The New Black Mask (No 4)

Mark Coggins There’s No Such Thing as Private Eyes

Mark Coggins is a computer programmer who studied international relations at Stanford and hopes to be a full-time professional writer. “There’s No Such Thing as Private Eyes” is his first published story, and he plans to expand it into a novel. He is twenty-seven.

Delbert Evans was cheap: cheap with his time, cheap with his money. Cheap with everything. It didn’t do you any good to tell him, though, because he liked being that way. I was sitting at a table of the cheap bar we had agreed upon when he came up — thirty minutes late.

Delbert sold insurance. I don’t know how, but he did. I guess people bought it because they felt sorry for Delbert when they got their first look at him. His head was wedge-shaped, almost all profiles. His nose was a full-scale copy of Edison’s first light bulb, and his eyes were close set and slightly crossed. The rest of him wasn’t much better. He had a stick body that his Sears suits never fit and feet so long a cow gave up its life every time he went to buy shoes. Delbert made a nervous gesture I took for a wave, bumped the table sitting down, and said:

“Excuse me for being late, August I got caught on the phone with a very important call, and I didn’t leave my office until just a few minutes ago.”

I laughed like I didn’t believe him. “Okay, Del, why did you call me down here?”

Delbert smiled and capped teeth shone behind his thick lips. “You private investigators are always in a hurry,” he complained. “Couldn’t you allow me to order a drink before we get down to business?”

I said that I could.

Delbert signaled a waitress and ordered one of those sweet, candied drinks people are always inventing nowadays. I asked for another Scotch.

“Here’s the proposition,” Delbert said after the waitress had gone. “We want you to investigate the theft of an expensive diamond pendant that was insured by our company. We are prepared to offer you 10 percent of its insured value if you recover it. Otherwise, we will pay you at the rate of $100 a day plus expenses for the time you spend on the investigation.”

That was unusual. Insurance companies rarely offered to pay a daily rate for recovery investigations. I said, “What’s the catch, Del? I know you guys don’t work that way.”

Delbert’s face became flushed. “Yes, well, the pendant is worth over $500,000, so naturally the insurance company is very concerned about recovering it for our client. We are offering you the rate of $100 a day even if you don’t recover the pendant to insure that you will be motivated.”

I still wasn’t buying. Delbert was too cheap to offer more money than he had to. I rode him some with my stare.

“Ahem, of course,” Delbert sputtered on, “if it should turn out that the pendant has not been stolen at all, that our client still has it, then you could not really claim to have recovered it.”

“And I wouldn’t be entitled to the 10 percent fee, right? I get it now. You guys think your client has faked the robbery to get hold of the insurance money and still keep the pendant. But it’s cheaper to hire me at $100 a day to prove it than to pay me fifty grand.”

“Ah, yes, something like that,” said Delbert. “Will you take the case?”

Normally I didn’t like insurance jobs, but my bank balance was so low it would fit under a lizard. I said, “Okay, make it 125 and give me the details.”

Delbert smiled with relief. “$125 it is, August. Our client’s name is Pamela Dyer. She is the widow of a wealthy real estate developer. The pendant was stolen a week ago from the apartment of a friend of hers, Robert Grey. Mrs. Dyer and Grey had gone to the apartment after eating dinner in a restaurant. Shortly after they arrived, two men with guns burst through the door and demanded they turn over all the valuables on their person. The men had stockings over their faces. Grey lost a gold watch and a hundred dollars in cash; Mrs. Dyer lost two diamond rings and the pendant. The gunmen tied up Mrs. Dyer and Grey before they left and pulled out the phone for good measure: Grey said he managed to free himself after an hour of struggling, and then he released Mrs. Dyer and went to a neighbor’s apartment to phone the police.”

The waitress came up with our drinks and scurried off. I took a few sips from mine before I said anything. Finally: “I can see why you would think the robbery was a fake, Del. The gunmen knowing Mrs. Dyer would be in Grey’s apartment with the pendant at that particular time does seem unlikely. But they could have spotted the pendant in the restaurant and then followed Grey and Dyer home to make the heist.”

Delbert looked disappointed. “Do you really think so?” he asked.

“No, I’m not sure. I just wanted to show you that there were two ways of looking at it. Do you know what the police think about the robbery?”

“They seem altogether satisfied that Mrs. Dyer and Grey are telling the truth. However, they don’t seem to be doing much in the way of investigation. That’s why we are hiring you.”

I nodded in sympathetic agreement and pumped Delbert for a few more details, like the addresses of Robert Grey and Mrs. Dyer. We finished our drinks then, and I left Delbert in the bar to do whatever it is insurance salesmen do by themselves in bars.

This was Phoenix in the summertime and it was hot. I drove in my Ford Galaxy with all four windows down because the air conditioner had given out two summers ago. I was heading up Central Avenue from the bar downtown to see Pamela Dyers boyfriend, Robert Grey. Grey was a big-wheel lawyer in Phoenix, and the firm he worked for had its offices in the posh Weckler Building on Highland.

