Extra Kill - Dell Shannon (12 page)

"Mostly, I think, on Carstairs' money—she
spent most of hers as it came in. Maybe he'd begun to see through her
at that, he'd tied it up in trust—in two trusts actually, one for
the girl. They'd only been married a couple of years, the kid was
just a baby, when he crashed. Sure, Mona's got plenty to get along
on, but that's not enough for her."

"She is," said Hackett, "a member of a
funny cult called the Temple of Mystic Truth. Know anything about
that?"

Horwitz shook his head and shrugged. "Can't say
I want to. This town used to have a reputation for that kind of thing
too, and when you come to think of it, it's natural. You take these
people—they're people without roots, you know?—and most of 'em
are suckers for that kind of thing. Especially, you might say, as
they get older. They feel a lack somewhere, they look around for
something solid, for an answer, and because they're the kind of
people they are, the orthodox doesn't attract them."

"Yes, I can see that. She'd been going around
some with this fellow who got knocked off, Brooke Twelvetrees."

"Oh, that one, was it? And that's why you're
interested. I remember him. She brought him in, pestered me to take
him on. Well, you never know where you'll find something good, I
looked him over. He had looks, the kind a lot of women go for, but
don't get me wrong when I say, like I did about Mona, that's the
first and only thing. It's important, but you and I could both name a
dozen top stars without much in the way of looks. Mona and some like
her, both sexes, got to the top on looks alone, but that doesn't hold
you there. It's a thing there's no word for—showmanship, I guess
that comes closest to it. Nothing to do with talent. I can name you
people"—he did so—"who've been on top for years,
without having anything but a lot of gall, and showmanship. It was
that, even a little bit of it, this Twelvetrees didn't have. The
personality didn't project, he couldn't've held an audience with the
doors locked and safety belts to fasten 'em down. I said nothing
doing, and Mona was mad as hell .... No, that was the only time I
ever met him, it'd be about two years ago .... I heard later Meyer
and Hanks took him on, don't know if or where they'd got him
anything?

"Well, thanks. Where's that outfit?"
Hackett took down the address. "You don't think there'd have
been anything serious about their going around together? Just as an
opinion."

Horwitz laughed. "Because Twelvetrees was maybe
twenty-five years younger? Look, you don't need to be a psychiatrist
to read these people. One of the damndest awful things about them is
that they never get past a certain stage in life. They're kind of
fixed at the mental age where parties and clothes and boy friends and
girl friends, and all the—the froth, you know, is all that's
important in life. It can have sad results. You take anybody
fifty-five, sixty years old, even if he's got good health, nothing
chronic, he's glad to let down once in a while, take things easier,
stay home Saturday night and read a book. He's got a long way past
being interested in kids' things—he's got to other things just as
much fun. He's found out he doesn't have to be twenty-five years old
and handsome as a movie star to get a kick out of making love to his
wife, and she doesn't have to be Marilyn Monroe. He doesn't—you
know—have to keep up a front. These people, the front's all they've
ever had, and it's the most important thing in the world to them—they
can't let themselves let down, ever. The front of perpetual youth. In
looks and every other way. I tell you, once in a while I find myself
in a night club or somewhere like that, not by choice but on
business, and I don't know any sadder sight. These people like Mona,
hell-bent on having a good time the same way the twenty-five-year-old
kids are having a good time. Out of the fronts of things—good looks
and clothes and going to parties. . Mona and this Twelvetrees? She
always has a man in tow, to be seen with. Whatever she can pick up.
She's got to. By the only rules she knows, if she didn't have
something in pants to be seen with at the good-time places, it'd mean
she was dead—as a female. And there are, in this town, enough men
like her that she can always find one. But of course she'd always
prefer one like Twelvetrees, to the ones her own age working just as
hard as she is, with their toupées and expensive false teeth and
corsets. Shows she's still an attractive, vital female—that's a
word they like—to pick up a young man. You want my opinion, well,
Twelvetrees was one of these people too, and he probably took up with
Mona thinking she could do him some good in the way of contacts. Or
just maybe because she paid the bills at the good-time places. I
wouldn't say she'd gone down quite as far as that, to pay a fancy man
to squire her around, but maybe—and there are nuances in these
things, even with people like Mona."

"So there are," agreed Hackett. "Well,
thanks very much for your help. Don't know that any of it's much use
to us right now, but you never know—and anyway it's interesting to
get the inside view on them."

"You find it
interesting?" said Mr. Horwitz sadly. "Seems funny to think
I ever did. These goddamned awful people . . . like reading the same
page in a book over and over. Someday I got to get out of this
business .... "

* * *

Walsh didn't know yet why Mendoza was asking him
about that D.-and-D. call; he was doing his best to be helpful, but
it had been such a routine thing . . .

