Authors: Wade Miller
The girl looked at him with eyes that brimmed unhappiness. “Don’t laugh at me, Walter.”
Walter James put his hand over hers. “You know I couldn’t,” he said. Kevin bit the inside of her lip.
“My father’s having an affair with Shasta Lynn.”
The detective’s irregular features were solemn. Kevin scanned them anxiously. “I’ve been so afraid to tell anybody. I haven’t known what to do.”
Walter James’s blue eyes were thoughtful. “I’m glad you told me, Kevin,” he said gently. “It won’t go any further, I promise you.” The girl stared silently at the polished table. Walter James considered the bowed head with its carefully parted red hair. He gulped down the rest of his drink and stood up. “Let’s go down to the car.”
“I’ll meet you by the elevator,” Kevin said. “Little girl’s room.” She gripped his hand hard. “And thanks, Walter.”
They rode down to the lobby in silence, staring soberly at the back of the operator’s black coat. Kevin turned toward the revolving door that led to the street, but Walter James’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“Walter, what is it?”
He urged her away from the elevators and into the corridor where a neon sign pointed the way to the cocktail lounge before he answered. “I just have a naturally suspicious mind.”
“But — ”
“Sssh!” Walter James said and softened it with a smile. “There are times when redheads should be seen and not heard.”
Kevin joined him in watching the elevator doors silently. A silent minute went by. Two. Then the door of the second elevator slid open, disgorging another crowd from the Sky Room. Walter James watched the last of them troop through the revolving doors before he moved. Then it was to sigh softly.
Kevin’s eyes were wide and sparkling. Her voice hit an upper register excitedly. “Walter!” she insisted. “What was it?”
He grinned at her. “Maybe it was just a trick to make you feel better,” he said.
Her mouth sagged in disappointment. “You wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you?”
Walter James let his face sober. “No, I wouldn’t,” he agreed. “You didn’t notice him upstairs, then?”
“Notice who?”
“It’s probably just a coincidence,” mused Walter James softly, “but he left the bar as we got in the elevator and he was on the next one coming down — ”
Kevin squeezed his upper arm hard in exasperation. “Walter! Who?”
“Oh,” he said, his eyes coming back to focus on her impatient face. “I’m sorry. It was our evasive friend from the Grand Theater.” He took her elbow and urged her toward the revolving door. “The popcorn vendor. The boy who tried to sneak out of the theater, you know. John Brownlee.”
T
HE
B
UICK
bore them quietly out the Eleventh Avenue gorge under the Cabrillo Bridge. Mixed eucalypti and evergreen rose shadowy on the canyon slopes of Balboa Park. Behind them the plate glass of the Sky Room showed as a red rectangle high in the sky. The fog was still a shy wispy thing that disappeared at the headlights’ stab.
“Light up and tell me about your father and Shasta Lynn,” prompted Walter James. “But first: are you sure?”
Kevin fumbled at the cigarettes. “Oh, I don’t know! I’m not sure of anything any more. But I can’t see what else it could be.”
She set two cigarettes aglow and handed him one. “You see, Dad never goes out at night very much — never oftener than one night a week generally. He likes to sit by the radio all evening until he falls asleep. He’s crazy about radio programs no matter what they are. He even has a radio going all day in his office, listening to the music over XEGC and those announcers with the horrible voices.”
Walter James looked puzzled.
“That’s a Mexican station down in Tijuana. And, of course, the announcers are Mexican and all have flat raspy voices.”
“Does Shasta Lynn have a radio that particularly excites your father?”
“Please don’t be funny,” said Kevin, unhappily. “The radio has nothing to do with it. I was just trying to show you Dad doesn’t lead a particularly wild life. But for the last few years he’s been going out one night a week regularly — but not necessarily the same night every week. I never thought anything about it — I don’t even remember whether he told me where he was going or not. I just figured it was some real estate business and didn’t pay any attention. But one night about a month ago he told me he was going to a Chamber of Commerce meeting and the next day one of my professors was talking about the Chamber of Commerce and happened to mention their meetings were on an entirely different night.” Her voice raced ahead as though she were anxious to get everything said. “The next week he said he was going down to the Bowling Academy and mentioned something about getting interested in the game and needing the exercise. I went downtown and sat in the Academy all evening. Dad never showed up.”