When I came to Highland, I turned left off Central and drove a block or so until I reached the underground garage that served the cluster of office buildings in the vicinity. I parked in a cramped space on the third level, rode the elevator back upstairs, and crossed the street to the Weckler Building.

The Ringling Brothers could have fit their circus in the lobby, elephants and all. Right then it was populated by flashy, overweight business types who still wore their three-piece suits, even though it was 105 degrees outside. I walked to the elevators, losing sight of my feet a number of times in the pasture of wool they used for carpet. At the directory, I checked the number of Grey’s office, and then I caught a ride on an ascending elevator to the fifth floor.

Grey’s office was a short way down the hall on the right. Inside I found a cute secretary making noise with an electric typewriter. She had long blond hair and a deeply tanned oval face. She wore a cream pantsuit over a figure that would make an accountant snap his pencils. I introduced myself by giving her one of the smudged business cards I carried around in my wallet and asked if I might see Mr. Grey about the theft of Mrs. Dyer’s pendant. She walked distractingly back to a dark-grained wooden door, knocked lightly, went in.

When she returned, I was told Mr. Grey would allow me ten minutes of his time. Grey was a fat man, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He waltzed around his desk to greet me like someone who weighed seventy pounds less. The grip he clamped on my hand was very firm. The light brown hair on his head was beginning to thin out, and he had a pleasant face that would have been handsome except for his extra chins. He wore a lightweight navy blue suit.

After we exchanged pleasantries and sat down, I said, “Mr. Grey, I’ve been hired by the insurance company to investigate the theft of Mrs. Dyer’s pendant, and I was wondering if you could give me some information about it.”

Grey smiled faintly and formed a bridge with his hands. “You must realize that I have already given all the information I know about the theft to the police, Mr. Hammond. There is no need for anyone to question me further. I think the insurance company is stalling, and you are merely part of that stall. How much longer will Pamela have to wait before they give her the money she is entitled to?”

“Ask them. They think you two faked the robbery,” I said just to rattle him.

Grey looked about as rattled as a granite headstone. He frowned and pushed his real chin down into the other ones. “You can’t be serious. Mrs. Dyer and I were robbed and tied up in my apartment by two very real thugs. There was no duplicity involved.”

“What did the men look like?”

“They wore stockings over their faces.”

“So I’ve been told. But can you describe the rest of them?”

“They were both moderately tall with strong builds. And they both wore Levi’s and T-shirts. I can’t tell you anything more.”

“Okay,” I said. “Did you notice anyone like them following you from the restaurant after dinner?”

“No, I did not. Of course, I wasn’t really looking.”

“How often did Mrs. Dyer wear her pendant?”

Grey let out a big long sigh like he was tired of talking about the whole thing. “She wore it occasionally,” he said. “She did not wear it all the time like some women do with expensive jewelry. Pamela has very good taste.”

“Yeah, in some things.”

Grey’s face reddened. “What is that supposed to mean, Hammond?”

“I forgot. When was the—”

Grey cut me off. He said, “I don’t care to discuss this any further. If you want more information, then go ask the police. Perhaps they have time to waste with cretins.”

“Lots. They talked to you, didn’t they?”

I was a real friendly guy that afternoon. I got up and went through the door. Grey’s secretary was still typing in the outer office. She looked up from her work and addressed me in a cheery tone:

“Did you get what you came for?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I got what I came for. But now that I’m here, I see something else I might like too.” I smiled a cute smile and waited for her to catch on. I didn’t wait much.

“You can’t always get what you want. Bye-bye, Mr. Hammond.”

I laughed a little, winked at her, went out the door.

My office would never win any awards for interior decoration, or anything else for that matter. I leased it in a building that used to be a profitable hotel until the neighborhood ran down and they turned it into an office building for seedy businessmen like myself. There were a few seedy dentists in the building too. Anyway, my office still looked like a hotel room with a small bedroom off the hallway door and an even smaller bathroom adjoining it. I’d filled the bedroom with a secondhand sofa that was also a foldaway bed, an elementary school teacher’s desk I’d bought at a sale when the school burned down, a filing cabinet I got from the same school, and two chairs: one for myself and one for my client. The bathroom I’d filled with a lot of air.

I was lying flat out on the sofa, holding a glass of whiskey on the middle of my stomach. I had eaten dinner in my apartment and come back here to think. The most conclusive decision I’d come to since lying there was that the ceiling was dirty. The second most conclusive decision I’d reached was that I should call Pamela Dyer. I moved to the desk to carry it out.

I rang her number a long time before the maid answered. I identified myself and asked to speak to Mrs. Dyer. A few seconds later, she came on.

“Hello, Mr. Hammond. Robert said that you might try to contact me. I don’t believe I have anything to say to you, though.” Her voice was hard and distant.

“Don’t you want to recover your pendant?”

“Yes, of course. But I’ve been answering questions for a week now, and still I don’t have it back. Answering questions doesn’t seem to do any good, Mr. Hammond.”

