While the prowl boys were bringing Dana in, I had put through a call to Paula. She had asked me to go over to her place as soon as I was through with the police, and I said I would. I could tell by the sound of her voice how shocked she was, but neither of us said much. We were both aware we were talking through the police exchange board and pretty sharp ears were certain to be listening in to what we were saying.
Mifflin had asked a lot of questions, but without telling him about Cerf I couldn’t be of any help, and I didn’t tell him about Cerf. I said I had no idea why Dana had been shot and that she wasn’t working on a job for me. He went over the ground again and again, but it didn’t get him anywhere. Finally he said he would have to to talk to Brandon, Captain of Police, when he came in, and that I would hear from them during the morning. I said I’d be around and made tracks for the door. He seemed reluctant to let me go, but he hadn’t any reason to keep me there.
The policeman guarding the entrance scowled at me as I walked down the steps. There was nothing personal about it. The cops of Orchid City were picked for their meanness. I scowled right back at him and went on to the end of the street, where I picked up a taxi to take me to Paula’s apartment on Park Boulevard.
I was surprised to find her dressed, and looking as neat as a new pin when she opened the front door.
‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘I have coffee for you. I bet you need it.’
Paula was a tall, dark lovely with cold, steady brown eyes and a mouth as business-like and as hard as a rattrap. She was quick on the uptake, unruffled and easy to work with, and it says a lot for her force of character that during the years we had worked together I had never made a pass at her, although once or twice I had been tempted. Maybe it was because we had worked together during the war. She had been a cypher officer attached to the O.S.S. where I worked with the cloak-and-dagger boys. It was she who had encouraged me to launch Universal Services and had lent me money to tide me over the first six months. We had taken the rough with the smooth together for about five years. We had seen each other at our best and worst. It got so I didn’t look on her as a girl any more, not that she wasn’t attractive, she was, but we knew too much about each other to encourage a romance, and she had a way of nipping that sort of thing in the bud with a sarcastic remark that I or any other guy wouldn’t risk running into a second time. But for all that, we got along fine together.
‘Never mind the coffee,’ I said. My nerves were still jangling from the shock of finding Dana. ‘I want you to go over to Dana’s apartment. She may have left duplicate of her reports there. I’m off to see Cerf.’
‘Take it easy, Vic,’ she said calmly. ‘That’s all been taken care of. I’m just back from seeing Cerf, and Benny’s over at Dana’s place now.’
‘I might have known you would have got going,’ I said, and sat down. ‘So you went to see Cerf. Was he up?’
‘No, but he soon got up,’ she said, pouring a large cup of black coffee. She went over to the sideboard and fetched a decanter of brandy and floated a spoonful of the liquor on the coffee. That was one of her fads. She maintained black coffee was a better stimulant than whisky. ‘This is a dreadful thing, Vic. That poor kid....’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘What did Cerf say?’
‘He’s acting like a crazy man. You didn’t tell the police Dana was working for him?’
‘No. I stalled Mifflin, but I don’t know how long it’ll be before he finds out. Mifflin’s nobody’s fool. Cerf’s holding us to our guarantee, of course?’
‘Is he not!’ Paula said, pouring a second cup of coffee. ‘If we tell the police Cerf hired us to watch his wife we might just as well go out of business.’ She went through the brandy ritual and came over to sit opposite me. ‘He swears he’ll deny anything we say, and if we do talk he threatens to sue us for libel.’
‘He doesn’t care a damn that we’re heading for an accessory rap, I suppose?’
‘Of course he doesn’t.’
‘Well, we’ve given him the guarantee so we can’t go back on it. I don’t like it, Paula. That rule wasn’t intended to cover murder.’
‘Any ideas why she was killed?’
‘Nothing solid. Maybe she came upon this guy who’s blackmailing Anita and he silenced her.’
‘How was she killed?’
‘Shot through the head with a .45 at about fifteen yards range by someone who could shoot. What beats me is why he took her clothes.’ I finished the coffee, stood up and began to pace up and down. ‘We’ve got to find this killer, Paula.’
‘You mean we’re handling this on our own?’
‘You bet we are. From now on we’re not taking any other job until we’ve got this guy. When we’ve found him we’ll have to work out how we’re going to fix him without involving Cerf.’
‘Couldn’t we take Mifflin into our confidence?’ Paula asked. ‘You get on well with him. He might be prepared to keep Cerf under cover.’
‘Not a hope. He would have to report to Brandon, and you know how Brandon loves us. No. We can’t tell the police anything. They’d want to interview Mrs. Cerf. That’s something Cerf wouldn’t stand for. If he says he’ll swear he didn’t call us in, that’s what he’ll do. We have no proof that he did call us in. He hasn’t paid our fee yet, and by the look of it, he won’t. His first contact with us was by phone. All we’d get from him would be a libel suit that’d break our backs.’
‘I don’t like it, Vic. If the police find the killer and he talks we’re going to be chopped.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t see how they will find him. They have nothing to work on. We hold all the clues and that’s why we’ve got to clear up the mess. And besides we have a personal interest in this killing. No one’s going to shoot one of my operators and get away with it.’
‘What’s the first move then?’
‘I’m going to talk to Mrs. Cerf right away.’
Paula shook her head.
‘It’s not going to be that easy. She’s skipped.’
I stared at her, the flame of my lighter hovering before my cigarette.
‘She has?’
‘I asked to see her, but Cerf refused. He said he was arranging for her to leave town right away. She’s gone by now.’
‘We’ll have to find her. She knows the killer.’
‘That’s what I told Cerf. He said she knew nothing, and if we interfered with her or tried to find her we’d be answerable to him.’
‘We’ll find her all right,’ I said quietly.
‘Don’t be too sure the blackmailer is the killer, Vic,’ Paula said. ‘We have only Cerf’s word for it there is a blackmailer. She may be helping a lover.’
‘I’ll have a word with the daughter. She hasn’t any time for Anita and might be glad to talk.’
‘That’s an idea. Who else is there to work on?’
‘There’s the guy who found the handbag: Owen Leadbetter. I don’t know whether to let the police milk him and get the information from Mifflin or have a go at him myself. If Mifflin finds out we’re making inquiries he might smell a rat. Leadbetter might give us away.’
‘You’ll probably stop his mouth if you pay him,’ Paula said. To her way of thinking money could do anything.
‘Yeah. Well, I’ll try him. Then there’s this guy Barclay, been around with Anita, and according to Dana’s report they were acting like lovers. I’ll dig into his background. He may be our man for all I know.’
‘If there is a blackmailer at the bottom of this,’ Paula said, ‘I’d pick Bannister. He’s touched everything crooked since he’s been here. Why did Mrs. Cerf call on him the night before last, and what was her urgent business? If we could find that out we might get places.’