The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories

I tossed another coin on the counter and the bleached blonde handed me three more baseballs. I hefted one of them, prepared to heave it; but before I could let fly, the yellow-haired gal dropped dead with a crushed skull. Five minutes later I was collared for the killing.

Putting it that way, it sounds about as impersonal as a telegram condensed to fifty words for economy's sake. It didn't seem so impersonal to me at the time, though. My neck was in a lonely spot and I mighty well realised it. If ever a guy had been draped with a murder frame, I was that guy.

The whole thing started the previous afternoon when Roy Cromwell, ace director for Paravox Pix, ankled into my agency office with an embarrassed look on his handsome mush. He was a stalwart ape in the loudest set of tweeds this side of an air raid alarm, and his fame for making hit films was exceeded only by his rep as a Romeo in private life.

Crossing my threshold, he flashed me a sheepish grin. "Hiya, Philo. How's the best private eye in Hollywood?"

"The name is Dan Turner," I said. "Mister to you."

He reddened. "Still sore, eh?"

"I never forget a raw deal."

"I didn't mean it to be as raw as it turned out," he protested mildly. "Why pack a grudge?"

"I've got every reason to pack a grudge. You had a girl in a Sunset Strip dice club one night a month ago. The joint was raided. You begged me to take the doll off your hands and pretend I was her escort. Like a dope, I agreed."

He said: "I appreciated the favour. Honest I did."

"Sure," I sneered. "Only it developed that she was engaged to Bernie Ballantyne, production mogul for Paravox; in other words, your boss. That's why you palmed her off on me. If Bernie found out you were entertaining his sweetie, he might get even by dropping your option, so you picked me for a fall guy."

"But, Dan, listen-"

I waved him quiet. "So what happened? Bernie made me the target of his jealousy; barred me off the lot. I used to get all of the Paravox snooping business; picked up some fat fees. But now, thanks to you, I can't even go through the gates."

"That's where you're wrong," Cromwell said placatingly. "Ballantyne wants to bury the hatchet."

"Yeah. In my dandruff."

"No. He's got a job for you."

I gave him the surly focus. "Quit ribbing."

"A thousand dollars is no rib." He took a check from his wallet, threw it on my desk. It was for a grand, made out to me, and signed with Bernie Ballantyne's scrawled autograph. "That's only the retainer. You'll get more later."

My ire began to fade. "He must crave somebody cooled for this kind of geetus."

All the colour leaked out of Cromwell's pan; left it a floury mask. His glimmers bulged. "Wh-what makes you think a thing like th-that?" he choked. Then he recovered some of his poise. "For a minute I thought you were serious. Shall we go on out to the studio? Bernie's waiting."

I said: "Okay," and we hauled bunions. Leaving the building, I wondered why my casual remark had put the director in such a dither. For an instant he'd acted like a bozo with something nasty on his conscience.

His Packard speedster was parked down at the curb, but I preferred my own jalopy for convenience. I trailed him until a traffic semaphore separated us halfway to Culver City. Cromwell beat the red light by a whisker, pulled ahead; and when I finally got a green signal I'd lost him. I remembered this later, although it didn't seem to matter at the time. I didn't need anyone to guide me to Bernie Ballantyne's private sanctum.

The Paravox production bigwig had a layout of offices in the main executive building, just inside the mammoth wrought iron entrance gates. An assortment of secretaries passed me through the various anterooms until I came to the last one, a sort of Gothic waiting chamber architecturally designed to awe you before you entered the holy of holies. I wasn't very impressed, though. I was too interested in a brunette honey who had just stepped out of Ballantyne's room.

I recognised her and said: "Greetings, Toots."

She drew a sharp breath as she tabbed me. She was a fragile little dish, delicate as a Spring breeze in a modish confection of white silk jersey. Her wavy hair was blue-black to match her peepers, and she had a complexion three shades richer than the cream off the top of the bottle. But there was a tremulous quiver to her ripe pomegranate lips, and her mascara was smudged as if she had recently leaked a trace of brine.

This needled my curiosity. Since she was emerging from Bernie Ballantyne's office you'd naturally think he was responsible for her turning on the weeps; which seemed queer in view of the fact that she was his fiancée, Vala DuValle.

She didn't look happy at meeting me. "Mr. T»-»Turner!"

"Skip the formality and call me Danny-boy. You know, the unfortunate jerk that took you off Roy Cromwell's hands the night a certain dice drop got knocked over. Or have you forgotten how I stuck my neck out for an alleged pal and wound up on the wrong end of a hotfoot?"

She drifted toward me in an aura of expensive fragrance. "Please!" she whispered. "Don't link my n»-»name with Roy's. Bernie might hear you."

"Would that be such a disaster, hon?"

"You know it would. For Roy, and maybe for m»-»me, too."

I said: "Then you shouldn't play with fire. Cromwell's dynamite for a jane who's engaged to somebody else."

Her piquant puss got pink. "Roy and I are just good friends, nothing more. You've got to believe that."

"Sure. But does Bernie believe it?"

"He doesn't know anything about it. And he mustn't. He won't either… unless somebody carries tales to him. You w – wouldn't do an ugly thing like that, would you, Mr. Turner?"

"Not unless I thought it would pay me dividends," I said. I was only kidding, of course; but the joke seemed to backfire. A dismayed expression crossed her angelic map and she turned, pelted out of the room before I could explain or apologize. I heard her sobbing as she scrammed, and the sound made me feel like the lowest heel in Hollywood.

Well, nuts. I could hunt her up later and make amends, I decided. Meanwhile Ballantyne was waiting for me. I barged to his door, ankled in, hung the squint on him as he sat behind his ornate desk. "You wanted me, Bernie?"

He was a quarrelsome little sourpuss with fretful glims and a thin, petulant kisser surrounded by permanent sneer lines. Not yet thirty, he was one of the most important powers in the flickering tintypes; and like a lot of undersized runts, he used that power the way you'd swing a baseball bat. In fact, he had been a shortstop on several bush league ball teams before he came into the picture industry.

"Sit down," he piped in his high, reedy voice.

I said: "No, thanks," and set fire to a gasper, blew a blob of fumes his way; deliberately stayed on my dogs. This gave me two advantages. It showed him he couldn't boss me around, and it allowed my six-feet-plus to tower over him, stressing his lack of dimensions. You could see he didn't like it.

He held his temper, though. "Climb off your horse, Hawkshaw. So I had you barred from the lot. So I made a mistake. So I'm sorry. Can I help it if I've got a jealous nature?"

"You should learn to call your shots," I said.

He shrugged. "I love Vala so much it gets me down if I think she's interested in another man. If anybody tried to take her away from me, I believe I'd kill him." Then he grinned wryly. "Forget I said that. It doesn't include you."

"Much obliged."

"She explained how you just happened to meet her casually at a party and took her to that dice club the night of the raid. No hard feelings?"

"None at all," I said. If the DuValle cupcake had blown down Ballantyne's suspicions with such an outright lie, it was okay by me. I added: "I just passed her. She looked upset."

"She is upset. That's why I'm hiring you. I want you to find out what's troubling her; why she's drawn large sums of money out of her bank account lately for no plausible reason. I want to be told if she's in some kind of jam."

I said: "A blackmail jam, for instance?"

He twitched. "What gives you that idea?"

"When people act worried and draw big dough from the bank, it usually spells shakedown," I answered. "Any cheap flatfoot could tell you that. Do you know of anything in her past that somebody could use as a basis for extortion?"

"No. She's all right. She's been that way ever since she became our top Paravox star; and there was never any hint of scandal in her private life before that, to my knowledge." His manicured fingernails drummed the polished desk. "I'll admit the blackmail angle occurred to me, though. I even asked her about it point-blank, a moment ago."

"So that's why she looked so woeful," I said. "Did she spill anything?"

"Nothing. She denied she was in trouble of any kind. I don't believe her, of course. I think she's being bled, and I want to know why. More important, I want the blackmailer's name. I'll fix him!"

"Suppose it's a dame instead of a guy?"

A mean glitter came into Ballantyne's shoebutton peepers. "A dame? They make coffins for dames too, don't they?"

I remembered an offhand crack I'd made to Roy Cromwell in my own office about his boss craving somebody cooled. Cromwell had nearly thrown a wing-ding until he saw I wasn't serious. But now, twice in the same dialogue, Bernie Ballantyne was yodeling a murder threat.

CHAPTER II – Under Arrest

My assignment was to keep a constant tail on Vala DuValle during the next few days; check her movements, her contacts. As it happened, she was currently working in a farce comedy opus being produced by Ballantyne and directed by Roy Cromwell; so the next morning I went on a location jaunt with the unit-and ankled into a homicide frame up to my neck.

Outdoor action scenes were to be shot on the amusement pier down at Venice, a once-popular seashore resort that had recently become practically a ghost town since its beach got quarantined by the health authorities because of sewage pollution in the surf. Deserted by vacation tourists, it made an ideal spot for a movie; there was no gawking public to infest the premises, no autograph maniacs to annoy the cast.

Paravox had rented the whole amusement pier; roped it off for camera purposes. Chattering extras thronged the midway, played the sucker games, squealed on the merry-go-rounds and the giant sky-ride that stretched its dizzy dipsy-doodle tracks on slanted trestles over the water. The DuValle quail, playing the heroine, was supposed to meet the leading man for the first time on this sky-ride; according to the screwy scenario she was to fall in love with him while descending an incline at seventy miles an hour. Personally I thought the story smelled, but then I'm just a private snoop, not a critic.

