Authors: Wade Miller
M
AJOR
R
OCKWELL
walked into the dressing room. Walter James closed the door behind him and leaned his back against it. Rockwell looked at him with astonished eyes. “What is this all about, Mr. James?”
“Sit down,” suggested the slender detective. “I’ll try to explain it to you.” He cocked an ear to the stage where Shasta Lynn was finishing her song. “It’ll have to be brief, though.”
The major put one hand on the dressing table chair. “You called me Dr. Boone. That’s the second time you’ve made a mysterious reference to that name, Mr. James.”
“Yes,” said Walter James and smiled a cat smile. “Because that’s who you are, Major.”
“Let me assure you — ” began the heavy-set man. Walter James interrupted him by raising his hand with the gun in it.
“I don’t want to argue with you, Major — I don’t have the time tonight.” He steadied the gun on Rockwell’s midsection. “I’ve been looking for Dr. Boone. I told you that. He killed my partner and when your partner is killed you have to square accounts.”
Rockwell’s tanned face whitened perceptibly. “I swear, Mr. James — ” he said in the voice that held the hint of a quaver.
Walter James’s arm was throbbing like the beat of a drum. “You don’t have to swear, Major,” he said softly. “Because I know that you’re telling the truth. You’re not really Dr. Boone — but you’ll do.”
Rockwell’s voice assumed the tone proper for soothing a dangerous maniac. “Mr. James, you don’t know what you’re saying. Your phone call this afternoon — you said it was important that I be here — ”
The slim man grimaced impatiently. “I know what I said. Sit down, Major.” He gestured forcefully with the gun. Rockwell sank slowly into the dressing table chair, keeping his eyes riveted on the smaller man’s face.
From his coat pocket, Walter James brought forth several lengths of neutral-colored fish line. With the deftness born of long practice, he tied the big man’s wrists to the back of the chair, and then, bending down, his ankles to the legs.
Blood from his wound was dripping off his hand as he arose. He smiled at the bound man. “They’re only slipknots, Major — they wouldn’t hold you a minute if I left you alone.”
Rockwell said, his voice underwritten by terror, “What — what are you going to do with me?”
Walter James was listening to the music accompanying Shasta Lynn’s strip tease. He brought his attention back to Rockwell with an effort. “Oh, I thought I told you. You’re going to be Dr. Boone. Clapp has worked awfully hard on this case and he deserves to have a Dr. Boone, even if it’s the wrong one.”
Rockwell stared at him, his lips parted slightly. Walter James squinted thoughtfully at the pistol in his hand. He sat down in the folding chair.
“The unknown factors, like Shasta Lynn, screw you up sometimes in cases like this,” he mused, “but I think it will all work out.” A movement of Rockwell’s head made him look up sharply. In the mirror he saw that the door behind him had slid open.
“Keep your hands on your knees, Walter.”
The old woman in funereal black shut the door in back of her without looking at it. Walter James sat quietly, watching her in the mirror. The silvered pistol in her hand pointed unwaveringly at his spine.
“Good evening, Ethel,” he said.
With a quick gesture, she flicked the black veil over her unfashionable hat. Her face was pale and set, with no wrinkles at all under the heavy powder. Shiny white hair was netted tightly.
“Let go of the gun,” she said, almost in a whisper. Walter James allowed his fingers to relax and the .38 thudded against the wooden floor. Major Rockwell let out a wavering sigh.
“Thank God!” he said. The woman gave him the briefest of glances.
“Who’s this?”
Walter James said softly, “Why, this is Dr. Boone, Ethel.”
“Dr. Boone!” The woman’s lips curled. “He’s not Dr. Boone — you know and I know that there isn’t any Dr. Boone.”
“Yes,” agreed the slender man. “You and I know it. But nobody else does. And Dr. Boone has been very useful to me.”
“You didn’t think you could get away with it, did you, Walter?” asked Ethel Lantz. “Don’t move your hands!”
Walter James froze. “I am getting away with it,” he said. “I knew you were here after we found the gun, but I’ll admit I didn’t expect you to show up tonight. Did you write that note from Shasta Lynn?”
