“Maurine was supposed to be Gabby Garvanza’s girl. Someone tried to rub Gabby out. Maurine saw the whole thing. She wasn’t hurt. No bullets were fired in her direction. She didn’t say anything. Why?”
I could see Bill was thinking.
“The reason,” I said, “could have been because the gunman was someone she liked very much. That someone liked her so well he wouldn’t want her hurt. He knew she liked him enough so that he knew he could depend on her not to squeal.
“Then Gabby began to get well, and Gabby knew who had shot him. Gabby started planning to go to San Francisco and even scores.
“Maurine wanted to warn her friend. She wanted to make certain that the next attempt on Gabby’s life was going to hit the jackpot. You think back on that story the newspaper tells about how she walked out on the people who were with her — bodyguards that had been provided by Gabby to see that nothing happened to her.
“She pretended to get crocked, to pick up with some fellow whom she met by chance — Well, I did a little checking of my own. That fellow was an aviator. Maurine picked him up, all right, but they didn’t go out making whoopee together. They dashed out to the airport. The fellow she’d picked up cranked up his plane and made a blue streak to a field up north of San Francisco, where the plane let down and Maurine and George Bishop were scheduled to have a secret confab and lay plans so Gabby Garvanza would cuddle up on a nice cold slab in the morgue.
“Somebody was there waiting. Someone who felt that a lot of good could be accomplished by getting George Bishop out of the picture in such a manner that he would seem to have a perfect alibi.”
“Gabby Garvanza?” Bill asked.
I snorted derisively. “Gabby wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble. Who was it who profited the most by Bishop’s death?”
Bill thought that over, then stirred restlessly. “I don’t like the chin music you’re making,” he said. “Even listening to it could get me into trouble.”
“Not listening to it could get you into a hell of a lot more trouble. How big a damn fool do you think Gabby is? Gabby Garvanza is in San Francisco right this minute. Hartley Channing pulled a pretty slick deal but he committed a murder.”
“John Billings killed Bishop,” Bill said.
I smiled and shook my head. “Bishop’s body was put aboard Billings’s yacht. That was done by someone who knew that once the body was found there people wouldn’t look any farther for the real criminal than young Billings. Billings thought he was smart. He sneaked the body over onto an adjoining yacht. What he didn’t realize was that Bishop had been killed with his gun and that the murderer had dropped the gun overboard from the stern of Billings’s yacht. It never occurred to Billings to think of that or to go down in the drink and take a look. But that was the first thought that occurred to the police. That’s why the diver working with an underwater metal locator found the gun in the first fifteen minutes. Gabby Garvanza knows these things. Now what do you think he’s going to do?”
“How do you know Gabby Garvanza knows them?”
I grinned at him and said, “Who the hell do you think hired me?”
Bill sat up straight in the chair. He studied me thoughtfully for a few moments, then gave a low whistle.
He tossed the magazine over onto a battered table and said, “What do you want, Lam? If I let you get away from me Channing would kill me before Gabby ever took over.”
I said, “Let me get to a phone.”
“That would be too hard.”
I said, “Lots of things are going to be hard. Don’t think for a minute Gabby Garvanza doesn’t know what’s going on here. You rub me out and the chances that you’ll live to see your next birthday are just about a million to one — and I don’t give a damn if your next birthday is the day after tomorrow.”
Bill’s forehead knitted into a frown.
I said, “The police will find the aviator who took Maurine up here within—”
“Shut up,” he blurted. “I want to think. If you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll keep your damned trap closed for the next five minutes.”
I eased back on the bed. The pillow propped under my neck took some of the soreness out of the aching head.
It wasn’t five minutes, not much over two minutes, when Bill said, “There’s a phone booth down at the end of the hall. Now, for the love of Mike don’t make any noise and don’t let anybody see you.”
I got up off the bed. Bill took my arm to steady me.
“Got any money?” Bill asked.
I ran my hand clown into my trousers pocket and encountered the small change. “Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” Bill told me. “You’re on your own. If anyone spots you I’m going to put a slug in your ribs and claim you were escaping.”
He opened the door, looked up and down the corridor, then nodded to me.
I eased my way down the hall and into the phone booth, closed the door, and tried to recall the number of Gabby’s hotel. The thought of having to look it up in the phone book was an agony to my aching eyes and I couldn’t take any chances with the delay.
I remembered the number, dropped a coin, and spun the dial on the telephone.
When the hotel answered I said, “George Granby, please.”
I could hear the connection being made. Realizing how much depended on Gabby being in and talking with me, I could feel my hand begin to shake and my knees quiver at the mere thought that he might not be there.
The man who answered the telephone was undoubtedly the bodyguard who had thrown me out.
“Put Gabby on,” I said.
“Who is this?”
“This,” I told him, “is Santa Claus and it’s Christmas. Get Gabby on fast or his stocking will be empty.”
I heard the guy say, “Some nut says he’s Santa Claus passing out information. You want to talk with the goof?”
I heard Gabby rumble something, and then the bodyguard said, “Go peddle your papers.”
I said, “This is Donald Lam, the private detective, whom you threw out a while back.”
“Oh-oh,” the man said.
I said, “I’ve completed my investigations up here. I told Gabby I might do him a good turn. Now I’m in a position to do it.”
“What way?”
“By giving him information about what I’ve uncovered.”
“We don’t give a damn what you found out. We know what we want to know.”
“You think you do,” I said. “You’d better know what I know and then you’ll know who killed Maurine Auburn and why. Ask Gabby if he’s interested.”
This time I couldn’t hear anything. The bodyguard was evidently holding his palm over the transmitter so I couldn’t, but after what seemed an interminable wait, and after Central had asked, “Are you waiting?” Gabby Garvanza’s voice said cautiously, “Start talking. Give me facts. To hell with what you think. Give me facts.”
“I told you I might be able to do you some good,” I said. “Now I’m—”
“Can the chatter. Give me facts.”
I said, “You’ve known Maurine for over a year. How many times in that year has she got drunk enough to start playing around with strangers? The business of getting boiled and walking out on the bodyguard was part of an act. The fellow she went out with was an aviator. He took her to San Francisco.”
“Any damn fool could put two and two together on that,” he said, “now that her body’s been found.”
I said, “All right, she went of her own accord, under her own power, on an errand she didn’t dare to tell you about and didn’t dare to let the bodyguard know about. The errand was that she wanted to keep a rendezvous with George Bishop.”
“That all?” Gabby asked.
“George Bishop shot you,” I said.