“Hell, a man has a right to change his mind,” said Walter James amiably.
“But for the last three weeks he’s used the Bowling Academy excuse and he never goes there.”
“But, Kevin — have you ever followed him to a woman?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been ashamed of what I’ve done already.”
Walter James said carefully, “Please don’t be offended by this, Kevin — but isn’t it his own business?”
She spoke as if she had asked and answered the question many times to herself. “You mean that I’m old enough to know what life is all about?”
“Something like that.”
“Walter, I’m not trying to pry into Dad’s life. We’ve never been awfully close. I’ve got too much imagination for him. But we always have been on the level with each other and — and — I don’t want to see him get mixed up with the wrong people. People like Shasta Lynn.”
“Just how does Shasta Lynn fit into this?”
She rolled down the window and tossed her cigarette out. The inrush of air rippled her coppery hair. She leaned her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes wearily.
“This is where I really seem silly,” she admitted. “I got some crazy idea that he was in financial trouble. I guess I acted like he was some cheap bank clerk absconding with money from God knows where. Anyway, I’ve had a semester of accounting, so I checked his books. If it had been anything involved, I wouldn’t have found it. But the books are simple and they fairly shouted at me.”
“What did they say?”
“Two months ago Shasta Lynn got a house in La Mesa from my father. She didn’t buy it; he just gave it to her. And paid the man who owned the house out of his own pocket. It was right in his bank book.”
Kevin sat up straight. “He’s keeping her, Walter. For the last two months Dad’s been drawing money out of the bank. A whole lot more than we use for the household expenses and our spending money. Don’t you see?”
Walter James wrinkled his smooth forehead. “I’m not sure what I see. Is that why you went down to the Grand? To see Shasta Lynn?”
The girl nodded. “I don’t know whether I went just to look at her and see what she was like or whether I was going to be silly and try to talk to her.” She laughed harshly. “I don’t know what we’d talk about. I guess it’s hers and Dad’s own damn business.”
Suddenly, she started to cry. “But why didn’t he tell me? Why does everything have to be so sordid?” She broke down into sobs and put her face in her hands. “Why isn’t Mom here?”
Walter James reached over and stroked her silky hair gently. “Don’t worry about it, Kevin. I’m glad you told me instead of the police. Not that the cops take any interest in things like that. Your father hasn’t committed any crime by giving money to Shasta Lynn. Nobody can prove what for. I’m glad you told me because now I can keep an eye out. Shasta Lynn’s in this thing up to her neck, but there’s no reason for your father to be involved.”
She looked at him pleadingly. “Do you think you can keep him out of it?”
“I’ll do my best. I don’t think it will be too tough.”
“What are you going to say to her tomorrow?”
“That depends on what she says to me. I don’t have much to go on. My only angle is this: the Filipino was crazy about her. If she isn’t actually tied up with this dope mob herself, maybe Fernando Solez spilled something to her. You know how guys in love are.”
Despite her misty eyes, she grinned roguishly. “No. How are they?”
“Ask your Bob sometime. At any rate, I’m going out there and scare the hell out of her. Maybe something’ll happen. God, how I hope she can give me a lead on Dr. Boone! That’s the only link with Atlanta.”
For a couple of minutes they spun down El Cajon in silence. Scattered car lights cut through the gathering fog; there were street lights and drive-in lights and lights from coffee and doughnut shops that lit Kevin’s face briefly as they sped by. Walter James looked at her; she was wan and solemn, but she looked lovelier than he had ever seen her.
She sensed his eyes and instinctively stretched her green skirt over her knees. Then she smiled faintly.
“Girlish, aren’t I? Walter, was it Dr. Boone who shot at us?”
“If Dr. Boone carried that .25 in his purse and got his face powder all over it.”
“Powder? Was that on the gun?”
He nodded. “That’s it. A cheap brand that could be any woman’s. It even matches the body powder that Shasta Lynn keeps in her dressing room.”