The woman stared in the mirror at his flat blue eyes. “After I failed twice, I decided I had to make my opportunity to kill you.” Her mouth smiled bitterly and alone. “Occasionally, people can be more clever than you, Walter. I knew that Shasta Lynn was the one thing you weren’t sure about. I knew that a message from her would bring you in with your guard down.”
Walter James looked tenderly at her reflection. “Ethel,” he said, “you shouldn’t have been afraid to come back to Atlanta. We could have shared the money and carried out the plan together. Then we could have had each other. You know that. I’ve been waiting for you to get in touch with me.”
The old-young face twisted hatefully. “I didn’t want you — I wanted Hal. But you killed him, Walter. You wanted the money all to yourself. The plan would have worked for all of us, but you wanted it all to yourself.”
“It can still work, Ethel.” Walter James inched forward on the chair. “We get rid of Shasta Lynn tonight. Give Clapp the major here as a fall guy. Then you come out of hiding and — ”
Ethel shook her white head and the old-fashioned hat bobbed. “Nobody else is going to die, Walter — nobody except you. I don’t want anything more now that Hal can’t be with me. All I want is to watch you die — the way you watched Hal die.”
The slender man’s lips tightened. “You haven’t taken very good care of the guns, Ethel. The one you left across the street last Saturday night hadn’t been cleaned since I gave them to you.”
“I’m not going to look down. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You see, I’ve thought this out carefully. You’ve stopped winning.”
Walter James shook his head sadly. “If only you had come back to Atlanta.”
“I was afraid. Anybody that knows you should be afraid of you. Your eyes — the way they are now. That’s the way they were that night when Hal was in Denver and you suggested that we kill him and carry out the plan by ourselves. That’s when I began to be afraid. That’s why I went to Miami before Hal got back.” Her voice trembled. “I let him down. I was too weak and too afraid of you to stay in Atlanta and warn him.”
“We can work something out,” he said, sitting very still. “We’ve meant such a lot to each other.”
With her free hand, she fingered the bound white hair. “I made a mistake with you. Hal is the only person who ever meant anything to me. He still is. I’m doing this for him — I wouldn’t have the strength to do it for myself. I’ve lived in fear for the last two months, Walter.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police, Ethel?”
“You were working with them. You knew they’d help you clean up your organization and never know what they were doing.”
“I was right, too,” Walter James said softly.
“It takes nerve to go to the police and try to solve your own killings. But you’ve run out of luck.”
“The police are still your best bet, Ethel.”
“I don’t intend to go to prison. That’s hell on a woman. I don’t want to get wrinkled and ugly — let my hair get dry and coarse.” She fingered it tenderly under the net. “I’ve hurt it now. I had to bleach it and put bluing on it and cut some of it off. These awful clothes so no one would recognize me.” Her eyes flooded with wetness and she screamed at him. “I haven’t been anybody for the last two months! I haven’t even been a person! I’ve been afraid of you!”
The gun wavered.
In one moment Walter James stood up and kicked the chair back into her. An explosion burned his side and the mirror broke over his clawing hands. He found the derringer under the rag, whirled and fired. The trailing rag drifted to the floor.
Ethel Lantz stood weaving from side to side, horror on her incongruous face. The black satin across her stomach began to stain liquidly. The .25 slid from her fingers and clattered on the floor.
“I guess I never really thought I could beat you,” she said weakly and crumpled clumsily in a heap.
Walter James looked at his hands outlined against her black form. They were beginning to tremble.
Not yet! Please, not yet!
He turned slowly and looked at Major Rockwell.
Rockwell drew back in the chair as far as he could move. “James — ” he pleaded in a hoarse voice. Walter James picked up his .38 from the floor with his right hand and squinted at the bigger man. The pain in his side was like a roaring fire, crackling and burning inside him.
The door slammed open and Clapp stood there, one hand clutched in his coat pocket. “James!” he shouted. “Put down that gun — ”
Walter James threw the empty derringer into the pit of the big man’s stomach. The detective bent over in the doorway, trying to draw a gun from his pocket. Hurling himself forward, the slender man cut at him twice, viciously. The edge of his flattened palm sliced across Clapp’s arm and again across the side of his heavy neck. Clapp toppled out of the dressing room.
