The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!

Originally published in Dime Detective Magazine, April 1953.

Chapter One

Hal Decker sat on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The bed was really just a shelf, hinged to the stone wall. High above it, sunlight lanced through a narrow opening and fell across the floor in four parallel segments, divided by the shadows of bars.

When the heavy grill clanged shut behind me, Hal lifted his head from his hands, his dull eyes mirroring for a moment a trace of a smile that had the nervous character and brevity of a tic.

“Sol,” he said. “Solomon Burr. Sorry to have to get you into this mess, boy.”

I sat down on the bed beside him. It was no kind of bed to induce sleep in a guy who probably wasn’t sleeping well at best.

“Sorry, hell,” I said. “In my office, a client’s a client, and it’s a long way between.”

The tic-smile flickered again. “Hard times? In that case, how are you going to like working for free?”

I shrugged. “It’s practice, anyhow.”

“Sure. Thanks, Sol. Funny, isn’t it. How things turn out, I mean. Few years ago, we were cracking law books and drinking short beers together — just friends. Now everything’s changed. Now we’re lawyer and client, all mixed up in a big, beautiful murder case.”

“We’re still friends, Hal. You know that.”

“Yeah, I guess I counted on your feeling that way, Sol. Not that you can do much. A guy charged with murder has to have a lawyer, that’s all. It’s strictly a dry run.”

“You haven’t been convicted yet.”

His laugh was short and ugly. “No, not yet. But I’ve been framed for a conviction, and it’ll come in time. I’ve been framed by an expert, Sol. All that’s left to do is to hang me on the wall.”

I found a pack of cigarettes and shook one out for him. “Maybe you’d better brief me,” I said.

He drew smoke deeply into his lungs, letting it ride out on a long, quivering sigh. The smoke rose heavily in the still air, drifting and thinning in the shaft of sunlight.

“Funny,” he said again. “Funny how the little things never have any significance, until you’re about to lose them — like a cigarette.” He pulled himself up short, repeating his humorless laugh. “This case won’t do you any good, Sol. This one you’ve already lost.”

“That’s what you said before. Just for exercise, suppose you let me go through the motions of being a lawyer, anyhow.”

He stood up, moving into the slanting projection of the sun and lifting his head to look up along its angle to the distant patch of sky beyond. I was sorry to see him like that, looking up through bars into the rationed light of day. We’d been good cronies once, we’d had good times over those beers. Even now, we hadn’t seen much of each other since, memories of the past stirred and came alive again.

Hal was primarily muscular; he’d never really had the cut of a lawyer. After we’d gotten out of law school, while I was hanging out a shingle, he’d gone into enforcement. The metropolitan police department was crying for law students at the time; the idea being that the best way to eliminate inefficiency and corruption was to get top grade personnel. It was one of those movements that the old timers get prodded into now and then by a temporarily-aroused public.

After a while, when the public goes back to business as usual, the reform dies quietly, ignored by the veterans in office. The lure was last promotion in a field that has an appeal for a certain type. Hal was the type, and he’d gone in. But he hadn’t stayed long. In one way or another, he fouled up and he’d landed outside fast, education and efficiency be damned.

Maybe, now, he read my thoughts. Moving out of the sunlight, and returning to the shadows, he said, “You ever hear why I was bounced off the force?”

“No.”

“I thought not. It was hushed up at the time, but it makes a good story. Career of an educated copper — Dick Tracy with a degree.” His voice sank to a low level of bitterness. “One night we were cruising out East Market, Old Finnegan and I. We were working double-harness. He was breaking me in, getting me started on that nice career everyone was talking about. We got a call to stop at a place over on Forest, a few blocks away. Seems a gang of kids were raising hell in an apartment over there. Well, they were raising hell, all right.

“We walked right into the middle of a flowering tea party — reefer smoke as thick as fog. One of the young guys cut up rough, and I had to put him to sleep. When we booked them, it turned out that this kid was the mayor’s nephew, the nephew of handsome Danny Devore himself. That’s it — story of a career boy — the end.”

“You sure that’s all? I hear you made a threat. To be precise, I hear you promised to kill Danny and eat him for breakfast.”

His shoulders sagged, and his head fell a little forward. He pressed the heel of his right hand against his forehead. “I got a little drunk. A guy says crazy things when he’s drunk.”

I sat watching him, thinking of the mayor he had threatened to kill. A threat to kill doesn’t usually mean much before the fact. After the fact, it takes on significance. And this was after the fact, because the mayor was dead. Charming Danny Devore, the bachelor, glamour boy, the smooth idol of metropolitan politics. Hard as it was to realize, he was dead from the slugs of a .38.

“How about the gun?” I said. “Your gun was found in the study by the body, and it had your prints on it.”

“Does a man commit murder and leave the gun behind?”

“Who knows? Murderers do idiotic things sometimes. Besides, one question doesn’t answer another. How did the gun get there?”

“I’ve already said — I’ve said a thousand times — it was stolen from my room. It had to be, I hadn’t even looked at it for weeks.”

“You never even missed it?”

“No.”

“Okay, let it go. How about the witness? This guy Richert happened to be passing Danny’s place about the time of the murder. He saw you come out the front door and go down the drive. To make it practically perfect, he just happens to be one of the district attorney’s special investigators.

Hal shook his head, and began to pound his clenched fist into his palm. His voice, paced to the pounding said, “He didn’t see me, Sol. He couldn’t have seen me, because I wasn’t there.”

“You think he’s lying?”