And I didn't seem to be getting very far with my snooping. Cromwell insisted on eleventeen rehearsals of the preliminary crowd sequences, in which Vala DuValle didn't even appear. Bored, she retired to her makeshift dressing room in the Fun House; and naturally I couldn't follow her there.

So I did the next best thing; killed time by mingling with a bunch of extras and bit players prowling the pier. There was one concession game that drew my attention: a counter across the narrow open front of a rectangular cubicle. On platforms toward the back wall of this joint, dummy milk bottles were arranged in pyramids, the idea being to knock them down by hurling baseballs at them.

Of course the owner of the caper had leased it to Paravox for the day, the same as all the other concessionaires had done. And the reason the game interested me was because I recognised the contract actress behind the counter, the bleached blonde cutie who was taking the real owner's place. This yellow-haired wren's name was Maizie Murdock and I'd been on many a party with her in the old days.

I leaned an elbow on the counter. "Having fun, babe?"

"Well, dip me in peanut butter if it isn't Dapper Dan, the wolf in sleuth's clothing!" she gave me a welcoming smile. "How are you? Where've you been keeping yourself?"

I said: "Hither and yon. I'm fine. And you?"

"Okay, but lonesome now that you've scratched me from your address book."

I started to tell her I had censorship trouble but never got the words out, because just then somebody laid a hand on my arm. I turned; saw it was Roy Cromwell. "Anything I can do for you?" I asked him.

He said: "Sorry, Sherlock. This is supposed to be the final rehearsal, not a gabfest." Then he seemed to realise he'd sounded like a director throwing his weight around, and he made an apologetic mouth. "Er, I mean-"

"Okay, bub, okay," I waved him off. "I'll powder." I looked at the blonde Murdock filly. "See you soon, hon."

Cromwell registered embarrassment on his handsome pan. "Hey, wait. I've got an idea. As long as you're here among the extras, suppose you toss some baseballs at these bottles. It'll give me some action to focus my cameras on. Can do?"

"Can do," I said. Cromwell faded off behind me and I picked up a ball, hurled it, scored a clean miss. I tried again, twice; did a little better. Then, play-acting, I planked a coin on the counter and Maizie Murdock gave me three more baseballs. I hefted one of them- Something whammed past my ear like a dirty grey streak. The blur of motion made me duck; and then the Murdock doll let out a stricken bleat that was cut off in the middle as if someone had chopped it with an axe. In fact, I heard a chunking sound; like a blunt hatchet hitting a ripe cocoanut.

I pinned the flabbergasted focus on Maizie just in time to pipe a baseball caroming off her conk, bouncing high in the air. Where it had bashed her, a sudden open fracture appeared. Her blue peepers went glassy and she started to sag.

I yelped: "What the-!" and vaulted the counter; caught her as she toppled. I was too late to do her any good, though. Long before I had lowered her to the floor she had joined up with her ancestors.

She'd been bumped.

For an instant the huge cast and technical crew didn't seem to savvy what had happened. Then chaos spilled over and the panic was on. Three people came sailing at me from the crush: Cromwell, Bernie Ballantyne, and Vala DuValle. I'd known Cromwell was in the crowd, of course; but where Bernie and Vala came from was a mystery to me. One minute they weren't in sight and the following minute they were climbing my back like monkeys picking bananas.

The Ballantyne runt was the worst offender. He kept dragging at my shoulders and yowling: "Call the cops! Get me some law! Help me with this murderer!"

I hunched myself, gave him a flip that sent him flying over into a far corner. This seemed to be the DuValle brunette's cue to dig her fingernails at my glims. She flurried at me, clawing and screeching like a demented banshee. "You beast!" she caterwauled. "You loathesome, slimy beast-!"

I snarled: "Quiet, kiddo," and whapped her a stinger across the chops, hard enough to send her staggering. "Lay off me. I'm not fooling."

Roy Cromwell copped a gander at my palm print on Vala's map and gave a perfect demonstration of a guy blowing his top. "Why, blast your soul!" he roared. Then he grabbed a baseball from the counter and pitched it at my favourite features.

If I hadn't dropped flat on my puss, it would have been just too bad. The throw was an absolute strike; smoked past where my noggin had been an instant before. Had it hit me it would have rendered me defunct. Instead, it crashed against the rear wall of the concession hard enough to split the woodwork in the same way Maizie Murdock's skull had been split by a previous toss. I couldn't help tabbing the similarity.

Rage boiled up inside me. I rolled over, scrambled upright, snaked out my.32 automatic from the shoulder holster where I always carry it for emergencies. I thumbed the safety, curled my finger around the trigger, and got set to blast. "Now, then, chum," I rasped at the director. "One more move out of you and your form will need vulcanizing."

He froze. The DuValle cupcake crouched near him whimpering. Bernie Ballantyne seemed to shrink in his corner, fear scrawled on his rodent profile. "The cops!" he kept mumbling softly. "Isn't anybody going to call the cops?"

"Yeah," I lipped at him. "I am. But first I want to know why you freaks jumped me."

"Because you killed that g»-»girl," he piped in his reedy falsetto. He stole a furtive glance at the Murdock wren's remainders. "You f»-»fractured her skull with a baseball!"

I said: "You lie in your teeth, small fry. I hadn't made my throw when she got bopped. Ask Cromwell." I turned to the director. "Tell him, Roy."

Cromwell kept his glims glued on my gat. "Don't expect any help from me, Turner. I saw what happened."

"Meaning what?"

"You threw the ball at her."

I felt my gullet tightening. "So you're trying to frame me, too. Why? Is it for personal reasons, or just because you think it's wise to string along with your boss?"

"I don't need any excuse for telling the truth," he said sullenly. "I saw you heft the ball and draw it back-"

"But I didn't heave it. Did, I, sister?" I asked Vala.

She ran trembling fingers through her blue-black coiffure. "I didn't see you. I didn't know anything about it until I came out of my dressing room and Bernie told me what you'd done. I'd believe him in preference to you, though."

"You would," I sneered. "You know what side your cake's buttered on." Then I tried being reasonable. "Look, all of you. If I croaked this cookie, what was my motive?"

Cromwell said: "Maybe because she was a nuisance."

"Nuisance?" I stared at him.

"I heard her asking you why you scratched her name off your address book. Maybe she'd been your sweetie and you ditched her. Maybe you thought she'd make trouble; the scorned-woman angle. I don't know. That's for the law to decide."

"You want me pinched, huh?"

He lifted a shoulder. "For my money, you saw a chance to get away with murder and you tried it. The girl was a perfect target and you had a baseball in your hand-"

"And why did I have a baseball?" I bleeped. "I'll tell you! You asked me to throw at the bottles." I moved a step toward him. "It was a fishy request; I can see that now."

He turned pallid around the fringes. "Are you accusing me of trying to frame you?"

I said: "It's a thought."

The impact of this idea hit him all of a sudden. "But why would I frame you unless I-?"

"Yeah, exactly. Unless you were the killer yourself. Remember the ball you just slammed at me? It was a perfect strike over the heart of the plate. It splintered the boards of the back wall. A guy who can heave the horsehide that hard could also crack a cupcake's cranium the same way."

Bernie Ballantyne thrust his beak into the conversation. "If you think you can pin your crime on Roy, think again. I was near him at the time. He threw nothing at Miss Murdock. Every bit player and extra in the crowd will testify to it."

"Yeah, if you tell them to," I growled.

He bridled. "You mean I'd use my position to force anyone to perjure-?"

"Damned right you would. And not necessarily for Cromwell's sake, either. Maybe for your own. I seem to recall you used to be a bush league ball player in your early days. A shortstop, I believe."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Accuracy and throwing power," I fired back at him. "The ability to chuck a baseball and bean somebody. Or am I wrong in remembering how you made two bumpery threats when I talked to you in your office yesterday?"

I figured this ought to set him back on his heels; expected to see him do some squirming. He didn't though. His attention didn't seem to be on me at all. Instead, he was staring past me as if glomming a hinge at something very soothing to the optics. Then, suddenly, he barked: "Arrest this man, officer! He's the one you want. He's the murderer."

I whirled; but I was a split second too slow. A pair of harness bulls from the Venice police force had sneaked up behind me with their roscoes unlimbered; evidently some wise apple in the cast or technical crew had put in a bleat for them while my back was turned. Now they thrust their rods into my ribs and told me I was under arrest, and would I drop my gat before they shoved a load of lead through my liver?

CHAPTER Three – One for Dave

There's something about a copper's.38 Positive that spells authority. Two.38's are twice as nasty. Moreover, I didn't have any drag in Venice. Hollywood is my territory, and my private detective badge is no good outside the city limits. I was a cooked goose and I knew it.

"Sure, boys," I said. "Sure I'll drop my gat." I let it fall and held out my mitts for the nippers.

One of the bulls bolstered his heater, reached into his handcuff sheath for a pair of bracelets. This reduced the odds, but not too much. I was still in an ugly jackpot.

I yelled»: "Look out! Ballantyne's going to shoot!"«

The second cop had quick reflexes. He pivoted toward Bernie, ready for fireworks. When he realised the undersized producer didn't have a gun, he wheeled back to me, cursing at the top of his adenoids. That was when I kicked his.38 out of his clutch. The weapon went skittering.