“Let’s try some of mine anyway. Can you describe the pendant for me?”

There was a short pause. “Oh very well,” she said. “The pendant is made of gold and is shaped like a heart, or the outline of a heart. It’s strung on a fine chain, which is also made of gold. There are blue diamonds inlaid along the circumference. The diamond at the top cusp is larger than the others and is of unusually fine quality. That diamond is what makes the pendant so valuable: it’s one of the largest blue diamonds in the world.”

“Oh,” I said. It sounded pretty gaudy to me. Maybe Mrs. Dyer didn’t have good taste in anything. “How did you acquire the pendant?”

“My late husband gave it to me for our tenth anniversary.”

“How long ago was that?”

“None of your business,” she snapped.

“Right; but how long ago was it?”

She made a snarling sound. I hardly recognized her voice as she barked, “Go fry your face in a pan, Hammond.” Then she hung up.

My mouth fell open like it usually does. Nothing in there but teeth and stale air. I was really pumping ’em dry. No scrap of information escaped detective Hammond. He knows all the right questions and all the right ways to ask them.

I wheeled back in my chair to the filing cabinet and opened the drawer with the only thing important in it to get a bottle of whiskey. I poured an inch or so of the stuff into my glass. It wasn’t very good, but I took my medicine and liked it. I was going to see Mrs. Dyer in person, and I needed all the help I could get.

She lived in a ritzy section of north Phoenix. I didn’t have any trouble locating the house because it was as big as a barn — and only a bit more handsome. It was lit up like some kind of government building with floodlights that shone up from the ground. I pulled into the circle drive and parked my dusty Ford behind a shiny new Mercedes. At least my car was in good company; I knew I wouldn’t be with Pamela Dyer.

I crossed to the front door and banged on it with the ornate knocker that hung there. After a while the porch light came on, and a tall woman in a black crepe dress answered the door. She was forty or so, big-boned and rugged looking. Her hair, black as her dress, was wound tightly in a severe bun many years out of style. She looked me over slowly with an expression most people save for child molesters and Bolsheviks. It had to be Pamela Dyer.

“Who are you?” she asked sternly.

“Hammond,” I said. “August Hammond.”

“You’re the private investigator who called, then?”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes burned greenly. “Come in,” she said, and led me into a large sunken living room.

I looked around. The room was a fine illustration of what a lot of money and no taste can accomplish. Antique furniture from twelve different periods cluttered it. Expensive-looking pictures hung on all four walls at irregular intervals, and a large Persian rug lay in the middle of the floor on top of the regular carpet.

There was also a tall man with a big gun in the far right corner.

I said, “Is that your maid, Mrs. Dyer?”

The man began laughing like a sick horse and walked in to the middle of the room, pointing his Colt Army .45 at me. “That’s right, smart guy,” he said. “I’m the maid and I’m here to do a little house-cleaning. Check him for a gun, Pammie.”

There wasn’t anywhere to check except my belt line because I didn’t have a jacket on, just short sleeves. I don’t carry a gun unless I think I’ll need it, and I didn’t think that night. Mrs. Dyer patted my waistline anyway — about as firmly as you’d caress a hot stove. She stepped back when she was finished, and the tall guy with the gun came up and dug it into my stomach. His big red face was pitted with acne scars, and his breath smelled of liquor. But so did mine.

He said, “Pammie doesn’t like smart-guy private detectives tracking their gumshoe prints all over her neat little house, so she called me to help her clean up. What do you think of that, smart guy?”

“It’s fine — if she wants to fumigate after you leave.”

He didn’t like that one, and he told me so by swinging the flat of the .45 into my left cheek — hard. I staggered back but didn’t fall. I got mad then and decided to take my chances. Pockface had the gun pointed to the side because of the follow-through on his swing. I lunged toward his gun arm, bringing my knee up into his groin as I came forward. A half second later, we both hit the ground and he lost his grip on the .45. I slugged him once in the jaw and struggled across the Persian rug to reach the gun. I would have made it too, if Pamela Dyer hadn’t hit me in the back of the head with one of her antique chairs.

My arms buckled under me then, and I began to lose consciousness. The last thing I remembered was Pockface kicking me in the ribs. It’s funny, but I hardly felt it at all.

The sun peeped through a crack in some expensive curtains, and a wonderful day began outside. I felt like throwing up.

I was lying face down on the Persian rug in Mrs. Dyer’s sunken living room. Beside me lay the remains of what had once been an Italian antique chair. Or maybe it was French; I’m not an expert. I knew without checking that the back of my head was missing. I checked anyway and found a matted patch of bloody hair on a bump big enough to convince me that my head was reproducing by fission.

As for my ribs, I decided it would be less painful if I just stopped breathing.

The sun had moved several degrees higher in the sky before I forced myself to consider getting up. I glanced at my watch; it was 7:30. If I didn’t get up soon, the real maid would come along and vacuum me off the rug. I struggled to my feet and surveyed the room from an upright position. There was no one in it.