“Not necessarily. Look. He saw this guy from a distance, and in bad light. Maybe he really thinks it was me, but you know how those things are. If there’s other evidence, like the gun, it’s easy to go along with it. It would be easy for Richert to convince himself that I was the guy.”

“True enough. Now, tell me where you were that night, if you weren’t out there shooting Danny Devore.”

His clenched fist relaxed, the fingers falling open. “I was with a girl,” he said.

“At the time of the murder?”

“I was with her all night.”

“Then why the hell haven’t you said so? What’s this girl’s name?”

He shook his head, tiredly. “I can’t tell you, Sol.”

“Why the hell not? Listen, you’re on a short road to the hot seat, and you haven’t got time for chivalry.”

He just shook his head again, turned away from me and looked blankly into a corner of the cell.

“You got an idea of protecting her honor? You actually got a corny idea like that? Listen to me, Hal. So you were with the gal. Who cares? These days they’re doing it in headlines all over the world. You get everything but photographs.”

He laughed his short, ugly laugh. “You’re not thinking well for a lawyer. Like I said, I’m in a frame. It was built by an expert. I’m in it because someone wants me in it, and he wants me to stay there. What do you think would happen if he learned there was a witness who could get me out?”

“She’d get protection,” I said.

“Protection? From that outfit out there?”

“You’re making it tough for me, Hal.”

He lifted his shoulders, still staring at the corner. “I’m sorry, Sol. I told you right at the start that it’s a dry run.”

I went over to the grill and rattled the bars. Behind me, Hal continued to look into the corner. Maybe, in his mind, it was a symbol of the tight one he was in. “Thanks for coming, anyhow, Sol.”

“Save it,” I said. “And don’t go contacting any other lawyer. It’s the first real case I’ve had in a century, and I’m damned if I’ll be cut out.”

I went down the long hall and out into the free air. For a minute I stood on the curb, breathing deeply. Then I crawled into my car and drove back to my office.

The office was in a building where the rents were possible for a youngish lawyer with the soft dew of college hardly dry behind his ears. It was on the second floor. If you wanted to get up there, you walked because there was no elevator. Down the hall, you found a door with a pane of frosted glass. And on the glass, in imitation gold leaf, you read the words: Solomon Burr, Attorney-at-Law.

If you pushed the door open and walked in, you were met by the rapid-fire clatter of a second-hand typewriter bouncing under the agile digits of a gal who was by no means second-hand. Her name was Kitty Troop, and she was my secretary. She presented, among other things, the impression of bustling activity under the pressure of many cases pending in court. This was a ruse. Actually, she saw your shadow on the glass and had her novel dog-eared in the likely event that you were a false alarm. Being a clever gal, she kept a clean sheet in the machine at all times, ready for the act at the first sign of any stray character who might turn into a client. If you looked over her shoulder, you saw that she was typing: The sly, quick fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.

But you didn’t look over her shoulder.

You were busy looking at other things. She showed you first some nice teeth in a smile between the merest hints of dimples. Then she stood up, and you saw a figure that made you forget all your troubles. When you got your breath back and asked if Mr. Burr was in, she replied in a voice that was as soft as a fog that Mr. Burr just happened to be free at the moment and would give you a few minutes. Then she walked over to Mr. Burr’s private door, giving you a reverse view from seams to ash-blond bun. By that time, you didn’t give a damn if Mr. Burr was the lousiest shyster in town, with the highest fees on record. You were ready to give him your case, just so you could come back for the scenery.

If Kitty was on her toes, she knocked on the door and counted slowly to five. Then, when she opened the door, you saw an alert, clean-cut guy busy as hell with a lot of legal papers and stuff. If she forgot and opened the door without knocking, chances are you got a brace of elevated shoes and a pretty good view of a fairly standard profile. It was profile because this guy was watching the spider who lived in a web up by the ceiling. The spider’s name was Oliver Wendell Holmes. The guy’s name was Solomon Burr.

This was all on a slow day, which most of them were. As yet, no one had mistaken me for a revised edition of Clarence Darrow. Though there were those exceptional months, I found myself unable to meet with any consistency the world’s constant demand for cash. Catch me toward the first, and I could be had for the rent. How Kitty paid her rent, I don’t know, since she was paid herself only now and then.

Today, when I walked in with the stale air of the municipal dungeons still in my nostrils, the small reception office was crowded. That is, there was one other person besides Kitty in it. A girl. She sat on the edge of a chair so straight and stiff that she managed to give the impression of being coiled like a spring. Dark red hair between a tiny hat and a face that retained its prettiness under strain; dark green suit, attractively filled.

“This is Miss Wanda Henderson,” Kitty said. “She wants to see you.”

“How do you do, Miss Henderson,” I said. “Come right in.”

I pushed open the door to my inner sanctum, and she did a tricky job of uncoiling while rising on the perpendicular, preceded me into the office, and sat down on the edge of my fancy chair for clients with a rigidly balanced bending. She sat with knees and ankles clapped tightly together, hands clutching a green leather purse in her lap. She seemed afraid to relax for an instant. Wanda Henderson was no scarecrow, far from it. As I said, not even the distortions of strain destroyed the basic lines of her face, not even the deep shadow of fear in her eyes.

I offered her a cigarette, thinking it might loosen her up a little. After a slight hesitation, she accepted it and a light gratefully.

“Apparently Hal’s never mentioned me,” she said.

I’d guessed her identity, of course, from the moment I’d walked in.

