Sheffold went up the stairs, and with the length of hall to give him momentum, hit the flimsy door with his shoulder. Wood splintered as the lock pulled away. Sheffold righted himself into a crouch.
Pantera was standing spread-legged over Alyce Rowland as she huddled on the floor. The shoulder of her dress ripped, and there were red splotches on her face. Pantera, rigid, looked up, hands away from his body and tensed to grab for a gun.
“Stay right there,” Sheffold whispered. “I could clip you before you get it. Two hundred and forty pounds across your legs could snap ’em in two.”
Pantera didn’t move a muscle. Sheffold moved forward, catlike, and lifted Pantera’s gun out of a shoulder clip. Then he pushed the racketeer away and lifted Alyce to her feet.
“What is it?” he asked. “Where’s Chick?”
“Gone,” she said, dully. “One travels faster than two. I came back here. There was no place else to go.”
Sheffold looked at Pantera. “You’ve been a busy boy tonight. The shake-down on Richards has backfired. He isn’t going to buy!”
Pantera shrugged. “Says who?”
“It wasn’t Mrs. Richards in the pictures,” Sheffold continued. “It was someone else. Who?”
Pantera shrugged again and kept silent. Sheffold said, barely above a whisper, “You’re all alone up here, Pantera. And maybe you’re a very tough man, but not in this league. Who was the woman in the picture?”
Pantera jerked his shiny blond head at Alyce. “It was cutie,” he said sullenly. “She and that little grifter Chick had set Bannerman up for a shakedown. But they lost their nerve and brought the stuff to me. I figured Bannerman would pay at least fifty grand for it. I bought it for twenty. They didn’t tell me Bannerman had dropped out of sight. They thought they had me for a patsy. Me!”
Silent fury shook him. He was a proud man with a strong sense of inferiority. He couldn’t be a great man in his own eyes when two small-time crooks could make a sucker out of him. “I’m out twenty grand,” he said, more quietly. “Somebody is going to pay. Bannerman, Richards, this little tramp. I don’t care who.”
Sheffold looked at Alyce. “Pack that bag again. You’re getting out.”
“It’s packed!” she said. She ran into the bedroom and returned immediately, carrying the bag. The camel’s-hair coat was draped over her shoulders. “Let’s go, Pete.”
At the door Sheffold said, “It’s nothing to me, Pantera, but you’d better pull in your horns. You’ll be lucky if you get off losing only twenty thousand. Bannerman was murdered tonight. Then there’s Richards — he shot himself. Maybe you’re clean on both counts. But some ambitious young cop might not know your reputation and hang it on you.”
Then he followed Alyce out and down the stairs. The man he had hit was crawling across the lobby like a dog with a broken back. He didn’t seem to know them as they went past him.
In the borrowed car, Sheffold said without expression, “Tell me the rest of it, Alyce. You and Bannerman.”
“It was Chick’s idea,” she said defensively. “He figured Bannerman would be good for a squeeze. When you came to see us, Chick made up that whole story just while he sat there. Lord, what a talker he was. A no-good, sneaking rat,” she added, “but he could con you right out of your dentures.”
“How much did you ask for?”
“Ten grand. And Bannerman agreed to it. He wanted a couple of days to raise the dough, he said. That’s when he took a powder. We didn’t know where he was, or what he was up to. That’s why we unloaded on Pantera — for double. But that little rat Chick lost his nerve. He was always a small-timer. He grabbed the twenty grand and blew. Say,” she demanded, “is that true? About Bannerman being dead?”
Sheffold nodded. For the first time he was beginning to doubt his own abilities. Over the years his confidence in himself had built up in direct proportion to the general belief that he was a simple-minded giant. It had become an unquestioning belief that he was almost infallible. Now he was stopped cold by the complexity of Bannerman’s kidnapping and murder.
“Pete,” Alyce said in a soft voice. “You’re going to help me get out of town, aren’t you? I got to have money. Chick didn’t leave twenty dollars. But you’ll help me, won’t you, honey?”
“I suppose,” Sheffold said, “that I can’t let you get murdered. I’ll get you a couple of hundred from Julian — if he hasn’t fired me for not staying on the job.”
“Tell him all charities are deductible,” Alyce said.
“Even if the charity is at the point of a gun?” Sheffold asked her ironically.
“Sure,” Alyce’s voice was flip. “You can deduct for theft, too.”
Sheffold stared ahead for a long minute. “So you can,” he said thoughtfully. “I’d forgotten that.”
Chapter Six
Street of Broken Dreams
Julian was sitting at his desk, staring at something no one else would ever be able to see. He didn’t even react enough to remove his glasses when the door opened. After a long moment his eyes lifted and focused at Sheffold. “He’s dead, Pete,” he said in a voice that was like very old parchment. “Murdered. They found him in his car.”
“I heard,” Sheffold said.
“I paid them ransom just as they demanded. Why did they have to kill him?”
“I don’t know,” Sheffold said. “The rest of it I understand. But not the killing.”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars,” Julian mumbled. “We’ll have to close the club for a while. A week or two. But we’ll reopen, Pete.”
Sheffold waited silently beyond the rim of light from the desk lamp.
Julian’s shoulders moved and he collected his thoughts. “What is it, Pete? What’s on your mind?”
“Will you write something for me?”
Julian nodded and picked up the desk pen as if the request were perfectly normal. He pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer. “All right, Pete.”
Pete Sheffold said: “Write this: In full possession of my faculties and without duress, I make the following statement: I killed Harley Bannerman tonight on the sea road south of Palos Verdes.”
The pen scratched across the paper, paused once, went on scratching.
“The reasons for my act were as follows: Bannerman was being subjected to an extortion attempt, first by a former hat-check girl, Alyce Rowland, and her accomplice, a man known as Chick — last name unknown — and later by Danny Pantera. In order to raise the money to pay off the extortionists, Bannerman planned his own kidnapping. He disappeared, using a cottage owned by himself as a hideaway. The only other person who knew of this cottage was a woman named Mrs. Malcolm Richards, who had no knowledge of the fake kidnapping.”
The pen was silent now, but Sheffold went on talking as though he had not noticed.
“Mrs. Richards went to the cottage on the suspicion that Bannerman was there. Bannerman managed to slip out the back door, and after firing a random shot to pin down any pursuit, he escaped down the side of the hill. I did not, at this point, know of Bannerman’s real need for the money. I cooperated because half of the seventy-five thousand dollars of supposed ransom was to be mine. It could be deducted from the fund set aside to pay my income tax, since money lost through theft is deductible.”
“Pete—” Julian said. “You don’t have to continue.”
“Yes,” Sheffold said. “It’s the only way... Write this too: While it has no direct connection with Bannerman’s murder, his disappearance set in motion certain events which led to Mrs. Richards being blackmailed by Danny Pantera. Because of this, her husband committed suicide, and I am morally responsible.”