Hell Has No Fury

Chapter Two More Women in the Act

My head was lying, on something delightfully soft. Far off above me, a voice said, “Damn it, you’re getting me all bloody.”

Opening my eyes, I saw through a swimming pink mist the shimmering, elusive face of Kitty Troop.

“Pardon me,” I said, shutting my eyes again.

The effort detonated a bomb inside my skull.

“Shut up,” Kitty said. “If you’ve got to bleed, bleed quietly.”

When I’d accumulated enough strength to lift my lids once more, the pink mist had thinned a little, and Kitty’s face was closer and clearer.

“You’ve been crying,” I said.

She sniffed. “Like hell I ‘have. You think I’d waste any tears on a guy three months delinquent on my salary? What the hell you trying to do, sonny, make like Perry Mason?”

“Perry Mason never gets beat up,” I said. “Perry Mason is a hero. Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got nice legs?”

“You’d be surprised,” she said. “Anyhow, you ought to use a more direct approach. Between you and me, lover, this is a damned devious technique. Now get up. The fun’s over.”

I tried a grin and suffered for it. “You’re profane, honey. You’re a very profane dame.”

“To hell with you,” she said.

Slipping an arm across my shoulders, she made enough clearance to draw her leg out from under. Then, very gently, while bells rang and sirens whined in a vivid shower of colored sparks and streamers, she deposited me into a chair.

She went away, and I let my eyes close. Pretty soon, she returned, and I let them stay closed. She swabbed the cut on my cheek hone- with liquid fire.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Merthiolate,” she said.

“Take it easy, honey.”

“It ought to have a stitch.”

“Nothing doing.”

“Okay. I’ll pull it together with tape. That way, it’ll leave a cute little scar. Make you look experienced.”

She did things with gauze and tape, and after a while, I began to feel much better, the fire diminishing in my face. With the tips of my fingers, I explored tenderly a swelling along the line of my jaw, the bloat of my lips. Kitty held a small mirror in front of me, and I was surprised to see that the reflected face wasn’t nearly so misshapen to the sight as it was to the touch. It had its purple patches and its distortions, to be sure, but the damage was minor to a face like mine.

“Nothing much I can do for the lips,” Kitty said.

“You might try kissing them.”

“No, thanks.”

“All right. I wouldn’t let you kiss me, anyhow, because you’re vulgar. You’d have to wash your mouth out with soap and water first. By the way, where’d you get all the first aid stuff?”

“I keep it in the drawer with my novel. I’ve been holding it for the day you get tired of watching your lousy spider and start looking around for more basic entertainment.”

“I’m not the rough type, honey.”

She gave me another grin, a little firmer around the edges this time, and perched on a corner of the desk. The nylon, even with runners, was very alluring.

“I was keeping it for you, lover, not me. Any guy who can’t handle a couple of gorillas wouldn’t get far with Kitty.”

I eased my head back wearily against the chair, and her hand came out suddenly, her fingers trailing lightly down my bruised cheek.

“It isn’t funny, Sol.”

“No,” I said, “it really isn’t.”

“What’s it all mean? Why do you rate a treatment by professional gorillas?”

I sat there with my head back, looking up at the ceiling. It was still the same old ceiling. Kitty sat on ray desk, and she was still lovely, desirable, and unpaid. Everything was the same and in order. Yet nothing was the same, and nothing was in order.

“It means, honey,” I said quietly, “that a very deadly character wants Hal Decker to burn for a murder he didn’t commit. It means that anyone who gets in the way will get to be considered strictly expendable.”

“Who is he, Sol?”

“That’s something I’ve been thinking about real hard, and I keep getting an answer that scares the hell out of me. On the evidence, it’s really a pretty simple problem. Wanda Henderson is Hal Decker’s only alibi. Hal hasn’t told anyone about her, because he’s afraid of what might happen to her. On her own, Wanda went to Austin Stark, the district attorney, and told him Hal had spent the night of Danny Devore’s murder with her.

“What did Stark do? He laughed politely and sent her home under threat of a perjury rap. But Wanda didn’t go home. She came here instead, because Hal had mentioned to her that I’m a lawyer and that we used to be pretty good friends. She leaves here, and five minutes later a trio of gorillas make an appearance. One of them tries to buy me off the case. When I won’t buy, he gives me a sample of available consequences. Here’s the point, honey. How do they know Wanda Henderson is an alibi for Hal Decker? What’s the only way they could know?”

Kitty was perfectly still, her eyes shining. After a while, she said, “The district attorney, Sol? Don’t be silly.”

“It figures.”

“The way you look at it, it figures. Look at it another way, it doesn’t figure at all. In the first place, Stark isn’t part of the old crowd at City Hall. Danny Devore’s crowd, that is. He’s a crusader, a clean-up guy. As a matter of fact, Danny was one of his principal targets. He’s the white knight of the righteous.”

