone because you might have been trying to trace the call for the cops.”

“They aren’t in on this at all. They don’t know you exist.”

“They don’t think Anselmo killed himself!” he retorted.

“Anselmo,” I told him, “isn’t dead. You only grazed his ribs.”

He took that hard. If I’d been planning to jump him, I could have done it then, the shock was that bad. “Not dead, eh?” he mused. “Then it was Anselmo who potted old Pop through the window.”

“Who else? You should have worked that out before this.”

“Well, he’s got friends,” he muttered. Then he got down to business. “Like I said, I got this fillum and it’s for sale. How much will her old man pay for it?”

“Not a nickel, if she’s dead.”

“She’s... she isn’t dead.” I didn’t like the way he stammered over it. He realized that he had to say Laurie was alive. But he hadn’t sounded convincing. “How much, Carmody?”

“Five hundred,” I said carelessly.

He laughed scornfully. “Just multiply that by ten and we’ll go on from there.”

“Where’s a small town doctor going to get that kind of money?”

“He wouldn’t want the fillum to be rented out some more!”

“At five thousand, he couldn’t do anything about it. I think he might raise a grand. But I’m not sure.”

Wensel was bitterly disappointed. He swore vigorously. “Well, how soon can you get it?”

“In a week.”

“A week!” he screamed. “I got to have it tomorrow. Anselmo will find me in a week.”

I shrugged. “Where’s the girl?”

He got crafty again. “How much is that worth?”

“In dollars and cents about one Roosevelt dime. But I might get that thousand for you tomorrow if you steered me to Laurie—” I broke off.

Wensel had stiffened and he was peering down the path. Even in the darkness I could see that he was no harmless little street photographer. The way he reacted told he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot the eyes out of anyone who tried to come up that path. “No stake-out, eh?” he snarled at me, and tried to backhand me with the flat of the gun. I ducked; and then half way down the hill a gun exploded.

Wensel bleated softly and went down. He was hit, but not out. He fired from the ground, the muzzle blast almost scorching my face. Down the hill a woman screamed, and I thought: What in hell is a woman doing here?

But I was doing my thinking on the move. I wasn’t hanging around between two gun fires. I dove sideways at what looked like a thicket. It was all right but it was also the edge of a ridge. I went over the side and down twenty feet in two bounces. I thought I was never going to stop rolling.

Then, suddenly, I came up on my knees and a shadowy form flashed across my line of vision. I was so dizzy and turned around I thought I was back in college playing left end. I reacted from instinct. The tackle I threw then was better than anything I’d ever done at Boston College. Simultaneously, I realized it was possibly not a very bright move. I might be tackling the guy who was doing all the shooting. But it wasn’t; it was a woman.

If you think tackling a woman on a wet hillside, even with lead singing through the air is nice work, forget it. She might have been a big fullback. She was big, all right, and she was active. She struggled with a frantic strength that just sent us further down the side of the ridge. Which was all right too, because it took us farther from the firing.

I tried to get a gentlemanly sort of hold on her, and she tried to bite my wrist. The moment I felt her lips I knew who it was. Only one woman in this case wore so much lipstick it felt like a gob of grease.

I said: “Relax, Miss Vaughn. You’re among friends.”

She gave up then and she had no worse than a split decision due her.

In the meantime the firing seemed to have quit on the ridge above us. There was no sound except the rain falling on the leaves of the scrub trees around us. Then below us, heading down, we heard someone leaving the battle field. I couldn’t tell whether he was staggering or just having trouble with that steep, crooked path. But he was making a lot of noise.

“Who is it?” I asked Eva.

“John Anselmo,” she said sullenly. “He made me come with him. I didn’t want to.”

“You didn’t want to follow me this afternoon either, did you?” I sneered. “You were better at it, anyway. Let’s get up the hill and see how Wensel is.”

He was there, not far from where Anselmo’s first shot had dropped. At first I thought he was dead, but when I tried to turn him over off his face, he spoke.

“Don’t move me, Carmody,” he whispered. “The rat got me good.” He seemed to be hurt along the spine because he couldn’t lift his head to talk. His face was down in the mud and wet leaves, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

I knelt beside him and put my face close to his. “I. didn’t cross you, Wensel. They tailed me here.”

“Don’t make a hell of a lot of difference now. I got it good this time, Carmody.” His voice got suddenly weaker. “Behind the trunk of a big tree up aways — the fillum. I been carrying it with me. That’s all there is. You can have it. It’s worth a grand.”

“Where’s Laurie Bressette?” I asked.

He didn’t seem to hear me. “Don’t let Anselmo have it,” he breathed. “The double crossing rat! Fifty thousand dollars I had coming. Fifty thousand — that was my split.. ” His voice trailed away and I thought he was gone, but he rallied for an instant. “Ask Randolph — ask her what she’ll pay to get back... everything that was stolen...”

He died then, with his face still in the wet cold leaves of that park he’d played in as a kid. Maybe since he had to go, dying here gave him a little comfort. I don’t know. Nothing comforted me. I left him lying there for the rain to fall on.

