I looked at his nasty, fat face across the desk, and the pressure was back in my chest.
“Why not come to the point, Lieutenant?”
“Sure. He’s dead — Richert is. Someone smoked him in a room over on the east side. Crummy dump where he’d holed in.”
I stared at him, and my mind was as numb as a blank can be. After a while, I said, “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Murder never does. Not in the end.”
“Who would want him dead?”
“Hal Decker would.”
I laughed caustically. “Use your head, Lieutenant. Decker’s an ordinary guy, a little guy. He doesn’t have hired hoods to bump off an unfriendly witness for him.”
“He’s got you.”
“I’m a lawyer, not a torpedo.”
“He’s got the dame — the one who took a story to the D.A. — the Henderson dame.”
“So you’ve heard about her.”
“Like I said, I hear a lot of things.”
I massaged my forehead trying to muscle my thoughts into some kind of pattern, but it wasn’t any good. They kept right on milling around in confusion.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t expect you to believe it, but I’ve never been close to Richert. Not even within shooting distance. And I’d stake my life that Wanda Henderson hasn’t, either. There’s no reason to think she’d have been able to locate him. Damn it, there’s just no one loose who wanted him dead, no one who gave a damn about his testimony against Decker.”
Shivers’ lips twisted with sour sarcasm. “Maybe you think the D.A. bumped his own witness. Maybe that makes sense to you.”
“No. That makes no sense, either. Not a damned thing about this makes sense.”
Surging up onto his little feet, he said, “One thing makes sense, counselor. Whoever killed Richert, it’s my job to find him. That makes all the sense I got any use for. You think I’m an unpleasant guy, and probably I am, but you haven’t seen anything yet. Believe me, you haven’t begun to see how unpleasant I can be.” He turned and went over to the door, and turned back again. “Be seeing you, counselor,” he said.
He went out across the reception office, and I heard his thin, dry voice directed at Kitty from the vicinity of the hall door, “It’s not that you aren’t good looking, sister. It’s just that I’m too old.”
Kitty came in and sat down on my desk. “You hear what he said? I thought it was very considerate of him. Restored my confidence.”
“Well,” I said bitterly, “he didn’t say anything to restore my confidence.”
She put fingers under my chin and tipped my face up. “I know. Just when you’re beginning to look human, too. You look much better without the fat lips, Sol.”
Her voice was light, but her eyes were clouded. I got the idea that she might be concerned.
“You been listening at the door again?” I said.
“Of course. Naturally.” Her eyes were lifted to the window behind me. “We’ve been loafing too hard, Sol. We ought to go somewhere on a vacation.”
“Together, honey? That’s a very interesting idea that I may remind you of later.” I stood up and moved around the desk. “Right now I’ve got a date with another gal. You have Wanda Henderson’s address?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’m going out there.”
“Look, hero, a lawyer’s supposed to see his clients in his office. He doesn’t run around knocking on doors like a census-taker. Damn it, do you have to go looking for trouble?”
“I’m not looking for trouble, honey. I’m looking for a way out of it. In case you haven’t noticed, trouble’s all around me. I’m buried in it, right up to my neck.”
She slipped off the desk. “Sure you’re in trouble. You know why? Because the area’s swarming with dames. Scratch a dame, you always uncover trouble. I knew you were out of your depth, Sonny, the minute that red-head showed up here yesterday. Then, as if a red-head wasn’t enough, you had to go get involved with a platinum blond, with round heels, no less. This case starts out as a nice, simple frame for murder, and all of a sudden it develops female trouble.”
I grinned. “You haven’t credited all the cast. There’s a black-headed doll, too. Her name’s Alma Stark.”
“The great man’s wife? How does she figure?”
“I don’t know how she figures, but she’s got a black eye. A dame with a black eye must have been into something.”
Kitty, eased up close and tapped me on the chest with a red nail. “For your information, you still haven’t got the cast complete. There’s still another female on the stage. She’s beautiful, intelligent, and loaded with charm. Besides, you owe her three months’ salary, and she doesn’t want you dead until it’s paid. Take care, lover.”
That put us on an upbeat, and it seemed like a good place to leave us for the time being, so I got the address and went downstairs to my car. After cutting across town for about twenty minutes, I came to the address Kitty had given me. This was another walkup, but Wanda Henderson lived on the second floor instead of the third, and I was feeling better than I had felt yesterday, what with the rapid healing of my bruises and the growing affection for Kitty Troop. Even with Wiley Shivers in the background, my mental state was reasonably bright as I knocked on Wanda’s door.
The door was a little off the latch and swung inward away from my knuckles. Through the crack between door and jamb, I could see a kind of dull, red stain on the worn carpet of the room. Having been made susceptible to suggestion by recent experience, I thought at first that it was blood, but then I saw that it wasn’t blood at all. It was hair.
I pushed the door open farther and stood there looking at Wanda Henderson, and I could see that she would be cold to the touch. Her arms were spread, the fingers clawed. Her red hair splashed around her head, and there were bruises on her throat. She’d been killed by hands — direct, primitive, the most brutal of all forms. At least it was a change from shooting.
I pulled the door shut very quietly, I turned, and went back downstairs to the car and drove away.
It wasn’t that I didn’t even consider calling the police. I did. It “was” my first thought. My second thought, however, was of Wiley Shivers, and I felt that anyone, even in case of murder, was justified in not calling the police, if calling them meant facing Shivers the second time in one day.
Now the whole affair was a monstrous bit of nonsense verse. Nothing whatever made any sense at all, and I was groping blindly in a maniac world that was filled with wandering women and a fine, indiscriminate slaughter of witnesses. Why? Why the impartial elimination of- the key witness on both sides? The only guy who’d figured in the business all the way was Austin Stark. All the way to the murder of Wash Richert, that is. But how could you figure Stark in the elimination of his own man? Of course, he probably had Richert’s signed statement, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same as a live guy in court putting the clincher on a frame.
Several blocks from the walkup, I stopped at a corner drug store and went inside to the phone. I dropped a dime and dialed.
“Hello, Kitty. Anyone there?”
“No. Your date over already?”
“It never even got started. Wanda had another date, in Samara.”
“What the hell you talking about, lover?”
“You don’t get it? A novel reader like you? Never mind, though. It means she’s dead.”
The wire sang between us, and after a while, she said quietly, “One of the others called in, right after you left — the platinum one.”
“Richert’s wife? What does she want?”
“She wants to talk with you. She sounded scared. She sounded scared to death. Which reminds me that I’m scared to death myself. I’ll bring all the petty cash and meet you at the bus station. We can’t afford a train.”