Her eyes widened. Walter James noticed for the first time that they were a burnt brownish color. “Shasta Lynn! But she wouldn’t be carrying body powder around in her purse.” She grinned suddenly. “Even she must have some sense of decency. You can’t powder all over in public.”
“Very true.”
“But if it had been kept in her dressing table drawer, the gun could have gotten powder on it.”
“Which immediately brings up the problem: how did my gun which I gave to Hal Lantz get in Shasta Lynn’s dressing table drawer?”
He wheeled the car around in front of her house and cut the motor. She pondered the problem till they reached the front porch. Finally, she said, “I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about it. The pieces never fit together right away. And when you’ve finished you generally find most of the pieces are missing, anyway, and you’ve made wild leaps from one to another till you reached a conclusion. The conclusion smart cops draw is that they’re not so smart as they are lucky.”
“I won’t be able to think about anything but guns and murder at school tomorrow. Not that my grades are so much, anyway.”
“Get a good night’s sleep — that’s the main thing.” The slender man jerked his head at the black shape of a car parked across El Cajon a half block away. “You don’t have to worry. There’s your bodyguard.”
The girl sighed. “That’s reassuring. I feel like nothing can go wrong. It’s like having a guardian angel watching over you.” She patted his hand. “I’ve had a wonderful time, Walter.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he stated.
“Will you?” It was an unguarded exclamation of pleasure rather than a question. She swung the door open into the darkened house.
“I couldn’t help it,” Walter James said gently. She stood looking at him. The centers of her eyes were cups of warmth. The silence of the night was broken only by a car stopping across El Cajon.
“Don’t Walter,” she said, ending the communion. “I mean — don’t kiss me. Not tonight. After the things we’ve talked about. This isn’t the night for it.”
He kissed the pale shape of her hand instead.
“Good night.”
“Good night. See you tomorrow.”
The dark shape by the palm tree jolted him from pleasanter thoughts. “Yes?” he said.
The shape became a man in a sport coat and an open-throat shirt. “You’re Mr. James?” The voice was unsure, slightly immature.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Newcomb — I go with Laura.”
Walter James relaxed. “Oh, sure,” he said. “You’re Bob. Come on to the car.” Seated, he watched the youth’s profile. “Cigarette?”
“No, I don’t use them.”
“Well?”
Newcomb looked at him nervously. “Mr. James, you probably think it’s none of my business — but what are you doing with Laura?”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
The boy moved his head uneasily. “I don’t know. Suddenly, you show up and Laura doesn’t even know I’m around. She broke our date tonight to go out with you. She won’t tell me anything.”
“I haven’t done a thing to harm her, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Walter James told him coldly.
Newcomb looked miserably at his hands. “It’s not that so much. It’s just that Laura’s a funny girl. Moody, kinda flighty. She’s got to get over that if she’s going to be happy.”
Walter James quirked his mouth briefly. “Look, kid. The best way for people to be happy is to mind their own business.”
A cold silence seeped into the car.
“I didn’t think you’d understand,” said Newcomb stiffly, after a moment.
“But you tried,” Walter James said, irony heavy in his voice. “And now no matter what happens you can always say — I did my best.”
“You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”
Walter James turned the ignition key. “That handle right there opens the door.” Newcomb got out, clumsily, without a word. Walter James stepped on the starter.
“Good night,” he said pleasantly. “And take my advice, junior. Don’t play with the big kids — they play rough and you might get hurt.” He let out the clutch and left Newcomb standing at the curb.
T
HE
M
ONDAY MORNING SUN
warmed his pale hand as it lay along the Buick window opening. A little more of this, he thought, and I won’t look so much like a bookkeeper. He grinned at himself in the rear-view mirror and nearly roared through a violently red traffic stop. As the motor idled, he glanced over to see what street this was. College Way.
A big black and white sign pointed left to San Diego State College. About a mile over Walter James could see the college tower, thin and square and brilliantly white, probing the hot sky. Kevin had mentioned at dinner the night before that September was sometimes the hottest month of all. He unfastened the shirt button under the knot of his tie.
