Hanley stood quietly, looking at the woman, saying nothing. She came towards him quickly, staggering slightly, more than a little drunk. Her arms went up and around his neck and she pressed herself against him, the planes of her body groping like fingers against Hanley’s unyielding flesh.
“God, but you startled me,” she said. “Coming in like that without making a sound. I didn’t even know you were in the living room, until I heard you cough.”
Hanley smelled the perfume that was like a cloud around her, the heavy scent that was like the distilled fragrance of all the gardenias in the world. He raised a hand, instinctively, to touch her body, then checked himself, and pushed her away from him with the palms of both hands.
“So there’s a guy in the bedroom,” he said. “A guy in there, after all you said I meant to you.”
The woman’s voice rose again in shrill, nervous laughter.
“Are you crazy?” she asked. “A man in there! You ought to know better than that.”
“Maybe I ought to,” Hanley said, “but I don’t. I’m going to have a look at the bedroom, Clare.”
The woman turned, ran unsteadily to the bedroom door, then turned to face Hanley, her face twisted with drunken fury. “All right!” she said. “There is a man in there! Do you think I’d wait forever for you to dig up something on Mark? You think I could live on the chicken feed you’ve been giving me, you flat-footed ape?”
Hanley’s pale eyes began to darken slowly, like empty glasses filling with some blackish fluid. A muscle quivered in his cheek, but his face remained impassive.
“You didn’t mean any of it, huh?” he whispered. “You didn’t mean any of it about us, at all?”
“Of course I didn’t mean it,” she said scornfully. “Oh, you were mildly interesting at first — the big, strong, silent man — but I’m sick of slumming. Now get out! I’m going into the bedroom, and I’d advise you not to come after me. And if you don’t get the hell out of here, right away, I’ll call the cops. Real cops, and not a cheap, grafting private eye.”
Clare Ibberson turned, went into the bedroom, and slammed the door behind her.
When she had gone, Hanley moved swiftly. He went to an ash tray that was heaped high with cigarette stubs, all of which bore traces of the bright coral lipstick that Clare Ibberson wore. He scooped up a score of the stubs with his gloved hands, dumped them into an overcoat pocket. He took a half-emptied bottle of bourbon from a coffee table, corked it, and put it into another pocket. On a sofa, he found a black suede glove and a handkerchief that reeked of Clare’s heavy perfume, and he tucked the glove and the handkerchief away in an inside pocket. Finally, he took out a handkerchief of his own, wrapped it carefully around a glass that was standing on the coffee table. The rim of the glass was smudged heavily with the bright lipstick, the oily cosmetic forming an almost perfect print of the woman’s lips.
Ten minutes later Hanley was in the neat living room of Mark Ibberson’s apartment. Working with methodical speed, he transferred the cigarette stubs from his pocket to a clean ash tray stand near the living room sofa. He wadded up the perfume-soaked handkerchief, stuffed it behind a cushion on the sofa and tossed the suede glove on the floor. He put the bourbon bottle on Ibberson’s coffee table, unwrapped the lipstick-stained glass and placed it beside the bottle. When he had finished, he walked to the telephone in the corner of the room, called police headquarters and asked to speak to Lieutenant Mike Baker, in Homicide.
“Emmet Hanley speaking, Mike,” he said, when he heard the familiar voice at the other end of the wire. “I just walked into the apartment of a guy named Mark Ibberson, and found him dead.” He gave Baker the address of the apartment house in a matter-of-fact voice. “I hate to lose a client, but I think it was Ibberson’s wife that knocked him off, and she’s a client of my agency. A drunken babe with a bad past record, and she’s left clues all over the place.
“The gun? Yeah, it’s here, Mike. I don’t think you’ll find any prints on it, though, because the lady was wearing gloves. I know, because she left one of ’em here, on the floor. Sure, I’ll stay here, Mike. I’ll stay right here till you arrive.”
He hung up, and then walked across the room and pushed open the bedroom door. Mark Ibberson lay on his back on the bed, his pale face serene in death. Hanley stood looking down at the body for a moment, and then let out an involuntary cry of astonishment as he saw that the black automatic was missing from the dead man’s hand.
He heard a sound behind him, whirled, and saw Spinelli standing in the bedroom door. There was a dried crust of blood over his half-closed right eye, and blood still seeped from his gashed and swollen lips. In one hand Spinelli carried the suicide weapon, and in the other he held the suicide note that had lain on the bed table when Hanley had first entered the apartment, forty minutes before.
“I figured you were lying when you said Ibberson was out,” Spinelli said thickly. “I figured something was wrong, and that you’d go tell Clare. So when I come out of the ether in that alley, I headed for here and found the guy dead, a suicide — just like you found him when you were in here before. You’d be kind of in the soup, wouldn’t you, if they didn’t find no gun, and no suicide note, and people knew you’d been here?”
Hanley’s eyes came up to meet Spinelli’s. For a moment he had known fear, and then the sickness of defeat. But now he felt only numbed. He was suddenly very tired; almost too tired to stand.
“Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it,” he said wearily. “The cops are on their way here.”
“I heard you call ’em,” Spinelli said. “After I come in here and got the note and the gun, I hung around outside, trying to figure out my next move. When I seen you come in here, I followed. I was in the hall, while you was planting the evidence.”
“You punk,” Hanley said. “You’re queering me good, aren’t you?”
Spinelli suddenly shook the paper in his hand, spitting out blood and excited words. “Boy, what a setup! The poor guy even puts it in his note that it’s her gun. One she’s got a license for, and that he took with him when they split up. Only she didn’t know he took it. The poor guy loved her so much he apologizes for swiping her gun, and says he was too tired to look for one some place else.”
“You punk,” Hanley said again. Spinelli laughed. “Brother, when you swear you didn’t have breakfast with her, and when they find out it’s her roscoe, Clare won’t have an alibi in the world.”
Hanley stood staring at Spinelli, saying nothing.
Spinelli ran his tongue across his crushed lips slowly, and then he shrugged and his gloved hand made a small movement. The automatic hit the floor and skidded across it to Hanley’s feet.
Hanley’s jaw sagged in amazement, and his tired eyes widened as he watched Spinelli fold the suicide note and put it into his pocket, his face twisted into a painful grin.
“I guess I oughta blast you for working me over the way you did,” Spinelli said. “But that wouldn’t pay no hospital bills. I’ll settle for making you pay for getting me a new face.” He glanced toward the dead man. “I know why you want to frame her, but I don’t give a damn. All I know is I want to see that bitch get what’s coming to her. She killed Ibberson, just as much as if she’d pulled the trigger herself. She’s the worst kind of bitch there is. Somebody’s got to stop her, and it might as well be us.”
Hanley sat down on a chair, his big body trembling and weakened.