He dived after it, which was a serious error on his part. I tripped him as he plunged; sent him skidding on his profile. He collected a nostril full of splinters and loudly called on heaven to witness that he'd been stabbed.

Meanwhile I swung a hell-roaring haymaker at his partner's prow. The punch connected, which made two brass buttoned heroes down on the deck. I tensed my thews and sinews, uncoiled myself, and cleared the counter in one fell swoop. Now I was on the midway of the amusement pier, hemmed in by extras and grips and a miscellaneous movie mob.

Dames squalled and guys tried to hang the grab on me. I lowered my noggin, bucked the line, rammed three carpenters and an electrician floundering on their backs. Directly opposite the baseball target concession there was a high, circular tower thrusting its spire upward like an overgrown totem pole. It even looked like a totem pole, its exterior decorated by a big spiral serpent of papier mache and plaster of paris.

The head and face of this giant dragon formed the tower's exit at pier-floor level, its vast mouth open and framed by red-painted fangs. The serpentine body coiled upward around the tall structure, with its massive tail forming a sort of spire at the distant top. Away up there you could lamp a sort of platform all guarded by wooden railings.

Down on the pier, alongside the dragon's exit mouth, there was an entrance flanked by a ticket booth. A sign above the little booth said: VIEW THE SHORE-LINE FROM THE HIGHEST SPOT IN VENICE IOc Escalator (Moving Stairway)

Now Running

SLIDE DOWN THE BIGGEST

THRILL ON THE WEST COAST

1Oc

A wild hunch sneaked up my back. I plunged toward the tower entrance, catapulted past the ticket wicket, gained the escalator. Behind me a roscoe sneezed: «Ka-Chow!» and a red hot hornet buzzed past my ear. That would be the cops having a spot of target practice at my expense. I bent low, blipped onto the moving stairs, felt myself being lifted-but not fast enough to suit me. I started running upward.

The first leg of the escalator ended on a little landing. You stepped off, walked onto the next flight which ascended in the reverse direction; a zig-zag effect. This was repeated twice more; then you were on the very top platform, away to hell and gone up in the air, with nothing but a wooden guard rail between you and a sheer drop to the ocean on one side or the pier on the other. The view was terrific.

I wasn't very interested in it, though; at least not the water. In fact, the breaking waves could have been made of Vat 69 and I wouldn't have liked them from that high up. To dive into the drink from such a height would make toothpicks of every bone in your skeleton.

The thought gave me goose pimples big enough to hang pictures on. I turned, stared down at the pier and the crowds milling around the escalator entrance. I could look straight into the baseball concession across the midway; piped Maizie Murdock's crumpled remnants and Bernie Ballantyne holding Vala DuValle in his embrace, trying to soothe her. Cromwell stood to one side, peering toward the base of the tower straight under me.

The people down there were chattering, pointing; but I didn't lamp any trace of the two cops. I thought I knew why. Above the clattery racket of the machinery that worked the moving stairway I heard thumping footfalls getting closer. Those bulls were on their way up to nab me. Both of them.

I breathed a relieved sigh as I doped this out. It meant a break for my side, because the dizzy numbskuls had neglected to post a guard at the lower exit-the mouth of the stucco dragon. My whole future hinged on that omission.

To my right, up on the top platform, there was a maw-like orifice resembling the entrance to a dark tunnel. The tunnel itself slanted downward at a steep pitch, curving spirally, lined with smooth wooden corduroy strips that were polished to a gloss from friction. This tunnel was the interior of the serpentine dragon that wound itself around the tower from spire to foundation. It was a giant slide, the kind where you sit on a chunk of carpet, give yourself a push, and go circling downward at a thundering clip.

I selected a rug sample from the pile at the slide entrance. I adjusted it, settled myself on it and cast off with my fingers crossed. Whammo! My dizzy descent was something I'll keep dreaming about from now on.

Around and around, down and down I went, with gravity pulling me and centrifugal force slamming me sidewise against the chute's hardwood-strip walls. All the breath leaked out of my bellows, and I felt my optics popping like two grapes being squeezed.

The inventor of that maniac contraption had saved an extra thrill for the last third of the journey. Here the spiral pitch increased its rate of drop; you hit a slight hump and then felt the whole tunnel floor going out from under your hip pockets. Blam! I landed in an awkward sprawl, and now I was circling toward the base at ninety miles a minute. A horrible idea gnawed at me. Suppose one of the wooden corduroy strips came loose and skewered me. "Nix!" I moaned. "Not that!"

And then my wild ride ended. I was at pier level, and I shot out of the dragon's mouth like a shell from a cannon. My glims were full of tears and my elbows full of abrasion blisters from friction contact. I landed ker-thump on a mattress placed strategically for the purpose. It felt as if somebody had stuffed it with discarded horseshoes.

I staggered to my pins. Nobody tabbed me. Everyone was hanging the focus on the tower entrance nearby, where those flatfeet had gone up the escalator after me. I spun on my heel and started to run.

My jalopy was parked on the street that ended at the landward front of the pier. I reached it, piled in, kicked the starter a savage wallop. Somebody spotted me as my cylinders came to life. "There he is-!"

I snarled: "You mean there he goes," and stoked my boiler with ethyl. Three minutes later I was careening through Venice under forced draft.

I ditched my bucket in Ocean Park because I knew there would be a radio bleat out for me in short order. I didn't want a lot of prowl cars on the sniff for me, looking for a vee-eight coupe and its contents. A public bus was my best bet; and as luck would have it, a big Pacific Electric red job was just getting ready to pull out. I boarded it, slipped the driver my fare, and sat down in a rear seat, bushed.

The ride back to town gave me time to get my mental cogwheels functioning. Busting loose from those Venice bluecoats had been a screwball move, maybe; but I craved freedom in copious quantities. It was the only way I could hope to haul myself out of this mess I was in; pin Maizie Murdock's murder where it belonged. Of course I was on the lam now; and by powdering I had made myself look guilty. Even so, I was better off than if I'd been languishing in a seashore Bastille. You can't do any detecting in a cell.

Moreover, had I meekly submitted to the bulls, they'd have closed the case and thrown away the key. With all that false testimony against me, I wouldn't have had the chance of a hailstone in the hot place.

As it was, I dropped off the bus in Hollywood around noon, cocked and primed for action. There were several angles I wanted to investigate, and first on the list was the deceased Murdock quail's background; her recent activities. Whenever there's a homicide, there's also a motive. Find that motive and you can commence narrowing down your field of suspects.

To start with, though, I needed a spare roscoe; mine had been confiscated on the amusement pier and I feel practically naked if my armpit rig is empty. Besides, my nerves were frazzled around the fringes and the only thing that would mend them in a hurry was a good stiff prescription of Scotch broth. There was an extra rod in my stash, plus a cellarette full of Vat 69. So I decided to go home-provided the coast was clear.

I took a taxi, had it ferry me twice around the block until I was satisfied no local coppers were lurking about the apartment entrance. Then I sneaked in through the basement garage and took the automatic elevator up to my floor; unlocked the door of my igloo and ankled over the threshold. Whereupon a familiar voice said: "Welcome home, wise guy."

It was my friend Dave Donaldson of the homicide squad, and he had me covered with his cannon.

I whirled, hung the stupefied glimpse on his beefy features.

He leered complacently. "I figured you'd show up here so I staked out and made myself comfortable."

"That's breaking and entering," I said.

"Not when I've got a John Doe warrant it isn't. This is an official visit, bud. Can you guess why?"

I said wearily: "Yeah. You're collaborating with those Venice numbskulls. I'm pinched."

He made admiring noises with his mouth. "You sure do catch on quick, don't you? Let's take a little journey down to headquarters. Maybe I'll even let you get in touch with some shyster before I send you back to the beach."

"Damn the beach," I said. "Also the sons who're trying to fasten a frame on my elbows."

"Ah. So it's a frame. It always is." He waggled his rodney reprovingly. "I wish killers would sing a different tune once in a while, just to break the monotony. I get tired of that one. It stinks."

"So it stinks." I dredged a gasper from a crumpled pack on the table, set fire to it. "So I'm not a killer. Have a jolt of skee while I tell you the score."

"I'll take the skee but I won't believe anything you warble. And don't try to slip a mickey in my glass or I'll bend this gat around your ears."

I put an injured expression on my mush as I poured him the snort and handed it to him. I downed a double dollop myself and said: "You know I wouldn't feed you a mickey. I wish I'd thought of it, though. It's a swell idea."

"About the kill," he prompted me. "Why'd you do it?"

"I didn't."

"Who did?"

"I don't know-yet."

"Whale feathers," he said. "I got a full report over the teletype. Fifty-'leven extras say you had the baseball in your fist just before the blonde bim got bopped. Roy Cromwell says it. So does Bernie Ballantyne. What more do you want?"

"Another drink," I said, and had it. "And a chance to prove they're cock-eyed liars."

"About you having the ball?"

I shook my head. "No. That part's true enough."

"Then what are they lying about?"

"Me throwing it at Maizie. I didn't."

"Well, who did?" he persisted.

"You already asked me. I told you I don't know-yet."

He looked bland. "You could guess, couldn't you?"

"Sure, but what good would it do me? Quit being clever. You know you're just needling me, trying to make me say something damaging. You're not as coy as you think you are." An inch of dew remained in the bottle. I killed it.

"A fine thing," Dave sounded aggrieved. "You didn't even offer to share it with me." His tone hardened. "If you're so innocent you must have somebody in mind as a candidate. Come on, name him."

