Deadly Weapon

To
GLORY

“Listen, Miss Gilbert. I’ve come to figure that man is the only deadly weapon. Take a gun. It’s an absolutely harmless thing — even makes a good honest paperweight — until some man gets his hand around it. You can strip a gun down to its basic parts and it’s lost its power. You can reduce man to his chemical elements, but you’ve always got the spirit or whatever you call it, left. And that spirit will find some damned way to do evil.”

— A
USTIN
C
LAPP

W
ALTER
J
AMES
eased himself into the aisle seat and tried to relax. He couldn’t be calm at times like this; he felt his hands on his thighs, pulling the crease of his trousers a little higher. He felt his fingers at his stomach buttoning and unbuttoning his double-breasted coat.

The music from the four-piece band behind the runway was self-consciously languorous, underwritten with heavy drumbeats. Walter James could feel the rhythmic echo in his stomach:
itwillbreakanyminute, itwillbreakanyminute.
He brought his head around slowly, peering up the darkened house, to catch another glimpse of the man he had come to see. The house lights had been out for two minutes now, setting the mood for the Grand Theater’s star attraction.

Yes, there he was — second seat from the aisle in the last row. A glow of embarrassed red from the weak footlights barely outlined the man’s head against the back wall.

The tin voice over the public address system broke the spell of the drum beat. “And now — what every man in San Diego has been dreaming of — the Grand Theater’s own — lovely Shasta Lynn!”

Walter James turned his head back to face the stage. The curtain glided up. He automatically joined the clattering handclaps that greeted the woman standing in the footlight glow. The fat man next to him was whistling shrilly. As the sound cleared his head, Walter James sat up straighter, feeling almost relaxed. This was better. He turned his full attention on the woman.

Shasta Lynn was not overly pretty, he decided, but her nose was thin and straight, and the planes of her face were not irregular. Her drawing power seemed to be her body: curved and flamboyantly sexual, it thrust arrestingly against the sheath of scarlet satin it wore. Her blonde hair was shoulder length.

As the admiration of the audience subsided to a rustle, a microphone slid down from the top of the proscenium to shadow her face. She sang “All of Me” in a convincing voice, in tones that were softer than Walter James had expected. She stood very still as she sang, her hands moving occasionally and slightly against either thigh. She stood very still, knowing that every eye was fastened on her as she breathed out the words.

After the last soft “All — of — me” the band at her feet began to accent the drumbeats again. The microphone moved up into the gloom. The red draperies behind her crept silently apart. Now the woman was surrounded by funereal black, against which her blonde hair and white skin were incandescent. She began to undress, moving gracefully and rhythmically about the stage. The throbbing band increased its pace and blue footlights joined the red ones, caressing her weaving body with purple overtones.

Walter James leaned forward in his seat, wondering just what was strange about the dance. Shasta Lynn was fascinating but not attractive; her suggestive movements seemed calculated to arouse not lust but some other more bizarre and stealthy surging. Despite the feminine bloom of her body, it intimated an odd decadence that Walter James had never noticed about womanly nudity before. What’s wrong with her? he thought. He looked around at other members of the audience near him; their dimlit faces seemed to be registering the normal reactions. I’m getting old, he thought; maybe thirty-eight is too old to appreciate this sort of thing. Then, while Shasta Lynn posed as nakedly as San Diego law would allow, taking the acclaim of the audience, he dismissed the whole thing as the result of too much imagination.

The curtain dropped.

It rose again as the house lights went on. Male voices still shouted for Shasta as the entire cast paraded about the bright stage, stridently singing an unintelligible song about the show was over but we’re happy, happy, happy, and see you next week at the Grand The-ay-ter.