The signal glared green and four miles later he was in La Mesa. The town was small and peaceful, hunched at the feet of steep mounded hills. It took about fifteen minutes of diligence to locate the address Kevin had given him.
He was straining to see the street numbers when a black sedan brushed by his Buick, traveling in the opposite direction. Walter James looked quickly in the rear-view mirror, but the car was already disappearing over a rise of ground. Oh well, he thought, there are probably a lot of thin men with hawk faces around here; it probably wasn’t Danny Host at all.
Shasta Lynn’s house was a one-story beige stucco that sprawled a hundred yards away from the road behind a scattered row of eucalypti. Most of the front was glass paned, the interior hidden by striped monk’s-cloth drapes. He wheeled the car up the red dirt driveway. A drape twitched into place. There was no front porch; three red cement steps led up from the driveway and there was the door. He got out and walked around the car.
Walter James stopped on the first step. The front door was open now and Shasta Lynn stood in it. “Yes?” she asked.
She stood much as she had when she was singing on the stage Saturday night — very still and erect, with long fingered hands lying quietly along her thighs. Blonde hair still swung around her shoulders. She was wearing a house dress of some blue coarse material that complimented her body. Evidently, there was little underneath it.
“I’m Walter James. Dr. Boone sent me.”
There was a movement in the house behind her.
“I don’t know of any Dr. Boone,” Shasta said steadily.
Walter James smiled. “That’s what I was told to tell you,” he said. “Suppose we go inside and discuss it.”
He heard a door close softly in the house.
“I can’t see why we should.” The woman was an imperturbable statue.
“It’s for your own good, Shasta,” said the slender man, starting up the steps. “Especially now that the Filipino is dead.”
The buttons of his coat brushed her; she pulled her body back against the door jamb and Walter James walked into the house. Shasta shut the door. He tossed his hat on a table by the end of a Monterey divan and sat down. The monk’s-cloth drapes were porous and let a filtered quantity of sun into the room which stretched across the front of the house. It was a large room, well-appointed, with knotty pine walls. The floor was wine-colored, of some linoleum-like substance, spotted here and there with throw rugs. A cheerful room, had it been garbed in sunlight.
“Sit down, Shasta,” said Walter James. He added, “And talk.”
Her greenish, faintly slanted eyes probed at him. Skillfully, she slipped the connections of the door chain together without a glance toward it. Her walk toward him was the same she had used on the stage of the Grand Theater, calculated, bizarrely seductive. Walter James sensed the same wrongness he had felt during her dance. Confined in this low-ceilinged room of faded sunlight, the feeling began to resolve into understanding.
Shasta sank into the woven cushion beside him, making no attempt to keep her ivory knees covered. Their roundness failed to reflect any gleam of the dim light, as though they were dusted with powder even now.
Curiosity began to thaw the coldness of her eyes. She parted her lips without showing her teeth. “Who told you to tell me of Dr. Boone, Mr. James?”
“A friend in Atlanta.”
“Atlanta? What was his name?”
“I don’t know, Shasta. He just said he was a friend.”
“Then I can’t see how this concerns me.” The eyes cooled again.
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” said Walter James. “And, by the way, what was Danny Host doing around here?”
Her face was blank. “Really, Mr. James, I don’t seem to understand a thing you say.” She rose lithely and swayed to the end table. Through flat eyes, he watched her pick up his hat with cool meaning. He smiled at her and unfastened the single button that held his sport coat together. He slid down on the small of his back in the cushions. The coat fell open.
“I won’t rush off,” he said lazily.
She looked scornfully at the leather band of his shoulder holster. “My, aren’t we the big man!”
“Now that the Filipino is dead, what will you smoke?” asked Walter James idly.
Shasta replaced his hat on the end table and picked up a squat silver box. “Cigarettes,” she stated. “Would you care for one?”
She opened the box; it was full of white paper cylinders.
“After you,” said the slender man politely. She took one off the top. Walter James inserted a finger to the bottom of the box and fished one out of the last row.
“Light?”
