How long I stayed that way I wouldn’t know but after what felt like a couple of long nights in a row, I realized there was a faint sliver of light showing from the corridor outside. Marty had slammed the door shut in back of me when I first came in, I remembered, and now it was open. So he was either playing it awfully cute, or he’d gone. There was one sure way to find out—I fired another shot and started rolling at the same time. I rolled maybe ten feet and there was still no answering shot. Nobody could play it that cool, I figured, so I climbed onto my feet and headed toward the fractionally open front door and the light switch beside it.
In the sudden harsh illumination, the room looked like a battlefield—the huge painting face down on the floor, the plaster wall in back of it chipped and scarred. There was no sign of Marty Estell and I guessed maybe he chickened out when he realized Pete wasn’t going to be any more help at all.
I walked across to the couch, which had been slammed up against the opposite wall, and looked down at Pete. He was on his knees, his body bent forward across the couch, with his face buried in the plump cushions. Both arms were still outstretched in front of him, and the rigid fingers were half-buried in the back of the couch where they had punctured the upholstery. It was about where my face would have been if I hadn’t made that froglike leap at the last moment. Where his face was buried, the cushion was saturated with a glistening wet stain.
chapter seven
Like the song said, I didn’t know what time it was, only for different reasons. It felt like I had lived a whole lifetime in Willie Byers’ apartment already. The police routine had rolled through the whole lengthy process, from flashlight bulbs popping to the guys from the meat-wagon carrying away their grisly clients. But Lieutenant Schell still paced up and down the room like everything was still brand new and he was surprised.
“It’s like living a nightmare over again!” he stormed. “You only came into Santo Bahia yesterday—and in that little time you manage to come up with three corpses! Two homicides and one justifiable homicide—or that’s your story, without witnesses. I promise you, Boyd, if I can’t get you into the gas chamber, I’m going to see you locked away for a minimum of two thousand years! I’m going to—”
“Promises, promises!” I snarled at him. “It was your idea in the first place bringing me back here, remember? You were the smart one who had it all figured out—and what happened to that guy you were going to have tailing me all the time?”
“That was just a gag to keep you on your toes,” he snarled right back at me. “We got other things to do in the department. But if I’d ever dreamed what would happen when a maniac like you was let loose in town— “You know something?” He covered his face with his 78 hands and groaned in despair. “Thirty-six hours back, the only problem I had was a stolen tiara. Then you arrived and what have I got now?”
“Two unsolved homicides and one justifiable,” I said promptly. “You sure little Willie didn’t kill himself?”
“I’m sure,” he said sourly. “No powder burns on the side of his head. I wish he had suicided, it would make things a hell of a lot easier for me.”
“Do Marty Estell and Pete Wotzis have a record?” I asked hopefully.
“Sure,” he grunted. “It’s Pete Ungar and he’s got a long-playing record—you name it, he’s done it! Marty’s a lot smarter—only one conviction out of twelve arrests. He did two years upstate for assault with a deadly weapon.”
“You know their records already,” I said obviously, “so you knew they were in town.”
“I know everybody who’s in town,” he snorted. “But I didn’t figure them in the Elmo job, it wasn’t their kind of operation. More likely if they’d planned to heist that tiara, they would have gone in through the store’s armor-plated window—with Marty using Pete as a battering ram.”
“You didn’t know that Marty was Louise Lamont’s boy friend?”
“So you could get lucky and walk in on Pete the first time you went calling on the girl,” he growled. “I don’t have that kind of luck.”
My watch said it was long past midnight and right then I wouldn’t have been excited if the real tiara had materialized six feet up in the air.
“Lieutenant,” I said politely, “I’ve been through the whole thing three times already. You mind if I go now?” “Yeah,” he said in a flat voice, reminiscent of Marty Estell, “I mind.”
“Okay,” I shrugged helplessly. “You play pinochle?” He stopped pacing up and down for a moment, and stared at me distastefully instead. “It’s the missing pieces that can drive you crazy.” His voice was morose as he talked more to himself than to me. “So Louise Lamont was shacking up with her boss, Rutter, and she figured to make some hard cash out of it—okay. The blackmail attempt on Rutter’s wife bounced right back into her face and she goes out on her ear. She hears about the beauty contest, or maybe it was her own idea, and cons Rutter into letting her enter, with the promise she’ll win it—or else she’ll smear his reputation in all the places it’ll hurt most. This I understand—it’s logical, even.” “I know what you mean,” I said glumly. “It’s the stinking coincidences, along with the bits missing, that make it real tough. She happened to go to some art classes where she happened to meet Willie. Then Poolside happened to dream up a publicity scheme with Elmo’s jewelry store, using that tiara. And Willie happened to be the guy who made that tiara.”
“If you keep on, I’ll start in screaming,” Schell said pitifully. “So let’s accept all those coincidences and pretend they could happen to anyone. Then Louise and Willie cook up a scheme to rob the store. Willie makes a paste imitation, and Louise switches it for the real thing while she’s posing for publicity pictures—okay?”
“I know,” I said sympathetically. “So if it was Willie who killed her because he found out Marty Estell was beating his time—why did he leave that second paste imitation on top of her head? And what the hell did they need two fake tiaras for in the first place?”
“It’s a good question,” Schell grunted. “And I got one even better—if it was Willie who killed Louise, then who killed Willie? And if it wasn’t him, then who killed the both of them?”
“And where’s the genuine tiara anyway?” I finished for him.
The Lieutenant closed his eyes for a long moment. “I’m tired,” he said, his voice thick with self-pity. “I work too many hours for not enough money, my wife’s about to divorce me—and the selfish citizenry doesn’t give a goddamn. I’m going home and sleep for maybe three days.”
“It sounds like a great idea,” I said wistfully. “You mind if I come along, too?”
“You’ll enter my house over my dead body!” he snarled.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “I mean, can I leave when you leave?”
“I guess so.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic. “You still driving that rented convertible?”
“That’s right.”
“Then there’s still a faint hope you might run it off the road and kill yourself.” His voice brightened a little at the thought. “You wouldn’t consider leaving a signed confession with me, for use only under those conditions, I guess?”
“You guess right,” I assured him hastily.
“Then you might as well get the hell out of my sight,” he grunted. “I can feel sick to my stomach without looking at you.”
“You’re a great guy, Lieutenant,” I told him as I headed toward the door. “Be sure and call me if you break a leg on the way home or something—right now I could use a good laugh.”
It was almost two in the morning when I got back to the hotel. The desk clerk stifled a yawn while he hunted for my key, and I took the opportunity to check the register. A Miss Patty Lamont had checked in okay and was in room 704. After I’d gotten the key, I went straight up to her room and knocked gently.