“Until this afternoon,” I said, “I hadn’t seen Hal for a long time. He probably has a lot of friends I’ve never heard of.”

She leaned forward stiffly, clutching the edge of the desk. “You’ve seen him?”

“I just came from the municipal prison.”

“How is he?”

I shrugged and lit a cigarette of my own, taking my time, answering her through smoke. “Licked,” I said. “Ready to quit. I’m supposed to be his lawyer, but it’s just for looks.”

“He didn’t mention me at all?”

“Not by name. He said he spent the night of the murder with a girl. That you?”

Delicate color flushed her cheeks. “Yes.”

“It’s an air-tight alibi, honey. You could save his hide with a dozen words in the right place.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.”

“This isn’t the right place. If you speak up, Hal won’t even need a lawyer. All you have to do is see the district attorney.”

“I’ve seen him.”

In his corner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, with no problems, slumbered quietly in his web. The office seemed filled, of a sudden, with a poised and breathless menace.

“Yes? What did he tell you?”

“He told me it was a nice try and that he admired me for the attempt, but said he had a witness of his own who contradicted my testimony. His witness was one of his own investigators. He told me to go home and forget it, otherwise I’d find myself involved in a perjury charge.”

Her voice had sunk to a whisper of bitterness. I got up and moved over to a window that looked down into the narrow chasm of a dreary alley.

After a while, I turned back into the room. She still sat on the edge of her chair, the ineffectual cigarette burning forgotten between her fingers. A thin line of smoke ascended past her face. Her eyes met mine, fear swimming darkly.

I said quietly, “You know anyone out of town? Anyone you could visit for a while?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad. You ought to take a nice trip. You ought to take a quick trip to a far place. You got a job?”

“Yes.”

“Get sick. Give me time to figure something out. In the meantime, go home and lock your door. For your sake and Hal’s, take care of yourself.”

She jerked erect. “I’ll be all right. Will you call me when you need me?”

“I’ll call you. Leave your address with my secretary.”

She went to the door and stood there with one hand on the knob. “Why?” she asked. “He’s just one of the little guys. He isn’t big enough to rate a top bracket frame.”

I was suddenly wishing I had never known Hal Decker and that this girl was a thousand miles away. I wasn’t proud of the feeling, and I said softly, “There’s nothing personal about it. Any guy would have done. It’s just that someone needs a patsy... it’s just that Hal pointed at himself with his big mouth... it’s just that he made himself logical.”

She continued to stand there for a few seconds, her eyes fixed in a blind stare of intense absorption. And then, saying nothing, she went out.

I leaned back to study the wall beside the door. Outside in the reception office, the voices of Kitty and Wanda Henderson were engaged in a brief exchange. Then the hall door opened, closed, and silence descended.

Suddenly, beyond my door, Kitty’s typewriter began a furious clattering. Shadow on the glass, I thought. The clattering ended abruptly, and Kitty’s voice rose brightly. Almost immediately, my door swung open, and my reflexes had me reaching for a stack of paper, while I thought unkindly of Kitty’s negligence in forgetting to cue me in. But I didn’t complete the action. I knew, somehow, that the two guys who entered would not be susceptible to the routine.

One of them leaned against the door. The other moved in on my desk, with a cordial smile on his face. He even removed his hat, placing it carefully on a corner of the desk. His hair was light brown and clipped close to a skull. He was tall, topping-six feet, with heavyweight shoulders that moved in easy co-ordination with his legs. A pretty nice-looking guy, really, except that his light tan eyes were cold and shining with conditioned wariness. There was about him the delicate and indefinable scent of violence and death.

“You Solomon Burr?” he asked, pleasantly.

“Yes,” I said. “Have a chair.”

The cordial smile spread a trifle. He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and removed a thick, green packet. He fanned the edge of it with a thumbnail and laid it on the desk among the legal papers.

“No, thanks. We won’t stay. The girl who was just here — Wanda Henderson — this will pay you to forget her.”

It was a lot of money, a hell of a lot of money for a lawyer with a relatively new shingle. I looked at the packet, and my palms were itching.

“Go to hell,” I said.

The guy with tan eyes kept smiling. He picked up the money and returned it to his pocket. Leaning across the desk, as if he were going to argue the point, he slashed the horny edge of his hand across my month. My chair teetered, crashing over backward, not so much from the blow as from my effort to get away from it. The guy came around the desk and kicked me. I tried to move away, but all my muscles were drawn in a kind of excruciating contraction. I felt myself hoisted, jammed against the desk. Stony knuckles raked my face and the pleasant voice, spaced precisely between blows, reached me faintly on a rising wave of thunderous nausea.

“You could have made a nice bundle, just for turning down a job. Now you’ll turn it down without the bundle, just because I ask it. You hear me, counselor? You hear me real plain?”

I heard him, but I didn’t answer. I slipped away under cover of night and descended in soft and sweeping gyrations a thousand sickening miles to the blessed sanctuary of the floor.

Chapter Two More Women in the Act

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

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

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

The effort detonated a bomb inside my skull.

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

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

“You’ve been crying,” I said.

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

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

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

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

“To hell with you,” she said.

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

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

“Ouch,” I said.

“Merthiolate,” she said.

“Take it easy, honey.”

“It ought to have a stitch.”

“Nothing doing.”

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

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

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

“You might try kissing them.”

“No, thanks.”

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

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

“I’m not the rough type, honey.”

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

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

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

“It isn’t funny, Sol.”

“No,” I said, “it really isn’t.”

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

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

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

“Who is he, Sol?”

