He spoke quickly: “Listen, boss. I got a look at the guy in that Cad—”
Pale flame broke in bitter streaks from above the door of the coupe. A gun racketed between the buildings that faced each other across the street. Joey fell against Dalmas. The coupe jerked into sudden motion. Dalmas went down sidewise, onto one knee, with the driver clinging to him. He tried to reach his gun, couldn’t make it. The coupe went around the corner with a squeal of rubber, and Joey fell down Dalmas’s side and rolled over on his back on the sidewalk. He beat his hands up and down on the cement and a hoarse, anguished sound came from deep inside him.
Tires screeched again and Dalmas flung up to his feet, swept his hand to his left armpit. He relaxed as a small car skidded to a stop and Denny fell out of it, charged across the intervening space towards him.
Dalmas bent over the driver. Light from the lanterns beside the entrance to the apartment house showed blood on the front of Joey’s whipcord jacket, blood that was seeping out through the material. Joey’s eyes opened and shut like the eyes of a dying bird.
Denny said: “No use to follow that bus. Too fast.”
“Get on a phone and call an ambulance,” Dalmas said quickly. “The kid’s got a bellyful... Then take a plant on the blonde.”
The big man hurried back to his car, jumped into it, and tore off around the corner. A window went open somewhere and a man yelled down. Some cars stopped. Dalmas bend down over Joey and muttered: “Take it easy, oldtimer... Easy, boy... easy.”
7.
The homicide lieutenant’s name was Weinkassel. He had thin, blond hair, icy blue eyes, and a lot of pockmarks. He sat in a swivel chair with his feet on the edge of a pulled-out drawer and a telephone scooped close to his elbow. The room smelled of dust and cigar butts.
A man named Lonergan, a bulky dick with gray hair and a gray moustache, stood near an open window, looking out of it morosely.
Weinkassel chewed on a match, stared at Dalmas, who was across the desk from him. He said: “Better talk a bit. The hack driver can’t. You’ve had luck in this town and you wouldn’t want to run it into the ground.”
Lonergan said: “He’s hard. He won’t talk.” He didn’t turn around when he said it.
“A little less of your crap would go farther, Lonnie,” Weinkassel said in a dead voice.
Dalmas smiled faintly and rubbed the palm of his hand against the side of the desk. It made a squeaking sound.
“What would I talk about?” he asked. “It was dark and I didn’t get a flash of the man behind the gun. The car was a Cadillac coupe, without lights. I’ve told you this already, Lieutenant.”
“It don’t listen,” Weinkassel grumbled. “There’s something screwy about it. You gotta have some kind of a hunch who it could be. It’s a cinch the gun was for you.”
Dalmas said: “Why? The hack driver was hit and I wasn’t. Those lads get around a lot. One of them might be in wrong with some tough boys.”
“Like you,” Lonergan said. He went on staring out of the window.
Weinkassel frowned at Lonergan’s back and said patiently: “The car was outside while you was still inside. The hack driver was outside. If the guy with the gun had wanted him, he didn’t have to wait for you to come out.”
Dalmas spread his hands and shrugged. “You boys think I know who it was?”
“Not exactly. We think you could give us some names to check on, though. Who’d you go to see in them apartments?”
Dalmas didn’t say anything for a moment. Lonergan turned away from the window, sat on the end of the desk and swung his legs. There was a cynical grin on his flat face.
“Come through, baby,” he said cheerfully.
Dalmas tilted his chair back and put his hands into his pockets. He stared at Weinkassel speculatively, ignored the gray-haired dick as though he didn’t exist.
He said slowly: “I was there on business for a client. You can’t make me talk about that.”
Weinkassel shrugged and stared at him coldly. Then he took the chewed match out of his mouth, looked at the flattened end of it, tossed it away. “I might have a hunch your business had something to do with the shootin’,” he said grimly. “That way the hush-hush would be out. Wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe,” Dalmas said. “If that’s the way it’s going to work out. But I ought to have a chance to talk to my client.”
Weinkassel said: “Okay. You can have till the morning. Then you put your papers on the desk, see.”
Dalmas nodded and stood up. “Fair enough, Lieutenant.”
“Hush-hush is all a shamus knows,” Lonergan said roughly.
Dalmas nodded to Weinkassel and went out of the office. He walked down a bleak corridor and up steps to the lobby floor. Outside the City Hall he went down a long flight of concrete steps and across Spring Street to where a blue Packard roadster, not very new, was parked. He got into it and drove around the corner, then through the Second Street tunnel, dropped over a block, and drove out west. He watched in the mirror as he drove.
At Alvarado he went into a drugstore and called his hotel. The clerk gave him a number to call. He called it and heard Denny’s heavy voice at the other end of the line. Denny said urgently: “Where you been? I’ve got that broad out here at my place. She’s drunk. Come on out and we’ll get her to tell us what you want to know.”
Dalmas stared out through the glass of the phone booth without seeing anything. After a pause he said slowly: “The blonde? How come?”
“It’s a story, boy. Come on out and I’ll give it to you. Fifteen-fifty-four South Livesay. Know where that is?”
“I’ve got a map. I’ll find it,” Dalmas said in the same tone.
Denny told him just how to find it, at some length. At the end of the explanation he said: “Make it fast. She’s asleep now, but she might wake up and start yellin’ murder.”
Dalmas said: “Where you live, it probably wouldn’t matter much... I’ll be right out, Denny.”
He hung up and went out to his car. He got a pint bottle of bourbon out of the car pocket and took a long drink. Then he started up and drove towards Fox Hills. Twice on the way he stopped and sat still in the car, thinking. But each time he went on again.
8.
The road turned off Pico into a scattered subdivision that spread itself out over rolling hills between two golf courses. It followed the edge of one of the golf courses, separated from it by a high wire fence. There were bungalows here and there dotted about the slopes. After a while the road dipped into a hollow and there was a single bungalow in the hollow, right across the street from the golf course.
Dalmas drove past it and parked under a giant eucalyptus that etched deep shadow on the moonlit surface of the road. He got out and walked back, turned up a cement path to the bungalow. It was wide and low and had cottage windows across the front. Bushes grew halfway up the screens. There was faint light inside and the sound of a radio, turned low, came through the open windows.
A shadow moved across the screens and the front door came open. Dalmas went into a living room built across the front of the house. One small bulb burned in a lamp and the luminous dial of the radio glowed. A little moonlight came into the room.
Denny had his coat off and his sleeves rolled up on his big arms.
He said: “The broad’s still asleep. I’ll wake her up when I’ve told you how I got her here.”
Dalmas said, “Sure you weren’t tailed?”
“Not a chance.” Denny spread a big hand.
Dalmas sat down in a wicker chair in the corner, between the radio and the end of the line of windows. He put his hat on the floor, pulled out the bottle of bourbon and regarded it with a dissatisfied air. “Buy us a real drink, Denny. I’m tired as hell. Didn’t get any dinner.”