"Okay, I'll name two. Cromwell and Ballantyne."

He chuckled sourly. "That's what I thought you'd say."

"Meaning what?"

"They accuse you, so you accuse them. Boy, are you corny!"

I got sore. "Look, I've good reasons for pointing the finger their way. Want to listen?"

"I suppose it won't cost me anything. Speak your piece."

"Well, Cromwell jobbed me into tossing those first few baseballs. And he stood directly behind me when the murder pill zipped past my ear to bash the blonde chick."

Dave rubbed his chin bristles. "All right. By a long stretch of the imagination we'll say he had opportunity, although everybody around him claims he didn't throw anything. Skipping lightly over that, what would be his motive? What did he have against Maizie Murdock to make him want to kill her?"

"I don't know-yet."

"Get a new phrase. That one's tiresome," he said. "Now let's consider your case against Ballantyne."

I shrugged. "The same setup. He was behind me when the death ball was heaved."

"Any motive?"

"Possibly. He's engaged to his star, Vala DuValle. He thinks she's being blackmailed. He hired me to look into it. He hinted he'd like to croak the blackmailer."

"Aha. And maybe Maizie Murdock-"

I nodded. "Could be. Suppose he found out Maizie was bleeding the DuValle cutie? Suppose he carried out his croakery hint? It adds up."

"But why did he then try to pin the job on you?"

I had the answer ready. "Jealousy. I was with Vala DuValle one night in a dice joint that got raided."

"What were you doing? Trying to beat his time?"

"Hell, no. And later he got over his peeve, or pretended to. But he may have been laying for me, waiting for a chance to sink the harpoon in me."

Dave stood up, yawned. "Finished, Sherlock?"

"I've told you all I know, yes."

"Then let's go to the gow. You're still under arrest. Frankly I don't believe a word you've told me."

I goggled at him. "You mean you intend to hand me to those brainless wonders in Venice? Me, your best friend?"

"Yeh." He lowered his voice confidentially. "I even pinched my own grandmother one time for robbing a blind man. All my family are heels, including me. Stick out your fins for the nippers and be quick about it."

I reached in my pocket for a coffin nail. At the same instant, my front door opened a crack and a roscoe stuttered: Ka-Pow! behind me. The blast was bad enough but the slug's nearness was worse. It scorched a blister on my left ear as it went by; and then Dave Donaldson clapped a hand to his noggin, lurched drunkenly and fell down. Gore commenced leaking from his furrowed scalp.

CHAPTER IV – The Night of the Raid

I let out a strangled oath, swung around, hurled my heft at the door. It was closed again by the time I reached it. And it wouldn't open when I tugged at the knob. Somebody had jammed it from outside.

An acrid stench of burned gunpowder hung in the air, stung my smeller. I whirled and went racing buckety-blip to the kitchenette, where my stash had a second exit into a short elbow corridor. This portal worked okay. I lunged out to the short hall; pelted for the main one. Nobody was in sight when I got there, though; nobody, that is, except some nosy neighbours poking their beaks out to see what the shooting was about.

"Hey!" I rasped. "Did any of you see-?"

It developed that nobody had tabbed anything. I sailed down the main staircase: no dice. I drew a blank with the automatic elevator, too. But there was still a rear stairway I hadn't covered; and there was no use trying to, now. The gunsel had long since had time to scram out of the building-and out of the entire neighbourhood if he had a fast enough jalopy.

Panting fire and brimstone, I returned to my front door and found out what had jammed it. Some sharp disciple had wedged a.32 Colt between the knob and the doorcase in such a way that when you tried to open up from inside, you merely made the wedge tighter.

It was no trick to dislodge the roscoe. It had the same burned cordite odour I'd noticed in my wigwam an instant ago, meaning this was the heater that had drilled Dave Donaldson. I gave vent to a frantic bleat as I realized it now had my fingerprints on it from plucking it away from the knob. And the short hairs prickled at the nape of my neck when I tumbled to another fact that was a lot worse.

The rod was my own: the one those harness bulls had forced me to drop on the amusement pier!

I moaned: "For the love of-!" and shoved my portal open so hard it almost came off its hinges. Once inside, I kicked it shut again to keep out the busybodies. Then I hunkered down alongside Donaldson's sprawled tonnage; forced myself to look at his colourless puss. He and I had been through plenty together, month after month for more than ten years without a break. Now he was defunct… and I'd probably be accused of creaming him.

He proved this by mumbling: "Hello. Headquarters. Put out the net for that rat Turner. I was about to handcuff him when he shoved his fist in his pocket and shot me. Hello. Operator. You cut me off. Say, doctor, have you got an aspirin on you? A pound of hamburger, please, and here's the ration stamp. Yeah. Turner shot me, Chief. Delirious? Me? Well, you'd be delirious too if your hospital bed was as hard as mine. Feels like I was sleeping on the floor-" He opened his groggy glimmers, took a swivel and bellowed: "By gosh, I am on the floor!"

Realising he was alive made me feel as good as a guy having an abscessed tooth pulled. The relief was terrific but the aftermath hurt like the devil. That slug from the doorway had merely creased his cranium, maced him silly; but now he was conscious again and thought I was the bozo who'd nicked him.

To make it lousier, he tried to flounder up on his haunches. I restrained him. "Easy, Dave. Easy," I said. Then I realised I was prodding him with the.32 in my duke.

He lamped it and sagged back. "Oh. Going to finish your job, hunh?" His shoulders twitched. "Okay. I'm ready."

I snarled: "Don't be a dope, you dope. I didn't plug you. It came from the doorway."

"Hurry up and pull your trigger," he ignored what I was saying. "And don't miss. Because in another minute I'm going to be strong enough to tangle with you. That's a warning."

"I tell you I-"

He came off the floor slowly, an inch at a time. Mayhem glittered in his glims and there was violence in his knotted mitts. "Gonna beat your brains out," he announced distinctly. He swung a roundhouse haymaker, missed and folded like a punctured balloon. He was snoring before he hit the rug.

I hurdled him, picked up my phone, dialled headquarters. The desk sergeant who came on the line didn't suspect anything when I said: "Lieutenant Donaldson speaking. Look. I've just collared Dan Turner. You can cancel the pickup order we had out for him; I'm bringing him in personally."

"Okay, lieutenant. I'll notify Venice, too."

"Right," I said. Then I hung up and got out of there. Fast.

For a little while I knew I'd be safe. Cancelling that pickup order had been a stroke of sheer genius on my part. Now the radio prowl cars would quit hunting me; I could move around without being forced to duck every time I piped a blue uniform and a set of brass buttons. This wouldn't last long, though. Pretty soon Dave Donaldson would wake up again, phone his minions what had really happened. Then the heat would be on.

I blipped downstairs, barged outdoors, whistled a Yellow over to the curb and piled in. "Hollywood Times, brother. Don't spare the horses. I'm in a yank."

Presently we came to the newspaper building and I hotfooted up to the file room. The attendant was a guy I knew. "Hi, Larry," I said.

A flabbergasted look came into his optics. "Hawkshaw! Do you know the cops are-?"

"Yeah, you're telling me," I said bitterly. "I'm hotter than the inside of a stove. Let's understand each other. If you figure to stool on me, I'm leaving. If you feel like helping me, I'll be grateful. Take your pick."

"Why, I'll help you, of course; if I can. Stooling is out of my line."

"Thanks. How's for slipping me your envelope of clippings on a certain Sunset Strip dice joint raid about a month ago? You remember the place I mean."

He said yes he remembered, and scuttled to a file; extracted a thick manila folder. "Here's what you want. Your own picture's in it, incidentally."

I knew that as well as he did. The press photogs had made a Roman holiday of the raid, having been tipped in advance that it was going to be pulled. They'd snapped a slew of pix which were smeared all over the following day's front pages. One shot showed Vala DuValle clinging to my arm and looking hysterical, with a caption under it: PARAVOX STAR WITH FAMOUS SHAMUS. This photo was the one that had subsequently given Bernie Ballantyne an attack of the jealous jitters.

I spread the clippings on a desk; began studying them. The silliest picture was of the phony Grand Duke Mike Voronoff, restaurant proprietor and general moocher, trying to sneak through an exit on his hands and knees. There was another of Roy Cromwell haughtily informing a county cop that he'd come stag to the joint-a lie he got away with for the simple reason that he had palmed the DuValle brunette off on me a moment before. And then there was a medium long shot of the whole place, showing almost everybody who'd been there when the law busted in.

This was the snap I particularly wanted to gander. I glued the gaze on it, hunting people I knew. One yellow-haired cookie caught my attention.

She was Maizie Murdock.

I took a closer hinge to make sure. There was no mistaking her bleached tresses and gamine pan. She was with a pasty-faced jerk I'd never seen before; a guy who didn't seem to amount to anything unless they gave medals for a Victory Garden of pimples on the chin. I puckered my kisser, whistled softly.

Larry, the newspaper file clerk, ankled over. "Something?" he said.

"Maybe," I told him. "I'd like a phone and some privacy if you can manage it."

He led me to a secluded desk. "Help yourself." He left me there.

I fished a number from my mental note-book; dialled it. The bozo I called was Pedro Criqui, a French Spaniard who'd been in more hot water than used tea-leaves. Most recent on the list of his misfortunes was the fact that he'd been the proprietor of that raided dice drop.

"Pedro?" I said.

"I'll see if he's-a een. Holda wire, oui?"

