The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (35 page)

Still holding him, I shoved him backward into a reception hall that needed only a layer of turf to make it a polo field.

“But first take me to Mrs Heinrich,” I said. “That’s assuming you were levelling about her hubby not being home.” I kicked the door shut behind me, listened for the click that satisfied me the latch had snapped. “Meanwhile, don’t let anybody else in. Except the cops, of course. I wasn’t fooling about a killer being loose.”

He flapped some more. “You c-can’t—”

“Don’t be tiresome,” I said. “I’ll even let you announce me to the lady. Nick Ransom is the handle. Maybe she’ll remember me from the days when she was an extra named Marian Lodge and I was a stunt man around the lots.”

“But – but Mrs Heinrich doesn’t like to be disturbed during her star bath.”

“Star bath?”

“Like a sun bath, only at night. Something about the cosmic rays. She read it in a book.”

I took this in stride. The night was so full of whacky events I was growing calloused to it. And Marian always had a bird-brain.

“We’ll disturb her anyhow,” I said. “Get going.”

Muttering, he led me along the reception hall to a corridor, and along that to a stairway, and up this to a level which seemed to project outward into empty space. Actually it was a glassed-in-solarium with the domed roof rolled open; a basking room built out over the cliffside with no visible means of support, ending on a sheer drop down into the next precinct.

The butler cleared his throat apologetically, spoke my name and scuttled away with his coat-tails dipping lint. He never did phone Headquarters, the heel. He was all bluff and no hole card.

I stood there trying to adjust my eyes to the dark. There was movement on something that might be a chaise longue. You couldn’t quite tell in the blackness. The movement was white, though. Fascinatingly white. And a drawling she-male voice said:

“Nick Ransom, of all people. This
is
a surprise. Imagine, after all these years. And just as rugged as ever.”

I went toward her, wondering how she could spot my ruggedness in a room as dark as the bottom of the La-Brea tar pits. Presently my glimmers got their second wind and there was just enough starlight to show me the shapely outlines of a jane on a daybed. Just to make sure, I lit a match on my thumbnail.

Then I said: “Yipe!” and my flabbergasted exclamation blew out the flame.

The doll was Marian Lodge, all right; Marian Heinrich, now. Brunette, statuesque, relaxed, and utterly uninhibited.

She laughed. “Shocked, Nick? That’s out of character.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t expecting—”

“To get the full benefit of star bath rays you must have them flow over you like sea foam. All over you. Over all of you. Come sit by me, darling.”

“No,” I said firmly, “I’ll talk from here. It’s serious, and I want to keep my mind on it.”

“Silly boy.” Silk whispered intimately and a zipper wheeked. “Now you can be serious. Come kiss me hello.”

I sidled closer, cautiously.

“That was years ago. Before you got married. Speaking of husbands—”

“Let’s not.” She sat up, snared my fingers, tugged me down on the cushions. “Husbands bore me. Especially mine.”

“Where is he tonight?”

“Out chasing, I suppose. As usual. Don’t worry, he won’t bother us. He never gets home until late. Kiss me.”

I could be as persistent as she was. “Any way of getting hold of him by phone?”

“Heaven forbid.” She hauled at my wrist. “I’m so glad you came to see me, Nick. Like old times.”

Old times, my elbow. I’d been on two mild parties with her and she wanted to build it up to a feature production. In technicolor. What she was doing with my captured hand would have made a wooden Indian throw away his cigars. I was no wooden Indian, though. I was a private eye hunting a homicidal madman. “Cut it out, tutz,” I said. “I want to ask you something.”

“The answer is yes. Now kiss me.”

“Remember Ronald Barclay?”

“Do I! Mmm-mmm. I adored that man. Kiss me.”

By main strength, I got my fingers away from her. “Did he ever make a pass at you?”

“No.” She sighed regretfully. “Darn it.”

“But your husband was jealous of him, wasn’t he?”

“I wish you’d stop reminding me of my husband at a time like this. For all I care he can drop dead.”

This startled me. It made two people who yearned for Heinrich to pass away. Heinrich was not a popular guy.

“You might be surprised if he did die, hon,” I said. “Tonight. With a hole in the head. A bullet-hole, that is.”

She snagged my other hand and was reckless with it. Her sultry breath danced along my cheek. She was driving me crazy.

