The Guilty Are Afraid

I

The first thing that attracted my attention as I came out of St. Raphael City station was a blonde doll in a bikini swim suit, a straw hat as big as a cartwheel and dough-nut sized sun goggles. Her skin — and you could see a lot of it — was a golden satin, and she had a shape on her that Mr. Varga himself would have been proud to have designed.

She was getting into a hard-top Cadillac, taking her time while the unattached males feasted their eyes on her.

I feasted my eyes too.

She settled herself behind the driving-wheel and surveyed her male kingdom with lifted eyebrows. As she drove off she sneered in my direction.

The red cap with my baggage nudged me.

“If that makes your eyes pop, brother,” he said, “you’re in for a rare time when you get to the beach. Do you want a cab?”

“Are there more like her?” I asked, slightly dazed. “If a girl showed that much of herself where I come from, she’d land in jail.”

“The place is lousy with them,” the red cap told me. “This is St. Raphael City. Anything goes here. But don’t kid yourself. The more these chippies show, the less they give away. The only thing that talks with them is money. Do you want a cab?”

I said I wanted a cab, took out my handkerchief and mopped my face.

It was eleven-thirty a.m. and the sun blazed down. People streamed out of the station to waiting cars, cabs and horse-drawn carriages. This was vacation city, and I earnestly hoped Jack had thought to reserve a room for me.

A cab drew up and the red cap piled in my baggage. I tipped him and he went away.

“The Adelphi Hotel,” I said to the driver, got into the cab and started mopping my face again.

The cab fought its way through the traffic, and after two or three minutes, turned into the main road to the sea: an imposing, broad boulevard with smart-looking shops, palm trees and cops in tropical uniforms. The town had a rich look to it. Big Cadillac and Clipper convertibles lined the street on either side: every one of them the size of a bus.

As we crawled with the traffic, I sat forward, staring out of the window at the women. Most of them were in beach-wear: some in lounging pyjamas, some in halters and shorts, some in French swim suits: the fat ones invariably favoured the shorts. Every now and then I spotted a pippin, but most of them were the middle-aged and the fat.

The driver caught my tense expression in his wing mirror and he leaned out of the cab to spit.

“Looks like the meat market on a Saturday night, doesn’t it?” he said.

“I was wondering what it reminded me of,” I said, and sat back. “Quite a little town you have here.”

“Think so? I wouldn’t give you a dime for it. You’ve got to be a millionaire or you might just as well cut your throat as live here. There are more millionaires here to the square mile than any other country in the world. Did you know that?”

I said I didn’t know and wondered uneasily if I had brought enough money with me. I knew it would be hopeless to try to borrow anything from Jack.

We climbed a hill, going away from the sea, and after a while, we came to a quiet road lined on either side with orange trees. The cab pulled up outside the hotel.

I looked at the hotel as I got out of the cab. There was nothing de luxe about it. The kind of hotel I would expect Jack to have chosen: probably the food was good. He had a talent for finding hotels that served good food.

A boy in buttons came out and collected my bags. I gave the driver a dollar and went up the steps into the hotel lounge.

It was fairly large, furnished with basket chairs and a few decaying palms in brass tubs: if it wasn’t gaudy, at least it was clean.

The reception clerk, a balding fatty with a silk cravat to support his second chin, showed me his teeth and offered me a pen.

“You have a reservation, sir?”

“I hope so. The name is Lew Brandon. Did Mr. Sheppey tell you I was coming?”

“Certainly, Mr. Brandon. I’ve put you in the room next to his.” He placed his finger on the bell push and the bell hop materialized. “Take Mr. Brandon to room 245.” He showed me his teeth again. “Mr. Sheppey is in room 247. I hope you will enjoy your stay with us, Mr. Brandon. Anything we can do... any little thing...”

“Thanks. Mr. Sheppey in?”

“No. He went out about an hour ago.” He gave me a coy little smile. “With a young lady. I imagine they were going to the beach.”

That didn’t surprise me. Jack was no great worker and women were his weakness.

“When he comes in, tell him I’ve arrived. I’ll be in my room,” I said.

“I’ll do that, Mr. Brandon.”