Walter James jumped after him. A cluster of half-clad girls huddled on the concrete steps, terrified eyes staring at Shasta Lynn’s dressing room. They screamed hysterically at the sight of the slight man’s searching gun, crowding back and blocking the iron stage door effectively.
The pain in his arm and in his side were one united demon, chewing at him, trying to weaken him. He could feel the blood trickling down his leg. He spun and lurched toward the stage.
Greissinger and Madeline Harms stood in the wings, in a narrow corridor of drapes leading to the stage. They stared at him with wide eyes, unprotesting, as he shoved roughly between them and walked onto the stage. He was breathing heavily. The gun in his hand felt as though it weighed a ton.
Shasta Lynn posed nudely against the opposite side of the proscenium arch, a spotlight limning her powdered body. She looked at him; then, as recognition came, she screamed.
She was the reason the plan hadn’t worked. Shasta Lynn, the unknown factor. Walter James leveled the gun barrel at her naked body and, holding it steady with an effort, fired. She screamed again and fell back against the plaster arch.
She hadn’t fallen down. She wasn’t dead. What was wrong? He’d fired at her breast, but she was pressing her hands over a red spot on her thigh. Walter James shook his head wildly to break the film that was pressing against his eyeballs.
The circle of spotlight glided across the stage to envelop him, to paint him in glaring relief. He could see better now. There was a panicky stirring in the audience. He pointed the .38 at the blurred, shifting heads. Run, sheep, run. Kill the cowardly frightened monster. Kill them all! This was what power meant. Size had nothing to do with it; age had nothing to do with it. He squinted against the spotlight. There was really no noise from his audience — that screaming and roaring was from his aching side. Where had everybody gone? He wanted to explain to them: power is something you hold in your hand that makes everybody afraid of you. That damned spotlight!
He thrust up the gun and fired at it. It glared down on him without mercy. The film was closing in again, blurring, erasing. The spotlight seared him. It had to be turned out. Let’s turn out the lights and go to sleep.
A wave of noise swept over his aching side and jolted him toward the footlights. With an effort, he turned his head and saw Clapp standing in the wings. The big man had a long black police revolver leveled over his forearm. Smoke was seeping out of its barrel.
He felt his shoe smashing bulbs in the footlight trough as he caught his balance. Too bad, Clapp, you were a pretty smart cop. With both hands he lifted the heavy .38 and aimed it at the big man, the big man with the stony face.
The long black gun spoke. It said, “Walter!” with Kevin’s voice. His body jarred again. He stopped trying to squeeze the trigger. Let Kevin do it. She was floating down the aisle toward him, her lovely mouth twisted open, calling to him. Don’t let that punk Newcomb stop you, Kevin — help me pull this trigger, then we’ll go off together and have a wonderful time.
A third explosion ripped from Clapp’s gun. There was no jolt this time, no shock. Kevin had woven some magic about the bullet so it wouldn’t hurt his side. Kevin was making them take the spotlight out of the back of the theater so he could get some rest. The circle of light got farther and farther away, a pinpoint that finally flicked out.
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Guilty Bystander
Wednesday, February 8, 4:15 p. m
.
T
HE
room wouldn’t stay still. It kept swinging in slow, creaking circles like a carousel running down. He was lost in a fog — a hot, sticky fog. A voice echoed down an empty street toward him, calling his name. Georgia’s voice. He waited for it to fade away as it always did.
The voice kept calling. “Max! Max, wake up!”
Max Thursday opened his eyes with an effort and looked at the woman standing beside his bed. “Georgia,” he said huskily, then cleared his throat. “Georgia.”
She took her gloved hands off his arm. “Max, I have to see you.”
“Wait a minute,” Thursday said, squinting. “Let me wake up.”
Georgia stood looking down at him, worried lines carving her smooth forehead. After a moment, she crossed to the open white wooden door into the hall and shut it softly. She was as he remembered her — maybe a couple more lines faintly accenting the brown eyes. She was dressed in a suit of rich tan wool. She had always preferred the brown colors because they brought out the lights in her hair. Her figure was as slim and pleasantly rounded as ever, but the way she had her hair piled up under the flat brown hat made her look more housewifely than she had four years before.