“He wouldn’t be the first saint with a brass halo. Maybe he feels appointed, and anointed. Maybe he looks upon the death of Danny Devore as a kind of holy asassination. I sort of see it that way myself.”

“What about the frame of Hal Decker? Is that holy, too?”

“It could be. A holy sacrifice on the altar of pure politics. Saving the great man for the great work.”

“You’re making him a maniac, Sol. You don’t believe it, yourself.”

“You’re right as usual. I don’t really believe it. I was just talking.”

She scooted over on the desk and put her feet in my lap. “Look, Sol. You sure you aren’t off on the wrong scent? Austin Stark is an ambitious guy. He’s got a long way to go in politics. His first step up was going to be on the dead carcass of Danny Devore. Dead politically. I mean. Danny’s death was the worst thing that could have happened to him. Because of the old martyr angle, Danny’s gang is playing it for all it’s worth. Already people are forgetting what a louse Danny was beginning to look, and one of his boys is sitting in Danny’s chair. He’ll be there a long time now. Danny’s murder has set Stark’s career back five years. Can’t you see that?”

“Sure. I can see it, all right. I can also see Stark’s connection with the gorillas. I can see that he has made a blunt effort to intimidate Hal Decker’s only witness. I can see that his own key witness is one of his own key men. I can see it all, and I can smell it. It stinks!”

I sat up in my chair, removing her feet from my lap, and putting my hands flat on the desk. Slowly, with labor and sweat, I pushed myself erect and stood quietly, leaning on the desk, until the room quit revolving and everything settled in its place. Kitty put an arm around me, contributing to my equilibrium, and that part was fun.

“Go get the city directory, honey,” I said. “Look up the address of Wash Richert.”

“Stark’s witness?”

“He’s the guy.”

“You going to see him?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Why?”

“When something smells, you sniff around.”

Her arm dropped away from me, and she went out into the reception office. While she was gone, I tried on my hat for size. Except for a tender spot above one ear, my skull seemed to have escaped abuse. I took a turn around the room, checking my motor reactions and finding them adequate. Kitty came back and stood watching my test run with critical eyes.

“It’s nine twelve South Twentieth,” she said. “You want me to go along to put you together again, just in case?”

I walked past her. “Don’t be facetious, honey. Remember, I’m your boss.”

She snorted. “A hell of a boss, you are. Working the help without pay... brawling in your office... getting involved with politicians. How the hell can you ever expect to amount to a damn?”

I ignored her, opening the outer door, and putting one foot into the hall.

She said, “Sol.”

I paused and looked back over a shoulder, my eyebrows making interrogation points.

“Be careful, Sol.”

I went on out and down the single flight to the street. I leaned against a lamp post. As I stood there, the yellow light came on above me, casting my abbreviated shadow to the pavement at my feet. Getting into my car, I drove away.

Out on South Twentieth, I found nine twelve to be a three-story brick walkup, with a narrow front and a high stoop. I went up the steps and into a short hall with a weak bulb burning at the ceiling under a dirty globe. Along the wall on my right, as I entered, were six mail boxes. Examining the names on the boxes, I discovered that Wash Richert lived on the third floor. Cursing my luck and my condition, I made the long climb up the worn, dark flights.

Outside Richert’s door, I knocked and waited, hearing within the sound of approaching footsteps. A woman, I thought, and when the door opened, it was. For a woman, she was tall, almost as tall as I, dressed in a navy blue sheer that gave her arms and shoulders, where there was nothing, under a soft, smoky look. Her platinum hair was phony, but the dye job and the style were good enough to make the phoniness unimportant. Her eyes were warm and her mouth was soft, almost pouting in repose, but you got a quick impression that the eyes could freeze fast, the lips thin and harden.

“I’m looking for Wash Richert,” I said.

Her voice had a minor nasality, whining slightly in her nostrils. “He isn’t here.”

“You know where he is?”

“No.”

“You know when he’ll be back?”

“No. Probably not for a long time.”

“You his wife?”

“I could be. What is this, mister? What you after?”

“Just conversation. May I come in?”

She looked at me with her platinum top cocked a little to one side, her eyes speculative. She seemed to be trying to make something interesting out of me, something that would do to pass the time.

“Why not?”

Following me into the room, she wondered if I’d like a drink to match one she’d been drinking when I knocked, and since I needed it, I said I would. She went off into a small kitchen to mix it, and I dropped my hat onto a chair and listened to the pleasant sounds of glass and ice. Pretty soon she came back and handed me a glass that was dark enough to look promising. Her own, I noted, was just as dark.

“Must be lonely without your husband,” I said.