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

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

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

“It figures.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stark’s witness?”

“He’s the guy.”

“You going to see him?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Why?”

“When something smells, you sniff around.”

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

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

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

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

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

She said, “Sol.”

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

“Be careful, Sol.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You know where he is?”

“No.”

“You know when he’ll be back?”

“No. Probably not for a long time.”

“You his wife?”

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

“Just conversation. May I come in?”

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

“Why not?”

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

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

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

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

“Where’d you say Wash went?”

“I didn’t. I said I didn’t know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t waste your breath.”

“A guy’s life may depend on it.”

“I’m all broken up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why do you think so?”

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

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

He could have drawn an inference, but he chose not to. He merely waited for me to continue.

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

His face was bland. “So?”

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

“Why should I know where he is?”

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

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

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

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

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

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

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

“It’s unthinkable.”

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

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

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

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

“How do you do,” I said.

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

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

Finally, I gave it up and decided to go home, because I was very tired. I had done everything I could possibly do tonight.

Even Perry Mason couldn’t have done more...

Chapter Three Homicide Chimes In

When I hit the office next morning, after seven hours in the sack, Kitty was sitting behind her desk with her knees crossed. Her chair was pushed back far enough to give anyone at the side an unobstructed view of her long legs.

The show was good, but the audience was composed of exactly one short, fat guy with popped eyes and a sour, twisted mouth. His fat was saggy, lapping over his collar and belt, and he looked as if he might reach five-six in his socks. Leaning against the jamb of my private door, hands thrust into the pockets of his pants, he divided his attention about equally between the scuffed toe of a shoe and Kitty. As far as I could see, he showed about as much enthusiasm for one view as the other. His popped eyes, the color of skimmed milk, took no notice of me.

“You’re wasting it,” I said pleasantly.

Kitty sighed philosophically. “You never can tell about these reserved guys, they’re deep. Sometimes they crack all of a sudden. This one’s Wiley Shivers. Detective Lieutenant Wiley Shivers, to you. He represents homicide.”

“Smart,” Wiley Shivers said. “You’re a smart pair.”

“We’re really not so bad,” I said. “It’s just that we’re leery of visitors. We’ve had bad luck with some recently.”

His eyes dropped again to the toe of his shoe.

“Joker,” he said. “Some people always reaching for a fast line. You got no call to be funny, counselor. Maybe you better start worrying a little. Maybe you got some more bad luck coming up.”

Already I was sick of him. “Is that a guess or a threat?”

He straightened, rocking forward from the jamb to an unsupported perpendicular. I noticed that his feet were very small, almost like a child’s, so that the balance of his excessive weight always seemed a little precarious.

“Neither. Call it a prediction based on evidence. I’ll come in and talk with you about it.” He rolled his milky eyes at Kitty. “See that no one disturbs us, sister.”

Kitty cackled and put her legs away under the desk. “That’s a very rough assignment,” she said.

I went into my office and sat down in my chair, and Shivers came after me and sat down in the chair that Wanda Henderson had sat in yesterday.

“I hear you were out on South Twentieth last night,” he said.

“That’s right. I went out to see Wash Richert. You’ve probably heard that, too.”

“I hear a lot of things. You see him?”

“No. I saw his wife.”

“Yeah? Platinum dame with round heels?”

“I can vouch for the platinum, not the heels. Maybe you’re better acquainted with her than I am.”

“There you go again. You got a smart mouth, counselor. She tell you where Wash was?”

“No. She gave me a drink and threw me out. She didn’t even give me time to finish the drink.”

“Tough. All your luck seems to be bad. Why’d she do it? Throw you out, I mean.”

“She didn’t like my name. She didn’t like my job. She thought I was nosey.”

“Probably she thought right.”

“You’re not a nice guy, Lieutenant.”

His pale, milky eyes were unaffected. “I’m not paid to be nice. I’m paid to be a cop.”

“Are they incompatible?”

“Usually they are. You telling me you never saw Wash at all last night?”

“That’s right. I saw his wife. Then I went to see Austin Stark. After that, I went home.”

“Well, someone saw him. I thought maybe it was you.”

I looked at his nasty, fat face across the desk, and the pressure was back in my chest.

“Why not come to the point, Lieutenant?”

“Sure. He’s dead — Richert is. Someone smoked him in a room over on the east side. Crummy dump where he’d holed in.”

I stared at him, and my mind was as numb as a blank can be. After a while I said, “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Murder never does. Not in the end.”

“Who would want him dead?”

“Hal Decker would.”

I laughed caustically. “Use your head, Lieutenant. Decker’s an ordinary guy, a little guy. He doesn’t have hired hoods to bump off an unfriendly witness for him.”

“He’s got you.”

“I’m a lawyer, not a torpedo.”

“He’s got the dame — the one who took a story to the D.A. — the Henderson dame.”

“So you’ve heard about her.”

“Like I said, I hear a lot of things.”

I massaged my forehead trying to muscle my thoughts into some kind of pattern, but it wasn’t any good. They kept right on milling around in confusion.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t expect you to believe it, but I’ve never been close to Richert. Not even within shooting distance. And I’d stake my life that Wanda Henderson hasn’t, either. There’s no reason to think she’d have been able to locate him. Damn it, there’s just no one loose who wanted him dead, no one who gave a damn about his testimony against Decker.”

Shivers’ lips, twisted with sour sarcasm. “Maybe you think the D.A. bumped his own witness. Maybe that makes sense to you.”

