He stretched his hand toward the phone and then didn’t complete the gesture. He said dully, “Hell, Fred took my order and he’s gone off shift.”
“Conveniently,” O’Hara sneered. “So we’ll get hold of Inspector Blane and then we’ll go out to see Davenport.”
Picking up the phone, keeping a sharp eye on Kerr as he dialed, O’Hara got the police department, asked for the homicide squad. Somebody at the homicide squad told him Blane was out eating and they didn’t know where but he’d be back before long.
O’Hara said, “Thanks, I’ll call him later,” and broke the connection but didn’t put the phone down. He said, “I’ve stuck to this Lawton thing, Kerr, because Johnny was a fellow news-hound and I felt sorry for him and his family to have him go out tabbed as a woman-crazy suicide. If I can fix it so you’ll hang for that, swell and we’ll call it quits. But there’s something else. A young lady pal that came out here with me earlier is very peculiarly missing. If there’s something sour about that and you’re tangled up with it, that’s personal and they’ll have to nurse you back to health in order to hang you.”
Kerr said blankly, “I tell you, O’Hara, you’re on the wrong foot all the way through.”
“We’ll see.”
O’Hara dialed the Tribune, got the operator. He said, “This is O’Hara, Miss Cuddebach. Any calls for me?”
“Just a minute, Mr. O’Hara.” When she came back on the line, she said, “A Mr. Daffelbaum called. He wants to know if you’ll fix a traffic tag for him.”
“The next time he calls, say that I won’t. Anything else?”
“Miss Ames has called twice, wanting to know if you’d called.”
O’Hara’s face lost some of its grimness. He said, “Tell her I have.”
“If she calls again, where shall I tell her you are?”
“Tell her I’m going to call on a guy named Davenport. And thanks, Miss Cuddebach.”
He hung up, said to Kerr, “The girl friend’s O.K. and that makes you lucky. Climb under your bonnet and let’s go.” Kerr, shrugging, stood up and got his hat from a rack in the corner. O’Hara slipped the snub-barreled .32 out of his pocket, showed it briefly.
He said, “You’ll drive us in your car. And don’t try any fast ones. I won’t hesitate to shoot your knees out from under you.”
Kerr looked at the gun, got a little of his impersonal amusement back. He said, “My gun? Oke, O’Hara, I’ll try no fast ones.”
Kerr turned the streamlined nose of his big car down a winding, tree-bordered drive in the Brentwood Hills district. He said, “I’m not sure. I think it’s somewhere down here our councilman lives.”
“It is,” O’Hara said. “Fourth house on the right.”
The house, of Georgian architecture, wasn’t large as houses in that neighborhood went but it was elegant and spic and span in back of a white picket fence. There were lights on behind drawn shades, a porch light that shone amber in a decorative hanging lantern. When Kerr eased the car to the curb, O’Hara stepped out, stood beside the door with his hand against the butt of the gun in his pocket until Kerr climbed out. Kerr hadn’t argued, had hardly spoken since they’d left the Barcelona.
They went through a white gate, up a brick walk to the porch. O’Hara dug his left thumb into the bell-push. He rang three times and after the third ring footsteps inside came toward the door.
O’Hara had expected to see the face of a maid, perhaps of a butler. The house was staffed with servants, he knew; instead, when the door eased back, he found himself looking at the ruddy countenance of Councilman Davenport. Only now it was not quite so ruddy, not so jovial or friendly.
Davenport looked surprised and shaken but he managed to say, “Well, well, O’Hara.”
“You only think it’s well, Councilman,” O’Hara said. “I’ve just finished talking with Kerr and now I’d like to come in and go on from there with you.”
Davenport still blocked the doorway. He began to stammer, “No, O’Hara, n-not now. Later, if you d-don’t mind.”
While Davenport was choking on words, O’Hara motioned Kerr in ahead, stepped in on his heels. The hallway was square, big, furnished in softly polished maple.
There was a phone in a niche and O’Hara said, “I’ll use your phone first, thanks.”
He got the .32 out, backed to the phone and kept an eye on both Kerr and Davenport while he lifted the phone from its cradle with his left hand, used the index finger of his left hand to pick out the letters and numerals of the police department number on the dial.
Kerr leaned, dark and unsmiling, against the wall and Davenport shambled down the hall, didn’t bother to close the door.
He quavered, “What is this, O’Hara? What are you doing? How dare you break into my home in this manner?”
“I’m calling Inspector Blane at the moment,” O’Hara said. “If, when he gets out here, you still think you’ve got a case of trespass against me, he’ll know what to do about it.”
He dialed the last number and Inez Dana’s voice said from behind curtains at an archway, “Put that phone down, O’Hara! And your gun!”
O’Hara couldn’t see her. He could see the shiny muzzle of a revolver poking rigidly from a gap in the curtains but he couldn’t tell whether she’d be to the right or the left of the muzzle.
His left hand slowly dropped the phone back into its cradle and his right hand lowered, let the gun fall out of his fingers. It bounced off a throw rug onto wide, waxed boards and made an ugly scratch on the polished surface.
Inez Dana stepped out from behind the curtains. Her eyes were wicked, almost jet black. Her gun swung so that she could cover the three men in a general way.
“You just wouldn’t stay out of it, O’Hara,” she said nastily. “Now get in here, all three of you.”
She backed out into the hall so that she could command the doorway and the three men and motioned at them with the gun.
O’Hara said jeeringly to Kerr, “Does it or doesn’t it look as though little Inez meant to double-cross you and go south with the Davenport dough?”
“You’re wrong, O’Hara, but I’d still like to get my hands on her,” Kerr said softly.
“Get in that room,” Inez Dana said through her teeth.
Davenport and Kerr moved, went past the curtains. O’Hara went in after them with Inez Dana’s gun in the middle of his back.
The room, a long living-room, was mellowly lit by floor lamps. In a chair under one floor lamp Joe Rockley sat, his pink face smiling and his fluffy hair golden in the radiance of the lamp. A table beside his chair held a whiskey bottle, a siphon. Rockley was building himself a highball and he interrupted his task to nod genially at O’Hara.
“I didn’t get here much ahead of you, at that,” he said. “Just soon enough to have my wildcat friend here all primed to greet you. Ain’t she a honey with a gun? I wish I could handle one like she does but they give me the jitters. I do better with my brain.”
O’Hara swore back of his teeth, said, “Rock, you’re a louse. I wouldn’t have guessed you in this.”
Rockley stayed cheerful. “You guessed plenty, Ken. So much that we’ve got to get our dough and shake the dust of this City of the Angels off our hoofs in a hurry. Councilman, we’ve mentioned fifty grand and it was supposed to be ready tonight. Suppose you turn it over and we’ll be on our way.”
Davenport rocked uncertainly from one foot to another, said, “I... it’s in the safe in my study upstairs. I’ll have to get it.”
“Then get it,” Inez Dana said with ice in her voice.
With the look of a beaten dog about him, Davenport turned and went out of the room. For two minutes O’Hara stood, looking at nobody, his eyes turned inward, his face abstracted and sour. Finally he said, “Rock, I repeat that you’re a louse but you’re a clever louse. How did you do it?”