Extra Kill - Dell Shannon (28 page)

"I thought the name Shorter rang a bell,"
nodded Mendoza. "I remember."

"I figured out," Pickering broke in, "from
a couple of things that bastard, Twelvetrees I mean, said, that he
was responsible for that. D'you know whether that was a—so to
speak—routine investigation, or if they had anonymous information?
Do the police act on that kind of thing?"

"Not my department, but I can find out about the
arrest from Vice. Yes, certainly, Vice and Narcotics especially, the
anonymous tip often sets the ball rolling. Sometimes it turns out a
dud, sometimes not."

"Well, what I think happened was this," she
went on. "Twelvetrees knew Shorter, that came out when he
approached me with these negs. He said—because naturally I asked
how he got them—he said, in a jeering sort of way, not as if he
expected to be believed, you know, that Shorter'd had a premonition
about being arrested and had handed over had some stuff for
safekeeping. But later on he started to say something else, about how
he and Shorter had been together inside—and caught himself up. I
think he might have been in prison, and met Shorter there. And it's
just a guess, but I think Shorter showed him some of his—things—and
Twelvetrees recognized me in those pictures, either then or later. He
didn't do anything about it because I couldn't do anything for him
then, you see? I mean, he wasn't interested in me any other way
but—for money. It's a funny thing to say, but when it came to girls
to—go around with, well, I gathered from what Netta said—she's in
the crowd that knew him best—he was a little nervous of anything
from the right side of the tracks. You know? He didn't feel at home
with the kind who—oh, likes ballet and cocktails instead of the
amusement arcade and beer.”

"Very much in character."

"That I believe," agreed Pickering. "You
let me carry on, hon. The way I figure it, Lieutenant, when he heard
on the grapevine that it was a serious thing with Marian and me, then
he saw how he could do himself some good. Maybe you know he had—time
out to laugh—movie ambitions. That—! Well, I think he stole those
negs from Shorter and then ‘shopped' him, as our British friends
say, before he could find out or retaliate."

“
Quite possible."

"Anyway, he showed up at Marian's place—"

"On that Tuesday evening, maybe?" said
Mendoza. "Evening, because you'd be at work all day, he couldn't
have a private talk with I you. And it wasn't Wednesday because he
was elsewhere that night. Or was it Thursday? On Wednesday night he
was hinting joyously that some good fortune was coming his way."

"He told someone? My God, he—? Is that how
you—?"

"No, he was too canny for that. And while we're
clearing up details, how we got onto you was that he had a snapshot
of you in his wallet. Why?"

"So that's what happened to it," she said
slowly. She sat back, looking angry. "May I have another
cigarette, Toby, please .... Netta told me he'd asked her for one.
She was looking through some she'd just had finished, and he was
there and asked if he could have the one of me. She refused, but he
must have taken it anyway when her back was turned, she said. I
think—maybe he wanted it to check against—those others, to be
sure. She said it wasn't a very good one, but it was full-length, and
you know people photograph differently sometimes from the way they
really—though with those—well, I don't know. And maybe he just
stuck it away and forgot it—or more likely kept it as window
dressing, he was the kind who liked to have you think he had a raft
of girl friends .... It was Tuesday he came, Tuesday the
twenty-seventh. He had one of the negatives with him, and—and
prints of the rest. He—" She broke off, trying to control her
shaking voice.

"You take it easy, hon, I'll tell the rest."
Pickering lit a fresh cigarette; he looked very angry. "The
bastard. I'll tell you how the lyrics went, Lieutenant, if you
haven't already guessed. He didn't know quite how it was with us, if
you get me. He had it figured that Marian was the hell of a lot more
interested in my bank account than in me, and that I could be scared
off if I heard all this. As a matter of fact, I knew—she'd told me.
He didn't want money—"

"He wanted the nice send-off with a big
producer," said Mendoza. "That figures. A heaven-sent
opportunity for him, our stage-struck glamour boy! No wonder he went
to all the trouble—which, I agree, is likely—of stealing those
negatives and getting Shorter put away. And he was thinking ahead
too, probably. If you weren't impressed enough to whisk out a
contract right away, after you were married he could always do it the
hard way, bring pressure to bear on the grounds that you couldn't
stand the publicity."