“No. That makes no sense, either. Not a damned thing about this makes sense.”

Surging up onto his little feet, he said, “One thing makes sense, counselor. Whoever killed Richert, it’s my job to find him. That makes all the sense I got any use for. You think I’m an unpleasant guy, and probably I am, but you haven’t seen anything yet. Believe me, you haven’t begun to see how unpleasant I can be.” He turned and went over to the door, and turned back again. “Be seeing you, counselor,” he said.

He went out across the reception office, and I heard his thin, dry voice directed at Kitty from the vicinity of the hall door, “It’s not that you aren’t good looking, sister. It’s just that I’m too old.”

Kitty came in and sat down on my desk. “You hear what he said? I thought it was very considerate of him. Restored my confidence.”

“Well,” I said bitterly, “he didn’t say anything to restore my confidence.”

She put fingers under my chin and tipped my face up. “I know. Just when you’re beginning to look human, too. You look much better without the fat lips, Sol.”

Her voice was light, but her eyes were clouded. I got the idea that she might be concerned.

“You been listening at the door again?” I said.

“Of course. Naturally.” Her eyes were lifted to the window behind me. “We’ve been loafing too hard, Sol. We ought to go somewhere on a vacation.”

“Together, honey? That’s a very interesting idea that I may remind you of later.” I stood up and moved around the desk. “Right now I’ve got a date with another gal. You have Wanda Henderson’s address?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’m going out there.”

“Look, hero, a lawyer’s supposed to see his clients in his office. He doesn’t run around knocking on doors like a census-taker. Damn it, do you have to go looking for trouble?”

“I’m not looking for trouble, honey. I’m looking for a way out of it. In case you haven’t noticed, trouble’s all around me. I’m buried in it, right up to my neck.”

She slipped off the desk. “Sure you’re in trouble. You know why? Because the area’s swarming with dames. Scratch a dame, you always uncover trouble. I knew you were out of your depth, Sonny, the minute that redhead showed up here yesterday. Then, as if a redhead wasn’t enough, you had to go get involved with a platinum blond, with round heels, no less. This case starts out as a nice, simple frame for murder, and all of a sudden it develops female trouble.”

I grinned. “You haven’t credited all the cast. There’s a black-headed doll, too. Her name’s Alma Stark.”

“The great man’s wife? How does she figure?”

“I don’t know how she figures, but she’s got a black eye. A dame with a black eye must have been into something.”

Kitty eased up close and tapped me on the chest with a red nail. “For your information you still haven’t got the cast complete. There’s still another female on the stage. She’s beautiful, intelligent, and loaded with charm. Besides, you owe her three months’ salary, and she doesn’t want you dead until it’s paid. Take care, lover.”

That put us on an upbeat, and it seemed like a good place to leave us for the time being, so I got the address and went downstairs to my car. After cutting across town for about twenty minutes, I came to the address Kitty had given me. This was another walkup, but Wanda Henderson lived on the second floor instead of the third, and I was feeling better than I had felt yesterday, what with the rapid healing of my bruises and the growing affection for Kitty Troop. Even with Wiley Shivers in the background, any mental state was reasonably bright as I knocked on Wanda’s door.

The door was a little off the latch and I and swung inward away from my knuckles. Through the crack between door and jamb, I could see a kind of dull, red stain on the worn carpet of the room. Having been made susceptible to suggestion by recent experience, I thought at first that it was blood, but then I saw that it wasn’t blood at all. It was hair.

I pushed the door open farther and stood there looking at Wanda Henderson, and I could see that she would be cold to the touch. Her arms were spread, the fingers clawed. Her red hair splashed around her head, and there were bruises on her throat. She’d been killed by hands — direct, primitive, the most brutal of all forms. At least it was a change from shooting.

I pulled the door shut very quietly, I turned, and went back downstairs to the car and drove away.

It wasn’t that I didn’t even consider calling the police. I did. It was my first thought. My second thought, however, was of Wiley Shivers, and I felt that anyone, even in case of murder, was justified in not calling the police if calling them meant facing Shivers the second time in one day.

Now the whole affair was a monstrous bit of nonsense verse. Nothing whatever made any sense at all, and I was groping blindly in a maniac world that was filled with wandering women and a fine, indiscriminate slaughter of witnesses. Why? Why the impartial elimination of the key witness on both sides? The only guy who’d figured in the business all the way was Austin Stark. All the way to the murder of Wash Richert, that is. But how could you figure Stark in the elimination of his own man? Of course, he probably had Richert’s signed statement, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same as a live guy in court putting the clincher on a frame.

Several blocks from the walkup, I stopped at a corner drug store and went inside to the phone. I dropped a dime and dialed.

“Hello, Kitty. Anyone there?”

“No. Your date over already?”

“It never even got started. Wanda had another date, in Samara.”

“What the hell you talking about, lover?”

“You don’t get it? A novel reader like you? Never mind, though. It means she’s dead.”

The wire sang between us, and after a while, she said quietly, “One of the others called in, right after you left — the platinum one.”

“Richert’s wife? What does she want?”

“She wants to talk with you. She sounded scared. She sounded scared to death. Which reminds me that I’m scared to death myself. I’ll bring all the petty cash and meet you at the bus station. We can’t afford a train.”

“Some other time, hussy. What about the platinum? She coming to the office?”

“No. She’s waiting in a little bar called The Peanut. They serve them in bowls with beer. It’s on Fifteenth, just off Wamego Street.”

“I know the place. See you later.”