I and the bell hop and my baggage squashed ourselves into the ancient elevator and were dragged up two floors.

Room 245 was no larger than a large rabbit hutch and as hot as a blast furnace. The bed didn’t look big enough to take a midget at full stretch, the shower leaked and there was no view from the window. I only hoped it would be cheap. It had no other recommendation.

After the boy had gone through the routine of lowering and raising the blind and turning the electric switches on and off and seemingly surprised to find anything worked, I got rid of him.

I called room service and asked for some ice and a bottle of Vat 69 at the double. Then I stripped off my clothes and got under the shower. As long as I remained under the shower I felt fine, but when I returned to the bedroom I broke out into a sweat again.

I gave myself a slug of Scotch, then just as I was about to get under the shower again, someone hammered on my door.

I wrapped a towel around my middle, unlocked the door and opened it.

A big man with a red weathered face and freckles across his nose that looked as if it had been stamped on at one time, and who had cop written all over him, rode me back into the room and closed the door.

“Your name Brandon?” he asked in a voice as gritty as gravel.

“That’s right. What do you want?”

He took out his wallet and showed me his buzzer.

“Sergeant Candy, Homicide,” he said. “You know Jack Sheppey?”

I felt a prickle of apprehension crawl up my spine.

This wouldn’t be the first time Sheppey had been in trouble with the police. Six months ago he had punched a detective in the eye and had drawn a ten-day stretch. Three months before that he had taken a poke at a patrolman and had been fined twenty-five bucks. Jack was a great cop hater.

“Yes, I know him. Is he in trouble?”

“You could call it that,” Candy said. He produced a pack of chewing-gum, tore off the wrapping and fed gum into his face. “Can you identify him?”

That really jarred me.

“He hasn’t met with an accident?”

“He’s dead,” Candy said. “Hustle some clothes on, will you? I’ve a car outside. The Lieutenant wants you down there.”

“Dead?” I stared at the big, red face. “What happened?”

Candy lifted his heavy shoulders.

“The Lieutenant will tell you. Let’s get moving. He hates being kept waiting.”

I put on my shirt and trousers, ran a comb through my hair, slid into my coat and sat on the bed to put on my socks and shoes.

My hands were shaking a little.

Jack and I got along fine together. He had always had a fierce enjoyment of life: living every second of it and getting much more out of it than ever I did. It seemed impossible he was dead.

When I had fixed my shoes, I poured myself another slug of whisky. I felt I needed it.

“Join me?” I said to Candy.

He hesitated, licked his thick lips, fought with his conscience and lost.

“Well, I’m not exactly on duty...”

I gave him a slug big enough to knock over a horse and cart, and he poured it down his throat as if it were water.

“Let’s go,” he said, putting down the glass. He blew out his cheeks and thumped himself on the chest. “The Lieutenant doesn’t like being kept waiting.”

We travelled down in the elevator. As we crossed the lobby I saw the reception clerk was staring at me, bugeyed. The bell hop was also staring. They probably thought I was under arrest.

A couple of old gentlemen in white flannels and Harvard blazers were sitting in basket chairs by the door. They too stared, and as Candy and I passed, one of them said, “I’ll be damned if that fellow isn’t a policeman.”

We went down the steps where a car waited. Candy got under the wheel and I sat beside him. We drove fast, using the back streets, and avoiding the traffic on the main roads.

“Where was he found?” I asked suddenly.

“At Bay Beach,” Candy told me, his heavy jaw working as he chewed. “There’s a row of cabins there for hire. The attendant found him.”

I put the question that had been bothering me ever since I had been told he was dead.

“Was it a heart attack or something?”

Candy touched his siren button as a Cadillac tried to edge in front of him. The Cadillac swerved and slowed down at the sound of the siren and Candy went past, glaring at the driver.

“He was murdered,” he said.

I sat still, my hands squeezed between my knees, while I absorbed the shock.

I hadn’t anything to say after that. I just sat staring ahead and listening to Candy hum under his breath some tuneless song. In under five minutes we reached the beach. Candy drove fast along a wide road that ran parallel with the sea. Finally, we came to a row of red-and-white-painted beach cabins and a small parking lot.