I took his flashlight and I peered around until I found the film under a tree. Then with Eva Vaughn following I slipped and slid down the tortuous path to the foot of the hill. I didn’t offer to help Eva, but she didn’t seem to notice.

When we got to the little bridge we found Anselmo sitting there with his small neat head against the railing. He still wore that long, straight top coat. He’d stopped to rest, because he had been shot twice in the chest and he’d lost a lot of blood. He never got up again. He was as dead as Marty Wensel and I left him there too, with his long, thin legs stretched out half the width of the bridge...

In the beam of the headlights on his car I examined the film of Laurie Bressette. She’d been a pretty girl, with or without her clothes on. In most of the few frames I looked at she didn’t have any on. It got better as it went on, but I guess I just wasn’t in the frame of mind for that sort of stuff right then.

I put it in a brick picnic fireplace and touched a match to it. It was probably just my imagination that it gave off more heat than any ordinary film would.

I got in beside Eva and drove down the slope of Western Avenue. In the glare of a street light Eva Vaughn looked like a sandhog. Her dress was torn and muddied, and half off her. Her face was smeared with dirt and wet leaves, and all her makeup was gone. So help me, she looked better that way.

I said: “Do you want to talk to me or to the Homicide squad?”

“I haven’t done anything. I mean,” she added, remembering those forged checks, “nothing more.”

“I’m in no mood to humor you,” I said. “Just tell me!”

“All right,” she said. And she started to talk and when she finished I could see, a little foggily perhaps, the whole messy, complicated, blood-strewn picture. She asked: “What are you going to do?”

“There isn’t much left to do,” I said wearily. We always like to think of every case ending in a dramatic arrest, but it doesn’t happen that way very often. After a time, enough blood is spilled, enough people are hurt for the hatred to fade out and the whole brutal business grinds to a dull, heavy stop. That’s what had happened now.

I called CBS and Lida Randolph said she was meeting DeCoudre and O’Leary at Ricardo’s for a drink and a discussion on how to break the news of her signing in his picture. That was a big, important event, and up on a hillside were two men lying dead in the rain. I told Randolph I’d join them in Ricardo’s.

Chapter Seven Photo Finish

I guess I looked to the headwaiter in Ricardo’s as if I’d just climbed out of a muddy grave. The shine on my thirty-dollar shoes was gone forever this time, I thought. But I wasn’t worrying much about appearances. I didn’t even gape at Lida Randolph the way I usually do at a beautiful movie star. Felix DeCoudre seemed to be smelling something bad. O’Leary looked at me once and let me alone.

I said: “Miss Randolph, will you pay five thousand dollars for the return of your stolen property?”

“Why... no... No, I couldn’t—”

“You said you lost ten thousand dollar’s worth. What will you pay? One thousand? Five hundred?”

“Let’s talk about it some other time.”

“How much?” I snapped. “Ten dollars or ten cents? Or did you not lose anything at all?”

“My house was definitely broken into,” she said, with mighty indignation. “The police know that. Even if they don’t know who did it.”

“I know who did it,” I said. “A little, clumsy, frustrated second-story man named Marty Wensel.”

Felix DeCoudre shifted nervously. His broad, ravaged face showed everything except his thoughts. “Then have him arrested,” he said impatiently.

“It’s a little late for that. He’s lying on the side of a hill with his face in the mud. He couldn’t lift it because a bullet broke his back. But he doesn’t mind. Little things like rain and mud and cold don’t bother him now. The dead don’t care about things like that.”

O’Leary moved up beside me and whispered: “Easy, Willie. Easy, darling.”

I didn’t look at her. “Anselmo did better, though. He’s sitting up. He’s just as dead but his face isn’t in the mud. Not that it makes any difference to him, but I thought you might like to know.”

“Who in the world is Anselmo?” Randolph asked, looking prettily puzzled. “Sounds like an Italian chef.”

“You didn’t lose anything when your house was broken into,” I told Randolph. “Wensel bungled it. He didn’t have the talent for the job. So why did you want me to take the case?”

Randolph didn’t say a word.

“If I tell you that DeCoudre will never make his picture, does that answer my question?”

She looked me in the eye: “Yes, Mr. Carmody. That was the reason.”

“Just what do you mean by that statement?” DeCoudre demanded. “Just why will I not make that picture?”

“Because if you attempt to, Mr. DeCoudre, I’ll see that these facts are made public: first, you made a pornographic film, using Laurie Bressette, and rented it out to stag parties. You got Laurie to play along with you on the promise of starring her in your comeback picture, which you had no intention of doing even if you had hopes of making a picture. And that I doubt because you didn’t have the money. That dirty film was the only way you had of making a living.”

DeCoudre’s glassy, bloodshot eyes were filled with hate and the first signs of fear but he didn’t speak.