Her face was haggard — the fly-by-night haggardness of sudden grief. The worry there had not yet crystallized into pinched lines. Her pretty face held an unconcealed distaste for the shabby hotel room, the stench of stale whiskey and the man on the bed.
Max Thursday squinted and rubbed his tongue around the inside of his mouth, trying to erase some of the sour stickiness he tasted there.
“You should have phoned, Georgia. I wasn’t expecting you.”
He tried to swing his feet out from under the covers and the two patched gray blankets cascaded onto the floor. He was wearing crumpled blue trousers but no shirt or shoes. He sat there blinking.
Georgia crossed the room slowly, still looking at him. “Do you mind if I open the window?” she asked. “It’s pretty stuffy in here.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. While the woman struggled with the rusty window catch, Thursday scratched his bare chest. Then, more to attack the throbbing in his head than to straighten his tangled black hair, he plowed the fingers of both big hands back across his scalp.
“I hadn’t noticed,” he said. He scooped up a bottle from the uncarpeted floor. “Stuff like this — ” he frowned at the label “ — Old Cathedral makes you overlook that sort of thing.”
There was a sloshing of brown liquid in the bottom of the bottle and he tossed it into his throat with a quick gesture. He grimaced broadly, making the muscles on his neck stand out like clustered wires. “Old Sherwin-Williams!” he amended.
Georgia didn’t smile. There had been a time — four years ago — when her broad mouth had smiled at everything he said. But that had been four years ago — before the divorce, before everything.
He planted his bare feet on the chilly floor boards and rose. His thin six-foot length towered above every object in the cheap room — the bed of iron tubing, the scarred wooden dresser with its distorting mirror, and the woman in brown who stood somberly by the window. Behind her, the gray February sky promised more rain.
Thursday said suddenly and irritably, “Either act entertained or go home, little girl. You weren’t invited, you know.”
She bit at her lower lip, then said, “I can’t make this window work, Max.”
He clamped his thumb and forefinger around the clasp and forced it out. The lower window frame rattled up loosely and he propped it there with a two-foot section of lath that was lying on the sill. He leaned his naked shoulders out into the cool afternoon air, letting the rising wind strike his face. The brick outer wall of the hotel framed him in black. Across the black bricks were painted huge white letters reading BRIDGWAY HOTEL. Beneath that, in smaller letters, was ROOMS 50¢ UP.
Georgia had spread the gray blankets across the bed again and was sitting there very stiffly. Thursday walked over to the washbowl in the corner and splashed some water on his face. He filled the tumbler and drank deeply, twice. His unsteady hand spilled water on the worn throw rug.
The room was silent except for traffic noises — the growlings of cars and the rattlings of trucks as they traveled up Fifth Avenue, and from a few blocks north sounded the belligerent streetcar bells of downtown San Diego. He slipped his arms into the shirt he found piled on the dresser top and buttoned it while he studied his face in the contorted mirror surface. Red-rimmed eyes above an unshaven chin stared back at him. The broadness of his face escaped sheer ugliness by the highness of his cheekbones and the strong arch of his nose.
“Got a cigarette?” he asked.
“In my purse.” Georgia bit off the last word and bent her head. Her slim woolen shoulders jerked convulsively.
Thursday picked up her purse from the bed. He found half a package of Camels. He had trouble bringing the lighted match and the end of the cigarette together. “Don’t cry about me,” he said irritably. “You’re not my wife any longer.”
Georgia pushed long colorless fingernails into the tan wool over her thighs and held her shoulders still. “I’m not crying over you, Max. I haven’t had anything to cry about since I left you. Homer and I have been very happy.”
“Homer? I knew you’d married a doctor named Mace but I never thought you’d marry anybody named Homer, sweetheart.”
Her round chin came up defensively. “You needn’t try to be funny about Homer. He’s providing a good home for me and — ” her eyes began to spill tears “ — and Tommy.”
She dabbed gingerly at her cheeks with an end of gray blanket. The powder on her right cheek had smeared and a strand of gray wool clung to her skin. He reached over and plucked it off casually.
“You’re not glad to see me, are you, Max?”
Thursday groped for his shoes with his feet. “I can’t see any reason I should be.”
