Have Gat—Will Travel (18 page)

The big, innocent eyes got wider still. "Someone shoot at you?"

"Nothing serious yet. But there's just a chance you might know something to make things easier for me. Maybe you could give me some help."

"If I can, Shell."

"Can't you think of anything or anybody that might have been giving your stepfather a bad time?"

She shook her head and the red hair swirled about her face.

I said, "I'm in this thing too deep to get out now even if I wanted to, which I don't. Loring was in my office tonight when he was shot. Just before he was killed, he'd said something about blackmail. Doesn't that ring any bells at all?"

She shook her head again. "I'm sorry, Shell. Actually, I didn't have much to do with him."

"How come? And if you feel like telling me now, why did your mother already have a private detective working for her?"

Nancy took a long swallow and said slowly, "Mom wanted to divorce John. He was nothing more than a parasite, really. He just married Mother because of her money. He didn't have any money of his own — maybe a few thousand dollars he'd wheedled out of Mom on one pretext or another.

"But I think most of that was gone and lately she wouldn't finance any more of his so-called investments. He wouldn't quietly give her a divorce; said he'd fight it all the way, he might even frame evidence against her and try to get alimony." She pressed her full lips together. "Alimony! Can you imagine? Anyway, that's what Ellis was working on — positive evidence for a divorce. Something he couldn't wiggle out of. Mother had lots of time and money, so she just told Ellis what she wanted and let him handle it. She wouldn't have done anything crooked; she just wanted to catch John in something."

I said, "You don't suppose Ellis actually did get anything on Mr. Loring, do you?"

"Why, no. He'd have reported to Mother if he had; that's what she was paying him for. Why?"

"Nothing," I said. "It's not important."

We had another round, and I sipped at my drink and thought. Maybe I was beginning to feel the drinks a little, but everything in this case seemed crazy as three reefers and a quart of absinthe. I thought back to the moment Loring had come into my office, and I went over everything I'd been told since then and everything that had happened.

I gargled bourbon quietly and drew designs on the moist spot on the bar and appreciated Nancy's sitting silently beside me. I tortured my brains and favored the left side of my behind on the bar stool.

And all of a sudden it hit me.

It hit me, wham, like that, and I slapped a hand against my forehead. The bartender looked at me with a hostile squint, then darted a look under the bar at his war club.

Nancy said, "What's the matter?"

I said, "Honey, go home. Papa's got work to do."

"See me later?"

"Yeah. I'll see you later."

I
knocked on the door of Room 316 in the Brandon Hotel on Cahuenga. I'd got the address for five bucks from the bartender at the Sabre Club, and this time Velma was in.

She opened the door wide and stood facing me in a rose-pink negligee. Light streamed out of the room behind her and wrapped around her body like mist. I swallowed and walked into the room with my face a little warm. And not just from the drinks.

"Hello, Velma."

"Hello. What's with you?"

"Too bad, pretty baby. Party's over."

She said slowly, curiously, "What?"

"Ended, pfft, finished."

"You must be in the wrong room, mister."

"Right room." I could feel the double bourbons ganging up on me. "Right gal. You're Velma Vail. I'm Shell Scott, private eye, a snooper. I'm on the Loring kill and I've got it cold. And I've got you and your pal cold, and the blackmail's all washed up — cold."

She stood across the room looking at me, not saying anything.

"I'm almost sorry for you, pretty baby. This is the payoff." It sounded nice and dramatic, so I said it again, "This is the payoff."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, but there was an edge to her voice that hadn't been there before.

I pulled the strip of cloth with the threads and the little strip of torn celluloid out of my pocket and showed them to her. "These are yours, aren't they, Velma? I picked them up at Fillson's studio. It's up the river, baby."

She looked at the stuff in my hand and then back at my face. She didn't seem scared and she should have been. I was tired of getting shoved around.

She said, "Shell, that's no way to talk to me. Not really. Not when you hardly know me."

A cool number.

"Cut it, Velma," I told her. "I know you well enough already."

"Why, Shell," she said softly, "you don't know me at all."