She looked at me over the rim of her glass with an expression in her warm eyes that left everything open. “You’re only lonely if you let yourself be,” she said.

I swallowed a piece of my drink, and it was as strong as it looked. The warmth from the pit of my stomach was potent, prompt, and welcome.

“Where’d you say Wash went?”

“I didn’t. I said I didn’t know!”

“I guess you did, at that. I’m the forgetful type.”

“I’m not. If you’d tell me your name, I’d remember that.”

I had another drink and inspected the lowered cubes. “It’s Burr.” That didn’t seem to register, so I added, “I’m a lawyer.” She was still waiting, so I finished, “Hal Decker’s lawyer.”

When she lowered her glass, I saw that I’d been right in my analysis, of her eyes and mouth. They could change very fast. The former were now cold, and the latter was a thin line.

“You can finish your drink before you go,” she said.

I laughed. “It just goes to show you. A girl ought to insist on a proper introduction.”

“No wonder you’re all beat to hell. You’re a very snotty guy. Maybe you’d better go before you finish your drink.”

I walked over to a table and deposited the glass, wishing I’d emptied it before she pinned me down.

“I just want to talk with you,” I said.

“Don’t waste your breath.”

“A guy’s life may depend on it.”

“I’m all broken up.”

I retrieved my hat and moved to the door. “I thought you would be. Thanks a lot, baby.”

I went down and crawled into my car and sat there wondering what Perry Mason would do. After a while, I thought to hell with Perry Mason and drove a couple of miles downtown to an apartment house that had more floors than Richert’s and an elevator to get you up and down. At a desk in the lobby, I asked a young clerk if he would please call Mr. Austin Stark and state that Mr. Solomon Burr humbly requested five minutes worth of precious, unofficial time. I expected a bounce and was surprised when I didn’t get it. The clerk pulled a plug and told me I could go right up.

On the tenth floor, a blond oak door was opened by Austin Stark himself, and I walked into an apartment that indicated a source of income considerably bigger than a district attorney’s salary. Not that I suspected anything illegal, for Stark was an honest man in matters concerning the root of evil. He was also a ruthless man. The ruthlessness was apparent in the gray eyes, the strong, sharp jaw and the cruel, pale lips. A man of concentrated purpose and driving ambition... a man who, in the final judgment, could do no wrong... a man whose final judgment would always be his own... above all, a dangerous man.

In the rich living room, we measured each other. His shallow eyes took in my marred face without a flicker of discernible reaction. He didn’t ask me to sit down. He didn’t offer me a drink. He just stood and waited.

“I’m representing Hal Decker in the Devore murder case,” I said.

He nodded shortly. “I’m aware of that.”

“You’re also aware that I have a witness who will swear that Decker spent the entire night of Devore’s murder with her.”

“True. She told me the story. She’s lying, of course.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Because, as you know, I have a completely reliable witness who saw Decker leave Devore’s house.”

“Yes. Wash Richert. One of your investigators.”

He could have drawn an inference, but he chose riot to. He merely waited for me to continue.

“I’ve been out to Richert’s apartment. His wife told me he isn’t home. She said he probably won’t be back for a long time.”

His face was bland. “So?”

“So I thought you might tell me where he is.”

“Why should I know where he is?”

“He’s your witness. I assume you have him under wraps.”

“You’re wrong. I don’t have Richert under wraps.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

He was lying coldly and methodically, perfectly certain that any lie he might tell was justified.

“When he reports in, will you let me talk with him?” I said.

“No. Why should I let you influence my witness?”

“I don’t want to influence him. I just want to talk with him.”

“It’s unthinkable.”

I turned and started for the door. “Okay. Thanks very much.”

I had taken three steps, maybe, when the door opened and a woman stepped in. She stopped abruptly, staring at me, color seeping to the surface of her cheeks, her lips falling slightly apart. She was wearing a long, white gown that seemed to be made of multiple layers of diaphanous material. Her hair was black, loose on her shoulders, gleaming with highlights. Her eyes were blanked out by dark glasses. Under the rim of one lens, I could see the outer edge of an ugly, yellow bruise, and I thought, Why, this doll has a plain, old-fashioned shiner.

She said, “I’m sorry, Austin. I didn’t know you were engaged.”

His voice behind me was measured icily. “It’s all right, my dear. We’ve just finished. My wife Alma — Mr. Solomon Burr.”

“How do you do,” I said.

She nodded and stepped aside, and I went on into the hall and let myself out.

In my car, I sat for a while and tried to think, but it seemed that my brain wouldn’t consider anything but dames — three of them. The only one I really wanted to think about was Kitty Troop; but the other three — black, red, and platinum — kept barging in to spoil the fun.

Finally, I gave it up and decided to go home, because I was very tired. I had done everything I could possibly do tonight. Even Perry Mason couldn’t have done more...