"Stew that stall. This is Dan Turner."

"Oh. That's-a deeference. How you are, you sonagun? You een troubles, hah? Ees een the papers, on radio, you bumpa mamselle. You beeg chomp, Sherlock. You wanna keel somebody, ees crazy to pull eet in poblic. Fooey!"

I said patiently: "Fooey on you too, bub. I didn't bump her. Listen. I need some information."

"Whatsa cookeeng? I don't got information. Whats you're wanna knoweeng, hah?"

"How often Roy Cromwell brought Vala DuValle to your joint."

"Lotsa times, two – three, maybe six. Alia time he's-a shoots the snake-eyes. He's can't make point weeth lead pencil. Theesa DuValle pigeon she's like hees company, aplenty, you betcha. Boy oh boy."

"Did Cromwell ever take her to one of your private dining rooms?' I said casually.

His tone got distant. "Now waiteeng a meenute, palsy-walsy. Theesa DuValle chicken, she's-a nice mamselle."

"About the private room," I said.

"Theesa Cromwell ees being a rat. Me, I don't know nothing about nothing. Whats you theenking I am, a squealer?"

I grinned. "Thanks. So he did take tier to a private dining room."

"You sonagun. I deedn't telling you thees."

"No. You just let it slip, is all."

He cursed me fervently in four languages. "Two minutes they go in private room. She's-a no like the idea, you unnastand me? Maybeso she's-a like theesa Cromwell's company, but not so moch as that. He's telling her they have «petit dejeuner a deux». Catch what I'm meaning? Dinner for two, cozy by theirselfs. She's go een, look around, she's-a saying nix brother, ees bad for reputation."

I said: "I get it. She didn't mind going out with him, playing the night spots; but when it came to a nest behind closed doors it was no dice. Right?"

"Ees damned right. Whatsa matter, you no unnastand English? Hah?"

"Okay," I soothed him. "So Vala was strictly on the up and up with Cromwell. What night did this private room episode happen?"

He said the night of the raid, and started cursing the cops that knocked him over. "Ees costing me all I ever win from guys like-"

"Remind me to send you a towel to cry in," I said, and hung up on his dolorous moans. Now I had something I could sink my bridgework into. The DuValle cupcake and Roy Cromwell had come downstairs from a private room the night of the raid. Their visit to the second floor had been brief, true enough, but they had come downstairs.

And anybody gandering them as they descended might have made gossip of it.

And Maizie Murdock had been in the joint that night.

And later Vala DuValle had apparently been blackmailed.

And Bernie Ballantyne had threatened to kill the blackmailer.

And Maizie Murdock got croaked.

And Bernie had been on the scene of the murder.

And he had tried to frame me for it.

I said softly: "Turner, you're a genius. You'll be a marvellous detective some day if you live long enough." Then I torched a gasper and left the newspaper building. I wasn't very happy, though. I was afraid I might not live as long as a guy should if he hopes to be a marvellous detective.

CHAPTER V – A Foul Ball

Another taxi wafted me across town to the cheap apartment wikiup where the late lamented Murdock quail had lived. It was along toward dusk when I rousted out the manager, a slatternly old hag with henna-red hair that had grey streaks showing through. If she'd paid more than fifty cents a pint for the gin on her breath, she'd been robbed.

"Something, dearie?" she asked me.

I gave her a swift squint at my badge, not long enough to let her know it was only a private op's biscuit. "Official business," I said. "Homicide headquarters."

From within the harridan's flat a snivelling voice full of adenoids whined: "What is it, maw?"

"So you're from headquarters," the dame stared at me. "Just another cop, junior," she called to the voice inside. "Shut your mouth or I'll kick it shut." Then, to me: "Junior's my son. Sometimes I wish I'd drowned him."

"Tell him we're tired of cops," the voice snivelled spitefully. "Tell him to dust, maw."

I said: "I'd like to ask you some questions, lady."

"Questions!" she grumbled. "Questions, questions, always it's questions." A burp boiled up from around her insteps. "Oops, sorry. Something I et, no doubt."

The adenoids got vocal again. "What's he want, maw?"

"Quiet, bum. He wants to know about Maizie, of course." She looked at me. "Don't you?"

"Yeah. Isn't this where Miss Murdock lived?"

"Hey, maw, tell him to blow. You ought to paste him, maw. It would learn him something."

She pitched her voice to a shrill, infuriated screech. "Sock cops, is it? You keep running off at the face and I'll take you apart with a club." Then, with no change of expression on her unlovely puss, she lowered her tone to normal. "Just like his old man. A creep."

"About Miss Murdock," I said, "How many times have I go to go over it?" she made an indignant mouth. "Ask those other dicks that's already been here. For goodness' sakes, ain't you flatfeet got nothing better to do but pester a body crazy?"

"Heave him out, maw," the adenoids said.

She screamed: "Will you button that lip of yours?"

"Look," I said reasonably. "Can I help it if headquarters assigns me to check up on those other detectives? I'm sorry to put you to so much trouble, but-"

The dame sighed. "Okay." She scratched herself. "I'll tell it again. Maizie Murdock lived here until yesterday."

"You mean she moved?"

"I mean I changed the lock on her door and dragged her trunk to the cellar and held it on account she was six weeks behind in her rent. Don't ask me where she spent last night. I don't know and I don't care."

My gullet felt tight all of a sudden. "What?"

"Hey, maw," the adenoids whined. "The paper just come. I got it off the back step. You wanna hear something?"

She ignored him. "Sure, dearie," she told me. "Maizie hadn't had no movie work in a long time. She was broke. She kept saying she had a job coming up with Paravox, a bit part on a one picture contract. She kept saying she'd have the rent money pretty soon now, when she got her first pay. I got tired waiting, though. I ain't running no charity hall, am I? So last night I locked her out."

I felt as if a mule had kicked me in the short ribs. Maizie Murdock had been broke for six weeks. Her Paravox job, the one that resulted in her decease, had been the first she'd had in a couple of months. This information knocked all my theories into a cocked hat.

«She couldn't have been the character who was blackmailing Vala DuValle!»

No matter how you figured it, the answer came up that way. If Maizie had been the shakedown artist, she would have had cash enough to pay her rent; save herself from being locked out of her apartment. Since she didn't have the dough, it stood to reason that she hadn't been putting the bite on the brunette DuValle cupcake.

Therefore there was no motive for Bernie Ballantyne to have bumped her!

Of course he might have mistakenly thought Maizie was doing the blackmailing. I couldn't quite see how he could jump at such a haywire conclusion, however, in view of the circumstances. All told, it began to look as if Bernie was in the clear and I would have to hunt around for a fresh suspect.

I considered the director, Roy Cromwell, who could fling a baseball hard enough to splinter woodwork-or a she-male skull. He'd been in a position to heave a lethal pellet at the Murdock filly; but for what motive?

"Listen," I said to the apartment house hag. "Did Maizie ever have a gentleman friend named Cromwell, a tall, handsome guy dressed in loud tweeds?"

"She didn't have no gentlemen friends, dearie."

"You mean they weren't gentlemen?"

"I mean she didn't play that way. Not here, anyhow. She never had no men calling on her. I run a decent house for respectable people and she kept her nose clean. Otherwise I wouldn't have let my junior take her out once in a while. Poor boy, he's all busted up about what happened to her. He liked her. She was the only girl ever looked twice at him."

I said: "But he didn't like her well enough to keep you from putting her out of her apartment when she couldn't pay her rent, hunh?"

"Junior don't interfere with how I run my business. He better not, the little bum. I'd take a broomstick to him."

I was up against a blank wall again. If Cromwell hadn't been on social terms with Maizie, he wouldn't have had any reason for cooling her off. This seemed to erase him from my list of possible suspects, along with Bernie Ballantyne.

From inside the manager's flat, adenoids bleated again. "It says in the paper, maw-"

"Shut up, junior. How do you know what it says in the paper? You can't read."

"I can too read. Listen, maw, it says that private dick got picked up in his own apartment right here in Hollywood; the one that killed Maizie. You know; Turner is his name. A bull by the name of Donaldson nabbed him, but this Turner guy shot him, the paper says, and made a getaway. His picture is in the paper-I mean Turner's picture. Wanna see it, maw?"

"No," the dame said.

Neither did I. The heat was on me again, I realised. Donaldson must have recovered from his swoon, phoned headquarters, and started the dragnet rolling. It was time for me to make myself scarce. I started to say goodbye to the frowsy Jane; but all of a sudden my luck ran out.

Junior came to the doorway with his newspaper. "Lookit, maw. Here's the guy's picture I was telling you." He cast an absent-minded hinge at me, twitched and did a double-take. "Maw! That's him! That's Turner talking to you, maw!"

I should have whirled and lammed while the lamming was good, but I couldn't. My gams seemed paralysed. I was hanging the stupefied focus on junior's pimply mush, while recognition slammed through me.

He was the pasty-faced jerk who had been Maizie Murdock's escort in that dice joint, the night of the raid!

The next couple of minutes were pretty blurry. I finally got my brogans unlimbered and made a wild dive for the exit. Maw and junior blammed after me, bellowing like a pair of halfwits. They almost caught up with me as I gained the front door; or at least junior did. This cost him three front teeth.

He went down, squalling. His old lady stopped to inspect the damage to his kisser and I high-tailed out of there with my back pockets dipping sand and my right duke aching where I'd hung a haymaker on the little jerk.