“I wonder,” she said sadly, and hung up.

On Fifteenth, just off Wamego, The Peanut was a dismal, little bar which, like all bars in the morning, somehow gave the impression of having a hangover. In the shadowy interior, behind the peanut bowls, a bartender looked at me as if he wished he didn’t have to. Opposite the bar lining the wall, there was a string of booths, each with its own peanut bowl, and private remote-control box for the juke box in the rear. In the last booth, where the shadows were deepest, I caught a glimmer of platinum, the white movement of a lifted hand.

I told the bartender to bring me a shot of rye and went back to the booth and sat down. While I was waiting for the rye, I saw that Kitty had been right. Mrs. Richert was scared to death. Her face was drawn, no more than a shade darker than her hair, and her eyes were still and wary. She held a glass in her fingers, twisting it slowly, with odd little jerks.

“You wanted to talk with Wash,” she said. “It’ll never happen now.”

“I know. A cop named Wiley Shivers came to see me this morning.”

“Yeah.” Her eyes stared into her slowly rotating glass. “Nasty little toad. I wasn’t thinking straight, or I wouldn’t have put him on you. You got an idea Wash didn’t really see Hal Decker leaving Danny Devore’s place the night of Danny’s murder?”

“Yes. Hal spent that night with his girl. She was willing to swear to it. You get the tense? Was, I said. That was yesterday. Today she’s dead. Murdered. I just left her on the floor of her apartment.”

Fear moved like a shadow across her face. “The devil,” she said softly. “The merciless, arrogant devil.”

“Stark?”

The flesh quivered on her bones, and I could see her fingers tighten convulsively on the glass. “So you’ve figured it out. He killed Danny Devore, and I guess he killed Hal Decker’s girl. For that, I don’t give a damn. But he killed Wash, too, and Wash was mine. I’ve played him for a sucker whenever the notion struck; but he was mine, and I never wanted him dead. And I want the guy who killed him.”

“And if Hal Decker, an innocent guy, goes clear in the process, that’s purely coincidental, I suppose.”

Her eyes flicked up and down, and the hardness was in there with the fear. “That’s right. Wash and I had this fixed up for a big bundle, but now hope for the bundle’s dead with Wash, and all I want is to get even. I want the guy who killed Wash. Anything that comes with it is frosting on the cake, as far as I’m concerned.”

I looked at her with the first, faint light of dawn breaking inside my skull. “A bundle? So Wash was more than a phony witness. He was also a blackmailer. That explains a lot. I saw Stark in all this from the beginning, but I couldn’t see why he’d bump his own witness. And there’s still something I can’t see. I can’t see why Stark killed Devore. I know he was after Danny’s public hide, but murder’s something else. It’s too fantastic for belief.”

Her lips curled. “Politics,” she said, and the word as she said it was incredibly profane. “There was a better reason than politics for Danny’s murder. It’s really sort of funny, the way it happened. Listen. Wash was Stark’s investigator, and Wash was a handy sort of guy. He had a way with gadgets. Things like tape recorders, for in stance. Stark wanted something on Devore that he could use, something concrete. Devore used to make a lot of his crooked deals in his study at home, and Stark figured that if he could set up a hidden mike in the study with a recorder hidden outside, sooner or later he’d get something hot.

“He put Wash on the job, and Wash set the thing up. How he did it doesn’t matter now. Just take it from me, Wash was a pretty clever guy. He took three spools of tape on three consecutive nights and turned them over to Stark. What Stark didn’t know was that Wash played it all back before he turned it over. He not only played it all back, he made copies. Some of it was pretty good. Enough to nail Devore down. But Stark was greedy. He wanted more, and he got more.”

She stopped talking and began to laugh. It was deep, soundless laughter that shook her body like a violent spasm. After a minute, she broke it off with a shrill gasp and said hoarsely, “He got something real hot. He got something so hot it blistered the tape and shriveled his own lousy soul. He got Mrs. Austin Stark and handsome Danny Devore in a scene that was strictly unofficial. I guess it was the one thing the arrogant devil never dreamed of.

She began to laugh again, and inside my skull the dawn broke like thunder. The irony of it all was enough to make anyone hysterical. I reached across the table in the booth. I put my thumb on one side of her face and my four lingers on the other. Then I make like a pair of pincers, cutting off her laughter and forcing it back into her throat.

“I get it,” I said. “That was something a guy like Stark couldn’t take. He went blind. He killed Danny Devore, not for any political reason, but for the old three-cornered reason that’s always been valid.”

“That’s it.” She lifted her glass suddenly, draining away the last of its amber contents. “He told Wash to knock off the recordings. But he didn’t know that Wash had copies. He didn’t realize that Wash knew about Mrs. Stark and Danny Devore. Most of all, he didn’t realize that Wash was spinning another spool the night of the murder. He found it out about an hour later. He found it out when Wash showed up at his place all ready to do business.”

“What about Hal Decker’s gun?”

“Devore wasn’t killed with Decker’s gun. That was fixed later. Wash remembered Decker’s threats. He knew Decker could be made to look like a logical suspect. Wash swiped the gun the same night and planted it by Devore’s body. He agreed to swear he’d seen Decker leave the scene of the murder. Wash didn’t mind helping with the alibi.

“The way he looked at it, the alibi was a kind of insurance on the tape. Stark had to be free in order to pay. He was a guy going up, and he could pay and keep paying.” Her fingers tightened around the glass until I thought it would crack. “There was something else he could do too,” she said softly. “He could kill. Wash should’ve remembered that.”

