Off the Mangrove Coast (Ss) (2000) (21 page)

Reardon came in and with him were Doc Spates, the medical examiner, a detective named Nick Tanner, a police photographer, and a couple of tired harness bulls.

Sue, I decided to stick to calling her Sue as everyone else would, gave him the story, looking at him out of those big, wistful eyes. Those eyes worked on nearly everyone. Apparently, they hadn't worked on Larry Craine. I doubted if they would work on Reardon who, when it comes to murder, is a pretty cold-blooded fish.

He rolled his cigar in his cheek and listened; he also looked carefully around the room. Reardon was a good man. He would know plenty about this girl before he gotl through looking the place over.

When she finished, he looked at me. "Where do figure in this, Jim? What would she be needing with a private eye?"

"That wasn't it. We knew each other back in Wisconsin long before she ever came out here. Whenever she got in trouble, she always called me."

"Whenever..."

He looked at me sadly, letting the implication hang. I didn't tell him any more but I knew he would find out eventually. Reardon was thorough. Slow, painstaking, but thorough.

Doc Spates came in, closing up his bag. "Dead about two hours. That's pretty rough, of course. Whoever did it, knew what he was doing. One straight, hard thrust. No stabbing around. No other cuts or bruises."

Reardon nodded, chewing his cigar. "Could a woman do it?"

Spates fussed with his bag. "Why not? It doesn't take much strength."

Sue's face was stiff and white and her fingers tightened on my arm. Suddenly I was scared. What sort of a fool's chance I was building my hopes on I don't know, but all of a sudden they went out of me like air from a pricked balloon, and there I stood. Right then I knew I was going to have to get busy, and I was going to have to work fast.

Just then Tanner came in. He looked at me and his eyes were questioning. He was holding up an ice pick.

"Doc," he said as Spates reached the door. "Could this have done it?"

"Could be." Spates shrugged. "Something long, thin, and narrow. Have to examine it further before I can tell exactly. Any blood on it?"

"A little," Tanner said. "Close against the handle. But it's been washed!"

Reardon was elaborately casual when he turned around. "You do this?" he asked her.

She shook her head. Twice she tried to speak before she could get it out. "No, I wouldn't ... couldn't ... kill anyone!"

To look at her the idea seemed preposterous. Reardon was half convinced, but I, knowing her as I did, knew that deep inside she had something that was hard and ready.

"Listen," I said, "let me call Davis Claren and have him come over and pick up Sue. She'll be at his place when you want her."

He looked at me thoughtfully, then nodded. After I'd phoned and come back into the room, I saw he had slumped down on the divan and was sitting there, chewing that un-lighted cigar. Sue was sitting in a chair staring at him, white and still. I could see she was near the breaking point and was barely holding herself together.

Only after she had gone off with her friends did he look up at me. "How about you? You do it?"

"Me?" I demanded. "Why would I kill the guy? I never knew him!"

"You knew her," he stated flatly. "She looks like she has a lot of trust in you. Maybe she called on you for help. I Maybe she called on you before the guy was dead instead| of after."

"Bosh." That was the only answer I had to that one.

When he finally let me go, I beat it down to my car. It was after four in the morning, and there was little I couldl do. It felt cold and lonely in my apartment. I stripped of my clothes and tumbled into bed.

The telephone jolted me out of it. It was Taggart. I should have known it would be him. He was Sue's boss and, as executives went in Hollywood, he was all right. That meant he was basically honest but he wouldn't ever get caught making a statement that couldn't be interpreted at least three different ways. And if the winds of studio politics changed, he'd cut Sue loose like a sail in a storm.

"Sue tells me she called you," he barked. "Well, what have you got?"

"Nothing yet," I told him. "Give me time."

"There isn't any time. The D. A. thinks she did it. He's all hopped up against the Industry, anyway. I'm sending a man over to your office at eight with a thousand dollars. Consider that a retainer!" Bang; he hung up the phone.

It was a quarter to eight. I rolled out of bed, into the shower, into my clothes, and through a session with an electric razor so fast that it seemed like one continuous movement. And then, when I was putting the razor away, the name of Larry Craine clicked in my mind.

A week ago, or probably two, I'd been standing in front of a hotel on Vine Street talking to Joe. Joe was a cab starter who knew everybody around. With us was standing a man, a stranger to me, some mug from back East. He spoke up suddenly, and nodded across toward the Derby.

"I'll be damned, that's Larry Craine!" said the man. "What's he doing out here?"

"I think he lives here," Joe said.

"He didn't when I knew him!" The fellow growled.

With the thousand dollars in my pocket, I started hunting for Joe. I'd never known his last name, but I got it pretty quick when I looked at a cabbie over a five-dollar bill. It was Joe McCready and he lived out in Burbank.

There were other things to do first, and I did a lot of them on a pay phone. Meanwhile, I was thinking, and when I finally got to Joe, he hesitated only a minute, then shrugged.

"You're a pal of mine," he said, "or I'd say nothing. This lug who spotted Larry Craine follows the horses. I think he makes book, but I wouldn't know about that. He doesn't do any business around the corner."

"What do you know about Larry Craine?"

"Nothing. Doesn't drink very much, gets around a lot, and seems to know a lot of people. Mostly, he hangs around on the edge of things, spends pretty free when there's a crowd around, but tips like he never carried anything but nickels."

Joe looked up at me. "You watch yourself. This guy we were talkin' to, his name is Pete Ravallo. He plays around with some pretty fast company."

He did have Craine's address. I think Joe McCready knew half the addresses and telephone numbers in that part of town. He never talked much, but he listened a lot, and he never forgot anything. My detective agency couldn't have done the business it did without elevator boys, cab starters, newsboys, porters, and bellhops.

