He glanced at me again and slid the cigar to the other corner of his mouth.
“She told Raymond where she was going and he objected and she got mad and they went round and round. They were still at it at twenty after ten when the maid left to go home. Finally Raymond, crazy with jealousy, ran out of the house and jumped in his car and started for Kiernan’s. She followed him in her car. He had a big Duesenberg — we found it this afternoon parked on the highway below Kiernan’s house — and he beat her there by a few minutes...”
Amante stopped to light his cigar. He didn’t look at me any more but went on to the reporters:
“Kiernan was out on the porch taking the air, or maybe Raymond called him out. Raymond stood in the driveway and shot at Kiernan twice; the first shot missed and the second nicked his leg. Kiernan ran into the house and called Mister Finn” — he waved his hand airily in my general direction — “and said, ‘Somebody took a shot at me.’ About that time Miss Reid arrived and Raymond had to make good; or maybe she got there after he’d followed Kiernan into the house. Anyway, Raymond dragged Kiernan away from the phone and beat him with the butt of the gun and then threw the gun down and finished by kicking his skull in. Miss Reid probably tried to stop him — I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt — and then she saw the gun and picked it up, and when Raymond started to go she shot him...”
Amante had turned to me again with an expression like a cat practically bloated with canaries.
“But before she shot him she told him a few unprintable details about his ancestry and so forth, and...” — he paused to give it the proper melodramatic touch, finished slowly — “Mrs Bergliot, the housekeeper, overheard her... This afternoon Mrs Bergliot positively identified her voice!”
He let that sink in, then built up to his clincher in a hurry:
“After she shot Raymond she tossed the gun under the table — she was wearing gloves so there weren’t any prints — and beat it quick. She drove around for a few minutes and finally parked on the highway near the entrance to the private road to figure out what to do. She knew it was too late to frame an alibi and she knew Raymond would be traced to her and the maid would spill her guts... And then Mister Finn showed up, like an angel from heaven. She recognized his car — a blind man could spot that sixteen cylinder calliope of his — and she thought to herself: ‘If I drive back up there and make Finn believe I just got here, that Raymond socked me at my house and I just came to, then I’ll have Finn on my side and as Kiernan’s partner he’ll carry a lot of weight.’ She’s a bright girl...”
He was leaning forward with his arms spread out on the desk, giving me the cat-full-of-canaries business for all it was worth.
“It appealed to her instincts as an actress,” he went on, “and it worked out even better than she’d planned. Mister Finn not only went for her story hook, line, and sinker; he got so absolutely lousy with chivalry that he told her to go on home and go to bed and forget about the nasty old murders and he’d take care of everything!”
He leaned back and folded his arms. “If I didn’t believe Mister Finn acted in good faith — that he actually believed in Miss Reid’s innocence — there’d be a charge of withholding evidence, possibly even a charge of being accessory after the fact against him. However it has all worked out satisfactorily and I shall let these matters rest.”
One of the reporters snickered. The big copper was sitting on the corner of the desk grinning merrily and Amante’s sneer was the kind people probably wear just before they get their throat cut by the sneeree.
I sat and calculated my chances of suddenly diverting everyone’s attention by staring out the window or yelling “Fire!” or something and then hurdling the desk and pushing that sneer back where it came from, but they were too long; I couldn’t even have got past the big baboon. I sat still and wondered if it could get any worse.
Amante snapped: “That’s all, boys.”
The reporters dived for the door as a man. Amante wiggled his head at the baboon and he, after a last long withering look at me, followed them out and closed the door.
I said: “That was capital fun.”
He looked at me very seriously. “I’ve got to look out for my job,” he bellowed. “If you hadn’t sent Reid away last night I’d’ve had the whole case on ice this morning. I don’t intend to be head of a homicide squad all my life — I’m going places, and quick indictments and quick convictions are going to take me there—”
I interrupted: “Do you mean you actually believe last night happened the way you told it?”
“Absolutely.” He nodded slowly, was silent a moment, went on: “The newspapers are for me and that’s the way I want them. You acted out of turn and you’ve got to take the rap for it — with the newspapers.”
I uh-huhd and got up and walked over to the window, stood there a minute; then I went over to the desk and said: “I thought you were an intelligent guy and you’ve turned out to be just as nutty as a bedbug.”
He grinned with one side of his face.
“And I’m going to show you how nutty,” I went on, warming up. “I’m going to make you acknowledge publicly — in your beloved newspapers — that you’re all wet on the Kiernan case. Christ knows I’ve got plenty of reasons to. Number one: I happen to want to know who really killed Kiernan — and Raymond — and tried to give me the business this afternoon — a fact which you seem to have left entirely out of your calculations. Number two: I promised my dying great-aunt that I’d never stand by and see somebody rail-roaded...”
I stopped for breath and to think up a few more reasons. Amante sat grinning through a cloud of smoke, chewing his cigar happily.
“Number three,” I went on — “you’ve made me look like a prize sucker for the edification of a lot of yokels. And last but not least — you called my new car a calliope...”
We both laughed; he because he thought it was funny, and I because I thought it wasn’t.
Then, having delivered myself of all that horrah about what I was going to do, and why, I walked out of the office wondering where the hell I was going to begin.
I found Harry in the pool hall across the street and told him what had happened while we drove out Third Street. We got home a little before seven and I called Gene Curley and said I had a job for him and his brother and for them to come over to the apartment.
The Curley boys used to have a two-by-four detective agency in Philadelphia; they’d been on the Coast several years working at whatever turned up. Gene had been a bouncer in a downtown crap joint until it was conclusively knocked over and Frank had alternated between an occasional job of divorce sleuthing and extra work in pictures.
When they arrived I gave them a couple slugs of Scotch and began with Gene. I told him who Mrs Bergliot was and said I wanted him to tail her and keep a detailed report of everywhere she went, everything she did and everyone she saw.
Then I told Frank he was on the payroll too, but I didn’t have anything better for him to do for a while than ride around and see how many dark blue Buick roadsters with cream-colored canvas tops and spare tire covers he could find, to check licenses and stolen car lists and things like that. I knew it was a million to one shot that he’d turn anything up but I figured I’d have more important work for him pretty soon.
I gave them a century advance, sent them on their way rejoicing and called the desk for late editions of the evening papers. The Kiernan case stories were simply fine. They played me up as the smart young man from Broadway who turned out to be the great granddaddy chump — the one all the other chumps try to imitate. They made Amante’s struggle and triumph against the overwhelming odds of my stupidity look like St George giving the finger to the Dragon. When I tell you the subtlest crack they made was to call me “Sir Galahad Finn” it’ll give you a rough idea of what it was like when they really let themselves go.