The front door swung open, and a girl came into the bar. She was, as she would have been the first to tell you, intelligent, beautiful and loaded with charm. Her eyes drifting over me casually; she sat down in a booth up the line and ordered a beer.

“Has Stark got the tape?” I asked.

The platinum head nodded. “Not the two big ones — not the love scene, not the murder.”

“Where are they?”

Her eyes sharpened, calculating possibilities of salvage, and I laughed. “No dice, sister. I couldn’t rake up more than a fin. It’ll have to be for the satisfaction you get out of it.”

She shrugged and dug into her purse. On the table between us, she laid a key. The key had the number six hundred and eight stamped on it.

“Public locker,” she said. “Union Station. The player is there, too.”

I covered the key with a hand, and it was just in time. The bar door swung open again, and three guys came in. Two of them I remembered. They came straight back to our booth.

The guy who’d worked me over said pleasantly, “We thought she’d contact you. She told you where the tape is?”

“Tape?”

The guy’s laugh wasn’t quite as pleasant as his voice. “I’ll play along for a minute, counselor. Recordings, I mean.”

The key was red hot in the palm of my hand, under my thumb. “I don’t know anything about any recordings. Recordings of what?”

He drew his shoulders forward, his eyes impersonal. “Who knows? Who cares? We’re supposed to get the tape and deliver it, that’s all. You willing to talk now?”

I looked blank and stayed quiet. After a minute he reached down, and helped me out of the booth. One of the other two did the same for Richert’s widow.

We all went out together. On the way, I brushed the table of the booth in which Kitty was drinking her beer with a display of serenity that was, under the circumstances, somewhat annoying. My right hand, hanging at my side, extended just below the top of the table. I let the key slip down my palm into my fingers, and flipped it off toward Kitty’s lap.

Kitty lifted her beer and drank. She looked as if she were enjoying it...

Chapter Four Fitting the Puzzle Together

We went up from a narrow alley on rickety stairs into a large room that looked like it used to be a place to lay a bet. There was a flat top desk, with an undisturbed coating of dust. On the wall behind the desk, was an old slate blackboard with some faint chalk marks still on it.

The young gorilla who looked like a rah-rah boy pushed his hat onto the back of his head and said politely, “Ladies first.”

The bigger of the other two grinned and smashed the platinum blond across the mouth with the back of his hand. The blow cracked like a rifle shot, and she cringed away with a squeal and a whimper, pressing one hand to her injured mouth.

“Where’s the tape?” Tan Eyes said. Before she could answer, the big guy backhanded her again, and a wet sob gurgled in her throat. Her eyes flared with hate and fear, and all the other hellish emotions that a woman like her can feel for a guy who belts her in the face.

“Where’s the tape?” Tan Eyes said.

The big guy drew his arm up and back again, so that his chin was fitted into the interior angle of his elbow, but before he could slash it out and down, I said, “It’s in a locker at Union Station.”

Tan Eyes turned to me, smiling. “A gentleman. A real, damned gentleman. Can’t stand to see a dame knocked around. I thought you’d be soft.”

The big guy came over to me and grabbed me by the lapels with his left hand. He brought the heel of his right hand down in a short chopping motion on my bandage.

I could fed the cut pull apart, and blood welled out from under the bandage and ran down my face.

“That’s for not saying it sooner,” he said.

Tan Eyes held out a hand, palm up.

“You got a key?”

“No.”

The big guy hit me across the eyes with the edge of his hand, it was like getting hit with a tomahawk.

“Where’s the key?” Tan Eyes said.

I was blind. I had lost my vision in an intense flare of brilliant light that died instantly to total darkness. Now the darkness was diluted slowly by a gray infiltration, and objects and faces reappeared with a strange effect of coming down a line of perspective from a great distance. The big executioner had his chopper drawn back for a repeat, and Tan Eyes had his extended, as before, with the palm up.

I guess I could have taken more, if I’d had to. But I was glad I didn’t have to. Kitty had the key. She’d had at least twenty minutes to function, and Kitty was a smart gal. By this time, she was certainly in possession of the tape and the player.

“I dropped it in the coin slot in the juke box control,” I said.

The tan eyes faded to a cold and wary yellow. The lips below them barely moved.

“Don’t play fancy, counselor. If you say it, it better be true.”

“It’s true,” I said, and when the big one moved in for another cut, I added quickly, “The number’s six hundred and eight.”

Tan Eyes swung an arm out gently against the other’s chest. “To hell with the key,” he said. “A public locker’s no problem.”

The third guy had been standing against the door watching, just as he’d done in my office. It could be that he just went along for kicks, or that he was the coach. The guy who really called the plays and did the thinking when thinking was needed. He was the one who did it now, at any rate, even though it came a little late.

“The tape’s not in the locker,” he said.

Tan Eyes turned slowly. “No? You thinking of a better place?”

Number three, the Thinker, moved lazily against the door, lifting his shoulders slightly. “The tape’s not in the locker,” he said. “The key’s not in the slot. The dame’s got it.”

“Dame? This one?”

“No. The blond. The one drinking beer. I just remembered where I’ve seen her before. It’s been bothering me.”

The tan eyes were very still, fading again, masking the activity of the brain behind. “The secretary, his secretary!”

The Thinker’s lips curled. He nodded agreement. “Sure. I’m betting he passed the key off when he brushed the booth. One will get you ten if the tape’s not in his office right now, or on the way there.”

