He cocked an eye at O’Hara, said with heavy humor, “Don’t you reporters ever pay bills? Lawton was carrying ’em for a year back.”
O’Hara shrugged wide shoulders under the faded trenchcoat he wore, shoved his shabby fedora back on a thatch of black hair. The sourness of his craggy Irish face deepened but he said nothing.
Inez Dana went into a fresh set of wails and Detective Lieutenant Shuford said, “Could you wind up with her quick, Inspector? She’s going nuts.”
Blane looked at the sleek head on Shuford’s shoulder without any particular concern. “Tell her to relax. As soon as we get pictures of this, I’ll take her downtown and get her written statement. Now where the hell would that photographer be?”
Nobody answered him so he swung his eyes around to O’Hara, said, “I suppose, Irish, you want to know what happened?”
“I figured,” O’Hara said, “you’d get around to telling me by the end of the week. As a matter of fact, some crackpot called the Tribune office and said Lawton had bumped himself. I thought it was hooey.”
“That crackpot,” Inspector Blane said, “happened to be me. The Trib once did me a favor and I thought they’d like to know one of their reporters had blown his brains out.”
“And you really mean Lawton did the Dutch act?”
“Am I in the habit of kidding about things like this?”
O’Hara shook his head, blew his breath out between puffed lips. He said, “I’ve known Johnny Lawton a long time and I’d have said he was as likely to commit suicide as I am, which means not at all.”
Blane lifted his shoulders, dropped them. “You never can tell who’ll commit suicide or why.”
“What was Johnny’s why?”
Blane jerked a blunt thumb at Inez Dana and Inez unleashed a half-strangled sob. O’Hara batted his eyes in her direction, said: “Is this on the level?”
“Certainly it’s on the level. And if you’ll skip your cracks I’ll tell you about it.”
O’Hara nodded. His eyes took in Inez Dana somberly from head to toe, switched back to Blane.
Blane plodded on. “Like this, now, I get it. Seems like Lawton met Miss Dana a little while ago through Detective Shuford and right away blows his top about her. Lawton promotes her a spot in the floor show here through his connections as reporter for your sheet and he’s out here every night to watch her do one of them ostrich-feather dances. She doesn’t go for him in a big way, she says, and it got tougher and tougher shrugging him off because he got nuttier and nuttier about her.”
O’Hara’s eyes were beginning to get skeptical. “This story, if you ask me, gets nuttier and nuttier, also.”
Shuford threw O’Hara a hard murky stare and Blane said, “You want to hear this or not?”
“Go ahead.”
“Tonight after the first show the girl comes up to her apartment here and Lawton follows her. He goes on the heavy make for her but she bats his ears down. Then he goes completely wing-ding and pulls his rod with the old hooey about if he couldn’t have her, nobody else could. So she makes a break for the door and he takes a wingshot and misses, the slug going through that picture over by the door, and she beats it downstairs for help. At the foot of the stairs she runs into the City Councilman, Davenport, and a party just leaving.” He broke off, looked at Davenport and said, “That right, Councilman?”
Davenport nodded. “Quite correct, Inspector.” The long lock of hair slid over his right ear and he brushed it back. “I was just getting my hat and coat from the check girl. We’d heard the shot faintly and when Miss Dana told us what it was, I immediately went back to Mr. Kerr’s office and asked him to summon police.”
The manager of the club, Kerr, took his shoe-button gaze out of space and looked at O’Hara. He said in a husky impersonal drawl, “ ’S right, O’Hara. I called the cops and I knew Shuford was in the house so I got him. The radio car got here about the time I found him, so we all came up here together.”
Blane sighed. “It can only be suicide, O’Hara. The radio boys and Shuford and the Councilman and Kerr were within ten feet of the hall door when they heard another shot inside and when they busted through the locked door, the apartment was empty except for Lawton’s body. Besides that, there’s powder bums around the wound, the rod there is the one Lawton had a permit to carry and there’s two shots been fired from it, accounting for the one at the girl and the one through his head. Of course, we’ll check the gun for his prints and check the bullets against the gun and use the Lund test on his hand to see if he’d fired a gun but I’m satisfied it’s suicide. You satisfied?”
“Yes,” O’Hara said slowly, “and no.”
“What’s on your mind?”
Inez Dana had her head up from Shuford’s shoulder. She dabbed at her nose with a wilted handkerchief, looked at O’Hara from drowning brown eyes.
He held her under a neutral, speculative stare for a little. He said finally. “This Casanova build-up for Johnny doesn’t sound on the up and up to me, for one thing.”
Shuford suddenly said in a loud voice, “Inez!”
Flying pink nails seared long gouges down O’Hara’s check. Inez Dana swung the nails again, panted, “I won’t sit here and be insulted!”
Both Blane and Shuford grabbed her. She collapsed against Shuford’s chest. His small-boy face was red and angry. He said, “Louse!” in a quiet voice.
Patting a handkerchief against the red trail of Inez Dana’s nails, O’Hara observed, “It occurs to me that for a guy who was supposed to have put on a real battle with the lady, Johnny Lawton doesn’t show many scars.”
“Come on, Inez,” Detective Shuford said.
He led her into a bedroom and came out alone, shut the door. He said, “You’ve got a gut, O’Hara, to talk like that to a sweet little kid after what she’s been through. For two cents I’d have a swing at your mug, myself.”
O’Hara ignored him. “This may or may not be suicide,” he said to Inspector Blane. “I grant you don’t miss on many, Inspector, but here’s a couple of angles you might stew over before you go back to your squadroom domino game. In the first place, contrary to popular superstition, newspaper men often stay decent. Johnny had a nice wife and a swell little kid and he was nuts about them. Why would he play around?”
“It happens in the best of families,” Blane said.
“Yes, but Johnny had covered the amusement beat for five years and if he wanted to go on the make he had chances at plenty of hotter and apparently more willing numbers than this girl. There was never a whisper of anything like that. Now we’re supposed to believe he not only turned into a Casanova but that he even blew his brains out over the girl.”
Shuford grabbed O’Hara’s arm, snarled, “You accusing Miss Dana of lying?”
O’Hara lifted the hand off his arm, said mildly, “Keep your pants on, Otto.”
“I want you to know I’ve known her since she was a baby and I’ll see she doesn’t get pushed around by more than one reporter at a time.”
“And Lawton,” O’Hara said, firmly but not nastily, “was a friend of mine and I’ll see to it he doesn’t go out to the tune of scallions.”
Blane got his bulk between them, said, “All right, Boy Scouts, do your good deeds later.” To O’Hara he said, “I know the motive sounds sort of weak but the only guy could have shot Lawton was Lawton, himself. I’ve got five witnesses that nobody left by the door after the last shot.”