“Thanks.” She snapped the box shut, wandered to the other end of the davenport and sat down. “You were out front the night Ferdy was killed, Mr. James. Did you kill him?”
“No. I was sent from Atlanta to see Ferdy.”
“I don’t believe I know anybody in Atlanta.”
“Think it over, Shasta. You have to make a new contact now that the Filipino is gone. An aristocrat like yourself doesn’t want to fall back on ragweed.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Idly, he picked up the silver box and counted out the cigarettes on the cushion between them. When he reached eighteen, he stopped. The box was empty.
“And yours is nineteen and mine is twenty,” he enlightened her. “A fresh pack. Probably doesn’t mean a thing.”
He produced a white envelope from his coat pocket. In the bottom of the cigarette box were a few grains of tobacco. He tapped the box empty into the envelope, sealed it and replaced it in his pocket.
“I’m not from the police, Shasta. I don’t want to discuss you with them. Please don’t force me.”
“I told the police everything I have to say.”
Walter James stood up and lightly ground his fist against his palm. “Why didn’t you tell them about Gilbert?” he said suddenly.
She was on her feet like a serpent striking. Her tongue was between her teeth.
“Then again — why should you? Why shouldn’t Mr. Gilbert stay in business and provide that extra income? This is a hell of a fine house, Shasta, and we both know it. We both know what you and the Filipino shared.”
Her hands were pressed against her thighs again. “Tell me, Shasta, was there much between you and Ferdy?”
“Don’t you dare say that! Don’t you dare think of it!” she burst at him. Walter James began to get the picture. He stepped toward her and stood close.
“Shasta, you need a new contact. I can furnish a new contact. And we could be very good friends.” He ran his palm the length of her bare arm. Eyes blazing, she pushed away and rubbed the flesh he had touched.
“Don’t touch me! You can’t touch me and that crummy Gilbert can’t touch me!”
He heard a latch rasp behind him and he whirled. His fingers flicked the reassuring gun butt, then he dropped his hand. Madeline Harms stood in the doorway, the door swinging open behind her. Her mouse-colored hair hung down her back and she wore a blue silk kimono gathered loosely about her. She was barefoot.
“Is he hurting you, Shasta darling? I won’t let him hurt you,” the girl’s slack mouth said. Her eyes were dilated and mostly white. In her hand she held a carving knife, pointing outward from her stomach.
“Madeline — go back! I can take care of this bastard!” It was a screaming command.
Madeline shook her head loosely and stubbornly, trying to keep her match-head pupils fixed on the slender man. “Shasta needs my help. Darling always needs me.”
Walter James glanced into the room from which the girl had appeared. Through the doorway he could see no furniture. A soft red carpet covered the floor to the walls. There was an ash tray on the carpet.
“Darling Shasta needs Mr. Gilbert, too,” he said slowly and carefully to the girl. He noticed a smear of white powder on the front of the kimono. “That is why darling Shasta has Mr. Gilbert come to her.” He watched the blonde out of the corner of one eye.
Madeline bit the flesh of her hand between her thumb and first finger. Her eyes widened still farther and shifted erratically to the other woman.
“Tell him that’s not true, darling. Mr. Gilbert came to you just once, didn’t he? But little Ferdy knew too much about him. So we got lots of money. We got a beautiful house to live in.” She focused her gaping eyes on Walter James again. “Darling doesn’t love anybody. Darling only loves me!”
Her voice rose to a skittering scream. She thrust the gleaming blade out and started toward the detective. Her steps were too long and unsure. Walter James brought the edge of his hand down swiftly across her wrist. The knife clattered to the floor, and he hit her openhanded on the side of the head. Madeline fell and rolled loosely across the wine-colored floor.
Shasta sobbed and knelt by the crumple of bare flesh and blue silk. “Madeline,” she murmured, stroking the mouse-colored hair. “Honey, did he hurt you? Tell me he didn’t hurt you!”
Madeline sighed and coiled her arms contentedly around the other woman’s ankles.
Walter James picked up his hat and unfastened the door chain. “Thanks for the day, girls,” he said and went out into the sunlight.