"Ah, that damned little—! Yes, I suppose.
Well, anyway, Marian had sense enough to call me, after putting him
off on a plea of making up her mind, and I took over from there. He
thought he had her scared, had us just where he wanted us.”
Pickering laughed, short and ugly. "Money isn't everything, but
it sure as hell helps. I hired a couple of the best private
detectives in town"—he named the agency—"and we wired
Marian's place but good. We really set up the trap—me and two other
witnesses in the bedroom, and the tape recorder. He came over swell."
He grinned. "One qualification he had for the business, nice
clear-cut voice and good diction. We'd coached Marian, of course, and
she slipped him enough leading questions that we got the whole
layout, his whole plan, in detail. Beautiful. And then she did a
little acting and gave in, said she'd do whatever he wanted—only of
course we didn't tape that. My God, I'm giving myself away—but you
can see the spot we were in, only way to handle it—and besides he'd
made me damn mad. I wanted to cuff him down good, so he'd stay that
way."

"Very nice, very nice," purred Mendoza.
"It's deplorable of me, Mr. Pickering, but I don't think I'll be
vindictive enough—or honest enough—to turn you in for all these
little legal misdemeanors. I'd probably have done much the same thing
myself. I suppose you saw him on Friday, the next day. It was, I
assume, on Thursday when you sprung the trap."

"That's right. I saw him Friday morning, as soon
as we had legal statements drawn up by the witnesses and so on. We'd
set it up—she'd told him to come by about eleven and she'd
introduce us, give him a good send-off. And, brother, we did. Marian
wasn't there. I told him what we had on him and just how I felt about
it, and that, by God, I enjoyed. I told him first, as far as his damn
fool ambition for the movies was concerned, he was dead before he
started, right now, because in the inconceivable case that anybody
ever hired him to sweep a stage I could and would see he got fired—I
could blacklist him in this town, in that line, and he knew it. I
told him I wouldn't lose one damn thing but a little of my upright
reputation if he gave those negs to the Examiner tomorrow, and that
sacrifice I wouldn't mind, it was just on Marian's account I'd prefer
the whole thing kept private. I always had a kind of admiration for
that old bird—was it the Duke of Wellington?—who said Publish and
be damned. And I told him I'd take great pleasure in charging him
publicly with attempted extortion, and putting in all this nice clear
evidence to prove it. And, let's face it, money talks—even to the
law. I could have arranged for a trial like that to be held in
camera, and protected ourselves that way while he got it in the neck.
At that point he began to back down fast, said he'd never dream of
doing anything with those negs to embarrass Marian. O.K., fine, says
I, and just to guarantee that, we're going with you right now to get
them and if you get out of town within twenty-four hours, I'll keep
still, I won't lay the charge. But I'll check, and if you're still
here, brother, you get everything the law can hand you—and if some
damn fool jury lets you off, I've got the money to put you behind a
dozen eightballs, other ways. I don't need to tell you he didn't like
it—that's an understatement, when he saw I wasn't going to back up
a sixteenth of an inch from that stand, he called me every name in
the book. But he had to go along, he couldn't do anything else—unless
he wanted to get slapped in jail besides losing out everywhere else."

She gave a little half-tearful laugh. "He didn't
know much about Toby, you see, or he'd never have started all this."

"That I believe," grinned Mendoza. "So
you all took a ride out to 267th Street."

"We did. I went with him in his Porsche, and the
detectives trailed us. And the hell of a squalid little hole it was,
wasn't it? We didn't waste any time—he got the negs and gave them
to me, and I identified them as the ones we were after and the whole
dozen of them, and burned them right there——"

"In a big glass ashtray. Mmh. He had them in a
brown manila envelope in the bottom of his laundry bag, and he
emptied the whole bag out on the bed to get them for you."

"He did," said Pickering. "What's
more, there was—"

"Yes, I know, a second envelope. I know all
about that one. But not a third?"

"Not that I saw, no."

Mendoza leaned back, looking thoughtful. "Motives.
Yes, I wonder. Well, and so now we know why Mr. Twelvetrees was
clearing out in a hurry.”

"That was bluff," admitted Pickering. "I'd
got no way of checking to see if he really left town. But I would—and
he knew it—have come back to see if he'd left that place, and I
knew where he worked, this damn fool cult, that Temple—and I'd have
gone there to check. Hounded him a little, anyway."