The clatter of seats and the subdued thunder of feet on the wooden floor as the audience prepared to leave drowned the final chorus. There were a few scattered handclaps as Shasta Lynn and a lanky comedian bowed from center stage. The men — college youths, elderly salesmen, sailors — punctuated by an occasional untidy woman, began to seep up the aisle. As the curtain came down to rest for the final time, the four-piece band swung into a march, overridden by the tin voice seductively announcing show times for Sunday. Walter James joined the mob in the aisle, pushing toward the man in the last row, the man he had come to San Diego to see.

As he pressed his slender frame almost viciously through the massed bodies, a low scream leaped from the last row. The crowd stopped moving. Walter James pushed out of the aisle and scrambled over the three rows of seats that separated him from his target.

A girl leaned against the back wall of the theater, awkwardly half in, half out of her seat. Her arms were bent double at the elbows as she pressed clenched fists against her shoulders. Her mouth was still open from her scream; her eyes held astonishment rather than terror as they looked down on the man next to her.

The man’s head was bent forward as if he were straining to see his lap. But he was not looking at anything. A short knife hilt protruded from his chest.

“Y
OU MIGHT AS WELL
all sit down,” the big man said lazily. “We may be around here for a while yet.” The audience, nervous from twenty minutes of waiting, subsided gradually into the theater seats. The murmur of their voices swelled a little as the big man took his gaze off them and looked at the corpse.

Walter James said to the girl who had screamed, “There’s nothing to worry about at all. The police have the situation well in hand.” He sat on the back of a seat, one hand soothingly on her shoulder. She looked up at him gratefully. Though a small man, a perfectly proportioned body gave Walter James the appearance of greater size. A slight quirk to his lips hinted a distant excitement behind the irregular lines of his face. His pale blue eyes glinted under mussed brown hair.

The big man flicked his eyes briefly at them. He stood towering above the medical examiner who fussed over the body.

“I’ll want that knife when you pull it, Doc. And above all, don’t screw up the prints again.” He moved his tongue contemplatively over his front teeth.

“Got an aspirin for the young lady?” Walter James asked him. “She’s on the shaky side.” He removed his hand from the girl’s shoulder and got out some cigarettes.

The big detective moved lightly up to him. “The doc’ll take care of her as soon as he’s through over there.”

The girl shuddered. “I’m all right now,” she said out of her white face. “May I have a cigarette, please?” She was a youngster — tweed-suitish dress, nice features, penny-colored hair.

“Sorry,” said Walter James and dumped one out of his pack. The girl leaned forward, and he lit it for her with the glowing tip of his own. She huddled back in the seat again, keeping her eyes away from the men working over the body.

“It’s not very pretty,” the big man agreed sympathetically. “How old are you, miss?”

“Nineteen.”

“Still going to school?”

“Uh-huh. I go to State.”

The big man raised his eyebrows. “Name?”

“Laura Kevin Gilbert,” the girl said reluctantly.

Walter James said quickly, “Wait a while, won’t you? The kid’s shaky. She was parked next to the body when the lights went up.”

The big man shifted his gaze. “Who are you?”

“My name is James — Walter James.” He puffed smoke at the big man’s gray waistline.

“Stick around,” the big man advised. He spun on his heel, started down the aisle toward the stage. “Jim, I want you.”

An elderly plain-clothes man detached himself from the cluster around the body and followed the big man down the aisle. The front few rows of the theater were filled almost solid with silent people; toward the rear where the body had been found only a few hardy souls remained. The big man unbuttoned his coat and leaned back against the runway. He removed his hat and ran his fingers through his thick, grayish-brown hair.

“Folks, I’m Lieutenant Clapp from your police department.” He scanned them lightly, almost disinterestedly. “I don’t want to detain any of you any longer than I have to so we’ll try to get this over as fast as possible. A little Filipino has been killed back in the last row, probably while the show was on. It looks like murder. If any of you know anything about it, I’d appreciate you telling us right now, in the interest of law and order.”

He paused and glanced around expectantly. No one stirred.

“Don’t hesitate to speak up if you noticed anything out of order in the last row, around the area where the body is.” He paused again. Midway back in the theater, a hand was raised timidly. “Yes?”