The cabins were shaded by palm trees, and there were the usual gaudy beach umbrellas. Four police cars were parked on the road. I could see a crowd of about two hundred people, mostly in swim suits standing near the cabins. I spotted the Buick convertible Jack and I had bought second hand, and for which we were still paying, in the parking lot.

We pushed through the crowd who stared curiously at me. As we neared the cabins, Candy said, “The little fella’s Lieutenant Rankin.”

Rankin saw us and came forward.

He was a head shorter than Candy. He wore a lightweight grey suit with a slouch hat placed carefully and at a jaunty angle over his right eye: a man nudging forty-five with a smooth, hard face, ice grey eyes and a small slit that served him for a mouth. His hair, white at the temples, had been recently cut. He was dapper, neat and as hard as forged steel.

“This is Lew Brandon, Lieutenant,” Candy said.

Rankin looked at me. His eyes were as intense as searchlights. He took from his pocket a flimsy slip of paper and thrust it at me.

“Did you send this?” he asked.

I looked at the paper. It was the telegram I had sent Jack telling him when I would be arriving.

“Yes.”

“He was a friend of yours?”

“We were in business together. He was my partner.”

Rankin continued to stare at me. For a long moment he just stared, rubbing his jaw, then he said, “You’d better take a look at him, then we can talk.”

Bracing myself, I followed him across the hot sand and into the cabin.

II

A couple of beefy-looking men were dusting powder on the window-ledges for finger-prints. A thin, elderly man sat at a small table, a black bag at his feet, filling out a buff-coloured form.

I scarcely noticed them. My eyes went immediately to where Jack was lying on the floor by a kind of divan bed. He was hunched up, close to the bed, as if he had been trying to get away from someone when he was dying.

Except for a pair of swimming-trunks, he was naked. In the hollow of his neck and right shoulder was a blue-red hole. The skin around the hole was badly bruised. There was a scared expression on his sun-tanned, dead face.

“That him?” Rankin asked quietly, his ice grey eyes watching me.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He looked at the thin man. “Nearly finished, Doc?”

“All but. It’s a straightforward job. There’s a professional touch about it. I’d say a rat-tail ice pick. Whoever did it knew where to strike. Got him just by the occipital bulge. Driven in with considerable force. Death would be instantaneous. I’d say he was killed within the hour.”

Rankin grunted.

“You can take him away when you’re ready.” He turned to me. “Let’s get out of here.” He went out into the hot sunshine, blinking a little in the fierce light. He waved to Candy, who came over. “I’m going back to Brandon’s hotel,” he said. “See what you can find here. Doc says it’s an ice-pick job. Hughson will be down with some more men. Get them looking for the pick. There’s a chance the killer threw it away, but I doubt it.” He looked at his gold strap watch he wore on the inside of his thin wrist. “See you in my office at fourteen-thirty hours.”

He crooked his finger at me, then set off across the sand, walking through the crowd as if it didn’t exist. The crowd gave way hurriedly, staring at me as I followed him.

As we passed the parking lot, I said, “The convertible Buick belongs to Sheppey and me, Lieutenant. He had the use of it down here.”

Rankin paused, looked over at the Buick, then waved to one of his men.

“Tell Sergeant Candy the convertible over there is the car Sheppey came in. Get it checked for prints and give it a going over. When you’re through with it have someone take it to the Adelphi Hotel and leave it there.” He looked at me. “Okay?”

“Thanks.”

We went to a police car and got in the back.

Rankin said to the driver, “Adelphi Hotel. Take the long way round and drive slow. I’ve got some talking to do.”

The driver touched his cap, engaged gear and moved the car into the traffic.

Rankin settled himself in the corner, took a cigar from his pocket, shook it out of its metal container, pierced it and put it between his small white teeth. He lit it, drew down a lungful of smoke, held it, then let it drift slowly down his pinched nostrils.

“Well, let’s have it,” he said. “Who are you and who is Sheppey and what is all this about? Don’t rush it. Take it slow, but give me the complete picture.”

I lit a cigarette, thought for a moment, then began to talk.

I told him Sheppey and I had been running a successful inquiry agency in San Francisco for the past five years.

