Strip for Murder (16 page)

The bed was mussed and torn. It looked as if Three Eyes had been in bed when it happened, when it had started to happen. I thought of him lying there in darkness as the door opened and somebody came in, walked toward him, and I shivered slightly. I glanced around at the room once more, then went downstairs to the desk.

The old clerk looked at me with empty eyes.

I said, “Three Eyes in?”

He scratched the gray stubble on his cheek and shrugged.

“You know who I'm talking about, don't you? Room Twenty-seven.”

“Yep. Dunno if'n he's in or not” Slowly he craned his head around and looked at the slots where the keys were kept. His eyes fell on the slot for Room 27 and he turned back to me. It seemed to take forever.

“Yep. He's in.”

“He have any visitors last night or this morning?”

“Dunno.”

“Anybody else at the desk last night besides you?”

“Nope. Just me. Sometimes I sleep and you got to ring the bell.” He started to point at the bell, but long before his quivering finger completed the journey I gave up on him.

“Can I use your phone?” I said.

“Yep.” His finger started waggling toward the phone, but I beat him again and put in a call to Samson.

I gave him the picture. “That's it. Soon as your boys get here and look the place over, I'm taking off, unless they need me. I only found the guy. And I've got plenty of things to do.”

“Go ahead, Shell. You think it ties in?”

“Yeah. Looks like somebody's getting scared.”

“Watch that big toe of yours.”

“Sure. See you.” I hung up and got outside as a gray Ford coupé with a banged-up front fender started to pull in to the curb; it pulled out again as the police buggy stopped. After ten minutes I was through with the police and ready to leave again.

Before leaving the hotel I used a phone book to look up General Enterprises, Incorporated. It wasn't listed, which seemed odd to me.

It didn't take long to find out where Offie did business when he was available. He had a suite of offices on Sunset Boulevard near Van Ness, in a modern, pink-stucco building set back behind green lawn bisected by a white sidewalk. I went up to the door and into expensively refrigerated air. Nothing but the best for Offie—and that included a peach of a receptionist

She was wearing a dark skirt, above which was a pink sweater she might have knitted herself, getting halfway through with the job before saying the hell with it. Offie was so old I figured she was on display for the customers. I got younger every minute. She was strategically seated, so that she smacked you in the eyes when you entered, and she was strategically built so that she smacked you in
both
eyes. Hell, she smacked you all over.

She smiled at me, and I looked around the reception room, figuring I'd better look at it now if I was ever going to. Closed doors, with plain frosted-glass windows, studded the left and right walls. That told me nothing, so I looked back at the gal and walked up to her desk.

She wasn't a little girl, she wasn't little anywhere, and she wore grown-up clothes, but they hadn't grown up quite as much as she had. She looked like one of Cole's sensual women in
Playboy
magazine—blonde, with big brown eyes and those other big things you hear about but don't often see. At least don't often see so well. Not often enough, anyway.

“Good afternoo-oon,” she crooned. “What can I do-oo for you?”

I came within half an inch of giving it to her straight. But I said, resolutely, “I'd like a few minutes with Offie.”

She kept smiling. “Oh, you're a friend of Mr. Offenbrand's?”

“No, but I'm sure—”

“Your name?”

“Shell Scott.”

She blinked. “Oh,
you're
Shell Scott. I've heard about you. But of course you're Shell Scott. Who else would you be?”

“You've got me there,” I said brilliantly. “Who else, indeed?”

No telling to what conversational heights we might have risen, but then she said, “You don't have an appointment.”

“No. It's all right, though. I'm sure he'll see me.”

“I'm sure he won't. He never sees anybody without an appointment.”

“I'll bet he sees you.”

She rolled her big brown eyes around like Ferris wheels and giggled. “I'll bet. He's eighty-six, though.” She giggled again, as if she knew something I didn't know. Undoubtedly she knew plenty I didn't know.

I said, “Well, then, honey, you just slide into his office and tell him
you're
out here and would like to see him. How's that?”

Her face got blank. “I don't believe I understand where you're driving at.”

“Do this for me, will you, honey? Tell Offie that Shell Scott is here to see him. Tell him, further, it's about a man named Andon Poupelle. That might just do it.”

