Way of a Wanton (8 page)

Even if Bondhelm hadn't offered me what seemed like a potentially attractive deal for working on Zoe's murder, I would already have had a more than usual interest in the case for three other reasons: my affection for Raul himself and a desire to help him any way I could, the fact that I'd been given a lot of hell last night and don't like clubheads ordering me around or shoving me around, and the further fact that until this case was satisfactorily cleared up a number of people were going to be damned unhappy with me. But now, with the appearance of “Can You Guess?” I had what was, at least for me, a better reason for tying into the case than Bondhelm's offer.
 

What Hollywood
He-Man
bruised what Hollywood detective last night when that detective angled his nose where it
didn't
belong? Is rumor true that the detective promised to be good and
crawled
back into his ... shell?
 

I read the item again, my coffee cup poised in the air. Once word gets around a town that a private investigator is yellow or can easily be scared off a case, that investigator is in trouble. A little of that kind of libel is a lot. I put my cup back in the saucer slowly, without spilling a drop, got up, tossed a dollar bill on the counter, and left. At last my dream was going to come true: I was going to meet Fanny Hillman.
 

I was so griped when I drove away from Lyle's that I almost forgot to check on the green Chevy. I took a look, though: no Chevy.
 

Fanny rarely worked at the
Crier
building, as she had her own office in a little building straight down Sunset about two miles. I was there a few minutes after I read the item. I parked in front of the building and sat in the car for another sixty seconds. I couldn't just barge in and bust Fanny in the snoot, as much as that idea appealed to me at the moment, so I waited till I'd calmed down a little. And when I'd cooled a bit I started wondering how Fanny knew about the beef I'd had with King. So far as I knew, nobody had mentioned that business to the police.
 

Next door to the office building is a malt shop with a pay phone on the wall. I went inside and called Captain Nelson at the Hollywood Division. When he came on I said, “Hello, Ben. Shell Scott here. Anything new?”
 

“Nothing fancy.”
 

“You see Fanny Hillman's column?”
 

“I did. And I'm glad you called. That was you, wasn't it?”
 

“How'd you guess? Yeah, it was me and King. That's why I called. Did you or any of your boys give that to the press?”
 

“No, we didn't,” he growled. “You know why? We didn't know about it. Listen, Shell, I spent some time talking to you all alone, just like I did with the rest of that crowd, and this is the first I hear of a fight. All you mentioned was a
little
beef. That's to be expected, but a fist fight, no. Why did you hold out on me?”
 

“Sorry, Ben. It didn't seem too important at the time—as long as I did get the call in to you. And I imagine Genova must have told the rest to keep their lips buttoned.” I briefed him quickly on the beef I'd had about phoning him, then added, “I can understand why neither King nor Genova would want to get splashed in the papers, but I overruled their objections.”
 

He grunted. “You got any more you
forgot
to tell me?” His voice was edged with sarcasm.
 

“No. One more thing, that is. I'm working on the case now for a client. If anything comes up, you'll get it.”
 

“Yeah.” Nelson knew, as did most of the L. A. police, that I had a long record of working with the authorities instead of against them—particularly because I'd worked so long almost hand in glove with Samson, the Central Homicide captain downtown. But Nelson still said he'd like to see me if I remembered anything else. Then he asked me, “How about Evans? He give you any trouble?”
 

“Raul? Not especially. He just wasn't happy about a body in his pool. Neither was anybody else. I hope you don't lean on him too hard.”
 

“We won't lean on anybody especially till we get more. But the dame
was
at his place. You got any ideas why?”
 

“Nothing yet.”
 

“O.K.,” he said. “Say, Shell, how about the yellow suit in the pool?”
 

I laughed, told him I'd see him later, and hung up.
 

Then, not laughing, I headed for Fanny. Her office was one of four in the building, and apparently consisted of two or three rooms. Inside the first frosted glass door I found a guy at a typewriter and asked him, “Fanny Hillman around?”
 