A young sailor stood up. “My name’s Bill Davis,” he said uncertainly.

Clapp nodded encouragingly. “You saw something, did you?”

The youth twisted his head embarrassedly. “I — I think so — uh — Lieutenant.”

“What was it?” Clapp asked him patiently. The sailor held a short whispered conference with the uniformed man next to him. He raised his head and spoke rapidly.

“Randy says he thinks so, too, so I guess I did see it. I was sitting across the aisle from the guy — ” he indicated the body with a jerk of his blond head, “ — and I’m pretty sure that somebody was moving around there just about when the — uh — the lights went out.”

Clapp ran a heavy hand over his tanned face. “What kind of moving?”

The sailor frowned. “I — I’m not sure, Lieutenant. I just saw it out of the corner of my eye.”

“Thanks a lot, son,” Clapp gave him a kindly smile. The sailor sat down and began to whisper animatedly to his companion. The big detective glanced around at the rest of the audience. “Anybody else got anything to add? No? All right — Crane here will take your names and addresses one at a time. If you know anything, tell him. If you don’t, just give Crane your name, address, occupation and how we can get in touch with you by phone — if we have to. Then you can go home to bed and you probably won’t hear from us again. Thanks for your co-operation. All yours, Jim.”

Clapp moved up toward the body again. “Where’s that manager — Greissinger?” he called. A shiny-headed man poked between the curtains and came out on the stage.

“I’m just up here, talking to my people,” he explained anxiously.

“Let’s you come down here and talk to me,” rumbled Clapp.

“Sure, Chief. Anything I can do to help. We help you, maybe you help us keep some of the stink out of the papers.” He hustled up the aisle after Clapp.

Clapp looked down at the body. Once it had been a male, lineage Filipino, age twenty-five to forty, about five feet tall, approximately a hundred pounds in weight, complexion dark, lots of long black hair greased back, hands a little withered and knotty on the backs, large solid gold ring on the left one, expensive wristwatch with a gold strap, purple silk sport shirt with plastic buttons, black wool trousers with a hard finish and a neat crease, black patent leather shoes about size six or smaller.

“Too bad,” babbled Greissinger. “An event like this gives an honest legit house a bad name. Anything we can do to clear this up and keep some of the stink out of — ”

“In a minute,” Clapp brushed him off. “What’s the word, Doc?” Dr. Stein, the medical examiner was a young man but he looked at Clapp with old eyes.

“Died instantly. Heart was punctured by the knife blade. It went in right below the sternum up to the hilt. He took about three inches. From the size of him, the blade probably went clear through his heart. The wound points to his left, about fifteen degrees. Anything else?”

“How long?” asked Clapp.

“Hell, he’s fresh — within the hour. Very little bleeding, hardly got him dirty. He’s just beginning coagulation now.”

“Why no bleeding?”

“Look at the knife,” said Dr. Stein. “It’s a remake job, blade filed down to a quarter of an inch. It just made a puncture. Between the blade and the hilt, somebody’s fitted on a round metal guard, about two inches in diameter. That served as a sort of cork. Very clean job. I’d like to have more like this.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Clapp. “You can take him home with you now if you want. Thanks for the day.”

“I’ll give you a fuller report late tomorrow afternoon,” Stein assured him. “I’m going to sleep in the morning. It’s Sunday, you know.”

“Not for him,” said Clapp and turned to Greissinger. “You know the body here?”

“Yes — he works here. Or, anyway, he worked here. See, Chief, we want to help you all we can,” insisted the manager.

“Lieutenant,” said Clapp succinctly. “Sit down, Greissinger, you may save us trouble after all. So he worked here? What did he do?”

The pudgy manager took a seat off the right aisle; Clapp filled the one in back of him, looming above him.

“He took tickets as our patrons came in. His name was Fernando Solez — been with us since we opened in ‘43.”

“Kind of small to take tickets at a place like this, wasn’t he?”

