The Case of the Vanishing Beauty (23 page)

"But that's the least of your worries. We've got you for murder. I wondered why Georgia Martin was important enough to kill when she started throwing her weight around and let you know about it Saturday night. I know now. It wasn't just a missing sister or a phony religious racket—she was on the stuff. She was one of the damn-fool disciples. That's why she was a little cagey about what she told me. She wanted to protect her own skin and the name of the Martin family, but she didn't want anything to happen to her sister—and she was burning a little, herself. Somewhere she got the idea El Cuchillo was mixed up in the mess. I'm not sure how, but you'll tell me, Maggie. Maybe she got some stuff from Miguel after hours. Maybe a lot of things. But when she flipped down there Saturday night, she had to be taken care of. Nobody connected with IW could afford to take a chance your dirty racket might pop out in the open, so she had to be killed. All you had to do was grab a phone and call the Seipels. Easy. You're the gal that told me about phones, remember?"

She was just a little panicky now. "Anybody coulda called 'em. Didn't have to be me."

I grinned at her. "You admit it was the Seipels, then?"

"I don't admit nothin'."

"You were their boss. It wasn't Press. Peter went to you, not to Press, after I'd killed his brother."

"Who says so?"

"You do, Maggie. You told me."

She blinked at me.

"Sure, Maggie." I lifted the revolver in my left hand. "This is what I meant by receiving stolen property. It wasn't just a joke. Not completely. This is my gun, my thirty-eight. You brought it to me tonight, only you were going to use it on Tracy. The last time I saw this was when Peter had Paul take it away from me. Press didn't even see the guy, so you had to get the gun from Peter. Do I have to write it out?"

"I don't know any Tracy. I don't know what you're talkin' about." She was more nervous now, her tongue licking almost constantly at her fat lips. "What for would I have anything against this Tracy?"

I grinned at her again. "I'll let her tell you, Maggie." I yelled out the door for Tracy to come in. I heard her heels clicking in the hall and she came in the door. I walked up to her, led her over in front of Maggie, and asked casually, "Well, Tracy?"

She looked at me, then back at Mrs. Remorse. She said calmly, "That's the one."

"You sure, Tracy? You sure it was her?"

She strung along as if we'd rehearsed half an hour instead of about two seconds downstairs. "Yes. I'm positive. It was her, all right."

"Thanks, honey. Well, Maggie? Should I write out, too?"

I didn't have to. Her face was twisted and plain scared. I went on: "That's right, Maggie. You weren't sure, but she did get a good look at you when the boys took her upstairs at the temple. You came out at the wrong time. She was crying a little, but she wouldn't forget you. She could tie you in positively with the temple and Inner World, so you had to get rid of her. When Peter gave you my gun, naturally you found out we'd flown the coop. You probably figured correctly that Tracy would be home, and you called her, pretending to be me. She'd never heard me over the phone—you were lucky there—so she fell for it. And then, while you're watching for Tracy, I show up. You couldn't have both of us in the office at the same time, so you got rid of me with a cock-and-bull story and it was safe for you to let yourself in here. Only I wasn't gone long enough. A neat touch, my gun. You weren't sure how much I knew, but you figured Tracy could tie you up with IW. Getting rid of her with my gun might mess me up, too. But Maggie, darlin', it seemed strange to me that the phone should ring as soon as I got inside the office. Just as if somebody was watching the place. You should have waited a little while—but maybe you didn't have time. And why clear out a hundred blocks on Main? Why not Tenth or Twelfth—or right here? Simple. You needed time, and you needed me out. Chew on that, Maggie. You're finished. Admit it."

She went on licking her lips, and I stepped over to the side of the room with Samson. We spoke softly so that nobody else in the room could hear us.

He whispered, "Nice going, Shell. I've got an idea. What say I take Press out in the hall? I'll find a room on this floor and keep after him. You work on the old bag. One of 'em ought to bust open."

