“But,” Tony said, “it does look like suicide, doesn’t it? You haven’t let me in yet on the massive ideas in your massive brain; but your own story, the one you sent in last night, said there were witnesses that heard the shot when Johnny was in the apartment alone.”
“Yeah,” O’Hara agreed heavily, “it does look like suicide — pat. And when a thing looks so much like something, I begin wondering if maybe it isn’t something else. Anyway, I’m poking around.” The oyster cocktail had arrived and he went into it, talked through a mouthful. “Rurt ow see ris—”
“Manners, old thing, manners.”
O’Hara swallowed, said, “I went out to see Mrs. Lawton today to find if she knew whether Johnny had been working on anything hot. Incidentally, she didn’t. It seems she doesn’t know much about the newspaper racket and Johnny didn’t bother to talk shop at home. And say, that kid of theirs is swell. If I ever give in and marry you, I hope we have fourteen just like him.”
“In that case, I’m calling our deal off.”
“Sissy.” O’Hara grinned. “Anyway, my visit out there confirmed my notions along one line. Johnny wasn’t a chaser by nature and he was happy at home. His wife was twice as good-looking as Inez and they were in love. So he’d have had no sane reason to make a play for la Dana. Therefore her story, at least part of it, is a phony and when part of something is baloney you’re apt to find it’s all sausage. Then there’s the fake stick-up.”
“Where does that come in?”
“Somebody thought I had something I shouldn’t have.”
“As for instance?”
“I don’t know but I can use my imagination. Last night while I was fiddling around in Dana’s apartment, Shuford got the idea I’d snitched something out of Lawton’s papers and made a big blab about it. I hadn’t touched them and, as a matter of fact, when I went over them with Blane today there wasn’t anything interesting in them. But somebody might have thought there was and thought that I’d picked it up. He, or she, wasn’t taking any chances so a couple of hooligans were sent after me.”
“It must have been somebody who was there at that moment, then.”
“You catch on quick.” He ticked off names on his fingers. “There were Manager Kerr, Detective Shuford, Inspector Blane, a uniformed cop, Councilman Davenport, and a photographer. And I’m not forgetting Inez Dana. She was in a bedroom with the door closed but Shuford made enough uproar so she could have heard him. I think we can eliminate Blane and the uniformed man and the photo guy. Can you stand listening while I play with possibilities?”
“I can stand anything as long as I’m being fed. Go ahead.”
“First, could it be murder? If anybody wants to bet, my dough says murder — in spite of the fact that Johnny’s gun was the rod used, that his prints were on it and that the paraffin test showed he’d fired a gun. Suppose somebody first killed Johnny with Johnny’s own gun. Then, to build up Inez Dana’s story of Johnny going berserk, another shot is fired into the wall by the door. The sound of the shots would have been pretty well covered by the swing band downstairs. After that, the gun is wiped clean and Johnny’s prints planted on it. Then Dana lams downstairs, raising cain, and comes back with a lot of witnesses to hear a final shot inside her place.”
Tony squinted a hazel gaze into space thoughtfully. “That’s just it, that shot.”
“I’ve got a couple of supposes for that. Everything that sounds like a shot isn’t necessarily a shot. Suppose there was some kind of gadget in the partment, all primed to go off at the right moment and make a noise like a shot? If that seems too gaga, how about supposing the shot hadn’t been fired in the dame’s apartment but in one next to it? The apartments are small, the walls are thin and, with everybody expecting to hear a shot inside Dana’s apartment, they would have been easily fooled.”
“Maybe,” Tony said, “but, as my civics prof used to say in discussing honesty in politics, there we get into the realm of pure speculation.”
O’Hara grunted, “You sound like Blane. I told him all this and he said the same thing, except he didn’t know the long words you use.”
“I understood the police searched all the other apartments right away.”
“That’s what they said. My guess is that everybody crowded into Dana’s place for the first few minutes. During that time somebody could have slipped down the stairs without being seen. Anyway, let’s humor me and say it was murder. Then we get onto why. What’s the most logical reason for bumping off a newspaper man? Because he knows something about somebody and he’s going to print it. That would take care of the motive angle for everybody involved. Davenport’s in politics, Kerr has a night-life background and there’s always a flavor of underworld about that, Shuford’s a copper and some cops turn the wrong corner. Or Dana might have managed it all alone although it doesn’t seem likely because, granting it was a frame, it required plenty of brains and some split-second cooperation to make it come out right.”
“But if somebody did fire an alibi shot, wouldn’t that eliminate everybody you’ve named except Dana?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Don’t forget those punks that held me up could be in on it. I don’t think they could be the brains behind it, though, because they acted like garden-variety punks to me.”
“Go on from there.”
“Personally,” O’Hara said, “I lean toward Kerr. I’ve known Otto Shuford for years and I don’t think he has either the brains or the inclination to be crooked. Councilman Davenport looks clean as a whistle, too, and I’ve checked him today from antipasto to nuts. Realtor, director in the Security National, came into politics two years ago on the reform slate. His Council record is A-l and he has a nice wife and a couple of grown sons that are going places themselves. No whispers about him any place. My guess is Kerr.”
He stopped, his eyes glumly intent, and put the finishing touches to the sea bass.
After a little he said, “Anyway, Miss Ames, my nose thinks it detects a very sour smell about the whole thing. And I’m going to keep sticking the nose into it, hoping it — not the nose — won’t blow up in my face.”
Tony said nothing in a concerned reflective way and O’Hara finally grinned. “Besides, I don’t like reporters being killed and nothing done about it. It might give people ideas.”
“Like me,” Tony said cheerfully. “When do we start?”
“We?”
“We. After all, Johnny was a friend of mine as well as yours and I think a lot of his wife and the youngster, too. So my nose gets stuck out right alongside yours.”
“I’ll think it over,” O’Hara growled.
“Don’t waste brain cells. It’s Fate. Kismet. Or maybe just a feminine whimsy. But you may as well regard it as a fact, just the same.”
O’Hara was on his pie when the front door of the Grotto opened violently, letting in the steady swish of rain on the sidewalk outside. Detective Otto Shuford stepped in, planked heavy feet down the aisle between booths. Rain drops glistened on his big black slicker, a left-over from the days of pounding a beat. He jerked his head, looking into one booth after another, and the jerks sent little sprays of water from the brim of his hat at the annoyed occupants of the booths.
His face was red and furious. He paid no attention to the discomfort he was causing.
Stopping beside O’Hara, he planted himself solidly, said in a half-choked voice, “So, you lousy ape—”
O’Hara was quiet, unwounded. “Unbend, Otto, unbend. You’ll have a stroke.”
Shuford’s voice wasn’t loud but it was bitter, came between his teeth. “Miss Dana just called me and said you, or somebody from your dirty sheet, was around trying to dig up dirt on her today. Now I’m telling you to lay off. You get it? Layoff! She’s taken enough from you news-hawks already.”