“Yeah, she's here.”
 

“This ‘Eye at the Keyhole' thing. When's the
Crier
's deadline for it?”
 

He glanced up at me and said, “Depends what edition. Eleven P.M. for the morning edition. What's—” He broke it off, started a smirk, then killed it as I felt my jaw muscles bulge. Maybe I didn't know him, but he knew me. He jerked a thumb toward another frosted glass door behind him. “You'll find dear Miss Hillman right back there.” I didn't wait to ask him if that “dear” was an expression of admiration or contempt, but followed his thumb to Fanny's door. I couldn't help noticing a couple of glances directed my way from the two gals who were also in the room. I could feel my face burning. Fanny, being a Fearsome Filmland Power, had an office all to herself. I took a deep breath in front of the door, told myself, Take it easy, Scott, and went in.
 

The old bat looked up and gave me a blank stare as I came in. She wasn't as fat as Bondhelm, but give her a few more years past forty and she'd make it. Her pale eyes looked at me from a round, vacuous face. She'd been reading something on the stained-walnut desk behind which she sat, and I'd have given eight to five right then that it was either her own column, Tillie the Toiler, or Dotty Dripple.
 

She was really a galloping horror. She had hands of the type generally called “dishpan hands,” but the same thing might have been said of her face. She looked like a woman who would disappear every Halloween and turn up dancing around a bubbling pot; give her a broom and you'd lose her.
 

Still giving me the blank stare, she said, “Yes?” going up. She had a voice like Howdy Doody's.
 

I decided to play it light. Maybe this hag had really believed her own words. The least I could do was give her the benefit of the doubt.
 

“Good morning, Miss Hillman,” I said pleasantly. “My name's Scott. I, uh"—I give her the nicest smile I could find—"crawled out of my shell to correct a misapprehension. About your item in this morning's
Crier
.”
 

She sucked at something in one of her teeth. Or maybe one of Dr. Cowen's teeth. She knew who I was, all right. “I'm very busy,” she said shortly. “Can't you get to the point?”
 

“Yeah, lady, I'll get to the point.” Just like that she'd popped me. Here I was all sweetness and light and damn near ready to tickle her under the chin, and she was giving me this old routine. I slammed the door behind me and walked up to her desk. I came at her so fast that she scooted backward three inches in her swivel chair.
 

I said deliberately, “The point is pretty damn obvious, don't you think? In the first place, I don't like my name in your sticky column. In the second place, I resent libel and slander. Specifically I object to the implied accusation that a local ape man made me crawl, which he didn't, and the further implication that I could be scared off a case. Maybe I could be, but it hasn't happened yet.”
 

She said sweetly, “What case, Mr. Scott? What
are
you talking about? And I'm certain your name isn't in the column ... the sticky column, I believe you said?”
 

I'd had a death grip on the
Crier
, opened to this dear girl's word; now I slid it across the desk at her and started to point out my name. Then I stopped. Actually, my name wasn't in there.
 

She had noticed my hesitation and was smiling at me, happy as a clam, and I said, “Isn't it obvious who you were talking about?”
 

“Whom, Mr. Scott. About whom I was talking, you mean.”
 

“
You know bloody well what I mean!
”
 

Grammar lessons she was giving me. Pretty soon old sweetness-and-light Scott's brain arteries were going to open up and start squirting at each other. I sprayed air through my teeth and said more slowly, and more quietly, “Look, you know that's me who—whom—whom—well, godalmightydamn.”
 

Oh, she was happy now. She was having a ball. Only once in about a year do I get as griped at anybody as I now was at this quivering monstrosity, and a guy never builds toward peaceful relations feeling that way.
 

I took a couple of deep breaths and said, “Miss Hillman, I don't know where you got your information—though I've got an idea—but the item's as phony as house dice. For your information, I'm the boy who called the cops—and when I did it I hadn't promised to be good. Also, I have a client for whom I'm now investigating the murder of Zoe Townsend. Tooth and nail. There's an item for your column. For free.”
 