"Good deal, Sam." I flipped out the cylinder of my.38 and made sure the chambers were full and it was ready to go. "There's something else. I, uh, held out on you, Sam. That time I picked up the glass with the prints, I also picked up a couple of registers. Lists of the people who attended the sunrise services."

He thought for a moment, forehead wrinkled. "Then that list should give us the names of a flock of hopheads. You know, the ones that went regular."

"It should and it does. I talked to some."

Sam pushed out his lips and frowned. "And you held that out on me? Why, you dirty bastard." But he grinned when he said it. "Where are those ledgers?"

"Here. In the office. In a couple of magazines on top of the desk—those copies of True over there."

"Give me one of 'em."

"Now?'

"Yeah. I'm not going to say anything about it for a while. Just let our pals sweat a little." He glanced over at Press and Maggie to make sure they were keeping apart. "Besides, I want to see what they do when you haul them out. I guess they know you got the things, huh?"

"Press is sure to—they were in his room. I'm not sure about Maggie. Press might have been scared to tell her they were gone. There's a chance."

"Good. O.K., Shell. Let's start it."

I walked back over to the desk. Tracy was still standing by it. "For Pete's sake, honey," I said. "I'm sorry. Here, sit down." I pulled out the swivel chair for her.

Her eyes were wide. "It's all right," she answered. "I hadn't even noticed." She looked a little pale. She was probably just realizing what had almost happened to her. She sat down and I opened the magazines where I'd stuck the ledgers. They were still there. I took them both out, said, "Here you are, Sam," and started to hand one to him.

He wasn't watching me; he was looking at Mrs. Remorse. I glanced at her. She'd just about forgotten where she was. She rose part way out of her chair, staring at the ledgers in my hand. She said something unintelligible, then opened her mouth wide, lumbered around toward Press, and with one tremendous sweep of her massive left arm smacked him across the face and sent him sprawling on his back, blood gushing from his nose in a red stream.

Chapter Twenty-two

MAGGIE BENT OVER Press, her fingers curled into hooks reaching for his throat. Sam, moving like a cat in spite of his bulk, was across the room and had her by both arms before she could do any more damage. She'd done enough. Press was a mess.

Samson wrestled Maggie back to her chair, where she sat with her huge breasts rising and falling like two beach balls as she breathed heavily through her open mouth. Sam took one of the books from my hand, winked at me, then lifted Press off the floor and out of the room.

I pulled a chair up in front of Maggie, out of reach of her hamlike fists, and balanced my .38 on my knee while I talked to her. "What's the matter, Maggie? Didn't you know Press took us into his confidence? How do you think I knew so damn much about the racket? Where do you think I got those ledgers? Get smart, sister. Why do you think we brought him up here? You don't think I pulled all this information out of the air, do you?"

She was going around in circles and her brain was dancing a sloppy schottische. She didn't know which way to go or how to get there.

She rumbled, "You…you got nothin' on me." She didn't sound as if she believed a word of it.

I laughed in her face. I opened the ledger I still held and flipped some of the pages, watching her out of the corner of my eye. She started licking her lips again.

"S'pose I knowed somethin'?" she said hoarsely. "What if I did?"

"You could tell me about it."

"An' what's that get me?"

"I don't know, Maggie. I can't promise you a thing. A private eye can't promise any immunity. You've heard of state's evidence, though, haven't you? You can bet your good pal—I mean ex-pal—Press has. Anyway, maybe it'd be for what's left of your soul."

She looked around the room, not knowing what she was looking for, took a deep breath, and said nothing.

"Think about it, Maggie. We've got it all, anyway, But you think about it."

She thought about it. She was still thinking about it when Samson came back in alone. "Got it, Shell," he said. "I caught the radio boys and sent Press down to Headquarters with 'em. They're taking his deposition down there."

Maggie's, immense bulk quivered uneasily. "Whatsa deposition?"

Sam walked over by her. "That's a formal statement, Mrs. Remorse. Signed, witnessed, taken under oath. All very legal. This particular deposition is what cooks your goose."

"Cooks…" she croaked.