I checked the rest of the rooms and didn’t find anyone else. None of the beds had been slept in. I went into the kitchen and put some ice in a baggie for the back of my head. I found the front door then and walked to my car.

The sun was so bright outside that for a full five minutes I couldn’t do anything but stand by my car squinting, holding the ice to the back of my head. As I stood there, I heard the morning traffic on a main street about a quarter mile away. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the stark light, and I could see normally again. I did not like what I saw. Pamela Dyer lay hunched up in the backseat of my car looking dead.

I jerked the door open and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t any. Her black hair had fallen from the tight bun and settled around her shoulders in coarse, tangled strands. It gave her a frivolous kind of appearance I wouldn’t have thought possible. Her neck above the crepe dress was blotched with dark bruises: she had been strangled. The body was stiff and cold, growing stiffer and colder. I went around to the trunk of the car and got out an old blanket I kept there. I wrapped her carefully in the blanket, placed the body inside the trunk, closed it. My ribs were smarting the whole time.

I eased myself into the car and pulled out of the driveway. As I left, I noticed the Mercedes from last night was missing. I didn’t know where I was going; I was just getting away from there.

I ended up at a small city park at the northern edge of Phoenix. I drove up to one of the covered picnic tables they call ramadas and parked the car. When I was sure no one was around, I opened the trunk and hefted Pamela Dyer’s body onto the picnic table. It was a gruesome job.

I got in my car again and aimed it toward an open coffee shop. I went first to the bathroom to wash my face. There was a large bruise on my left cheek, and the skin was broken. I had almost forgotten about it with all the other rough stuff that had happened to me. I bent my head over the sink and tried to wash out some of the dried blood that was caked in my hair. I patted my hair dry with a paper towel, then went out to get some breakfast.

The waitress thought I’d been run over by a truck, and she told me so. I ordered a lot — not because I was hungry, but because I needed food — and began scanning a morning paper someone had left behind. I half expected to see a headline reading, “Private Investigator Strangles Woman and Hides Body in Park.” It wasn’t there, however.

The food came and I ate it. It didn’t taste very good, but I felt less light-headed with something in my stomach. After I finished, I went back to a pay phone and dialed the police department to tell them they would find the body of a dead woman at the park. It would take them several days to identify the body, especially if the media didn’t pick up on it. I needed those days to figure out the mess and clear myself against the time someone finally reported Mrs. Dyer missing.

I got into the car one last time and drove to Delbert Evans’s office. I had to talk to someone.

When I got to Delbert’s office, no one was there but Delbert. It was 8:50. I found him rummaging around the secretary’s desk looking for a paper clip. He greeted me with a grimace and told me I looked like I had been run over by a truck. I guess waitresses and insurance salesmen think the same.

We went into the inner office and sat down. Delbert put on a brave, expectant face and said, “Well, August, how is the investigation going?”

“Mrs. Dyer is dead.”

Delbert jerked like he had been shocked digging his bread out of the toaster with a fork. His face turned two shades whiter. “How did it happen?” he asked breathlessly.

I told him the whole wad, starting with my visit to Grey’s office and ending with the disposal of Mrs. Dyer’s body. He sank lower and lower in his chair as I told the story, and by the time I was finished, his chest was at the same level as the desk top. “August,” he said, and pulled himself up. “We hired you to find the pendant, not to antagonize Mr. Grey and Mrs. Dyer, and certainly not to have Mrs. Dyer killed.”

That wasn’t quite straight, but I let it slide.

“And frankly,” Delbert continued, “I don’t think it was very wise of you to remove Mrs. Dyer’s body from the premises. You’ve just made it that much more difficult for the police to solve the murder and clear you.”

“Be serious, Del. If I had called the police from the house when I found the body, clearing me would have been the last thing on their minds. I would be their number-one suspect. As it stands now, I’ll still be the guy they go after when they identify the body. The maid who works at the house knows I talked to Mrs. Dyer last night because she answered the phone. She might even have been at the house when I got conked; I don’t know.”

“But what about the man with the gun? Wouldn’t the police suspect him?”

“They would if they’d believe what I told ’em. But cops would as soon listen to winos in the street as private investigators.”

“What are you going to do then, August?”

“Go on with the investigation. Mrs. Dyer’s death and the theft of the pendant must be related. I don’t know exactly where the gunboy at the house fits in, but he’s got to be the link between the two. It’s clear Mrs. Dyer wasn’t telling us the whole story.”

Delbert started to ramble on the way he did whenever he got excited. Chiefly, he was concerned that I be more careful and not involve myself or the insurance company in any more murders. I couldn’t argue with that. I tried to calm him down anyway, and I spent another fifteen minutes or so talking with him about his golf game. I wouldn’t know a five iron if you hit me over the head with it, but I faked it.

I left after scrounging the first name of Mrs. Dyer’s maid from Delbert — that was all he knew — and went home to my apartment. There I licked my wounds and helped recycle aluminum by drinking a few beers.