She leaned closer to him, fragrantly familiar. Her voice was deliberate and nice. “At least you haven’t forgotten me.”
“Don’t underrate yourself, Georgia. I haven’t forgotten you, but we’re still strangers, Mrs. Mace. The Mr. Thursday you used to know was an upright, God-fearing youth — YMCA stock. And the Mrs. Thursday I was married to didn’t spill tears all over her make-up.” He smiled crookedly and spread his hands at shoulder height. “You see — we really don’t know each other.” He bent over to put on his shoes. “How did you find me?”
Georgia stared at the broad back of his neck. He had needed a haircut for some time. “Lieutenant Clapp told me you were living at the Bridgway Hotel. I could tell he didn’t care for you living in a place like this.”
Thursday straightened. “It’s none of Clapp’s business where I live or what I do as long as I don’t kill anybody. That’s the only aspect of my life that should concern the Homicide Bureau.”
She bit her lip again and smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle from her skirt. Thursday flipped the cigarette butt at the open window and took another from the pack on the bed. Through the match flame he watched his ex-wife with narrowed eyes and wondered when she’d get around to saying what she had tracked him down to say.
After a smoky silence during which she twisted at her suede gloves, he said, “Let’s cut the small talk and list the facts. If your doctor and you need money, you’ve obviously come to the wrong door.”
She wasn’t ready yet. She put her hand on his arm and asked, “Max — what do you do these days?” Her inquiring smile was faint and didn’t match the rest of her face.
Thursday chuckled. “Why, Mrs. Mace, I’m doing the only thing I know. I’m still a detective. I’m the chief house dick in the Bridgway Hotel. I’m also my staff.”
“A house detective in this place?”
“Why, sure. It’s not charity but a chance, just like on the posters. Smitty, the old girl who runs this firetrap, keeps me in liquor and cookies. In return, I’m the house detective.”
She said doubtfully, “It doesn’t sound like — ”
“Much,” the man finished. He lay back and sucked at his cigarette. “Okay — then it’s not a chance but charity. I’m a bum. But Smitty doesn’t mind. And since she doesn’t mind, I don’t think it’s any of your business either, Georgia.”
Georgia said, “You used to be good, Max.”
“I’m still good.”
She looked at the hand that held the cigarette. The blue smoke flowed upward in uneven little jerks. “Are you?” Her brown suede shoes kicked at the Old Cathedral bottle and it rolled across the floor to rest against the grimy molding.
“Don’t be so wifely,” he grunted. “Save it for Homer.”
As if there had been a cue, Georgia said quickly, “Was I such a poor wife to you, Max? We were happy until you threw up everything and went away. And then we had Tommy and when you came back — well, maybe I wasn’t very understanding.”
“That wasn’t what you thought at the time.”
“Maybe I didn’t try hard enough to understand. But Max, I had to think of Tommy. You were drinking so much — ”
He broke in sharply, “If you came down here to prove to yourself that you did the right thing, take a look around. But let me remind you that there weren’t many openings for private detectives in San Diego after the war. You wouldn’t go anywhere else — ”
“There were other jobs, Max.”
“So it was my fault after all. All right, I’ll admit it. But the show’s over now, sweetheart. You got rid of me and my bad atmosphere and you kept the kid.” He sat up quickly. “Now what do you want?”
Georgia stared into Thursday’s bloodshot eyes, peering, searching. She said in a low voice that neared a sob, “Max, did you write this?”
She laid a brown scrap of paper in his lap and he let go of her shoulder to look at it. The paper was roughly two inches square, torn from an ordinary paper sack. On one side were two lines of rough printing in capital letters: DOC–WE TRADE YOU. NO COPS.
“Common Manila,” said Thursday. “Probably a grocery sack. Soft lead — I’d guess Number 2.” He looked up at the woman quickly. The tears were flooding in wet globules down her cheeks but she paid no attention to them. Her face contorted painfully, as she looked for something deep in the tall man’s eyes.
“What do you mean — did I write this? Where’d it come from?”
“Oh, Max,” she sobbed. Her voice twisted the words as though they were the gloves clenched in her hands. “It’s a terrible thing to think — or ask — but that’s why I had to see you. Max — you didn’t steal Tommy from me, did you?”