What she saw, I suppose, was a skinny, elongated gent wearing slacks that needed pressing after a hard day, a sports coat with a bulge in the pocket, and a suspicious expression. What I saw was a smallish girl with hazel eyes in an oval, small-featured face that was now rather tearstained and dirty. Her disordered hair reached well down her shoulders and was that reddish shade of coppery gold that's almost always artificial, but it's a pretty color anyway.
As I've indicated, I kind of favor long-haired girls over girls who are so closely clipped or carefully pinned up or tightly curled, as to leave nothing blowing in the wind. On the other hand, given a choice, I'll pick the ones in skirts over the ones in pants any day-or night-in the week.
This one was wearing a ducky little pale green suit of thin wool, with sharply creased flaring trousers. There was also an immaculate white turtle-necked sweater or jersey. The suit itself wasn't quite immaculate, having picked up some smudges from the driveway. The jacket had got pulled awry. Automatically, under my regard, she made as if to straighten it, but checked herself, glancing down distastefully at her hands, which were too grimy from the pavement to be allowed to make contact with her clothing. She looked at me once more.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean…
"What didn't you mean?" I asked when she stopped.
"Back there," she said. "I didn't recognize you in the dark, Mr. Helm. I guess… I guess all I could see was the gun."
"How do you know my name?"
"I was in the hospital waiting room this afternoon when you came in. I heard you tell the nurse who you were and whom you wanted to see. I was… I was waiting outside, here, to talk with you, just now, when those men grabbed me…" She shivered. "If you hadn't come along, they'd have taken me away and killed me."
"Who wants you dead?" I asked. She didn't answer immediately, and I said, "You mentioned somebody named Frankie out there. Would that be Frank Warfel?"
"Y-yes. Do you know him?"
"We've met," I said. "Just barely. What's your name?" She hesitated. "I'm Beverly Blame," she said, but after a moment she went on quickly. "Well, for Hollywood purposes I'm Beverly Blame. Can you see Mary Sokolnicek on a movie marquee, Mr. Helm?"
"What were you waiting to talk with me about, Mary-Beverly?"
"It's about… about the girl you went to see, the redhead, the one who got hurt. I… I wanted to find out I mean, can you tell me how badly… Oh, hell, I mean how is she?"
"She's dead," I said.
Beverly Blame stared at me for a moment without moving. Then she stepped back blindly and sank down on the bed, still looking wide-eyed at my face.
"Dead?" She licked her lips. "But I thought, since she'd hung on so long, that she had a pretty good chance of…
"She's dead," I said. "She never had a chance, not really. Not with two.44 slugs in her. What's it to you, Mary-Beverly? How well did you know her?"
"I hardly knew her at all. I just…" The disheveled little girl on the bed licked her lips once more. "I just killed her," she whispered.
There was a long silence in the room-well, as much silence as you ever get in a big city like Los Angeles. The girl was probably so used to it she didn't even hear it, but having just spent a couple of weeks in a relatively small town, I was aware of the unceasing roar of traffic outside.
I said softly, "That's a damn popular murder, sweetheart. Everybody seems to want a piece of it. I was just talking with a man called Arthur Brown who claims he killed Annette O'Leary."
"You know The Basher?"
"Introductions courtesy of Frank Warfel," I said. "It's too complicated to explain, but Brown claims he shot Annette by mistake. How did you shoot her and what was your motive?"
"Oh, I didn't actually shoot her, Mr. Helm!" Beverly sounded shocked by the idea. "Heavens, I don't know anything about guns! I just… just sent her to her death. Instead of me. That's how The Basher came to make his mistake, don't you understand?"
"Not exactly," I said. "Tell me."
She drew a long breath, sitting there. "Well," she said, "well, as you've probably gathered, I'm in trouble in this town, bad trouble. I was trying to get away. I'd done something, something they couldn't let me get away with. Like talking out of turn. Well, I hadn't done it yet. but I'd threatened to do it. Me and my big mouth."
"They?"
"Frank Warfel and the people behind him, who are even worse if it's possible. And you'd better believe it's possible." She paused a moment, and went on: "When things didn't go right for me in Hollywood-that fancy stage name never even made the screen credits, if you know what I mean-when things went bad, I got a job in a certain place… Well, never mind the gory details. Anyway, Frank saw me and liked me and took me out of there. For a while. A couple of years. Until he got tired of little girls and found himself a big girl for a change. He likes variety, Frankie does." Beverly frowned at the nylon carpet between her green suede shoes. "It wasn't.. wasn't easy work while it lasted, but it paid well, if you know what I mean, Mr. Helm."
"Sure," I said. "You said you were trying to get out of town."
"That's right." The girl's voice was dull. "When I got near home that day-my God, it was only yesterday!- after putting on my big mouth act for Mister Frank Warfel and his current sweetie-and what a slinky blonde boa constrictor-type she is!-when I got near home I spotted The Basher waiting across the street from my apartment building. That's when I realized that I'd, well, talked myself to death, getting mad and jealous like that. The word was out, and little Beverly might just as well cut her throat with a dull knife and save Frankie-boy the trouble. Only I wasn't going to make it that easy for him, so I turned the convertible around and headed it for the airport. I had a little money, enough for a ticket somewhere, and it was better than dying, or having my face smashed into something nobody could look at without puking, like one girl I knew who talked too much…"
She shivered. After a little, she giggled half-hysterically. "You never figure it could happen to you. Do you know what I mean? You've got it made: an apartment, a car, good clothes, furs, jewelry, a bank account, the works, and you think it's going to last forever. And then, suddenly, you're on the run with just the rags on your back and the few bucks in your purse and death right behind you… You've got to understand how it was, Mr. Helm! You've got to understand why I did it!"
"Tell me," I said.
"When I got to the terminal, I caught a glimpse of one of Frankie's other goons waiting there, and I knew they'd be all around the place. I knew I'd never make it, and then along came a kid off a plane and she wasn't too big and she had longish red hair kind of like mine. I remembered that Arthur Brown had never seen me. Frankie-boy doesn't like to mix his pleasure people with his business people any more than he has to. Of course I'd seen a few people in the time I'd been with him, and heard a few things, that's why he had to shut me up. I'd heard of The Basher and seen him perform in the ring, but we'd never actually met. And I had this this awful, bright idea how to get them all off my trail, and I bumped into this girl and made with the tears and the sob story…
"She fell for it?"
Beverly drew a long breath. "Sure she fell for it, Mister. I'm a pretty good actress, if I say so myself. If it wasn't for studio politics… Well, never mind that! Anyway, I talked her into driving me home in the car she'd reserved at a rental agency. I got her to go in to pick up some things for me, things I didn't dare get myself because my estranged husband, a real maniac, was watching the place, waiting to make trouble if I showed. Something like that. I don't remember exactly what lies I used. I just made them up as I went along." The girl closed her eyes briefly and opened them again. "And she went in, a red-haired kid about my size, into my apartment building, and I saw The Basher leave his doorway and go in after her. I got behind the wheel of the rental car and drove like hell away from there."