The name Evita and a ten-dollar bribe were all the clerk at Valley Domestic Service needed to supply me with the full name and address of Mrs. Dyer’s maid. Her full name was Evita Salaiz, and she lived on East Roosevelt in a very bad neighborhood. In fact, she lived about three blocks south of my office.

The house was a gray stucco number built around 1803. The lawn surrounding it had been planted in the same year but wasn’t around now to tell the tale. Two yellowish bed sheets hung from a rusty clothesline in the side yard, providing the only shade for the whole place. A maroon Packard stood decaying nearby. I went up a cracked sidewalk to the porch and knocked at the screen door.

The Roman Empire rose and fell in the time it took someone to answer the door. The someone was a dark woman in a short white slip and nylon panty hose. Her breasts were round and obscenely full, her thighs big and muscular. She smiled at me and tilted her hips at an insolent angle. She looked about as hard to get as the time of day.

“Miss Evita Salaiz?” I asked.

“Yes.” she said huskily, “that’s me.”

“May I come in? I’d like to talk to you about one of the people you work for.”

“No, you cannot come in,” she said, and effectively blocked my way with her chest. “Who are you?”

I tried to look past her into the house, but the room was too dark. “My name is August Hammond,” I said in something like an official tone. “I’m the insurance investigator assigned to Mrs. Dyer’s case. Did you work at her home yesterday?”

“Yes, I work for Mrs. Dyer Monday’s, Wednesdays, and Fridays... Hey, wait a minute, you’re the private detective that called yesterday evening, aren’t you. I heard Mrs. Dyer talking to you on the phone, and she was not pleased. I shouldn’t be talking to you.” She moved to go back inside.

“Just a second,” I said, and grabbed her bare arm. “I just have a few questions to ask and I don’t think they’ll be that painful to answer.” I pulled another ten dollars from my pocket.

She thought about the money for a second. “Okay,” she said. “What is it you want to know?”

“When did you leave Mrs. Dyer’s house last night?”

“I left after cleaning the mess from dinner. Mrs. Dyer always has me clean up after dinner.”

“Did Mrs. Dyer have any visitors yesterday?”

“No... no visitors.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes I’m sure. I answer the door myself when she has visitors.”

“Have you ever seen a tall, red-faced man at the house?”

Someone moved in the dark room behind her. “No,” she said. “I’ve never seen a short, blue-faced one either. Can I have my money now? I’ve got things to do.”

I handed her the money just as a bumping noise sounded in the room. She glanced quickly behind her, pivoted, and went through the door. She locked it after her. There was nothing else to do but go back to my car and pull down the block to wait. At the least, I could tail anyone who left.

The flask from my glove box was half empty by the time her scream rang out. I hesitated only an instant before running up the street like an idiot. The house door was still locked, but the lock was cheap and it didn’t last long. I pushed through to the front room and nearly tripped over her where she lay face down by the door. She looked as healthy as I’d left her — until I turned her over. The face I saw then was not the face I remembered. Her forehead was caved in like a squashed melon, thick blood and gray mash oozing from the wound. I moved to feel her pulse, doubting she had one.

I should have been smarter. I should have realized the someone I saw moving in the dark room before would still be around after he crushed her skull. I should have known. A vague figure on the edge of my vision moved toward me. It swung, brought down something hard between my shoulder blades. A painful buzzing like a swarm of bees shot up my neck and nestled in my brain. I never quite lost consciousness, but I might as well have. Darkness and the floor beneath me were all I knew.

The next minutes were long ones. I heard a lot of noises, but I couldn’t distinguish any of them until I heard the sirens. The sirens were what forced me to move. Someone, probably the person who’d hit me, had called the police. I pried myself from the floor, finding Evita Salaiz’s legs under me. Nearby was my candidate for the weapon that had clubbed us both: a rolling pin. It was sticky with flour and gelled blood. The front door seemed like a dumb move, so I fumbled to my feet and made for the back door. I passed through the kitchen on my way and noticed a mound of dough waiting to be rolled out. It never was.

The back door opened to an alley that ran behind the houses on my side of the block. I crept along as stealthily as my new injury would allow until I came to a gap in the alley close to my car. I walked over casually and drove. I drove past the screeching police cars stopping in front of Evita Salaiz’s house and kept on driving straight to the Weckler Building. I was tired of getting beat up, and I was tired of falling over dead bodies wherever I went. I decided it was time to see Robert Grey again and really put the heat on for some useful answers.

I stuck my head through the office door and caught sight of his secretary. She was still at the desk typing, as if she had spent the whole night there. Today she was wearing a pastel summer dress.

I said, “Hi, angel, remember me?”

“Sure,” she said. “How could I forget a handsome hunk like you? But, ouch, what happened to your cheek?”

I stepped inside. “One of my playmates from last night got a little rough. I’ll survive.”

“You always would. But I’d hate to meet any of your playmates.”

“I don’t see why. Any friend of mine is a friend of yours.”

She flipped her hair back casually and gave me a big smile. “I already have enough friends, thank you.”