She'd been holding that rose-pink negligee together with one hand at her throat. Now she let go.

I must have raised an eyebrow, or something, because she laughed right out loud. Threw her head back and laughed through parted white teeth. Then she shrugged her shoulders, let the gown fall to the floor and stepped out of it. In the bright light pouring from the ceiling, it was worth seeing; she stood straight and still with her hands at her sides, smiling at me.

She was naked as a new boil on a Roman nose.

She looked different than she had in the dim blue light at the Sabre Club; her body was something a man might dream about. Round and warm and full of promise. I stared. I admit it. I stared, but good. Gabriel could have blown his trumpet in my ear and I wouldn't have heard it.

I guess that's why I didn't hear anybody come up behind me. Or the swish of the sap. One minute Velma was there looking like September Morn. The next minute there were only shooting stars and a deep black pit. I'd had it.

T
hings were fuzzy. Very fuzzy. The bright light was in my eyes and dancing around and the little guy kept on banging on my head with the big pan that went bong, bong on my skull, and I felt sick as hell.

Only there wasn't any little guy and there wasn't any pan, and my head kept going bong, bong, anyway. There was only Velma sitting in an easy chair and pointing a wicked-looking little automatic at my navel.

I looked at the gun and I looked at Velma. "That might go off."

"It might." No gay banter. Just sort of bored.

I was flat on my back on the carpet and my hands were bent under me and the left side of my fanny felt as if somebody had branded it. I tried to pull my arms out from under me and couldn't. Somebody had looped a fine rope around my wrists and I could feel it cutting my skin when I pulled. But it felt like a sloppy job. Sloppy or not, there was still a gun pointed at my middle.

Velma had changed from the negligee into a tan suit, and a couple of traveling bags were at her feet.

"Going someplace?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Me too?"

She nodded again.

"Where?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters."

"It shouldn't. You're only going part way."

I didn't like the sound of her voice. Suddenly she wasn't feminine any more.

I lay on my back and pulled easily, then harder at the rope.

"Hold still," Velma said. "Very still. I couldn't miss you from here."

She couldn't, at that. That was the third strike on me, but I was still standing at the plate. I didn't know I was out. I hunted around in my bonging brain for a weakness in her armor, and I had an idea. Not much of an idea, but an idea.

"Velma," I said. "You're a hell of a crummy excuse for a woman, aren't you? You'd let a guy get shot just to save some dirty nickels. You're not a woman, you're a flabby bitch on a broom."

She curled her lips back and spat at me, "Shut up!"

I kept my voice low and steady and as contemptuous as I could make it. "You're a lousy tart. You're one of the slimy, crawling things that hides from the sun." I kept it up for about a minute, looking straight at her. I said things I thought I'd never say to a woman, then spat on the rug at her feet.

It worked. Her face got white, then it got red and she got up and came toward me with her lips drawn back and her breath bubbling between her teeth. The gun was still in her right hand, pointing at me.

I thought she was going to let me have it in the belly and my muscles tightened and crawled till I saw her reaching for my face with her left hand. Her fingers were curled into hooks and the long, red nails could have torn out my eyes and ripped the skin from my face.

I rolled away from the clutching fingers and at the same time hooked my right heel behind her left foot. I drew up my left leg, fast, and jammed it as hard as I could against her knee.

I heard the sickening pop of the bone, and she screamed like a cat in a furnace.

She hit the floor hard and dropped the gun. But she had guts. I'll say that much for her. While I struggled and scrambled to my feet, she reached out — still moaning, half crying — and got her hand on the automatic. I didn't have any choice. I took one step toward her and laid my number ten Cordovan boot along the side of her head. And that was that.

I felt a little ashamed of myself, but better a bump on her skull than a hole in mine. I found the little apartment kitchen and a butcher knife and five minutes later I was out of the ropes and had them tight around Velma's wrists. She was still out, and I didn't worry about tying her legs.

She wasn't going to walk anyplace.

W
earily, I picked up the phone and called Homicide. Even Kerrigan's nasal whine sounded almost good. I told him what he'd find at the Brandon Hotel, hung up, and took off for my last stop.

