I aimed at the right rear tire, and missed. Harry came up behind me. He pushed my gun arm down before I could fire again. The convertible disappeared in the direction of the highway.
“Let her go,” he said.
“Who is she?”
He thought about it, his slow brain clicking almost audibly. “I dunno. Some pig that Nicky picked up someplace. Her name is Flossie or Florrie or something. She didn’t shoot him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You know her pretty well, do you?”
“The hell I do. I don’t mess with Nicky’s dames.” He tried to work up a rage to go with the strong words, but he didn’t have the makings. The best he could produce was petulance. “Listen, mister, why should you hang around? The guy that hired you is dead.”
“I haven’t been paid, for one thing.”
“I’ll fix that.”
He trotted across the lawn to the body and came back with an alligator billfold. It was thick with money.
“How much?”
“A hundred will do it.”
He handed me a hundred-dollar bill. “Now how about you amscray, bud, before the law gets here?”
“I need transportation.”
“Take Nicky’s car. He won’t be using it. You can park it at the airport and leave the key with the agent.”
“I can, eh?”
“Sure. I’m telling you you can.”
“Aren’t you getting a little free with your brother’s property?”
“It’s my property now, bud.” A bright thought struck him, disorganizing his face. “Incidentally, how would you like to get off of my land?”
“I’m staying, Harry. I like this place. I always say it’s people that make a place.”
The gun was still in my hand. He looked down at it.
“Get on the telephone, Harry. Call the police.”
“Who do you think you are, ordering me around? I took my last order from anybody, see?” He glanced over his shoulder at the dark and shapeless object on the gravel, and spat venomously.
“I’m a citizen, working for Nicky. Not for you.”
He changed his tune very suddenly. “How much to go to work for me?”
“Depends on the line of work.”
He manipulated the alligator wallet. “Here’s another hundred. If you got to hang around, keep the lip buttoned down about the dame, eh? Is it a deal?”
I didn’t answer, but I took the money. I put it in a separate pocket by itself. Harry telephoned the county sheriff.
He emptied the ashtrays before the sheriff’s men arrived, and stuffed the leopardskin coat into the woodbox. I sat and watched him.
We spent the next two hours with loud-mouthed deputies. They were angry with the dead man for having the kind of past that attracted bullets. They were angry with Harry for being his brother. They were secretly angry with themselves for being inexperienced and incompetent. They didn’t even uncover the leopardskin coat.
Harry Nemo left the courthouse first. I waited for him to leave, and tailed him home, on foot.
Where a leaning palm tree reared its ragged head above the pavements there was a court lined with jerry-built frame cottages. Harry turned up the walk between them and entered the first cottage. Light flashed on his face from inside. I heard a woman’s voice say something to him. Then light and sound were cut off by the closing door.
An old gabled house with boarded-up windows stood opposite the court. I crossed the street and settled down in the shadows of its veranda to watch Harry Nemo’s cottage. Three cigarettes later a tall woman in a dark hat and a light coat came out of the cottage and walked briskly to the corner and out of sight. Two cigarettes after that she reappeared at the corner on my side of the street, still walking briskly. I noticed that she had a large straw handbag under her arm. Her face was long and stony under the streetlight.
Leaving the street, she marched up the broken sidewalk to the veranda where I was leaning against the shadowed wall. The stairs groaned under her decisive footsteps. I put my hand on the gun in my pocket, and waited. With the rigid assurance of a WAC corporal marching at the head of her platoon, she crossed the veranda to me, a thin high-shouldered silhouette against the light from the corner. Her hand was in her straw bag, and the end of the bag was pointed at my stomach. Her shadowed face was a gleam of eyes, a glint of teeth.
“I wouldn’t try it if I were you,” she said. “I have a gun here, and the safety is off, and I know how to shoot it, mister.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’m not joking.” Her deep contralto rose a notch. “Rapid fire used to be my specialty. So you better take your hands out of your pockets.”
I showed her my hands, empty. Moving very quickly, she relieved my pocket of the weight of my gun, and frisked me for other weapons.
“Who are you, mister?” she said as she stepped back. “You can’t be Arturo Castola, you’re not old enough.”
“Are you a policewoman?”
“I’ll ask the questions. What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for a friend.”
“You’re a liar. You’ve been watching my house for an hour and a half. I tabbed you through the window.”
“So you went and bought yourself a gun?”
“I did. You followed Harry home. I’m Mrs. Nemo, and I want to know why.”
“Harry’s the friend I’m waiting for.”
“You’re a double liar. Harry’s afraid of you. You’re no friend of his.”
“That depends on Harry. I’m a detective.”
She snorted. “Very likely. Where’s your buzzer?”
“I’m a private detective,” I said. “I have identification in my wallet.”
“Show me. And don’t try any tricks.”
I produced my photostat. She held it up to the light from the street, and handed it back to me. “So you’re a detective. You better do something about your tailing technique. It’s obvious.”
“I didn’t know I was dealing with a cop.”
“I was a cop,” she said. “Not any more.”
“Then give me back my .38. It cost me seventy dollars.”
“First tell me, what’s your interest in my husband? Who hired you?”
“Nick, your brother-in-law. He called me in Los Angeles today, said he necked a bodyguard for a week. Didn’t Harry tell you?”
She didn’t answer.
“By the time I got to Nick, he didn’t need a bodyguard, or anything. But I thought I’d stick around and see what I could find out about his death. He was a client, after all.”
“You should pick your clients more carefully.”
“What about picking brothers-in-law?”
She shook her head stiffly. The hair that escaped from under her hat was almost white. “I’m not responsible for Nick or anything about him. Harry is my responsibility. I met him in line of duty and I straightened him out, understand? I tore him loose from Detroit and the rackets, and I brought him out here. I couldn’t cut him off from his brother entirely. But he hasn’t been in trouble since I married him. Not once.”
“Until now.”
“Harry isn’t in trouble now.”
“Not yet. Not officially.”
“What do you mean?”
“Give me my gun, and put yours down. I can’t talk into iron.”
She hesitated, a grim and anxious woman under pressure. I wondered what quirk of fate or psychology had married her to a hood, and decided it must have been love. Only love would send a woman across a dark street to face down an unknown gunman. Mrs. Nemo was horsefaced and aging and not pretty, but she had courage.