She considered it, then stood up and pulled down the base of her pink sweater, the base being about all there was to pull on, and walked out from behind the desk. “All rightie,” she said, and swayed toward the closed door on my right.

I had half a cigarette smoked by the time she came out again, fifteen seconds later. She sat down behind her desk, looked at me soberly, and said, “You were wrong. He won't, either, see you.”

“We'll try one more time,” I said. “Tell him that what I really want to see him about is General Enterprises, Incorporated. And about a bum check. Be sure to mention that the check is for one hundred thousand dollars.”

She went into her act again, swaying gently to and fro as if she were listening to music that I couldn't hear. It must have been a slow rumba combined with a fast waltz. This time when she came out she stood by the open door and said, “You may come in, Mr. Scott.”

That told me almost everything I'd wanted to know; but I went in anyway. Offenbrand was seated behind a coal-black desk about twelve feet wide. He was a small man, but somehow the desk didn't dwarf him, and if he was eighty-six he sure as hell didn't look it. Maybe that blonde wasn't for the customers, after all.

He stood up behind the desk, to about five feet, five or six inches, a dark-skinned guy with a full head of wavy white hair. “Mr. Scott,” he said in a firm voice, and shook my hand with a grip just as firm. “Explain.”

His eyes were black, fixed directly on mine, and they looked colder than frozen meatballs.

“How do you do, Mr. Offenbrand,” I said. “I'll explain. That's why I came here.” I looked around, found a leather chair, and sat down in it.

He got behind his desk again and looked at me, waiting. I said, “In return for my explanation, I'll expect a couple of answers myself. About Andon Poupelle, for one thing.”

“Perhaps.”

“OK. To start with, who operates General Enterprises?”

He didn't say anything.

I went on, “A man named Ed Norman pays General Enterprises a hundred grand a month. I don't know why for sure—maybe you can tell me—but I imagine it's principal and interest on a big loan. Say a million or so. The last check Norman made out to General Enterprises was written when he had thirty-three thousand in his checking account, four thousand in his savings account. Two days later, on June 17, he deposited a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So the check didn't bounce. But for two days it was rubber. Interesting?”

“Extremely. If true, Mr. Scott.”

“It's true. You head General Enterprises,” I said. “I'm a detective, as I suppose you're aware. And part of the little I know about you is that you'd be damned disturbed if anybody played you for a sucker. In any way at all. And it begins to look, doesn't it, as if somebody played you for a sucker?”

He didn't say anything. His face just looked a little harder.

I said, “You'll make just as much—more this way, as a matter of fact—but it's still a sucker play. To you, I assume, the rub would be the way it was handled. Right? And maybe the next hundred thousand bounces. Am I making sense?”

He was quiet for another minute or so, then he nodded briskly as if he'd made up his mind about something. “Yes. Is that all?”

“That's all I've got. And you must realize I'm guessing at a lot of it, but it fits. All I want from you is to know if I've guessed right. I know Ed Norman pays General Enterprises a hundred grand a month. I've assumed that you control the company.”

“I don't control it; I
am
General Enterprises. Mr. Norman needed money quickly for that club of his. He was then in the process of building it. I advanced him a million, two hundred.”

“How about Andon Poupelle?”

“He wanted money, of course, half a million, but I never give a man all he wants. We settled the transaction so that he pays me two-fifty within a year. I make a hundred in that period, which is a fair profit.”

When Offie said “a hundred,” he meant a hundred thousand dollars; he talked about thousands like I do about quarters. Any way you looked at it, though, he meant he'd given Poupelle a hundred and fifty thousand clams.

I said, “It wouldn't have been a check, I don't suppose.”

For a moment I thought he was going to smile. His lip twitched, then he said, “It was in cash. One of my men delivered it personally.”

“Just one other thing, Mr. Offenbrand. What security did Mr. Poupelle have to offer?” I grinned at him. “Naturally I examined his bank account, too.”

“Security enough. He told me he was marrying more than fifteen million dollars. He didn't receive any money from me until after the actual ceremony.”

“And that was June 16.”