“Silly. You don’t have to shoot him,” she murmured. “I won’t even tell him you were here.”

“I didn’t say
I’d
shoot him!” I choked. “I meant . . . Hey, cut it out. Quit it.”

Star glow dropped little glints in her sleek black hair and her lips were a dark flutter of challenge and demand. But whatever I was going to do about it never got done, because just then a voice full of adenoids whinnied at us from the solarium entrance.

A butler is handy to have around, sometimes.

“I beg pardon,” the butler said. “There’s a person at the door who insists upon seeing Mr Ransom.”

I leaped up to my feet. In the same motion I unholstered my fowling piece. If this was Ronald Barclay trying to trick me out where he could use me for a clay pigeon, slugs were going to fly through the blue California night.

“Describe him,” I said.

“He’s rather young, sir. And tall. He gave his name as Peter Warren Winthrop, and when I refused to admit him he asked me to convey a message to you. Something to the effect, sir, that Duffy has disappeared.”

I made a record getting downstairs to see Peter Warren Winthrop. He had plenty to say and not much breath to say it with.

“It’s the truth, Ransom, so help me,” Pete Winthrop said. His athletic shoulders twitched under a gabardine topcoat and he sounded like a guy who has experienced a profound shock, like encountering a herd of polka-dotted zebras. “I know it’s hard to believe. I could scarcely believe it myself. But it’s true.”

We were outdoors, pacing the patio flagstones. Behind us, Heinrich’s cubistic wigwam was buttoned up tighter than a bald man’s scalp, and I’d warned the butler to keep it that way when I ankled out to parley with the Chaple Arms bellhop. Keeping step with him now, and holding to the thick shadows, I had my gat in my grasp and my peepers peeled for possible peril.

“How’d you discover it, son?” I said.

“I – I had put through another call to your friend Brunvig at Homicide Headquarters, but as soon as I mentioned your name to him and said I was phoning to report the same murder you had told him about, he slammed up on me. Then I got an idea.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded, and told me about it. “I decided I would go out and try to find any kind of policeman – you know, a motorcycle officer or radio prowl car cop, maybe even a flatfoot pounding a beat. Anybody with a badge and a little authority. But first I wanted to make sure none of the tenants up on three would wander into Three-seventeen and see Duffy’s corpse and throw the whole house into a panic. I couldn’t remember whether we had left the door of the suite open or closed, locked or unlocked.”

“So you went up there.”

“Yes. And he was gone. Duffy, I mean. Vanished. Not a trace of him. Do you realize what that means? It means that Fullerton, or Barclay as you called him – it means he was there in the hotel all the time. Hiding some place. Hiding while you and I went down and started phoning from the lobby.” The punk shivered visibly in his topcoat. “You’d gone away and left me there with a killer. And he had moved Duffy’s body as soon as the coast was clear.”

“Moved it where?”

“How should I know? Not in any of the broom closets or linen pantries. I looked. I was scared, but I looked anyhow. But I didn’t try any of the rooms. We’ve got a full house, everything occupied. I couldn’t very well start knocking on doors, asking guests to let me in so I could search for a dead man. I didn’t know
what
to do. Then I figured I’d better come here and tell you about it. I figured you might have some angles.”

“All I ran into was curves,” I said dourly.

I was thinking of Marian Heinrich and her star bath. She would do no more star bathing tonight. Thick, sinister clouds were drifting in from Santa Monica, sullen and ominous, wrapping up the stars in black cotton batting. You couldn’t see the surrounding hills, you couldn’t even see the flagstones you were walking on. All you could see was a mental image of something maniacal and monstrous, something on artificial legs stalking you through a darkness as thick as oatmeal cooked in a vat of dye.

“He was clever,” Pete Winthrop said. “Nobody can prove he murdered Duffy if Duffy’s corpse can’t be found. The cops will never believe your story, now. Which gives him a clear field to ambush Heinrich.”

“Not while we do sentry duty,” I said.

“We?”

“Beat it if you’re yellow,” I growled. “I’ll do what has to be done.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said apologetically. “I was just flattered to think you wanted me.” Impressed. Boyish. A punk with a chance to assist a private dick and overwhelmed by it. And a little uncertain, too. “Mightn’t it be a good idea to phone the law again and try to persuade them to send somebody to help us stand guard?”