“I’ve been on a job in New York for three weeks while Sheppey has been looking after the office. While I was in New York I got a wire from him telling me to get to St. Raphael City as fast as I could. He said he had a big job on and there was money in it. I had more or less tied up my job, so I flew to Los Angeles and took the train here, arriving this morning at eleven-thirty. I went to the hotel, found Sheppey had reserved a room for me and was told he had gone out. I was taking a shower when Sergeant Candy picked me up. That’s all I can tell you.”

“He didn’t say what the job was?” Rankin asked.

I shook my head.

“Jack isn’t much of a letter writer. I guess he decided it would be quicker and easier to tell me than to write.”

Rankin brooded for a moment, then said, “Have you got your licence on you?”

I gave him my billfold. He examined the contents quickly and expertly, then handed it back.

“You’ve no idea who employed him here or what the case was about?” he asked.

“No idea at all.”

He gave me a hard stare.

“You’d tell me if you did?”

“Possibly, but as I don’t know, the point doesn’t arise.”

He scratched the side of his face, screwing up his eyes.

“Do you think he kept notes on the case? Progress reports?”

“I doubt it. He wasn’t keen on any paper work. Usually we worked together and I did the reports.”

He rolled his cigar between his lips.

“How is it you go to New York when you’ve an office in Frisco?”

“This happened to be a client I had had dealings with before. He had moved to New York and particularly wanted me to handle the job.”

“Sheppey was off his beat, too, wasn’t he? Think he was working for an old client?”

“Could be, but I don’t know any of them who has moved out here.”

“Do you think he was killed because of something he turned up on this case?”

I hesitated, remembering the reception clerk at the hotel had said Jack had gone out with a woman.

“I don’t know. The clerk at the hotel told me a woman picked him up and they went out together. He chased women: it was his big fault. He’d leave a job flat if he saw a woman who interested him. This may be one of those times and her husband objected. I’m guessing, but he’s been in an awful lot of messes through women in the past.”

Rankin grimaced.

“Did he run around with married women?”

“He didn’t care what they were so long as they had looks. Don’t think I’m knocking him. He was my best friend, but he certainly made me sore sometimes the way he lay down on the job because of some floosie.”

“It doesn’t often happen a husband shows his disapproval with an ice pick: that was a professional job.”

“Maybe he was a professional husband. Have you got anyone on your records who uses an ice pick?”

Rankin shook his head.

“I don’t know of anyone, but this is a very rich town. There are plenty of boys here on the make, and some of them are dangerous. No one’s ever been skewered by an ice pick, but there’s always got to be a first time.” He tapped ash off his cigar. “Can you get a line on this case he’s working on? That’s our first move. I’ve got to be sure his death isn’t hooked up to it.”

“Unless he’s left a record in his room, there’s nothing I can do about it,” I said untruthfully.

I was going to satisfy myself first that Jack’s client was in the clear before I let Rankin know I might be able to get his name. It was a long shot, but it was just possible Ella, our typist, who looked after the office back in Frisco might have a line on him.

Rankin leaned forward and said to the driver, “Okay, step on it now.”

In less than five minutes we pulled up outside the Adelphi Hotel.

We crossed the lobby together to where the reception clerk was waiting, his fat chins wobbling and his eyes bulging with suppressed excitement.

The two old gentlemen in white flannels had been reinforced by their wives, who looked as if they had stepped out of the pages of a Victorian novel. They sat motionless, staring at us, their ears growing out of the sides of their heads.

“Let’s talk where these old crows can’t listen,” Rankin said, pitching his voice so they could hear him.

“Why certainly, Lieutenant,” the reception clerk said, his voice flustered. He took us behind the desk into a small office. “Is there anything wrong?”

“Not here, there isn’t,” Rankin said. “What’s your name?”

The reception clerk looked even more flustered.

“Edwin Brewer.”

“What time did Sheppey leave here?”

“It would be about half past ten.”

“There was a woman with him?”

“Yes. She came to the desk and asked for him. While she was speaking to me, Mr. Sheppey came from the elevator and joined her.”

“Did she give her name?”

“No. Mr. Sheppey appeared before I could ask for her name.”

“Did they seem friendly?”

Brewer licked his lips nervously.

“Well, yes. Mr. Sheppey was pretty familiar with her.”