This time I went in the door with Velma's little automatic in my hand. The door to the room in back was open and I walked quietly over the thick, shag carpet. My .38 Colt was resting on a small table against the far wall of the little room. I said, "Surprise, surprise."

He whirled around, disbelief staring from his eyes, the ten hairs on his upper lip twitching like a crawling caterpillar. He sputtered, but nothing came out.

I said, "Fillson, I'm going to break you in two. The boys you sent after me should have done a better job. And you shouldn't have left a woman to look after me. I'm going to crack your spine."

"Wait!" It was a little squeak.

"Wait, hell! You didn't wait when Slippy Rancin told you he'd knocked off Loring in my office and scared hell out of me. You didn't want me scared. You wanted me dead in case Loring had already spilled your blackmail caper to me." I said through my teeth, "You shouldn't have sent him back, Fillson."

He was pitiful, he was so scared. His face was the color of stale dough and he was shaking like an overweight matron skipping rope.

"I didn't know what I was doing," he whimpered. "I was out of my mind. Let me go. I'll pay you anything. Anything."

I shook my head at him. "No soap."

"I'll give you thousands," he croaked. "Everything I've got."

"Nope. I wouldn't want that money. But I'll give you a gun." I dropped the little gun at my feet and watched him. He let out a little sigh, as if something had busted inside him, and leaped for the gun.

I timed it like a Golden Gloves champ and met him halfway. I whipped my right fist into the middle of his face as if I was trying to split it in two.

I was trying.

He went up a little into the air, stopped, then went down slow and easy, like a rubber belt on a fat man.

I told the back of his head, "That's for the lump on my skull, sucker," but he wasn't listening. Maybe I was being a heel, but when a guy tries to introduce me to rigor mortis as hard as Fillson had, and then decides to do the job himself, I lose any fondness I might have had for him.

I took a look around the little room and saw just what I'd expected to see. A 16-mm. movie projector, complete darkroom equipment, and several shiny tin cans. The cans were all filled with exposed film. One reel was already spliced into the projector so I switched it on and grabbed an eyeful. I do mean eyeful. It was Fillson's art course, all right, and I wasn't surprised at that, either.

K
errigan didn't seem very happy about the way I'd handled the situation, but he chewed his black cigar and listened while I filled in the events of the evening.

"Fillson had a sweet setup," I finished. "The squeeze. A new gimmick on the extortion racket. He ran an art class with a live model, but I'll bet neither she or the customers knew a palette from an easel. The model was an artist, too — Velma Vail — a bump and grind artist from the Sabre Club. And, incidentally, the cookie with the busted leg."

I flipped Kerrigan the torn strip of celluloid I'd pried out of the door: a big-bosomed gal posturing in a lot of fair skin and a G-string — possibly the same little triangle of cloth I'd picked up here at Fillson's earlier.

"That doesn't have to be Velma," I said, "but I'll give odds it is when your lab makes a big print of it. She's got some distinguishing characteristics that are hard to hide."

Kerrigan held the film up to the light and said, "Mmm."

"That's not a negative," I said. "It's a positive made from a negative so it can be run through a projector — movie film. It's all on reels in the back room. Including Velma."

"So what?"

"So this. Fillson picked the 'students' for his so-called classes with a lot of care. I got to wondering about that when I remembered a guy telling me they were all prosperous-looking and middle-aged, and all men. He let them park here in the easy chairs and soft divans while Velma went into her act. She might sit on a few laps or muss up a guy's pompadour — good clean, harmless fun, huh? Everybody has a roaring good time. Only all the while, a couple of cameras hidden behind the squares and circles in the surrealist paintings on the walls, or in the potted plants, or any other convenient place, are getting it all down on film.

"When just part of the film is run off, or some black-and-white prints made from choice frames, it doesn't look so much like good clean fun. It looks more like a sofa party. A man who wanted to keep his nose clean — a guy like Loring, for instance — would pay good dough to keep the picture out of circulation. If he didn't, he'd have one hell of a time explaining that his relations with Velma were purely platonic, or that he was merely attending a class in art appreciation."