The executioner moved in again. His lips were twisted back off his teeth, and his hand was raised to chop. At the door, the Thinker straightened and said, “Later. We owe him something, but save it for later. Right now we’ve got no time.” He gave the disappointed executioner a placating smile, as one might smile at an unhappy child, promising future pleasure. “You stay here with the dame. She might get lonesome if we left her by herself.”

Tan Eves took my arm like an old friend, and we went out of the room together and down the rickety stairs to the alley. The Thinker followed along. In the alley we all got into the Caddy that had brought us from The Peanut; Tan Eyes behind the wheel, the Thinker and I in the rear seat.

“You boys do all of Stark’s strong-arm work?” I asked.

The Thinker smiled lazily and said, “Button up, counselor.”

The big Caddy rolled along with a pedigreed purr, taking its time and minding the traffic signals. No one seemed to be in a hurry, which was agreeable to me, and it was probably another twenty minutes before we crawled out onto the sidewalk in front of my shingle. Going up the stairs, like meat in a sandwich between my brace of escorts, I prayed silently that Kitty had been sensible enough to take the tape someplace else. But Kitty, while clever, was given to being sensible only rarely, and this, apparently, wasn’t a rare occasion. She was sitting behind her desk, showing her teeth in a receptive smile.

“Hi, guys,” she said.

The Thinker closed the door and leaned against it, as was his habit. Tan Eyes walked over to the desk and took Kitty’s chin between thumb and fingers, tipping her head back. He let his eyes wander over her face and on down the arched stem of her neck. The eyes, she reported later, were tender.

“You’re a sweet doll,” he said. “You’re a luscious hunk of stuff. Wouldn’t it be a shame if I had to mess you up? Wouldn’t it be a crying shame?”

She kept on smiling as well as she could with the pressure on her face. Her voice was thin and strained from the tension in her throat.

“Anything you want to do, you better do quick,” she said. “My friend, Wiley Shivers of homicide, may be slow with a dame, but he can still fire his cannon allegro fortissimo. In your language, that means fast and loud as hell.”

He was like a guy in slow motion. His hand floated away from, her face, and he turned by degrees from the hips, his arm bent at the elbow and suspended outward at his side. He looked like a kid’s dream of a gunslinger. Only the gun wasn’t on his hip, it was under his arm. The suspended arm flashed up and inward as Wiley Shivers opened my private door. But Wiley’s gun was handier. It was already pointed accurately in the right direction.

Tan Eyes sat down very quietly on the floor and folded over like a supplicant. Against the hall door, the Thinker was immobile, spread on the wood in a kind of mock and frozen crucifixion. Wiley Shivers, that remarkable, fat, little guy, looked down at his victim, who was obviously dead, and his expression was precisely the same as when he’d looked at his scuffed shoe, or at the visible charms of Kitty.

“A good gunsel,” he said, after a while. “A dead one.”

Kitty came out from under her desk, and looked at me across the top. Her voice took off like a wild knuckle ball. “You’re bleeding again. Why the hell don’t you learn to protect yourself?”

I didn’t answer. I watched Wiley Shivers walk over slowly to the body of the rah-rah gorilla and nudge it with a toe. The folded body, in delicate balance, stirred and slipped over, straightening on the floor. The face under the light brown crew-cut had acquired a new softness of line. It looked rather sophomoric. Shivers’ sour gaze lifted, roamed around the wall, and down across the Thinker against the door. It came to rest on me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Sorry? For what? This guy?”

“No. For what I thought about you. I thought you were a crook. I thought you were hand-picked by Austin Stark to pin a rap on me.”

“I don’t give a damn what you thought.”

“Thanks, anyhow.”

His mouth twisted. His eyes looked like a couple of smeary marbles. When I was a kid, we used to call them snotties.

“That’s the trouble with you smart guys,” he said. “You think in generalities. We got crooks at headquarters, so you jump to the opinion that everyone’s a crook at headquarters. See what I mean? Under all the smartness, no brains at all. I’ll tell you something to remember, counselor. Wherever you go, you’ll always find a few honest guys.”

He moved over to the door and casually flipped an automatic from under the arm of the Thinker. Without turning, he said, “I’ll take this punk in. You two stay here and sit on those tapes. I’ll send back for them. And don’t worry about the cops I send, they’ll be honest. When I send them, they’re always honest. Wagon’ll be here for the guy on the floor.”

He was moving again, when I thought of the platinum blond. “They’re holding Richert’s widow,” I said. “I just happened to remember. The Thinker there can tell you where.”

Looking back for a second over his shoulder, he struck an attitude of ludicrous, flabby coyness. He was the only guy I’ve ever known you could love and hate at once.

“Much obliged. That’s real thoughtful of you. She’ll probably be very glad you just happened to remember. Incidentally, Stark’s in custody by now. I sent a couple men after him just as soon as I’d heard the tape. We’ll be springing Decker to make room for him.” His lips moved again into that sour twist that seemed to signify hatred, for all the world and everything in it. “See you around, counselor.”

He went on out with the Thinker, and I said, “Not if I can help it. Never again.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Kitty picked her way around the body in front of her desk. “Wiley isn’t a bad guy. I knew right away he was honest. That’s why I called him to meet me here.”

“Yes? What made you so sure he was honest?”

She grinned. “That remark he made. About being too old for me. No one but an honest man could have said that! Let’s go in your office and play the tape with Mrs. Stark and Danny Devore on it. I’ve already listened to part of it. He’s quite the romantic type. You can learn a lot from Danny, even though he’s dead.”