Sam ignored her and turned to me. "The main thing Homicide was interested in was the Martin girl. Press gave it to me. Saturday night she"—he gestured toward Maggie—"calls the temple and says there's trouble—"

"He's a goddamn liar!" she yelled.

Sam continued to ignore her and went on calmly: "—at this night club, this El Cuchillo, and for the Seipel boys to get down there and fix up Miss Martin and you." He grinned at me. "Cute, huh? Well, it looks like Press is in the clear himself. Mrs. Remorse didn't get him. She talked direct to one of the Seipel boys—Paul, it was—so Press didn't know anything about it till it was all over. Naturally—"

"Hey!" said Maggie.

"—we can't hold him as an accessory on that murder rap if he—"

"Hey! Wait a minute." Maggie was part way out of her chair again.

Sam frowned down at her. "What's eating you?"

"He can't do that," she rumbled. She paused a moment, eyes flicking from Sam to me, teeth nibbling on her lower lip. Then she made up her mind, blew breath out of her nostrils, and went on through with it. "He's lyin'. You'll screw me up, but he's in it. I called from the club, all right. But I talked to Press. Get me? Press I talked to. I swear I did. So he had to tell the boys himself. That makes him accessory or whatever the hell you call it."

Sam pushed out his lips in a frown. "Hmm. That's funny. That's not the way, Press tells it."

"The bastard! He's lyin'!"

"If you'd care to sign a statement to that effect, Mrs. Remorse… "Sam looked at me. "Got pen and paper, Shell?"

I scooted for the desk while Mrs. Remorse hesitated. Sam said, "Of course, we can leave it the way it is. It's just as good—"

"I'll sign it."

From there on in it was easy. Once she got started, she was in so deep there was no point in stopping, and we got it all. She'd been in the narcotics traffic in a small way when she bumped into Press and his new Inner World racket. Her shrewd mind played with that a while and came up with the racket to end all rackets. Inner World was a made-to-order blind for her narcotics deal, but more than that, her twisted mind saw it as a way to create a demand for her product. The way she looked at it, it was a simple case of the law of supply and demand. She had a supply of narcotics, a big supply from poppy fields in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico; more than she could use. And her go-between, or contact man, incidentally, was the little "sensual Latin" I'd first seen at El Cuchillo—Juan Porfirio. All that was needed for a really rich take was the demand: addicts. And IW could create that. A little morphine or heroin in the Inner World "cosmic fluid" that the suckers gulped with religious fervor, half hypnotized by Narda's sirupy phrases, and in a matter of weeks, presto, bigger demand. It wasn't 100 per cent, but even 10 or 15 per cent of the suckers added up to a staggering profit. Particularly when Maggie and Press could get the pure stuff in from Mexico, cut it ten times or even more with milk sugar, then push the cut dope directly to the addicts with nobody in between to worry about. Only Maggie, Miguel, the Seipels, and Press had been in the know on the narcotics angle, and Miguel—the only one left unaccounted for—was hiding out at a house of Maggie's in the San Fernando Valley. We got the address and, later, Miguel.

Anyway, Maggie had sold Press the idea, playing up the fantastic profits possible, arranged for Jordan Brent to ghost Narda's speeches, and had Narda fire all the old crew, get new help, and start in fresh on a really businesslike basis. It was a messy deal all around. Oh, yeah—the uncut dope was in El Cuchillo in cans of "imported chili," imported from Mexico just like it said, bold as hell, on the club's menus.

Maggie signed the long, badly spelled statement and Tracy, Samson, and I witnessed it. We had Margaret Remorse where she squirmed the most.

 
Samson used my phone and called Headquarters for a couple of cars. When he got up from behind the desk he put the statements in his coat pocket and I noticed him hitch up his pants. He didn't have on any belt.

A glittering idea began growing in my mind.

"Sam," I asked, "Where's your belt?"

"Huh?"

"Your belt. Where is it?"

"Oh, that?"

"Uh-huh."

"I, uh, lost it."

"Sure, Sam. You lost it. Where was it you lost it?"