“The Grand Theater is a good clean house. We don’t have any trouble here — you know that, Lieutenant. Besides, we got Johnny — he’s a pretty big fellow — he keeps the lines in order out in the lobby and watches the box office in case Gladys has any rough customers. We’ve never had much trouble till tonight.”

“Did Solez have any particular enemies?” asked Clapp.

Greissinger waved his hands. “No. Ferdy was a good clean boy — had nothing but friends. Everybody liked Ferdy — he’d do anything for you. Always a big smile.” He showed Clapp how the dead man used to smile.

“If Solez was a ticket taker,” mused Clapp, “why wasn’t he out taking tickets? What in hell was he doing sitting in the audience?”

The manager moved his plump hands out horizontally. “Oh, that! Nothing suspicious about that, Lieutenant. Ferdy was nuts about the way Miss Lynn danced — Miss Lynn, she’s my big attraction here. So we used to humor Ferdy — Johnny would take over the ticket box during Miss Lynn’s number so Ferdy could come in and watch. No harm in that.”

“Felix!” called Clapp. A stocky plain-clothes man hurried in from the lobby; he was dapper despite his fat. “Start checking the cast and employees. The body worked here as a ticket taker, named Fernando Solez, been here since ‘43. I want to talk to the cast in a few minutes. Particularly to a babe named Miss Lynn. Don’t scare them — just have them sit tight.” Felix nodded and started toward the stage. “So,” said Clapp, “Solez was nuts about Miss Lynn.”

“No, Lieutenant!” protested Greissinger. He palmed the sweat off his bald head. “You got me all wrong! Ferdy just liked to watch Miss Lynn dance. She’s a high-type girl, very high-toned. Ferdy just admired her — he liked to run errands for her — you know, get cigarettes or something if she ran out.”

“This Lynn woman got any jealous boy friends?”

“No.”

“No, what?” pursued Clapp. “She got a husband, she living with anyone, who does she run around with?”

“She doesn’t go out with anybody.”

Clapp’s lip curled. “Cut it, Greissinger. I’m old enough to know.”

Greissinger took hold of Clapp’s arm. “Believe me, Lieutenant, you got it all wrong. Miss Lynn is a high-type girl. There is nothing wrong there. I have never seen her do anything out of the way.” The pitch of his voice rose unevenly.

Clapp looked at him steadily. A spark kindled in the big man’s eyes. He rose and the pudgy manager rose with him. “Okay, okay,” the detective said, “but I think I’ll have a little heart to heart talk with Miss Lynn, just the same.”

Greissinger put his hands together as if preparatory to wringing them. “I can tell you anything you want to know, Lieutenant. There’s no use wasting your time with my cast — ” He felt the big man’s eyes on him quizzically and he stopped abruptly. “She’s backstage,” he said uncertainly.

“Keep her there,” advised Clapp. “I’ll be back there right away.”

The fat man let out his breath in a shuddering sigh and turned away. Clapp touched him lightly on the shoulder. “One other thing, Greissinger. Your man on the door — Johnny — tells me that not one of the audience left the theater before we got here.” The manager nodded. “That puzzles me. Why did a good three hundred people stick around to chin with the police. Got an answer?”

“Well,” said Greissinger, “that officer that’s always around this block — Murdock — he was here five minutes after the girl screamed.”

Clapp went after his point relentlessly. “But did you send after Murdock? Who called the police station? Who held this crowd in here till Murdock got here and I got here? Did you?”

“Well, Lieutenant, I was going to do all those things — I wanted to co-operate as much as I could. But that man of yours was in the house, so he took charge. He didn’t have any trouble at all with the tough guys — after all, he had a gun.”

Clapp asked slowly, “What man of mine?”

“Why, that gentleman up there,” Greissinger pointed. Clapp’s eyes followed the fat finger up to the back of the house and a new spark kindled in them. He crossed through the seats of the center section and marched up the left aisle toward Walter James.