My taxi was still waiting at the curb where I'd left it. The meter registered $3.25, which was felonious, but I was in no condition to argue. I told the hacker to pull the pin and get going. He did.

He also cast a knowing leer at me over his shoulder and said: "I been listenin' to the radio."

"That's nice. Symphony or swing?"

"Newscast. They put out a swell description of you, pal."

"So it's that way," I said.

"Don't get jumpy, Mr. Turner," he grinned at me in the rear-view mirror. "I don't like cops, neither."

"Meaning you don't intend to blow the whistle?"

"Not me," he said virtuously. "That's for heels. Besides, I guess maybe you're the kind that would treat a guy right if the guy levelled with you."

"You're talking about dough, of course," I said.

He blipped past an amber light. "What else is there to talk about at a time like this?"

I said: "You're a man after my own heart. You'd probably be after my kidneys and liver, too, if they were valuable enough." I fished two tens out of my wallet, handed them up to him. "How much loyalty will that buy?"

"I've maimed people for less. You wanna go somewhere in particular or just ride around?"

"I want to go somewhere in particular but I don't know exactly where. First let's find a phone."

He pulled in before a cheap groggery, scouted the territory, and reported no coppers in sight. "There's a booth at the end of the bar, chum. I'll wait."

I barged into the gin-mill, located the telephone, dropped a jitney and dialled Pedro Criqui again. "Pedro?"

"I'll see if he's-a een. Holda wire, oui?"

"Let's not repeat that routine. This is Turner."

«"Sucre nom de Dieu,» whatsa your always calleeng me op, hah? Ees bad enough you bumpa «mamselle» in Venice, but when you shooteeng policemans ees too moch. Goodbye, please."

"Now wait a minute," I said. "I didn't shoot Lieutenant Donaldson any more than I creamed Maizie Murdock. I'm in a jam and I need help."

"I'm sayeeng!"

"Listen. The night of the raid, this Murdock doll was there in your drop. Maybe you remember her."

"Maybe I'm do, maybe I'm don't. Who ees caring?"

"She had a kid with her; a yuck with pimples on a face only his mother could love, which she doesn't. Know the jerk I mean? Pasty complexion, skinny, talks with adenoids?"

"Ees sound like Joe Wilson."

This checked with the monicker on the apartment house hag's mailbox: Wilson. "That's the one," I said. "He's-a no good. A foul ball."

"A regular patron of yours?"

Pedro laughed sourly. "Whatsa you think, hah? I got no time for cheap nickels and dimes guys. Thees Wilson keed, I don't letting him in my place unless he's-a got two tens to rub together. He come once, twice, ees all. He's-a breeng blonde tomato weeth heem, he's-a shoot craps, he losing his shirt and go home."

"Never up in the bucks, eh?"

"Not while my place ees open. Since I am being raided I don't knowing how much dough he's-a got. Hell weeth heem."

"Have you heard if he's been going against any of the floating crap games around town since you got closed?"

"I hearing nothing. You so smart, you finding out for yourself, hah? «Au-revoir, adios» and do me a favour, hang op." He cut me off like a bill collector.

Dark had settled when I went back out to my cabby. I handed him another ten-spot. "How's for finding me a couple of games?" I said.

"Dames?" he gave me an admiring look. "You can think of romance in a spot like yours?"

"Not dames. Games. Floating ones. Dice."

"Oh, that. Yeah, sure." He ferried me to a shoddy hotel off Vine Street and talked to a bellhop. Then he told me: "Room 212. Go right up. Want I should join you and hold your winnings?"

"No, thanks." I went upstairs and had a brief conference in Room 212 with a furtive guy. Five minutes later I was down in my cab again. The hacker remarked that I must have thrown an awful jolt of snake-eyes to get through so quick. I said: "I certainly did. Find me another game."

He found me one and I had another conference. Presently I returned to the taxi. "Any luck?" the cabby asked me.

"Not the kind I hoped for," I said. "I've been checking on a dice player with adenoids."

"How can anybody play dice with his adenoids?" the hacker sounded indignant.

I said: "That's the point. He hasn't been." Which was true, according to what I had just learned. Joe Wilson, an inveterate crap shooter, had been hanging around the games for the past few weeks without rattling the bones at all. He was suffering the financial shorts.

This kicked another theory in the teeth. I'd thought perhaps the Wilson jerk was blackmailing Vala DuValle, on the basis of having tabbed her with Roy Cromwell coming downstairs from a private room that night in Pedro Criqui's drop. In turn, Bernie Ballantyne might have erroneously figured Maizie Murdock as the extortionist and made the grave mistake of cooling her.

But the pasty-faced Wilson punk was broke. Therefore he wasn't reaping any shakedown lettuce. He was as clean as Maizie had been-and I was up a stump again.

Riding along in the taxi's tonneau, I flared a match; lit up a gasper. Bye and bye my cabby said: "You done yourself a dirty trick that time, pal."

"How come I did?"

"A cop car went by just as you had that match up to your map. I think you been spotted." He looked in his mirror. "I know damn' well you been spotted. They're turnin' around with the red light on. Here they come."

I sneaked a swivel through the rear glass. He was right. You could pipe that crimson spotlight stabbing the dimout, and a siren started to growl.

They had me on the hook at last.

CHAPTER VI – The Gambler

My hacker romped on his throttle. "Wanna race?"

"Will it do any good?" I said.

"Hang onto your upper plate and we'll see," he advised me. And then he started doing some of the fanciest driving this side of the Indianapolis Speedway. We took the next corner on squealing skins, whammed north, careened to the left at the following intersection, and went rocketing westward like a comet with turpentine on its tail. The speedometer needle crept around to the notch above sixty, hung there a while, and began climbing. Night wind screeched around our flapping fenders and the rear treads commenced to smoke.

The prowl car stayed with us.

"What time is it?" the cabby asked me.

I braced myself, tried to hang the focus on my strap watch. "Not quite nine o'clock. Does it matter?"

"Yah," he said, narrowly missing a pedestrian on a crosswalk. The pedestrian emitted an anguished wail, jumped like a kangaroo, and disappeared down an open manhole. "Yah. There's a street the water wagon always flushes around this time o'night. For another ten bucks I could maybe have a idea."

"The ten's yours," I said. "I don't think you'll ever live to spend it, though."

He offered me odds of two to one, sent the cab catapulting around another corner and gripped his wheel hard. Dead ahead I lamped a block where the asphalt was black and shiny from a recent wetting. We barrelled onto this slippery stretch and made a sudden left turn into a narrow alley. Don't ask me how we pulled a bull's-eye; for the life of me I don't know. I bounced on the back seat like a pea in a dry pod; felt the cab's rear end slewing slaunchwise. Hitting the mouth of that alley was like a palsied man threading a darning needle with a hunk of two-inch rope; it just couldn't be done.

We did it.

The prowl chariot blammed into the wet block and tried to make the same maneuver. Goggling backward, I saw it skid out of control and spin like a pinwheel. It made three complete revolutions, while the cops inside it screamed their tonsils to tatters. Then there was a thundering crash, and a geyser of water fountained upward from a busted fireplug.

My cabby slackened speed as we emerged from the far end of the alley. "Them bulls probably needed a bath, anyhow," he remarked. "Now where you wanna go, bud?"

"To a hospital," I said weakly. "For a nervous breakdown."

He made clucking noises. "Doctors won't do no good for what ails you, Hawkshaw. What you need is a snifter." He passed me a depleted pint. It was rotgut rye, but I drained it and it tasted like nectar. Presently my grey matter started functioning again. I was almost back to normal.

I started counting on my fingers adding up what I knew concerning the things that had happened since Maizie Murdock's murder. Both Roy Cromwell and the little Ballantyne blister had attempted to frame me; and yet, as the score stood now, neither of them looked guilty of the actual kill.

Okay. Could it have been some unknown character in the mob of extras and technical crew? Some guy who'd had a personal beef against Maizie and saw a chance to knock her off? If so, I was sunk. Hunted by the law, how could I hope to ferret information regarding the hundred and fifty or more guys and wrens who had been on that amusement pier?

And besides, the cops weren't the only ones gunning for me. There was that anonymous citizen who had fired a shot through the doorway of my stash, missing me and nicking Dave Donaldson; Until now, I'd almost forgotten this incident in the excitement of ensuing events. In fact, I'd paid very little attention to the matter from the outset-largely because of the spot it put me in.

True, the shot had given me a chance to make a getaway from Dave. But it had also made him think I was the trigger guy; and this had deepened my jackpot to such an extent that I hadn't attempted to rationalise it. In fact, for a while I'd thought maybe the bullet had actually been meant for Dave, fired by a misguided friend trying to do me a favour.

Now, though, I realised it could be viewed from a different angle. Suppose I had been the intended target of that slug? Suppose the gunsel's aim had been bad, so that he missed me and hit Donaldson instead?

This new line of reasoning led me to something else». Suppose the baseball that conked Maizie Murdoch had likewise been meant for me?» It certainly had come close enough to my noggin. Maizie could have been just an innocent bystander, bashed by accident; the same as Dave Donaldson, later, was also accidentally nicked. In his case it was a.32 pill; in Maizie's, a baseball. That was the only difference. Everything else meshed into an identical pattern.

And the.32 pill had come from my own roscoe, the one I had dropped on the Venice amusement pier.

So now I was back on the same old merry-go-round. Cromwell could have picked up my gat. Or Bernie Ballantyne. Either of them could have pitched the lethal baseball at the Murdock cupcake, too, hitting her instead of me. Which one of them was the guy that thirsted to render me into a corpse?