"Sure, sure. That he knew too, and I see how his
mind worked on it. He had to cut his losses. What time was this?"

"We got out there about a quarter of one, and it
couldn't have been much after one when we left, we didn't linger at
it, as I say. No, I didn't give a damn where he went or what he did,
once those negs were burned. Matter of fact, I didn't try to do any
checking, but he might have thought I would—like all that kind he
was a coward when you backed him against a wall. He was so mad at me
he'd've liked to kill me, but he didn't have the guts, even with a
gun there to his hand. And what the hell he wanted with that—I
mean, that wasn't his line, the direct action. Maybe it made him feel
big and dangerous .... I couldn't tell you the make and model, a
pistol of some kind, it was in one of the drawers of the bureau. I
saw it when he yanked the drawer open to get a handkerchief—he had
a sneezing—spell .... Yes, I think I'd know it again."
Pickering laughed contemptuously. "Oh, he'd've liked to see me
drawn and quartered, and he had about fifteen years on me too, if I
had a better reach—but he never lifted a hand. You know what he
did? It was the damndest thing. He came out of that apartment with us
when we left, and went over to the carport on the other side of the
building. And just as we were pulling out of that court, he came out
with a trowel or a fork or something and started to dig around that
funny-looking shrub planted in a tub there. Going at it in a kind of
blind fury—as if he had to dig at something, if it was only a
shrub."

Mendoza laughed. "Yes—and so that answers
another little question. I've heard it said that gardening's a very
relaxing occupation in cases of nervous tension. Maybe his doctor
recommended it."
 

SIXTEEN

"Answers," he went on to Hackett dreamily,
after they had gone.

"We're getting them in, finally.
Va
aclarando
—it's clearing up. And very nice
too. So now we know almost all that happened to dear Brooke that
Friday. His unlucky day, all right. He was finished here, after that
business with Pickering .... It looks as if Marian's got herself a
man,
absolutamente
.... He'd have no chance at all to get anywhere in show business, and
he was also finished taking an easy living out of the Kingmans,
because Pickering knew his connection with the Temple: he'd promised
to hound him and he would. Everything had turned sour on Brooke
Twelvetrees. First of all, he had to get away from 267th Street, in
case Pickering did come back to check after the tw
enty-four
hours' grace .... There he is, hacking away at the Tree of Heaven in
his blind fury at the way everything's turned out. I can see him,
when that thought takes shape in his mind, stalking back into the
apartment, throwing down that trowel anywhere—he's forgotten he had
it—and starting to pack. He—yes. Yes." Mendoza was sitting
on the end of his spine, eyes shut, looking peaceful, hands clasped
across his lean middle. "
Eso es
,
of course. He got here with just that old brown leather suitcase,
he's had no occasion for luggage since, and he's accumulated too much
to go into it. So he leaves his packing, he gets out the Porsche and
goes off to buy a couple of new suitcases."

"I follow you," said Hackett. "That's
nice deducing, but is it very important?"

"It might be. I think on the way he started
thinking a little more clear and shrewd, and his first idea would be,
What can I salvage out of this? He could try to go on blackmailing
the Kingmans from a distance, but that's always a little more
difficult. And I think he must have been very tired of the Kingmans
and their Temple. Also, I think he needed some cash right then—he
was the kind who spent everything as it came in, maybe he hadn't even
enough for those suitcases on him. So he thought of the Kingmans'
safe—and then he thought of the Temple bank accounts .... Cut his
losses, sure, and take everything along he could lay hands on. Now we
don't know how long he worked at his gardening, how long he spent
starting to pack. But we've got a kind of
terminus
ad quem
, because the bank shuts at three.
This just came in this morning. If it hadn't been that particular
bank, this would be a different story, because a lot of banks now
stay open later on Fridays and don't open on Saturday at all. But
that one sticks to the old rule. So we deduce that by the time it
came to him how he could salvage something out of the wreck, it'd be
too late to get into the bank when he got there—it'd be quite a
drive, you know.
De paso
,
it's maybe a little confirmation of how our friend Kingman could get
into the dither he did, you know, apparently he didn't know that,
wasn't familiar with the banking hours. Because if he'd known the
bank was open from nine to twelve on Saturdays, he'd have been down
there to lay his warning then, and all this would have started two
days before it did. Are you with me?"