He said: “Yeah? Let’s go after the guy.”
“I don’t think you’ll like it.”
He sat up. “Can the double-talk.”
“You really want to know who it is?”
“Don’t be a dope,” he snapped. “Sure I want to know.”
“All right, don’t get sore. It’s you.” I hope Miss Post will forgive me — I pointed.
He looked at me for a minute, his eyes narrowing. “Fowler, you’re nuts! D’ya think I laid out two hundred fish to have you tell me I killed Maxine? Hell, if I’d done it, don’t you think I’d know it?”
“But would you admit it?”
“I damned sure wouldn’t hire a shamus to prove I had!” he barked.
“Now that’s how I figure it,” I admitted, haively. “But what about the letter?”
“What letter?”
“A letter you wrote to Maxine when she married Burke. You said you’d get both of them.”
He leaned back against the head of the bed and smoked. “Fowler, you’ve been a con. You ought to know how it feels to be in lock-up and see your dame go for another guy. I was sore then, sure. I sneaked a letter out, and I guess I did say a lot of damn fool things. But it was strictly wind.”
“Good enough,” I conceded. “But what if the letter turns up in some of Maxine’s effects? Can you make the cops believe it was wind?”
Clark’s reaction was surly. “What is this — a shakedown?”
“What do you mean — shakedown?”
He sat up and snarled at me. “If you want to sell me the letter, why don’t you say so?”
I shook my head. “Clark, I think you’d better get yourself another boy. This is no dice.”
He grabbed my shirt front and rattled me around in the chair. “No dice!” he roared. “I’m the guy who’ll say when it’s no dice! Now get this, Fowler — you took on a job you’re damned well going to finish. You can write your own ticket for dough. All I want is the guy who killed her!”
“I’ll find your killer,” I told him, when he let go of me. “And I hope it turns out to be Joe Louis!”
He laughed and went back to his game.
I straightened my tie, picked my hat off the floor and went home. How I loved that man!
The next morning, Sammy Hillman dropped in on me. I knew his visit wasn’t purely social. He wasn’t in any hurry, so I pushed him a little. “By the way, what are you selling these days? The Annual Police Benefit doesn’t happen for months yet. What’s the pitch, Sammy?”
He smiled. “I’ve got another sideline. It isn’t much, but it takes up the slack between murders.”
“Vacuum cleaners, insurance?”
He shook his head. “Candid camera stuff. I’ve been experimenting with infra-red night photography. It’s amazing what you get. No light shows, the subject never knows a picture has been taken.”
I knew this was no good. He wasn’t passing the time of day. “Yeah,” I said, “I can see where that’d be quite a hobby.”
He smiled again and dug in his pocket for an envelope which he handed me. “Here’s a couple of shots I got last night with an automatic rig.”
There were three prints, to be exact. I recognized the setting at once — the guest room window of Maxine’s house. One picture showed Wally Burke climbing in, the other was me, ditto, and the final one was of Burke and me climbing out. The prints were stamped with the time the film was exposed.
I returned them to Sammy. “A very nice likeness.”
The envelope went back in his pocket. He continued to smile. He was enjoying this a lot more than I was.
“I don’t suppose you would object to telling me what you two gentlemen were after?” he asked.
“Not at all, Sammy. Just a second.” I pulled Maxine’s diary out of my writing desk drawer and handed it to him. “Here it is.”
His face fell a little. It was too easy. He scanned a couple pages of the diary. “What was there in it for you?” he asked.
“What difference does it make? You’ve got the book.”
He was very patient with me. “It makes a lot of difference, Marty. If I’ve got to catch a murderer, I’d just as soon it wasn’t you.”
“Who’s been murdered?” I asked.
“Maxine Keyes,” he said quietly.
“How do you figure?”
Sammy puffed, marched his cigar from one side of his mouth over to the other. “Simple. Where she landed, there was plenty of loose dirt. She lit face down. If she’d been alive at the time, she’d have snuffed up a lot of dust. There wasn’t any in her nasal passages.”
“So it’s murder. Well, what d’you know?”
“Of course, you’re surprised as hell. You only wanted that prop gin bottle for a souvenir, I recall. And now the diary. Was it the same thing?”
This wasn’t funny. I couldn’t tell him the truth — that I burglarized Maxine’s house looking for a letter in which a client of mine threatened her life. And it wasn’t going to be easy to convince him I had been after her diary in the spirit of Hallowe’en.
“All right, Sammy. You win,” I said. “You’re going to give me hell for this, but I might as well get it over. I was on the level when I said I wanted the bottle for a souvenir — just a goofy idea. But when I got home, I noticed something we’d both missed. It was bone dry! I was afraid you’d bounce the bottle off my nut, unless I could find something else to back me up when I hollered murder. So that’s what I was up to last night. I found her diary, but I’m just as glad I can turn it over to you.”
Sammy looked blank for a minute. “O.K., Junior G Man,” he growled. “I’ll buy it. But I’ll take it from here, if it’s all right with you.”
I made a date with Marion for Maxine’s funeral. Shortly after twelve, I picked her up and we drove down to the Hollywood Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard. The services were being held in the chapel.
As far as I was concerned, Maxine’s funeral was a waste of time. The flowers were pretty, Maxine made a lovely corpse, the music was moving, and, I thought, the eulogy was just corny enough to give the girl a last laugh before they covered her.
Marion identified the principal mourners for me but I was too thick to make anything of it. Except for one thing — Wally Burke was not among those present.
I wanted to have another talk with this Burke, so after we’d done all the public grieving we could for Maxine, I asked Marion if she would mind riding out to his place with me. The idea was, she knew where he lived. Besides, keeping Marion around for the rest of the afternoon wasn’t exactly unpleasant. She wasn’t my type — too pure. But I could dream.
Burke lived in one of those white ranch house mock-ups like no ranch outside San Fernando Valley. But it was all right, if you like that sort of thing — nice lawn, trees, and pansy beds beside the walk.
Marion and I couldn’t raise anyone inside. In the back yard, a dog barked and was answered by several hounds in the neighborhood.
So it wouldn’t be a total loss, I walked around to see Burke’s dog. He was a big, rust-colored collie. He knew Marion at once and jumped around, inviting us in. While Marion was mauling his ruff, I noticed his water pan was turned over. So I bought him a drink. He slurped it dry in twenty seconds Mex and woofed for more. It had been a long time between drinks. He acted hungry, too. I scouted the porch to see what I could find for him.
The back door was unlocked. I asked Marion if she thought it would be O.K. if we raided Burke’s ice-box — for the mutt, of course. She thought so, and while she was poking around in the frigidaire, I helped myself to the rest of the house. I got my money’s worth.
I found Mr. Burke hanging around in his closet — by his neck. He was wearing white silk pajamas, and his little blue toesies dangled a few inches off the floor. A small stool was kicked over behind him. He’d been there long enough.