Cromwell didn't seem logical; he had no reason to hate my clockworks as far as I knew. In fact, he was in my debt for the favour I'd done him, the night I took Vala DuValle off his hands in that night club raid.

The DuValle chick didn't fit the picture, either. I'd never done anything to earn her enmity; and besides, she was too fragile and dainty to heave a ball hard enough to burst a skull. She didn't have the muscles.

But Bernie Ballantyne-

"What the-!" I said harshly.

The hacker looked back at me. "You feeling bad, friend?"

"Plenty bad. I just thought of a guy who believed I was making a play for his sweetie. He pretended to get over it, later; but maybe he still packed a secret grudge."

"You dicks must have a lot of fun doping things out."

"This one isn't funny," I rasped. "The guy tried to bean me with a baseball. He missed, and it croaked a she-male. Whereupon he framed me for the kill."

"You're sure of that?"

I said: "Reasonably sure. I know a way to check it."

"How?"

I gave him Vala DuValle's address this side of Beverly. "If I can make this bozo's sweetie talk, I may be able to cinch the thing. She can tell me if he was still sore at me."

"Suppose she don't wanna talk, though? No Jane likes to put her boy friend in the grease."

"She'll talk," I blew on my mitts. "She'll talk or I'll bat the bicuspids out of her."

It wasn't late enough at night for a flunky to give me such a frigid gander. I had thumbed the DuValle quail's doorbell and waited easily three minutes before I thumbed it again. Now this liveried butler opened up and squinted at me as if I'd been something you'd find under a rock.

"Miss DuValle?" he said to my polite query. "Sorry, my good man."

"You're sorry for what?"

"Really, it's nine-thirty-"

I said: "Yeah, Pacific War Time. I asked for Miss DuValle."

"She has retired."

"Then trot her out of retirement. I want her."

He drew himself up, haughtily. "See here."

"When you say that to me, say see here, sir." I grabbed him by his boiled dickey. "How long has it been since you got poked on the trumpet?"

"Why… er… never." Then he added: "Sir."

I said: "You've missed an experience," and educated him with my knuckles. He fell down, moaning that his nose was broken. Oddly enough, he was right.

Leaping lightly over his reclining form, I ankled toward an ornate marble staircase and chased myself up to the second floor at a brisk trot. The crash of the butler's fall and his piteous moans had preceded me, however, serving as a sort of storm warning. When I reached Vala DuValle's room, she was already at the door.

"Remember me, Toots?" I said.

"Mr. T»-»Turner…!"

"The same, and pardon my warty exterior for barging in this way. It's impolite but necessary."

"You beast!" she said.

I tried to look hurt. "That's no way to talk. In the first place, it's inhospitable, and in the second place, they don't write that sort of dialogue any more. Too mid-Victorian."

"Get out," she put her teeth together and talked through them. "Get out before I call the police."

"I'll call them myself when the time comes," I said. "Right now I crave information."

"Not from me. I don't associate with killers."

I debated whether to deal her a smack on the puss or try a little strategy first. I tossed a mental coin and strategy won. "I'm not a killer, hon," I made my voice humble.

She peeled back her pomegranate lips. "Liar."

"I'm levelling, honest I am. Give me a chance and I'll prove it. I'm trying to save my neck."

"Why should I care about your neck?"

"Maybe you shouldn't, but it's the only one I've got, and it fits all my collars." I unlimbered my nicest smile, meanwhile fishing for an angle. As my hacker had remarked, no Jane likes to put her boy friend in the grease; therefore I might not get very far if I came right out and asked this brunette doll about Bernie Ballantyne still being sore at me. If I told her I suspected Bernie himself of being the guilty guy, she would congeal like frozen parsnips.

The thing to do was to sneak up on her, do some verbal sparring until she dropped her guard. Then maybe I'd find out if Bernie hated me so much he would pitch a baseball at me and bean somebody else by mistake. I might learn if he was the one who had picked up my roscoe on the amusement pier, later trying to plug me with it but nicking Donaldson instead.

But what was the best approach? All of a sudden a hunch nipped me. "Look, babe. You know that trouble you've been having?"

"Wh»-»what trouble?"

"The thing Ballantyne asked you about and made you weep," I said. "The same thing he hired me to investigate. Don't hold out on me. I'm hep to the setup."

"You're t»-»talking riddles."

"Yeah. It's a riddle when a cute little frail like you gets worried and draws a lot of dough out of her bank account for no logical reason. It's a shakedown riddle."

She sucked in a ragged breath; turned four shades of pale; backed toward her dressing table. "You unspeakable rat!" A cut glass perfume bottle was on the dresser. She picked it up, hurled it at me.

She tossed it with all her heft, which was nothing to boast about. It wabbled through the air almost lazily. I didn't even bother to duck; I just fielded it instead, caught it with a casual left duke. "This stuff is expensive," I reproached her. "It shouldn't be wasted on private snoops." I put it back where she got it.

Her angelic pan contorted darkly. Then she flurried into me, kicking and scratching and panting.

I said: "So you want to fight," and pinioned her. Every time she broke loose I grabbed her arms again. Presently she subsided, whimpering. I let her go; apologised for the bruises and contusions on her elbows and upper arms. "I guess I just don't know my own strength," I said, but I was thinking of something else-and still planning my battle strategy.

"Get out," she whispered.

"Not yet, kitten. I've got to know about that blackmailing."

"As if you didn't!"

I cocked an eyebrow. "Sure, I know you're being bled. Bernie knows it, too."

"You… t»-»told him?"

"He told me," I said. "He hired me to look into it."

Her short laugh had an uneven quality, like cloth being ripped. "What irony!"

"You mean him hiring me when he was jealous of me?"

"You know what I mean."

I said: "Maybe I'm extra stupid tonight. Skip it. About the shakedown geetus you've been paying. What was it based on?"

"Keep it up," she grunted. "Keep right on playing dumb."

"Was it somebody that piped you coming down from upstairs in Pedro Criqui's joint with Roy Cromwell?"

She gave me a sullen, silent stare.

I said: "Did this party threaten to squeal to Bernie Ballantyne, which would have scuttled your engagement? Was that why you paid hush money?"

Her map was a defiant mask. She didn't answer me.

"Look," I said. "I've had a chinfest with Pedro Criqui. He's told me the whole story."

"What story?"

"About how you refused to stay in that room with a wolf like Cromwell. You know, hon, in many respects you're a naive dope."

She looked baffled. "I don't understand."

"It's very simple," I said. "Somebody put the nibble on you by threatening to tell Bernie you were seen coming from a tryst with your director. But why did you pay this shakedown when you were innocent?"

She fell into the trap; admitted she was being bled. "I had to pay. I was innocent, yes; but who'd believe me?"

"Pedro Criqui would have been happy to clear you. You could have got him to explain how you didn't stay upstairs more than a couple of minutes."

Puzzlement came into her widened glimmers. "That's queer advice, coming from you."

"Not at all. I was hired to help you, remember? And I'm trying to do my job-meanwhile helping myself at the same time. I want to get you out of your blackmail jam and myself out of the homicide jackpot."

"But-but I th-thought you-"

"Never mind what you thought," I said gently. "The point is, we want to finger the blackmailer. Right?"

"Y»-»yes."

"I think I know him," I said. Which was a lie.

She stiffened. "Wh»-»who?"

"I've done a lot of checking,." I told her. "I've eliminated all the possible shakedown suspects except one."

"Wh»-»who?" she repeated tautly.

I said: "Roy Cromwell himself."

"No! That's not-why, that's insane!"

"On the contrary, it makes sense."

She stared at me. "Roy wouldn't do a thing like that. He-he makes as much money as I do. He's the highest paid director on the Paravox lot. Why should he-?"

"Look," I said. "He makes big geetus but he gambles it away. Pedro Criqui told me how rotten Cromwell's dice luck has been. I figure the guy lost so much lettuce he got desperate. He decided to use you for a soft touch. He squired you around, jockeyed you into a sour spot and then shoved the needle in you."

This was just a lot of sheep-dip as far as I was concerned. I didn't mean a word of it, actually; but it sounded plausible, and I was trying to gain the Jane's confidence.

She fell for it, too. "The filthy, rotten heel!"

"Yeah. And to make it worse, he shoved you off on me when the joint was raided. That got Bernie Ballantyne sore at me. I guess he still is, hunh?"

"Well, a»-»a little," she admitted. "Although he got over it, pretty much."

I said: "The hell he did. He even tried to frame me for the Murdock filly's murder."

"Oh-h-h, no! I mean he really thinks you k»-»killed her. He's sincere about it."

"Maybe you're right," I shrugged. "It doesn't matter much." I turned toward the door. "I'll beat the rap, one way or another. In fact, I'm going out to do that very thing right away. Be seeing you, Babe."

"Wait," she said. She came close to me, stood on tiptoe and put her hands on my shoulders. She kissed me. It was a sisterly kiss. "That's for setting me straight on a lot of things," she whispered shyly.

I ankled down to my taxi with my yap still tingling from the warm contact of her lips.

CHAPTER VII – The Force of Gravity

At the nearest public phone I made three calls. First I dialled Roy Cromwell's stash, asked a sleepy servant if the director was home. The answer was yes, so I hung up. I didn't want to gab with the guy; I just craved to make sure he was on deck for the blowoff.