“You always would. Do you think I could get in to see your employer?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Some minutes later, I found myself in Robert Grey’s private office, sitting in the same chair as yesterday. Grey hadn’t lost any weight in twenty-four hours, but he had changed clothes. He wore a beige suit.

“What can I do for you today, Mr. Hammond?” he asked coolly. “Have you come to exchange insults again?”

“No, but I’m still surprised you agreed to see me.”

“I wouldn’t have, but it seems it is the only way to motivate the insurance company to pay Pamela’s claim.”

I got mean. “You needn’t worry about that anymore. Mrs. Dyer is dead.”

“That’s preposterous.”

“No, it’s quite true,” I said with false calm. “She was strangled to death by someone with large hands — large hands like yours maybe.”

Grey looked down at his hands on the desk and then jerked them into his lap. His face reddened. “What is this, young man? Some kind of macabre joke?”

“Yeah, I’m joking. I’m also joking when I tell you Dyer’s maid got her face smashed by a rolling pin. It’s all something I made up. And don’t call me young, because I’m not.”

Grey narrowed his eyes to slits and gave me what he thought was a serious-looking stare. “Look, Hammond,” he said, “I’m tired of playing this idiotic game with you. You’ve come into my office twice in two days, and each time you have accused me of some crime. Yesterday it was insurance fraud; today it is murder. I don’t like being treated in this manner, especially by seedy private investigators. Why don’t you leave before I am forced to throw you out?”

I leaned over the desk and laughed in his face. “All right, Grey, I’ll leave if you don’t like it. But I hope you learn how to deal with things you don’t like soon. Because when I figure out this case — and believe me, I will — you are gonna like it a lot less.”

Grey clamped his jaw shut and the muscles on the side of his fleshy face twitched. I got up out of the chair and went through the door into the outer office. It had been a short meeting. The secretary wasn’t in her office, so I walked straight out the next door and down the hall to the elevators. The hand I pressed the elevator button with was shaking.

I waited a time for a car to stop on the floor, and then all three showed up at once. I got into the closest one with an old guy dressed in a suit fifteen years out of style. During the ride to the lobby, he generously revealed his secret for making a million dollars. I thanked him in a tongue-in-cheek way and walked out of the building to my car. I learned three months later that he was Mr. Weckler — the owner of the Weckler Building and a guy worth about four million — but by that time I had forgotten the secret.

I drove back to my old office building and went in. In the lobby, I bought an early edition of the afternoon paper from one of the machines and carried it back to my office. When I got good and settled behind my desk with some whiskey, I went through the paper looking for articles on Mrs. Dyer’s death. I scanned the front section and saw nothing. But in one of the back sections I located a small article telling how the police had found the body of an unidentified woman in a city park. They gave a short description of the deceased and asked for the public’s cooperation in identifying her. I hoped they wouldn’t get it.

I was very tired and my head ached. I downed another three pony glasses of whiskey for the pain — and for the frustration — but it didn’t make me any less tired. I began to look through the rest of the paper just to have something to do. When I got bored, I walked over to the sofa and lay down.

That fairy tale is right. It is very pleasant to be wakened by a kiss. Her lips were cool and moist, her hair perfumed.

“That’s the last time I wake a sleeping beauty,” she said. “It smells like you’ve been sleeping with a bottle.”

I opened my eyes and found Robert Grey’s secretary standing over me. She was as pretty as ever, but her hair had been messed by the wind. I said:

“No, you just smell my French cologne.”

“I think Scotch cologne would be more exact, but I’m not one to argue. Tell me, why are you sleeping on the job anyway? Aren’t you afraid some of your ‘friends’ will come up here and do you in while you snooze?”

“They could, it’s true. But none of them hate me enough to come to this part of town to do it.”

“I think you have a point there.”

“Then what are you doing here? And how did you find my office?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions.”

“That’s my job — when I’m not sleeping.”

She motioned with her hand for me to scoot over and sat down next to me on the sofa. “Well, if you ever make enough money at your job to buy a new couch, I suggest you do it. This one is terrible. Anyway, I got your address from that dog-eared business card you gave me yesterday. And I came here to help you, believe it or not. I heard you and Mr. Grey yelling at each other today before I went on my break, so I figured you didn’t get too far with him. I might be able to tell you a few things you don’t know.”

I looked into her eyes and smiled. They were light blue and mischievous looking. I had a feeling she was the type of person who never took anything too seriously. I said, “I’m sure you could tell me a lot of things I don’t know, but why would you want to? Aren’t you supposed to be loyal to Mr. Grey? He doesn’t like anything told to seedy private investigators like me.”

“My loyalty stops when my employment does. I don’t work for Mr. Grey anymore. He got angry with me for typing a letter wrong, so he called the secretary service I work for to get a new girl. You see, I was only a temporary replacement while his regular secretary was on vacation.”

“So your motive is revenge.”

“Nope. I typed the letter wrong on purpose because I was tired of working there. I only take those jobs from the temporary service when I’m not modeling. Modeling is my main source of income.”