That was how I got into Craine's apartment. I went around there and saw Paddy. Paddy had been a doorman in that apartment house for five years. We used to talk about the fights and football games, sitting on the stoop, just the two of us.

"The police have been there," Paddy advised, "but they didn't stay long. I can get y' in, but remember, if y' get caught, it's on your own y' are!"

This Craine had done all right by himself. I could see that the minute I looked around. I took a quick gander at the desk, but not with any confidence. The cops would have headed for the desk right away, and Reardon was a smart fellow. So was Tanner, for that matter. I headed for the clothes closet.

He must have had twenty-five suits and half that many sport coats, all a bit loud for my taste. I started at one end and began going through them, not missing a pocket. Also, as I went along, I checked the labels. He had three suits from New Orleans. They were all pretty shabby and showed much wear. They were stuck back in a corner of the closet out of the way.

The others were all comparatively new, and all made in Hollywood or Beverly Hills. At first that didn't make much of an impression, but it hit me suddenly as I was going through the fourteenth suit, or about there. Larry Craine had been short of money in New Orleans but he had been very flush in Hollywood. What happened to put his hands on a lot of money, and fast?

When I hit the last suit in line, I had netted just three ticket stubs and twenty-one cents in money. The last suit was the payoff. When I opened the coat, I saw right away that I'd jumped to a false conclusion. Here was one suit, bought ready-made, in Dallas.

In the inside coat pocket, I found an airline envelope, and in it, the receipt for one passenger from Dallas to Los Angeles via American Airlines. Also, there was a stub, the * sort of thing given to you after a street photographer takes your picture. If you want the snapped picture, you can get it and more of them if you wish, if you want to pay a modest sum of money. Craine hadn't been interested.

Pocketing the two articles, I slipped out the back way and let Paddy know I was gone. He looked relieved when he saw me off.

"Nick Tanner just went up," he said.

"Thanks, Paddy," I told him.

I walked around in front and saw Reardon standing by the squad car. Putting my hands in my pockets, I strolled up to him.

"Hi," I said. "How's it going?"

His eyes were shrewd as he studied me. "Not so good for Miss Shannon," he said carefully. "That ice pick did the job, all right. Doc Spates will swear to it. We found blood close up against the handle where it wasn't washed carefully. It's the same type as his blood.

"Also," he added, "we checked on her. She left that party she was at with Gentry and the Clarens early, about three hours before it was over, which would make it along about ten-thirty. She was gone for all of thirty to forty-five minutes. In other words, she had time to leave the party, go home, kill this guy, and get back to the party."

"You don't believe that!" I exclaimed.

He shrugged and took a cigar from his pocket. "It isn't what I believe, it's what the district attorney can make the jury believe. Something you want to think about." He looked up at me from under his eyebrows as he bit off the end of the cigar. "The D. A. is ambitious. A big Hollywood murder trial would give him lots of publicity. The only thing that would make him happier would be a basement full of communists!"

"Yeah." I could see it all right, I could see him riding right to the governor's chair on a deal like that. Or into the Senate. "One thing, Reardon. If she had done it, wouldn't she have had the Clarens come in with her to help her find the body? That would be the smart stunt. And she's actress enough to carry it off."

"I know." He struck a match and lit the cigar, then grinned sardonically at me. "But she's actress enough to fool you, too!"

Was she? I wasn't so sure. I'd known her a long time. Maybe you never really know anyone. And murder is something that comes much too easily sometimes.

"Reardon," I said, "don't pinch Sue. Hold off on it until I can work on it."

He shrugged. "I can't. The D. A."s already convinced. He wants an arrest. We haven't another lead of any kind. We shook his apartment down, we made inquiries all over town. We don't have another suspect."

"We've been buddies a long time," I pleaded. "Give her forty-eight hours. Taggart's retained me on this case, and I think I've got something."

"Taggart has, eh?" He looked at me thoughtfully. "Don't give me a runaround, now. The district attorney thinks he has a line on it himself. It seems Craine's done * some talking around town. He thinks he's got a motive, though he's not saying what it is yet."

"Two days?"

"All right. But then we're going ahead with what we've got. I'll give you until ... let's see, this is Monday ... you've got until Wednesday morning."

Sue was waiting for me when I got there. She was a beautiful woman, even as tight and strained as she was.

"Is it true? Are they going to arrest me?"

"I hope not." I sat down abruptly. "I'd let them arrest me if I could."

"No, you won't." I looked up and her eyes were sharp and hard. "You came into this because I asked you, and I won't have that happen."

It was the first time I'd seen her show her anger, although I knew she had it. It surprised me, and I sat back and looked at her and I guess my surprise must have shown because she said, defensively, "Don't you talk that way. That's going too far!"

"Well you've got to help me. Just what did Craine want from you?"

"Money." She shrugged. "He told me he wanted ten percent of all I made from now on. He said he had been broke for the last time, that now that he had money he was always going to have money no matter what it cost."

"Did you talk to him many times?"

"Three times. He had some letters. There was nothing bad in them, but the way he read them made them sound pretty bad. It wasn't only that. He knew some stories that I don't want told, about my uncle."

I knew all about that, and could understand.

"But that wasn't all. He told me I had to give him information about other people out here. About Mr. Taggart, for instance, and some of the others. He was very pleased with himself. He obviously was sure he had a very good plan worked out."

"Does Taggart know about this?"

"No one does. You're the only one I've told. The only one I will tell."

"Did Craine ever hint about how he got this money he had?"

"Well, not exactly. He told me I needn't think I could evade the issue because he was desperate. He told me there wasn't anything he would hesitate to do. He said once, I've already gone as far as I can go, so you know what to expect if you try to double-cross me." "