Next I rang Bernie Ballantyne, got him on the line. "Bernie? Dan Turner talking."

"You murderous louse! How dare you call me?"

"Keep your shirt on, small fry," I said. "I thought maybe you'd like to know I've solved a mystery for you."

"What mystery?"

"The one you paid me to ferret out. I know who's been blackmailing Vala DuValle."

"You-wh – what?"

I said: "Yeah. Roy Cromwell. He needed a wad of scratch for his gambling debts, so he lured her into a compromising situation. She was strictly innocent, understand; but it looked bad on the surface. Then he put the bite on her."

Again I was delivering a load of hogwash, maliciously, with a deliberate purpose. The quarrelsome little Paravox mogul stewed and sizzled audibly at the other end of the wire. "Do you actually mean to tell me-?"

"I've got the goods on him," I lied. "And I know something else, too. I know who picked up my gat on the Venice pier. Chew on that a while." I rang off.

Then, finally, I dialled police headquarters and asked for homicide.

"Is Lieutenant Donaldson there or did he go home to sulk over his skinned scalp?"

"He's here with a bandage that makes him look like a Hindu. Whoever you are, I wouldn't advise you to talk to him unless it's pretty important," the desk sergeant said. "He's meaner than six sick skunks."

"Put him on. This is plenty important." I waited. "Hi, Dave. Guess who."

He tabbed my voice; blew his top. "You! Well, I'm a son-"

"Hold it. I've cracked that Venice kill and I need you. But quick. There's a pinch to be pulled."

"Yeh. With you as the party of the first part." He softened his tone and I heard him mumbling to somebody.

I said: "Never mind trying to trace this call. It's a public phone and I could be long gone before you sent a squad car after me-if I wanted to play that way. I don't, though."

"Says you."

"All right, be tough. You'll sing a different tune when you meet me at Roy Cromwell's igloo and I hand you Maizie Murdock's murderer."

Dave repressed a strangled bellow. "Say that again!"

"I want you to meet me pronto at Roy Cromwell's wikiup. The killer will be there."

"Meaning yourself, huh?"

"No," I said patiently. "Meaning the character who pitched a baseball at my conk in an attempt to knock me off, but missed me and chilled the Murdock gazelle instead. The same one who fired a slug at me in my apartment dump, missed me again and nicked a notch in your noggin."

"When did you dream that up?"

"A while ago. Good-bye now. I'm on my way to Cromwell's. Be seeing you there." I disconnected and barged back to my cab.

The hacker said: "You look happy. What's brewin'?"

"An explosion," I told him. "Know how you make gunpowder?"

"No. I buy mine ready-made."

I said: "You pour in all the ingredients and stir them. If you stir long enough-"

"Oh-oh. You been stirrin' the ingredients, hunh?"

I nodded; gave him the Cromwell bozo's address. "Let's ramble. The kettle is starting to boil."

Cromwell's rambling Spanish hacienda was pasted against the side of a hill north of Hollywood Boulevard, just off one of the canyon drives.

We parked a block away and I hoofed the rest of the distance; reached the director's driveway just as a sedan slid to a halt at the curb. Dave Donaldson erupted from the sedan with a bandage around his cranium and two plainclothes minions flanking him.

The plainclothes minions had their roscoes out. Dave spotted me in the shadows. "There he is! Grab him! I didn't think he'd have nerve enough to show up. Freeze, Hawkshaw. This time we take no chances with you."

"You don't have to," I said softly, and allowed the flatties to fan me for my rod. When they took it, I added: "Be careful how you handle that heater, chums. It's the one that creased your superior officer."

Dave snatched it. "So this is what you shot me with."

"No."

"Well, then, whose gat is it?"

"Mine."

"Aha. So you confess."

I said: "It's the one those Venice coppers made me drop down on the amusement pier when they tried to collar me. Later the actual killer glommed it, brought it back to Hollywood and blasted from my doorway."

"Still sticking to that malarkey, eh?"

"Sure, because it's the truth. Are you going to stand jawing at me all night or can we go indoors for the payoff?"

Dave lifted a lip. "This is the payoff. Handcuff him, men."

They nippered me, and this time I stood still for it. It was the third time I'd been taken in custody that day and I was much too weary to argue. I merely said: "Don't blame me when the case blows up in your kisser. The next kill will be your fault. Think it over."

"What next kill?" Donaldson demanded suspiciously.

"Right here in Cromwell's shanty. I sicced Bernie Ballantyne onto him a while ago, by phone. Judging by the lights in the igloo and that chariot parked across the street, Cromwell's got a visitor this instant."

Dave cleared his throat and spat. "Listen, wisenheimer. If you're pulling a swift one-"

"Use your own judgment," I said indifferently. "I've done my part. It's your picnic now."

He hesitated; seemed to realise I was levelling. "Come along with me," he growled. "But the bracelets stay on you." He turned to his underlings. "You guys wait here."

"But, lieutenant-"

He snarled: "Quiet," and tugged me toward the director's portal. "Shall I ring?" he whispered to me.

"No. Try the knob."

He did. "It's locked."

"I've got master keys in my pocket. Fish them out and get to work with them. I can't with these manacles."

He frisked me for the keys, found one that operated the doorlatch. "Now what?"

"Inside, fast. And no noise." I took the lead, moving silently. We came to an inside door that stood slightly ajar. Dim light glowed around it and low voices sounded in the room.

Roy Cromwell was panting: "All right. I admit I was the blackmailer. I needed cash. Desperately. I-"

You could have maced me senseless with an ostrich feather as I heard the guy's confession. My phoney accusations against him had turned out to be straight goods; he really was the extortionist! I'd fired a blind shot in the dark and scored the screwiest bull's-eye of my crazy career.

Another voice husked hysterically: "You scum. You pulled an unspeakable trick like that and caused me to commit murder. But you're going to pay."

"No-please-don't point that g – gun at me-"

This was my cue for action. I slugged the door wide open so hard it nearly came loose from its moorings; went leaping across the threshold with Dave Donaldson roaring in my wake. I yodeled: «"Drop it, Vala Du-Valle."«

The diminutive brunette cupcake had been aiming a tiny heater at Roy Cromwell, who cowered in a far corner like a weasel in a trap. But now she swung around, hung the glassy focus on me, tabbed Donaldson's cannon making faces at her.

"Oh-h-h…" she whimpered faintly, and let her roscoe clatter on the floor. "You… you…"

"Yeah," I said regretfully, remembering the kiss she'd slipped me not long ago. "Me, hon. Just in time to keep you from another croaking; and to hear you confess the Maizie Murdock bump. I'm sorry, baby. I mean that."

Her map was like a mask made of putty. "How… did you… how did you… suspect…?"

"Your arms," I said. "They gave you away."

Donaldson yipped: "Hey, wait a minute. What's this about her arms? They look okay to me. Only they aren't hefty enough to uncork a baseball pitch that could brain a Jane."

"I know it," I said.

"Then how-"

I stared moodily at Vala. "You thought I was the blackmailer, didn't you, kitten?"

"Y-yes."

"I'd made a crack in Bernie Ballantyne's ante-room; something about carrying tales to him if it paid me enough dividends. Since you were already being shaken down, that made you think I was the mug who was putting the bite on you."

"Y-yes," her voice was dull, lifeless.

I said: "You decided to croak me. You tried to with that baseball, but cooled Maizie Murdock by mistake. When everybody called me guilty you let it ride, thereby keeping your own skirts clean while still putting me in a coffin. Correct?"

"Y-yes." She didn't seem to know any other word.

"Then I escaped," I said. "You picked up my automatic; tried to blast me with it, later, at my apartment drop. Again your aim was lousy. You nicked Lieutenant Donaldson."

"Y-yes," she sounded like a victrola with a busted record.

I said: "Well, that's about all of it. Except your arms."

"Wh-what about them?"

"I called on you, hoping to get the deadwood on Bernie Ballantyne. At that time I had him tabbed as the guilty guy. But suddenly I noticed the bruises and scrapes on your elbows. I tumbled to the truth."

"How?" she whispered.

"I've got the same brand of bruises myself," I told her. "And I remembered where I'd collected them. The rest was easy. I spoke of Roy Cromwell being the blackmailer, figuring you would try to cream him the same as you'd tried to bump me. Which you did; and we caught you."

She blinked at me foggily. "The bruises…?"

"From the giant slide," I said. "Whamming down the spiral tunnel was where you got your arms hurt. Just before the murder, you rode the escalator to the observation tower on top of that amusement pier contraption.

"The view platform looked directly down on the baseball concession. You threw a ball at me from up there and gravity gave it murder-speed."

"Y-yes," she was back at that again.

I said: "As soon as you pitched the pill, you slid down through the spiral dragon. This landed you on the pier in plenty of time to establish an apparent alibi. You said you had just come out of your dressing room. Nobody doubted you."

From behind me, a new voice spoke: high, piping, reedy. It belonged to Bernie Ballantyne, who'd arrived to hear the payoff. Now he took Vala in his arms.

"I'll hire the best lawyers in the world to defend you, darling," he said. Then he glared at Cromwell. "You're fired, you chiseling rat. If you ever work in Hollywood again, it'll be over my dead body."

He was a good prophet. The DuValle cutie got off with a life sentence and Roy Cromwell got blackballed out of the galloping snapshots.

And Dave Donaldson actually paid dough out of his own pocket to have my jalopy brought back to me from where I'd ditched it in Ocean Park.