“I can believe that. You still haven’t told me why you drove all the way out here, though.”

“A person sure has to go through a lot just to give you a little help,” she said. “But I’ll tell you anyway. I came out here because I like you and because I wanted to see a real private eye in action.”

I winced. “There’s no such thing as private eyes. Not anymore, at least. They went out with big-time gangsters and Bogey movies. The only people left in the business are the big boys with the electronic spy equipment and the little operators like me. I’m doing well if I gross a thousand bucks a month, and the jobs I get are always leftovers. This isn’t a glamorous profession, and you can’t make it that way by calling me a private eye. If you call me anything, please call me a private investigator.”

She smiled. “Okay, Mr. Private Investigator, I came to see you in action. What exciting things have you done today besides sleeping?”

Nothing from my little speech had sunk in. She still expected me to talk out of the side of my mouth and show her the real brass knuckles I used to beat up criminals. I sighed. “Oh, not much. I did dispose of a body I found in the backseat of my car. And, of course, it’s always exciting to sit with you on the same sofa.”

“You’re not making a comparison between the two events I hope.”

“Never. Now tell me what I’m supposed to call you. I don’t know your name.”

“It’s Lynn Marrow. I know yours is August from your card.”

“All right, Lynn, let’s go somewhere we can talk and maybe eat something decent at the same time.”

We ate dinner at a nice restaurant and went back to her apartment, where I stole a few kisses. Much of the stuff she told me about Grey was useless. In her effort to play private eye with me, she blew the normal events of the office out of proportion. But there was one thing I found interesting: a tall man with a red, acne-scared face had come to Grey’s office after I’d left. He’d argued with Grey for a while and then stormed out of the office, promising loudly that he would come to see Grey again this evening. Finally, something was clicking. I decided Grey and Pockface would have one more person at their meeting — me.

I parked my crate outside Grey’s apartment building and went up the walk to the lobby entrance. The door was locked. It was on one of those intercom systems where you buzz up to the apartment to be let in. I punched about six of the room buttons and said “It’s me, honey, I forgot my key” into the speaker as they answered. I got in on the fourth try.

Grey’s apartment number, I knew from Delbert, was 312. I rode the elevator to the third floor and stepped out into a hallway that was as quiet as a sneak thief in the duchess’s bedroom. I found the apartment on the right side and put my ear to it. I heard nothing. I reached for the doorknob, turned it slowly.

The knob twisted sharply in my hand. Somebody pulled the door open and my arm went with it. “Too bad for you, Hammond,” said a voice. There was a swishing noise then, and I felt something burn hard at my left temple. Points of light blazed like welding sparks in front of my eyes. The floor reached up to grab me.

It was a man. He was saying something at my face, but I wasn’t listening. He was tall — or he seemed to be at the angle from which I viewed him. He had black greasy hair and sideburns that were much too long. He smoked a huge cigar that looked and smelled like a smoldering road flare. It made me nauseous. His fat belly was like nine pounds of stuff in a five pound bag. Presently, he laughed at me and showed off a set of teeth that could have made a poor orthodontist very happy.

I blinked my eyes with pain and concentrated on coming back to life. I was lying on a sofa in the middle of a dark-paneled room. Dark pieces of matching furniture were scattered about the room on top of a dark brown carpet. Everything was dark. There were three men in the room — and at least one gun.

“This bird ain’t too smart, is he, Mr. Mendoza?” Pockface said to the man with the cigar. Pockface gestured with his gun where he stood by the door, facing me. “He drives up to the apartment building and parks his car right underneath our window. Then he comes up to the apartment and expects to walk right in. Only thing is, he takes three weeks opening the door, and we have plenty of time to bash him in the head with a sap. You’d think he’d learn something gettin’ bashed in the head all the time like he does.”

“Yeah, you would, Eddie,” said Mr. Mendoza. “Just like you’d think fat Mr. Grey over here would learn that it’s not a good idea to back out of any deals he makes with me.” Mendoza nodded at Robert Grey, who stood by the foot of the couch looking as white as a sheet from an operating table. “Do you think you know what I’m talking about, shamus?” Mendoza said to me.

I struggled to sit up. “Yeah,” I said. “You helped Grey and Pamela Dyer fake the theft of the pendant so you could fence it. You would get part of the money from the pendant for your trouble, and they would get the rest plus the insurance money. But they never came across with the pendant, so you’re upset.”

“That’s close, shamus; you’re smarter than I thought you were,” said Mendoza. “You’re right about everything except the part about Grey and Dyer not coming across with the pendant. That’s not right; Mr. Grey gave us the pendant tonight. Look.” Mendoza reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a gold, heart-shaped pendant on a fine chain. He dangled it in front of my face. It was exactly as Mrs. Dyer had described it — except there wasn’t a large diamond at the top cleft, just a large hole. “So you see,” Mendoza went on, “I’m not upset because they didn’t give me the pendant. I’m upset because they didn’t give me all of the pendant. Without the big rock, it’s not even worth twenty grand: small change. And I don’t deal for small change.”

