When I pulled up at my apartment house, there was a police patrol car parked in front. Some of my neighbors were probably throwing bottles, furniture, or themselves out of the windows again, I thought. That was a bum guess.
I found a cop leaning against the desk in the lobby. The clerk looked up, brightened. “Here’s Mr. Fowler now.”
The cop got off his elbows. “You Martin Fowler?”
I nodded.
“You’re under arrest.”
I turned to the flustered desk clerk. “Call Iggy Friedberg for me, Charlie. Tell him I’ve done it again.”
We went out and got in the police car. I knew I wasn’t being taken in for jumping a traffic light. I just wondered how good a case my friend Sammy Hillman had against me. It was no joke, son. They booked me for murder before I found out.
I was plenty hot when Sammy finally got around to seeing me. Sweating it out in a cell for a few hours hadn’t sweetened my ever-loving disposition a bit.
There was a room full of guys on his side. I was dropped in a chair and lighted up like the Smiling Irishman’s Comer. Hillman came out of the shadows.
“I told you I didn’t want to do this, Fowler,” he said, by way of introduction.
“What am I expected to do, apologize?”
He extended a package of cigarettes.
“Aren’t you pampering the prisoner?”
But I took one. I needed it. He lighted it for me and permitted me a couple of drags in peace, before he opened up. “We decided you were in this thing too consistently, Fowler. So we decided we ought to have a talk. Of course, you know your constitutional rights—”
“I was wondering if you boys had ditched that old scrap of paper,” I remarked.
“—but it would be a lot better if you talked,” he continued.
I laughed. “Sammy, I’m touched. The interest my friends take in my welfare.”
He let it pass. “Incidentally,” he remarked, “I imagine Friedberg is going to have a little trouble getting a writ. You’re apt to be with us for quite a time. So let’s be pleasant about it.”
“O.K. Heard any good stories lately?”
“You’d be more amusing, Fowler,” Hillman commented drily, “if you’d tell me why you killed Maxine Keyes and Wallace Burke.”
“Is that all you need to know?”
He nodded. This guy had even less sense of humor than I thought.
“All right, I’ll tell you.” I paused to set up the gag. “I murdered them because I can’t stand actors. I’m going to kill them all. Blood will run in the gutters of Hollywood — blood and greasepaint!”
Hillman wasn’t amused. That hurt. “You’re a very funny fellow,” he said.
“What’s funny about it?” I asked. “It’s the best reason I can think of for killing a couple of strange people.”
After that we had at it for more hours than I ever thought there were. But it could only end one way. Hillman’s a stubborn guy, but even he knows you can only twist the truth so far. I think he was finally convinced he had pulled a wingding — that I was innocent. Anyway, he let me go.
As I was getting into my coat, he said, “I’m sorry we had to put you through that.”
“Don’t mention it, Sammy,” I shot back at him, “just stand by for a false arrest suit that’ll curl your hair.”
Hillman shook his head sadly: “Sue me if you want, son. But you’ll have to wait your turn.”
I scorned Hillman’s free ride home and took a cab.
I paid the hack-driver, and took two steps at least before I realized I was being convoyed right past the door of the apartment house by two of Johnny Clark’s men. My client wanted to see me.
Johnny had moved from his hotel. He’d become exclusive. He was in the hills off Beverly Drive. A real estate agent would have called it a “secluded private estate”. To me it looked like a hideout.
He was waiting in the living room. I started to ask him what it was all about. His fist looked like a basketball when it exploded in my face. I seemed to remember him spitting out a name for me, but the room was moving too fast and I piled up hard against the wall and slipped to the floor.
I didn’t get up for a minute, but when I did, I came up fighting. I knew it was nuts to take on a guy this big, but I go kind of screwy when anybody hits me.
He wasn’t much of a boxer, but when he landed he made the lights dance for me. I kept running into the walls. That’s what whipped me.
I came to with a fire raging in my mouth. My tongue and lips were swollen and cracked, and someone was forcing brandy down my throat. I gagged and thought I was going to be sick. Then I saw Johnny. He’d been feeding me the brandy. His face was marked up, too. That made me feel better right away. I pushed the bottle aside with my arm and sat up.
“Nice work,” I commented. My voice sounded as if I was talking through a catcher’s mitt.
Clark smiled and wiped a trickle of blood off his upper lip. He took a slug at the brandy bottle.
I looked around the room. Three of his boys were standing by for when the boss got through with me.
Clark put down the bottle, after having offered me another drink. “For a guy your size, you’re a pretty good man,” he conceded.
I said thanks and left it up to him.
“I always figured you a smart guy, too,” he continued, “but I don’t get you trying to ease a bum rap off on me.”
I propped a cigarette between my swollen lips and got it lighted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Clark. But this is straight dope — if I knew anything to hang on you, I’d do it now.”
His eyes narrowed. “I suppose next you’ll tell me you didn’t square yourself with the cops by giving them the letter I wrote to Maxine?”
I was brave. I guess I didn’t think he’d hit a man in my condition. “Look, Clark. If the police have that letter and can prove you killed those people, they’re doing it without any help from me. But more power to them.”
Johnny snorted. “You’re a helluva detective!”
I laughed. With my mouth it hurt me more than it did him. “You’re no prize yourself. Incidentally, where are you getting all this bum dope?”
“I got a telephone call,” he explained. “Some dame said you were going to turn a letter over to the D. A. to clear yourself—”
“A dame?”
“Uh-huh.”
I got it.
“Come on, Johnny.” I grabbed his arm and dragged him to the door. “I want you to meet a lady!”
The clerk behind the desk at Marion’s apartment was a highly nervous little guy with a marcelled blond toupee. When Clark and I ground our elbows into the desk, our battle-scarred pusses upset him frightfully.
“Inform Miss Trenton she has guests,” I told him. “Mr. Clark and Mr. Fowler.”
He complied and turned to us triumphantly: “Miss Trenton says she can’t see you gentlemen right now.”
Clark reached across the desk and thumped his narrow chest with a forefinger the size of a small salami. “You call the lady back and tell her to expect us.”
We started for the elevator, but the Filipino boy slammed the doors in our face. There was nothing to do but take the stairway. Marion lived on the fourth floor. Jumping up those stairs two at a time was no casual sport for a couple of guys who kept in shape by resting one foot on a bar-rail. When we levelled off on her floor, my head felt as if I was caught between a benzedrine and a bromide. Clark wasn’t any better off. We reeled down the hallway to her apartment.
The door was slightly ajar, so we didn’t wait for an invitation. That was more than just a social error. If I hadn’t been so damned lightheaded, I don’t think I would have been sucked in. But I was, and there we were, stranded in the center of Marion’s living room. The lady herself was between us and the door with a .32 that made the idea of trying our entrance over again sort of silly.