We were in the prowl car and headed toward downtown L.A. before it hit me. Oh, my God, I thought. Not... not Lois.
They took me downstairs in the Hall of Justice and back into the morgue. The body was covered with the usual cloth and they stood me alongside the table and peeled the cloth back.
The plainclothesman said, “Well? You know who it is?”
I felt sick. I said, “I’ve told you twenty times you've got the wrong guy. I didn’t do it.” I looked at the battered corpse again. “But I know who it is. His name was Joseph Raspberry.”
The next few hours were long ones, and lousy ones. It seemed that I answered a thousand questions a thousand times each, but finally the pressure eased off a little. About twenty of the cops I know in the department, all friends of mine, came around and they were on my side as much as they could be. Even Phil Samson, the Captain of Homicide and my best friend in L.A., climbed out of bed and roared down when word reached him. He threw his substantial weight about the place for half an hour; and I about half convinced the cops that I wouldn’t slam into a guy with my car, then leave the car out where it could be spotted.
The police story was simple enough once I got it. Calls concerning both the body lying at the side of a darkened road and the black Cadillac coupe convertible parked a mile away had come in at almost the same time, close to eleven-thirty p.m. The Cad’s right front fender was caved in, with blood and bits of hair on it. My name, of course, was on the Cad’s registration slip. The cops had looked into the trunk, too, where I keep all kinds of gadgets useful in my work, ranging from loaded grenades to an infra-red optophone, and not knowing me they’d figured I was either a master criminal or a mad scientist about to blow up the city. But that was all squared away when Samson and some of the other cops came around at Headquarters.
My story was simple enough, too: I told them exactly what I’d done all evening, except that I didn’t mention the fact that Joe had given me the tip that set me off — I had a reason — and I didn’t mention Cannon’s name, just told them I didn’t see who had slugged me and I figured it was a jealous suitor, which was true. My car obviously had been stolen and used to rub out Joe, apparently, I said, by somebody who wanted to give me trouble, and had.
It was long and wearisome, and the only break was when, at one-thirty in the morning, I sprang out of my chair and almost to the ceiling yelling “Jesus, Diane!” It had come to me in a flash that she was probably lying under the table by now, her eyes glassy. Samson was ready to leave then, so he said he’d pick her up and sec that she got home and — ha, ha — tell her I was in jail.
The upshot of it all was that I got mugged and printed, but out on bail shortly after eight a.m. Before nine I was back in my office without the thousand-dollar bill in my kick, all the morning papers spread on the desk before me, and the gripe, the anger, the fury in me feeding on itself and growing big enough to fill all Los Angeles and a substantial part of the Universe.
I had a good deal of information now, facts which satisfied me but wouldn’t last two seconds in court, even though one fact led to another and another right up to the valid conclusion. Naturally the boy I wanted was Cannon. But I had to tie him up so tight he’d never wriggle out. And I had to do it my way, do it myself, and do it fast. And for several reasons.
If I didn’t, I was probably through as a private investigator, at least in L.A. I’ve mentioned that a detective wouldn’t last six months without his informants and stools. The guys in and around the rackets would know by now that Joe had tipped me, and that Joe had been given the canary treatment. I knew that right now in the “underworld” of Los Angeles, the word was spreading, the rumble was going from bar to backroom to poker game to horse parlor: “They got Scott’s canary.” And the unspoken question would be, what was I going to do about it.
One of the things demanded of the guy tipped, is that he protect or cover for the tipster; canaries stop singing when it isn’t profitable. If I sat still, most of my tips and leaks would slow and eventually stop. I could have told the cops what I thought and let them pick up Cannon and his chums, question them, and with nothing solid against them let them go — whereupon Cannon would sit back and laugh at me, and so would the rest of the hoods and hooligans. No, I had to get him myself, and get him good.
There was more reason, too. I looked at the newspapers on my desk. Only one of them had the story headlined, but all of them had something about it on the front page. The stories merely said I was being questioned — I’d still been in the can when the reporters got the word — but they all had my name spelled correctly. Too many people would automatically figure me for the hit and run, even though my friends would know better. Most newspaper readers never see the “alleged” and “authoritative source” and “suspicion of.” They take the conjectures as facts and you’re hung on the newspaper’s banner. I was. A year from now a lot of people hearing the name Shell Scott would say, “Yeah, he run over that little guy.”
My office phone rang and I grabbed it, feeling like biting off the mouthpiece. It was Jules Osborne.
“Mr. Scott? What’s happened? Have you seen the papers? Diane phoned me last night, she was drunk, it was terrible. And I don't know what — this is—”
“Don’t get giddy. And yeah, I’ve seen the papers. What the hell do you want?”
“Why, I...” he sputtered a little. “Naturally I was concerned. I...”
“Look, Mr. Osborne. I’ve had a trying night. I know what I’m doing, and I’m getting close to what you want. Just relax for a while and read the papers.”
I listened to him chatter for a bit, then I said, “No, I didn’t mention you to the cops — I won’t. Nobody knows a thing. And I won’t put a word on paper, no reports or anything.”
“But Diane — she’s all upset. What—”
“I’ll talk to Diane. I’ll chew her ear off. She won’t bother you. Goodbye.” I hung up. I just didn’t feel easy going.
And I was pooped. I’d had only about an hour and a half of sleep — not including the two short periods at the Zephyr Room and behind the wheel of my Cad, which didn’t count. My jaw hurt, my right eye was damn near closed, and I was wandering around in broad daylight in that stupid tuxedo. My Cad was being gone over by the lab boys and I wouldn’t get it back till this afternoon, so I left the office, flagged a cab, and told the driver to take me out to Hollywood and the Spartan Apartment Hotel.
Diane’s house wasn’t out of the way, so I had the driver wait while I went to her door and rang. It took her so long to get to the door and open it that I’d almost decided she wasn’t home. But finally dragging feet came unsteadily through the front room, the door opened, and a strand of red hair and one bloodshot blue eye peered out at me. There were no glad cries this morning.
“Oh,” she said. “You.”
“Me. I dropped by to tell you I’m sorry about last night.”
“You're sorry!”
“Samson pick you up?”
“That old man?”
“He’s not so old.”
“That's what you think.”
What I thought was that Samson, a happily married man who never looked at another woman unless she was about to be booked, must have had one hell of a time with this little tomato. But I said, “And I wanted to ask you to lay off Osborne. Every time you yak at him he yaks at me and I’ve got no time for yakking. I’ll get your pretties back.”
“Oh, foo,” she said, then told me without humor what I could do with her pretties. She wasn’t very gay this morning, either. I left.
After a shower and change to a gabardine suit, complete with gun and holster, I phoned Lois at her apartment. No answer. I went back into downtown L.A., into the back rooms again, the smelly bars, and the horse parlors. I hit hotels and rooming houses, and I spent six hours and four hundred dollars, and sometimes I was a little brutal, but I was in a hurry. I got what I was after. Like the dope from Slip Kelly, for one thing.