Robert Grey made a noise in his throat. His eyes became wide, and he looked at Mendoza with a pleading expression. He said, “But, Mr. Mendoza, I’ve already told you what happened to the large diamond. Pamela kept it. I told her you would be angry, but she wouldn’t listen to reason. You must go and talk to her if you want the diamond.”

I started laughing. My laughter filled the dark room with a strange sound. Three dumb faces stared at me.

“Stop it,” ordered Mendoza.

I didn’t.

Mendoza jerked his head at Eddie, who came up from the door. Eddie switched his gun to his left hand and hit me in the mouth with his right. I tasted blood immediately, and my laughing stopped. Then I laughed some more. “Again,” said Mendoza. Eddie took a good swing this time and knocked me prone onto the couch. Blood flowed into my mouth.

“What’s so funny, shamus?” Mendoza asked.

I looked up at Mendoza and felt cold hatred. “You should know,” I said through thick, numb lips. “Ask your gunboy about last night.”

Mendoza looked over at Eddie, but Eddie just shook his head. “Make it plain, Hammond,” said Mendoza.

“Pamela Dyer is dead,” I said for the third time today. “Eddie strangled her after they knocked me out Then he dumped her in the backseat of my car, where I found her this morning.”

Eddie shook his head furiously. “No, Mr. Mendoza, I didn’t do anything like that. When I left the house last night, Mrs. Dyer was plenty alive.”

I sat upright again and looked over at Grey. He was as nervous as a squirrel. “Sorry, Eddie, my mistake,” I said. “You didn’t kill Pamela Dyer; Grey did. I joked about it when I went to see him this afternoon, but now I see I was right. He must have come to the house after you left to pressure Mrs. Dyer into turning over the pendant.” I turned to Mendoza. “That was the same reason you sent Eddie over there for, wasn’t it? Mrs. Dyer was holding out.”

Mendoza nodded.

“Well,” I said, “Grey figured he and Pamela Dyer couldn’t afford to hold out against you, so he went to see her himself. That’s when she told him she was keeping the big diamond. Grey must have gone berserk: he knew you wouldn’t stand for it. He strangled her and took what was left of the pendant with him as a peace offering. He put Mrs. Dyer’s body in my car because he wanted to frame me for the job, or he figured I would get rid of the body. Just like I did.

“There was only one problem. The maid at Mrs. Dyer’s house saw the whole thing before she went home last night. That, or Grey thought she did. He went over to her house this afternoon to talk to her about it, but I showed up while he was there. He panicked again. After I left, he smashed the maid’s skull with the rolling pin she’d been using in the kitchen. When I bumbled in a final time, he was forced to take a swing at me too. With me lying on the floor next to the body, he called the police and left in a hurry.” I addressed Grey. “I bet you were pretty surprised when I showed up at your office right on your heels.”

Things happened. Grey yelled something I didn’t understand and dove at me on the couch. Eddie tried to block him, but the fat man’s momentum was too much for Eddie. They both hit the couch, one on top of the other. I crawled over to them and made a play for Eddie’s gun; this time I got hold of it. Mendoza made a move with his hand toward his jacket. Too bad for him. The gun jolted and three slugs found their way into his gut. Mendoza dropped to the floor, his skull making a thud as it hit. I giggled.

Eddie and Grey hesitated for a moment and then reached to restrain me. Too bad for them. I worked the trigger quickly. Two bullets slammed into Eddie’s red face. The blood splattered on my arms and the couch. I turned the gun on Grey and fired. He slumped on top of my legs, died. I giggled some more.

I threw Grey’s body off me and stood up. Blood was everywhere in the dark room. I looked down at the bodies and leered obscenely. I wasn’t human.

My head was reeling, and I began to feel very, very sick. I went to the toilet and threw up. I phoned the police then.

The police really put me through the works. They didn’t like the dead bodies on the apartment floor; they didn’t like the missing diamond that they never found; they didn’t like my running from the maid’s house; they didn’t like the way I moved Pamela Dyer’s body; and most of all, they didn’t like me. I didn’t blame them. I was released after a seventy-two-hour confinement on suspicion of murder because of lack of evidence.

I quit then. I gave up. I stopped trying to be the clever private detective with all the witty chatter. I had had enough of the mindless killing, the low-class punks, and the high-class chislers I had to deal with, and the general feeling of cheapness. I was tired of being everyone’s lackey. Give it to Hammond; he can take it. He loves being smacked in the head or punched around. Go ahead, hit him some more. He’s tough. Yeah, he’s tough — but not tough enough.

Delbert was horrified with the way things turned out. He couldn’t accept the fact that I had killed three people. When I told him I was quitting, he offered me a job selling insurance with his company. I thanked him, but I wasn’t ready to go that far in the other direction.

I saw Lynn Marrow a couple of times more, but her attraction to me wore off when she finally realized I was never going to work as a private detective again. It wasn’t my fault. I had warned her once — once when I didn’t realize how right I was: there’s no such thing as private eyes.