Mat’s words bounced back from the wall in front of him. He said vehemently, “I was at my club. I was there without a break from five until a few minutes ago.”
“You can prove it?”
“By a dozen people, Ken. Why?”
“Because a very smart try has been made tonight to ease both Atkins and Philippi out of the local picture. At seven o’clock somebody started it by knocking off Philippi’s half-brother, Sam Ticino.”
Philippi growled, “Who you kidding? Your pal killed Sam.”
“Wrong,” said O’Hara. “The kid only saw who killed Sam. He grabbed Sam’s gun and grabbed a cab, tailed whoever it was out to the Bolero. He hung around there, saw the killer leave the place with Atkins and followed them to your apartment. He got in there after Atkins had been killed and was probably trying to figure what to do next when you barged in on him and he had to scram. So he beat it back to the Bolero, which seemed to be the nerve center for the whole thing and was sapped and brought up here by Deke Hanna and Wyman.”
“By Gawd,” Philippi breathed. “Wyman—”
“That doesn’t quite hold up, either. I think his alibi on the first killing will prove out, so he couldn’t have been the one the kid was tailing, although he did have the opportunity to bump Atkins. He was out of sight with Atkins for twenty minutes, supposedly in his office, but he could have waltzed Atkins out the back way, over to your apartment and been back in that time. Only, if he didn’t do the first one, he didn’t do the second. He probably knew a lot about it — afterward — but I doubt if he was in on it. He hasn’t that kind of guts. But he’d be too afraid of Hanna to spill anything on it.”
“Ah, nuts, Vic,” said Rig, “this guy is just talking. The kid done it all right.”
“That’s not reasonable, either,” O’Hara said, his words flowing on evenly. “The kid’s college-bred and even though he might have killed Sam in self-defense, he wouldn’t have had a motive in the world to kill Atkins.”
“You know,” said Tony Ames, “that he’s really Eddie Mullen?”
O’Hara grinned a little. “I saw his scrap book at the hotel today and he’s in twenty pictures with his football squad. I tried to send you to the office to check the picture because I smelled trouble and I wanted you safely out of it.”
“You meanie, you.”
“If the kid didn’t do it,” Philippi said, “then who did?”
“There’s Rig — or Max.”
“Both of ’em were with me all evening.”
O’Hara said cheerfully, “That’s all I needed to know.” He flicked a glance at the redhead who was slumped in the chair with her eyes closed, her mouth slack. He said, “Friends, let me present a smart gal — Seena Vance.”
Out of the silence Philippi choked, “You mean Seena — you mean she killed Sam and Atkins?”
“I’ve had her on my mind for quite a little while,” O’Hara said. He kept the edge of his gaze on her, saw that her eyes were open, her mouth was firming up although she hadn’t moved otherwise. “She was Luck Hauser’s girl before she was yours and she knew the cleaners’ and dyers’ inside out. I think maybe she was tired of being the doll and figured she could be the brains, particularly with the racket getting off to a fresh start in fresh territory. But she had to ace both you and Atkins out first and there wasn’t any better way than by framing a war between you. She laid Sam’s killing at Atkins’ door and Atkins’ murder at yours. And between the cops running both mobs ragged, and both mobs gunning each other out, she’d get in.
“Sam had been shot three times in the face which made it almost certain that whoever did it was sitting in his car, waiting for him, and that he’d known and trusted whoever it was because he walked right into it. Then at the apartment tonight I suspected she wasn’t within a mile of being as plastered as she pretended. All I got on her breath was beer. She pretended I was a brand-new face to her downstairs and then up in the hall she suddenly remembered I’d been following her around for twenty-four hours. Also when she pulled the stunt that let me get away — I don’t quite get it yet why she did that — she put on a gonna-be-sick act. But she didn’t get sick which shows it was a fake because I know from experience that when you gotta go, you gotta go and you can’t change your mind.”
The redhead didn’t look very tight now, although she was still slumped loosely in the chair. She sneered, “This guy uses a swell brand of hop, Vic. I suppose I was just going to walk in and take over the town all by my little self.”
“No,” O’Hara said. “You were going to take it over with your brains and Deke Hanna’s gun. Deke had to be in on it. You’d never have got Atkins away from the Bolero alone if Deke hadn’t wanted it that way. Atkins hadn’t ridden or walked the streets without him for five years that I know of.”
O’Hara hadn’t been watching the redhead, he’d been watching Deke Hanna’s back arching, his high farmer’s shoulders twisting. It was sort of fascinating watching his slow killer’s brain working out through his muscles, his nerves that way.
So O’Hara didn’t see the redhead uncoiling like a spring from the chair, winding herself around Tony Ames, grabbing at Tony’s little gun — until the thing was done.
The redhead screamed, “Deke!”
The scream took O’Hara’s eyes involuntarily away from Hanna for no more than the fraction of a second. And when they returned, Hanna had spun away from the wall, dropping to one knee. A gun was sliding out of his coat sleeve, a short-barreled deadly little thing, and the room trembled to its thunder.
Lead tunneled through O’Hara’s coat sleeve. O’Hara’s hand began to squeeze Rig’s automatic and Tony Ames and the redhead swayed between him and Hanna. He swore, tried to sidestep, to get a clear shot before Hanna’s gun cut loose again and the women kept getting in the way.
He saw Hanna up on his feet, dodging, holding the little gun poised with a practiced coolness. Hanna danced agilely to one side, cut along by the divan, got into the clear. His gun cut down toward O’Hara and the automatic swung toward Hanna. Then Eddie Mullen rolled off the couch and gathered Hanna into his arms like an end cutting down a wide-running half-back. O’Hara thought he could hear the bones crunch as the pair of them hit the floor.
Out of the corner of his eye O’Hara saw movement at the wall and the gun in his hand swiveled. He said, “Drop it, Max. The party’s over and you’re just a bit too late to get into it.”
Max looked sheepish and stuck a gun back into his shoulder holster and Philippi said severely, “You damn fool, ain’t everything worked out nice for us without you trying to start trouble all over?”
O’Hara looked back at Eddie Mullen and the blond young man was beating Deke Hanna’s head enthusiastically against the floor. Tony Ames was on her feet again and the redhead was back in the chair.
O’Hara grinned, said, “Remember the unnecessary roughness ruling, Eddie. The guy’s been out for at least a minute now.”
Eddie stopped pounding Deke Hanna’s head but he didn’t get up. He said, “Say, you’re not a bad reporter yourself, Ken. I heard how you doped it out and it was just about right. I got talking to this Sam guy at the restaurant and it turned out he was a pretty good egg when he was sober so I said I was sorry about the night before and I’d like to say so to Philippi.
“So he said Philippi was in a bookie joint a couple of blocks away and we could go down and see him. The rest of it was the way you said. This guy, Hanna, brought the Atkins fellow out the back way from the Bolero and put Atkins behind the wheel of a car. Then the redhead climbed in with a gun and made Atkins drive away.