We had paced all the way back to the front door by that time, Peter and I. And as if in answer to his suggestion, the portal opened not more than half an inch.

“Mr Ransom, sir,” came through the opening in a shaky whinny.

“Close that door and keep it locked!” I rasped.

“Y-yes, sir,” the butler said. “But I thought you should be informed that I fear I delayed too long in attempting to call the police as you originally suggested. Our line seems to be dead, sir.” The door swung shut and the latch clicked.

“Golly!” Pete Winthrop made a gulping noise in his gullet. “A dead phone. A cut wire. Barclay’s here – on the grounds!”

I gave him a shove. “Scatter. Stay up here on the patio level. Keep moving. I’ll patrol down along the driveway and garage. That way I’ll be set in case he tries to dry-gulch Heinrich coming home in his car. I don’t suppose you’ve got a heater?”

“Heater?”

“Gun.”

“No.”

“Barclay has, so watch out. Don’t jump him if you see him.”

“What
shall
I do?”

“Yell for me and duck for cover. Don’t let him get you in the open.”

We separated, and I went catfooting down the long monolithic stairway. There was one thing in our favor – the rear of the estate was walled in by a precipitous hill, barricading it against approach or escape. You couldn’t get in that way unless you used a block and tackle or descended by parachute. You couldn’t get out without a helicopter.

This made my strategy valid. The lower-level driveway was the only entrance, and the only exit. And the house itself was practically impregnable when its doors and windows were locked. Clenching my cannon, I was ready for the payoff.

Silence pressed down around me. With the coming of the clouds, even the hillside crickets had quit being chirpy. I kept listening for anything that might sound like the metallic clank of artificial legs in motion, the scrape of soles on cement paving.

Away back in the recesses of my think-tank something bothered me, something that refused to be dragged out so I could inspect it. It was an evasive wisp, a fragment that played hide-and-seek with my subconscious. I felt the same way about it that I’d felt when I had first heard an empty room speak my name with Ronald Barclay’s voice. Haunted, uncomfortable.

I had a curious sensation that Barclay didn’t exist, that he never had existed; that everything had been a figment of my imagination. But the throbbing lump on top of my noggin contradicted any such nonsense.

Barclay had been real enough. Figments of the imagination don’t slug you to dreamland, and they don’t croak poor old deaf guys like Duffy. And I had glimpsed the maimed ham with my own optics. I had lamped him in his wheelchair, definitely legless under the lap blanket, definitely one-armed, with a shirt sleeve pinned up emptily.

“Ransom!”

The shout came hoarsely from above, and then I heard a series of scuffling sounds, the violent rustling of underbrush. I leaped for the steps, took them three at a time, catapulted across lawn and patio toward those continuing noises.

Hard by the tiled area bordering the swimming pool there was a row of clumped hydrangea bushes. I couldn’t see them stirring, but I heard them.

Flying blind, I plunged forward – and overshot the mark.

Something reached out, tripped me. As I stumbled, a heavy and panting burden landed on my back with an impact that drove me down on all fours like a bear. I didn’t lose my roscoe, but for all the good it did me I might as well have pitched it into the pool. The hand that held it was pressed knuckle-deep in loam and I couldn’t raise it, couldn’t even move it.

Weight crushed me, flattened me, and then fingers clamped around my throat from behind. They were hot, inexorable fingers as relentless as steel springs.

They throttled me, pressing against my jugular and carotid artery, collapsing my gullet and robbing my bellows of air. I bucked and arched my spine and sunfished like a rodeo bronc, but all I threw was snake-eyes. I didn’t throw my rider.

Then I didn’t throw anything. I got thrown. I was propelled headlong into the swimming pool and I sank like an anchor.

They say a drowning gee sees his whole life pass by him in a series of flashback montage memories. Not me. I just saw the scenes of the past few hours. Plummeting downward in cold water, I reviewed everything that had happened.

My head stopped throbbing and my mind sharpened like a razor on a hone. I saw the cat eating a bird on the steps of the Chaple Arms. I saw Ronald Barclay’s hotel suite, the trick mirror in the closet door, the little padlocked alcove workshop where he had dabbled in prosthetics. I saw the defunct Duffy lying with his temple crushed in, a button fastened in one ear and wires running down to a switched-off hearing gadget he would never need again.