“I'm afraid it isn't very newsworthy, Mr. Scott.”
 

“Yeah? Well, it's true. Does that eliminate it?”
 

She didn't say anything. I said, “I came in here to ask you, pleasantly, if you'd correct the erroneous impression you gave in this column. I say quiet seriously that it could be damaging to me. Now, how about it?”
 

“That's absurd. If that's all...”
 

“It's not all. Where did you get your information? From King? It had to be from somebody involved. Somebody who most likely phoned you.”
 

No answer. She sucked at something in her teeth again. This time she got it.
 

I leaned forward on her desk, the palms of my hands moist on its smooth surface. “Tell me this,” I said. “Do you print anything that anybody tells you? Is a phone call all you need? I'll give you some hot items: Ava Gardner just shot Anthony Eden; Eisenhower confesses; the Pope has switched to Calvert's; Arthur Godfrey—”
 

“Please, Mr. Scott!” Her face wasn't pale white any more; it was getting as red as mine. “Get out of here!” she screeched. “I won't listen to any more of this...”
 

That was all. No use kidding myself, Fanny and I would never see eye to eye at that keyhole. I turned and started to leave, and now that she'd apparently survived the battle she gave the knife one more ladylike twist: “If it had been you in my column, Mr. Scott, what would you have done about it?”
 

I yanked my head back toward her. “What would you say to my hauling Zoe's killer in here and plopping him in your lap tomorrow? With instructions to brush up on his technique?”
 

Her round face got very mean-looking all of a sudden, then went back to normal, which was worse. She said icily, “Oh? Then you
already
know who the killer is. Why, that's just wonderful, Mr. Scott. Maybe I do have an item.”
 

“Now wait a minute—” I choked it off. This was a losing game and I'd had it. I left the door open as I went out. Fanny and I hadn't been engaged before, but we were sure as hell quits now.
 

I got some more eyeballing as I left and I gave out glares indiscriminately. In the Cad, I made a highly illegal U-turn in the middle of the street, buzzed back to Lyle's and had cardboard toast and two cups of brown water, then leaped back into the Cad, angrily ground the gears, and jerked away from the curb like a madman.
 

Just as I shifted out of low, something went plunk against the car somewhere and I wondered if I'd sprung something in the Cad's innards, or maybe hit a pedestrian. If a pedestrian, I hoped it was one of Fanny's faithful followers. But the rear-view mirror showed the road clear behind me and the motor purred sweetly.
 

Twenty minutes later when I parked in front of Genova's studio I was back to what would pass for normal. I was a little irritated with myself for getting so worked up in the first place, but even before I'd read today's
Crier
I'd had enough of Fanny Hillman to last me for several years. Now it was for life.
 

I got out of the Cad, slammed the door, and stared at the gleaming black side of the car for a few seconds while my throat got slightly drier. Now I know what that plunk I'd heard back at Lyle's meant.
 

There was a neat round hole—obviously a bullet hole—in the metal of the car just back of where I'd been sitting when I erupted so violently away from Lyle's. Apparently I could thank Fanny for one thing: She'd got me mad enough to save my life.
 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

I POKED my finger into the hole in the Cad's side, remembering I hadn't heard a shot. I could have missed it as I ground the gears. A lot of things were puzzling me. First of all, why anybody would be after me already. Within the last half hour somebody had tried to kill me, murder me, and they'd come so close that I could feel the muscles tightening involuntarily in my back and I looked around me nervously. But I didn't know beans about who had killed Zoe, and that was the only case I had any connection with now. And why hadn't I been shot when I stepped out of Lyle's? There was an explanation for that, though, which made sense. If a man wanted to shoot me and be far away before the kill was noticed, his best bet would be to wait till I was in the car, where I might not be spotted for a while, rather than drop me in plain view on the sidewalk.