“I believe so.” I knew that was a date he'd be interested in too, now, so it didn't surprise me when he pressed a button on a squawk box near the corner of his desk and said, “Daphne. Poupelle. The date.” In a moment her voice said from the box, “June 16.”

“Just a thought,” I said. “What if a man couldn't pay you back?”

The thought amused him. “Oh, they all pay, Mr. Scott. One way or another.”

I got up. “Thanks, Mr. Offenbrand.” I headed for the door.

Before I reached it he said, “Mr. Scott. Thank
you.
Your information was interesting. And it will also be interesting to see how this works out. Let me know, won't you?”

“I thought maybe you'd do something about it yourself.”

“Not if I can get someone else to do my work for me.” He meant me. I turned the doorknob and he said, “Is she dead?”

I turned to face him. “Who?”

“Mrs. Redstone.”

“She's dead.”

“You might be interested in Mr. Poupelle's last remark to me. Regarding his security. He said, as nearly as I can recall his peculiar idiom: ‘After all, the old girl can't live forever.'”

He was enjoying himself, enjoying pushing that one at me. I said, “Interesting. She didn't live forever, at that, did she? Who does?” I went out.

Chapter Sixteen

Daphne smiled automatically when I came back into the reception room. I walked to the desk, leaned on it, and jerked my head toward Offie's office. “Bubbling over with joy, isn't he?”

“Who? Mr. Offenbrand?”

“No, of course not. The eight other guys in there.” Her face went blank, so I went on quickly, “I was kidding. Yes, Mr. Offenbrand. Laughing Boy.”

“Oh, he's not so bad.”

“My lovely, you can do better.” I grinned at her, all over my face, so she couldn't possibly mistake my meaning.

My jaws were starting to ache by the time she said, “Oh, yeah?” and lifted her left arm. “Look at that.”

It was one hell of a bracelet. It sparkled like Times Square, squashed down into half a pound of metal and rocks. The rocks were diamonds. At least fifty of them circled a silver band, each diamond about the size of a peanut, and in the middle was something that looked like a cucumber.

“Oh,” I said in a small, sick voice, “that.”

She giggled. “And he
is
eighty-six. Maybe he'll remember me in his will.”

“Honey,” I said, “he isn't planning to die.”

OK, so I was disgruntled. I left, hoping I had ruined everything for both of them. Maybe Offie wasn't planning to die, I thought, but if he didn't watch himself, that Daphne would kill him.

Outside I headed for the convertible, and almost the first thing I noticed was the gray coupé.

It had the same crumpled front fender; it was the same Ford that had made a pass at Three Eyes' hotel. It was parked in the next block on the opposite side of the street and facing this way. I couldn't see anybody in it, but there was a chance the driver was slumped almost out of sight. I went on to the Cadillac, climbed in, took the .38 from its holster, and put it on the seat beside me. I drove down Sunset toward the coupé traveling slowly and gauging the traffic so there'd be an opening when I got just past the Ford. Then I tramped on the accelerator, and as the Cad jumped forward, I pulled on the wheel, cut around in a U-turn, and skidded to a stop alongside the parked car. The gun was in my hand, and I was leaning on the right door of my Cad—as it stopped, but nothing happened. The buggy was empty. I got out, looked up and down the street and across it before I stuck the gun back in its holster. I didn't see anybody. A Yellow Cab half a block beyond Offenbrand's building pulled out from the curb and swung around the corner. Traffic streamed by, and several people stared at my oddly parked Cad.

I'd been tailed out here for sure. And whoever it was had played it pretty cagey. I looked into the Ford, but there was no registration slip on the steering-wheel post. I went over the car's inside, but there wasn't a thing in it; the buggy was clean. It had probably been stolen.

A police car stopped alongside. In it were a couple of boys I knew from the Hollywood Division and I told them the story. They said they'd check on the Ford and I left. This time I made sure I wasn't tailed by anybody—including Yellow Cabs. Back in downtown L.A. I parked in a lot, walked out the back way, and caught a cab myself. I had the driver take me around a few blocks and then down Hill Street to the Parker Building, where Paul Yates had once had his office.