“Second, this John Anselmo, a second-story man pure and simple, made you a proposition. He was to be your film projectionist when the film was rented so that — with Wensel’s help — he could make plans to burglarize the homes. You agreed to the scheme — on the provision that all proceeds were to be invested in a comeback picture for you. All you needed was about a hundred thousand dollars because you had a commitment from Miss Randolph for a picture. On the strength of her name the banks would lend you as much as you needed.”

“You said Anselmo and Wensel are dead,” DeCoudre was perspiring. “So how are you going to prove anything?”

“I’m not,” I said. “I’m not even going to try. I’m just telling you the facts that I can and will make public unless you tear up Miss Randolph’s contract.”

“But Willie,” O’Leary put in, “what caused all the shooting?”

I said wearily: “Anselmo made the mistake of not letting Wensel in on all the facts. Wensel didn’t know he wasn’t going to get his split of the loot. When he heard about the investment he refused to go along. He had fifty thousand dollars coming — more money than he probably ever dreamed of having. He wasn’t interested in gambling for millions. He wanted his fifty thousand. When he didn’t get it, he went into the burglary racket on his own.”

“If you are insinuating,” Lida Randolph said coldly, “that those men were ever in my house with a dirty film, you’re a liar.”

I shrugged. “DeCoudre’s been in your house, hasn’t he? He could have scouted the place personally. That’s a nice touch, isn’t it, Miss Randolph? Planning to rob you to help finance your own picture!”

“You louse!” Randolph spat at DeCoudre. She didn’t stop with that.

“Fact number three: Wensel tried it on his own,” I said, “and made a mess of it — he admitted as much to me before he died. It made him a liability to Anselmo and DeCoudre. If he tried again he might get picked up and it was a good bet he’d sing. So Anselmo threatened him with the loss of his share of any profits from DeCoudre’s film. Wensel, being a single-tracked person, laid for his partner and shot him — near the shop on Selma Avenue. He broke into the rental library and stole the dirty film, hoping to sell it for five thousand dollars. You made that film, DeCoudre.”

DeCoudre tried one last bluff. “These facts,” he said, “seem to me pure supposition. You can’t prove a thing and if you make anything public, I will sue you for a million.”

“You probably don’t know just how funny that it!” I said. “I can prove you made that dirty film. Do you think Laurie won’t testify against you?”

“Is she alive?” O’Leary demanded.

“She is. And that’s the fourth fact.” I looked again at DeCoudre. “Her blonde roommate had a letter from her. Laurie got rumors of your new picture — the one she thought she was going to star in. She knew then that she wasn’t going to be on hand for it, so she wrote to Eva Vaughn and told her enough to insure Eva a role in the picture. You had no choice but to sign Eva up. Anselmo immediately put her to work following me for the second time because I knew too much — even if I was smart enough to understand it.

“It was through Eva that Anselmo was able to know where Wensel and I were meeting. He suspected that Wensel would contact me when he got that film.”

I didn’t explain any more to him. Maybe DeCoudre already knew that Anselmo had killed Pop Kurbee. I imagine that Wensel had been living with Pop at the Hotel Junipero at the time of his murder, and Pop was wearing some of Wensel’s clothes. At least that would account for my picture being in the pocket of Pop’s coat and also for Anselmo mistaking Pop for Wensel.

O’Leary was shaking my arm impatiently. “But where is Laurie?”

“In jail on a vice charge, a frame-up probably. When it came time to plan the new picture, Laurie had to be disposed of. Her acting was strictly from Stanislavsky and DeCoudre wouldn’t have her in his picture. The safe way out seemed to be in getting her arrested. Laurie hid her real identity so her family wouldn’t know of her disgrace.”

“You louse!” O’Leary said, and then she called DeCoudre a name I didn’t know she even knew. She should have had her mouth washed out.

Then Lida Randolph stood up and said venomously and profanely: “You’re really done this time, Felix. You know that, don’t you?”

DeCoudre just dumbly nodded.

“Send me your bill, Mr. Carmody,” she said. “You were right — nothing was stolen. That was my agent’s idea of publicity. I wanted to hire you the moment Margaret told me you were investigating this rat. I wanted something to break this contract. This does it.” She left.

O’Leary and I followed her, leaving DeCoudre alone, and he was to all intents and purposes as dead as his two pals up in the park. That night he shot himself...

Outside, O’Leary said sadly: “I can’t be mad at you for ruining my boss but I surely would like to have had that job.” A little later she wondered out loud: “Which one of them was the Voice?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we’ll never find out.” But we did. Two weeks later, we quietly sprung Laurie Bressette from jail and saw her aboard a train for East Peoria. At the station to see her off was a mild-faced, pipe-smoking young fellow. He was Laurie’s boy friend. His name was Danny Lawson.

His pipe was the gun he stuck in the back of my neck that day on Cahuenga Boulevard. He was just putting it back in his mouth when Marty Wensel snapped his picture which was why he happened to have his hand up to his face. And that voice he used to try to scare me away from finding Laurie in jail was the same one he used as a maniac in a radio serial called The Mad Doctor. He was about as deadly as a bubble bath!