“In what way?”

“Well, he walked up to her and said, ‘Hello, baby-doll,’ put his hand behind her and pinched her.”

“How did she react?”

“She laughed it off, but I could see she didn’t like it. She wasn’t the type I’d care to take liberties with myself.”

“What type was she then?”

“She had a sort of dignity. It’s hard to explain. She just wasn’t the type to take liberties with.”

“And yet he did?”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “Jack had no respect for anyone. He’d pinch a bishop’s wife if he felt in the mood.”

Rankin frowned.

“Can you describe this woman?”

Brewer rubbed his hands together nervously.

“She was very attractive: dark with a good figure. She wore big sun-glasses and a big hat. I couldn’t see much of her face. She had on navy slacks and a white shirt.”

“Age?”

“In the twenties, but I wouldn’t be sure: twenty-five perhaps.”

“Could you identify her if you saw her again?”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure I could.”

Rankin stubbed out his cigar in the ash tray on Brewer’s desk.

“If she wasn’t wearing the big hat and sun-glasses, but happened to be wearing no hat and a white dress, do you think you could still identify her?”

Brewer thought for a moment, then looked sheepish.

“Well, perhaps not.”

“You can identify the clothes, but not the woman?”

“Well, yes.”

“That’s not a lot of help, is it?” Rankin said. “Okay, never mind. After Sheppey had said hello, what happened?”

“He said he had to be back in a couple of hours and they had better get going. They went out together and I saw them drive away in his car.”

“Did she leave her car here?”

“I didn’t see one. I think she must have walked.”

“Let me have the key to his room.”

“Shall I call Greaves? He’s our house detective.”

Rankin shook his head.

“No. I don’t want your house dick tramping around lousing up any clues.”

Brewer went out of the office and over to the key rack. We followed him out. The four old people were staring.

Brewer said, “He must have taken his key with him. I’ll give you a spare.”

He found a key and gave it to Rankin.

As Rankin took the key, Brewer asked, “Has anything happened to Mr. Sheppey?”

The old people leaned forward. This was something they were panting to know.

“He’s given birth to a baby,” Rankin said. “I believe it is the first time in history, but I’m not absolutely sure, so don’t quote me.”

He walked with me to the elevator.

The old people stared after us, amazed expressions on their faces.

As Rankin pressed the button to take us to the second floor, he said, “I hate old people who live in hotels.”

“You’ll get old yourself,” I said. “They don’t live in hotels for fun.”

“A sentimental shamus,” he said, his mouth turning down at the corners. “I thought I had seen everything.”

“Did you get a line on the girl from the cabin attendant?” I asked as we crawled past the first floor.

“Yeah. The same description. There’re two changing rooms in the cabin. She used one and he the other. We found her slacks, shirt, hat and sun-glasses there. His clothes were in the other room.”

“The girl left her clothes in the cabin?” I said sharply.

“That’s what I’m telling you. It could mean either of two things: she wanted to fade out of the picture and decided she could do it by leaving in her swim suit. Everyone in this lousy town wears a swim suit or else she took a swim and someone knocked her off after knocking Sheppey off. My boys are searching the beach now. I think she faded out of the picture myself.”

“No one saw her leave the cabin?” I asked as the elevator stopped at the second floor.

“No, but we’re still asking around.”

We walked down the corridor to room 247.

“That was a pretty good disguise she was wearing,” Rankin went on as he sank the key into the lock. “People in this town don’t look at faces, they look at shapes.” He turned the key and pushed the door open.

We stood looking around the room. It was a little larger than mine, but not much and it was just as hot and airless.

“Sweet suffering Pete!” Rankin said under his breath.

The room looked as if it had been hit by a cyclone. All the drawers of the chest hung open. Jack’s belongings lay scattered on the floor. His brief-case had been ripped open and papers lay everywhere. The bed had been stripped and the mattress cut open, the stuffing dragged out. The pillows had also been ripped and feathers were heaped on the floor.

“Pretty quick work,” Rankin said. “If there was anything to find, we won’t find it now. I’ll get the boys up here. Maybe there’re some prints although I’m ready to bet there won’t be.”

He closed the door and locked it.