“Describe him,” Truax ordered.
“A black-haired zoot-suiter, the creep. He hit me. Then he ran off that way.”
She pointed away from the building. At a nod from his partner, Riggs took off in pursuit. I started to follow him, but Truax blocked my way.
“They’ll be coming from the club,” he said. “Buy us some time.”
“Yes, please,” Evelyn added.
I handed her my handkerchief and trotted back toward the lights. Three men had come out of the Arbor, none of whom looked thrilled about this call from danger and intrigue. I told them some guy had gotten fresh with his date, and they went back inside happy. When I rejoined the trio on the path, Beeler was in his glasses again and demanding names, ranks, and serial numbers.
Truax introduced himself as an operative of the Transcontinental Detective Agency.
“You too, Elliott?” Beeler asked me.
“Hell no,” Truax said. “How do you know Elliott?”
“He warned us about a robbery,” Evelyn told him. “Back at Nick’s Hideaway. He’d noticed your friend watching us.”
“Then he hurried along after you to make sure the real robber would have a clear field,” Truax said.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
“Wait nothing. If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have seen the whole thing. I would have nailed the guy.” He turned from me to Evelyn. “My firm was hired by your husband, Mrs. Lantrip, to keep an eye on you.”
Things were getting darker fast. I said, “Lantrip knew someone would try for the necklace?”
Truax looked pained by something. My naivete, as it turned out.
Evelyn said, “He wasn’t worried about theft, Mr. Elliott. He was worried about infidelity. With good reason.”
“Shut up,” Beeler said in a tone that made me sorry he’d found his glasses.
“Go to hell, David. I’m sick of this masquerade. And I’m not getting stuck for the price of that tramp’s jewelry.”
Truax, who was faster than me on the uptake, said, “You’re not Evelyn Lantrip?”
“No. My name is Marion Hale. I’m Guy Alexiou’s assistant.”
Finally, a name I could place. Alexiou was maybe the hottest director in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s current stable.
The woman with my pocket linen to her lip said, “Mrs. Lantrip met Alexiou when she was catting around out here last year. They’ve been trading love notes ever since. She knew her husband had hired Transcontinental to chaperone this year’s fling, but she also knew you only had her description to work with. I happen to fit that description, too. So she and Guy worked out a switch.”
That explained the secret smile she and Beeler had exchanged after my warning. I’d let them know the plan was working.
“While you’ve been traipsing around behind us,” Hale concluded, “Lantrip and Guy have been over in Malibu, going at it like rabbits.”
“Shut up,” Beeler said again.
He made up for being late with the line by shaking her arm roughly. That was all the opening I needed, glasses or no glasses. Only Truax beat me to the punch, literally. He hit Beeler in the breadbasket with a movement I admired both for its efficiency and effect.
“Why did the brother here go along?” he then asked as though nothing had happened.
Hale said, “He thinks Alexiou is going to get him in at Metro. He’s been out here for years, trying to worm his way in somewhere. Guy’s playing him the way Lantrip’s playing her husband.”
Riggs trotted out of the darkness. “No sign of him, Sam. He must have had a car waiting.”
“He’s halfway to Mexico by now,” Hale said. We all looked at her, even the stooping Beeler, so she explained. “He had an accent.”
That rang a bell. And Hale’s earlier reference to a zoot-suiter finally registered. But Truax still had the floor.
“How did he lure you away from the lights?”
Beeler wasn’t up to speaking, so Hale answered. “He met us on the club’s front steps. Gave us a song and dance about how there’d been a big fight and a newspaper photographer was inside snapping away. I couldn’t afford to have my picture taken as Evelyn Lantrip. The guy told us this path was a shortcut to a taxi stand. He followed us and pulled a gun.”
The Transcontinental man worked through it aloud. “He can’t have known the next party coming up that path would have a small fortune around her neck, any more than he knew that Elliott would come along to cover his back. He must be having the luckiest night of his life.”
I was good and sick by then of playing the fall guy. “His luck’s run out,” I said. “If we move fast, we’ve got him.”
“We?” Truax said.
“Sure. It’ll make a great ending for your report to Kansas City.”
7.
I took off for the bougainvillea tunnel, ignoring the group’s questions until we were passing the Arbor’s front door. Then I said to Hale, “You can wait inside. Or they’ll call you a cab.”
“What about Beeler?” Truax asked.
“He goes with us,” I said.
“The hell I will,” Beeler said.
Riggs, who was supporting Beeler at the elbow, stole his boss’s line: “Relax.”
Hale said, “I’m going, too. I want to see how this ends.”
I liked her for that and said okay. Truax wasn’t liking much about the setup, but he didn’t voice his objections until we were all squeezed into their coupe, Beeler and his nurse in the backseat and Hale between Truax and me in the front.
“Why Beeler?” he demanded then.
“Who picked the Arbor as your next port of call?” I asked Hale.
“David did. He said it was part of the circuit his sister liked to make.”
“It is,” Beeler said.
“And how did the gunman know you couldn’t afford to be photographed as Lantrip? That fairy story was especially designed to scare a woman in disguise. Nothing happened tonight by chance; everything’s been planned out. That’s why Beeler.”
“You’re forgetting your part,” Truax said. “They couldn’t know you’d blunder in. But if you’re right about Beeler being involved, then the robber had to have known his mark was being tailed. No gunman would waylay the lady if he knew she had a private cop in tow.”
It was a great objection. Either Beeler was an innocent party and the robbery was a lucky fluke or Beeler was a mastermind who’d set up a robbery that couldn’t work unless I happened along. Luckily, I’d seen a third way.
“Remember the guy with the unlit cigarette we scared when we charged out of the jungle? He was part of the scheme. All he had to do was ask you for a light and you’d be off camera long enough for the thing to work. Only I slowed you up instead. By the time you finally showed, Miss Hale had screamed and the jig was up. So the accomplice took off.”
I’d been giving Truax driving directions in small chunks, the same way I’d been passing on my brilliant solution. I knew that once I told all, it would be back to the chorus for me. Eventually, though, we arrived at Nick’s Hideaway.
“Why here?” Truax asked.
I told them then about seeing the watchful youngster in the dated suit and got the demotion I’d expected. Truax told Hale to stay in the car, she told him to tell it to the Marines, and we all five went in. Though the music was still playing, no one greeted us. I showed them the door marked Private. Truax tried its knob very quietly, then drew his gun and kicked the door in with the same economy of motion he’d earlier used on Beeler.
If Guy Alexiou had been directing the scene, the little tableau that greeted us couldn’t have been any more perfect. The gunman with the accent and the dated wardrobe was standing next to the room’s center of light: a big desk trimmed out in brass studs. Seated behind the desk was Nick Sebastian. Between his fat hands stretched a long strand of green beads.