"I don't want to prompt you. But just visualize
it in your mind—a big blacktopped area with apartments on two sides
and across the rear. The one where the drunks were was Number Three,
that's in the front of the second building on the right as you drive
in. It was about seven-thirty, and it was raining. It was the
landlady called in, and she was waiting for you—"

"Funny little fat lady in a man's raincoat,"
said Walsh suddenly. "Yeah, I got it, Lieutenant. We pulled up
where she was, I guess it'd be in front of her place, she was waiting
there on the porch, I remember that—and we both got kind of wet
going across to the drunks' apartment—left the car where it was,
see, it was just a step really but it was coming down pretty steady
then."

"Yes, go on."

"Well—I don't know just what you want, sir.
There wasn't anything to it. It's funny how just the sight of the
uniform'll quiet 'em down sometimes. There was this big bruiser of a
fellow and a little blonde woman, going at it hammer and tongs—you
could hear 'em half a block away, the landlady needn't've come out to
tell us where. Soon as Joe knocked and said who we were, they stopped
and the man let us in. We talked to 'em a few minutes, you know the
sort of thing: hadn't they better quiet down, have some consideration
for the neighbors, and that's all it took really." He stuck
again there, and was prodded on. "Well, let's see—Joe gave me
the nod, I knew what he meant, and I went out to the car to report
in. See, Joe figured, and I guess he knew from experience—he was a
good cop, Lieutenant, the best for my money—"

"I know he was."

"—He always said, about a deal like that,
where they aren't really slum people who just naturally distrust
cops, that you don't have to go acting tough, and a lot of times
they'll listen to a good stiff talk from a man in uniform where
they'd just get mad with somebody like the landlady or the neighbors.
That's what he meant, see. We could see they wouldn't make any more
disturbance, and so like I say I went back to the car to report in,
and Joe stayed to talk to 'em, so maybe they'd think twice the next
time."

"Yes. And then?"

"Well—that's all," said Walsh blankly. "I
sat in the car and waited for Joe, and pretty soon he came out—with
the landlady—she'd stayed in the drunks' apartment with him—and
she thanked us and we got back on our route again."

Mendoza made a few marks on paper, shoved the page
across the desk. "Look, here's the set-up, let's get it clear.
The apartments numbered Five and Six are in the building across the
end of this court. The landlady lives in Number Six. Numbers Three
and Four are in this second building from the street, at right angles
to that. Show me where your squad car was in relation."

Walsh hesitated, finally pointed. "I'd say just
about in front of this rear building. I mean not in front of either
of the apartment doors there but sort of in between them.”

"Damn it, I don't want to force this," said
Mendoza softly, "if there is anything .... When you both got out
of the car, you went straight across to Number Three? Bartlett was
with you?"

"Why, sure, of course." Walsh stared.

"He was in Number Three how long?"

"I guess about fifteen, twenty minutes—no, say
eighteen. Altogether."

"You'd gone back to the car and reported in what
it had turned out to be. How long did you sit there waiting for him?"

"About ten minutes, I guess. I remember I smoked
a cigarette, it was just about finished when Joe came. I don't get
what this is about, Lieutenant, it was just a routine—"

"Yes. Now when Bartlett came out of Number
Three, did he come straight across to the car?"

"Yes, sir—at least, I'd think so. Wouldn't
have any reason to do anything else, would he? I guess if you pinned
me down I couldn't say I know he did, because I had my back to that
side of the court, you know—he just came up and got in and said,
‘O.K., Frank, let's go.' The landlady came up behind him, with that
funny raincoat over her head, and hopped up on her front porch and
yelled ‘Thanks' at us and—well, that was that."

Mendoza sighed. "And if Bartlett didn't come
straight from Number Three to the squad car, the landlady would know
.... " He could ask, but he had the feeling this was a dead end.
Call it what, a minute, two minutes, for Bartlett to have seen
something, heard something? "
Qué va!
"
he muttered to himself vexedly. "Can you think of anything else
at  all, Walsh, no matter how trivial it struck you at the time,
that happened during the whole twenty minutes you were at this
place?"

Silence. Walsh was looking nervous and perplexed. "I
don't know what you're after," he said. "I just can't
think—- Well, a couple of the neighbors on each side of the drunks'
apartment came out—I think one couple was out when we drove up, I
seem to get a picture of them standing there on their front porch
under the porch light. That'd be, I guess, Number Four—end
apartment .... What, sir? I think that was the only porch light on
except the landlady's. Then when I came back g to the car, I saw the
people on the other side—that'd be Number Two, in the first
building—had come out on their porch. Wanted to see if we were
going to take the drunks in, I guess, but there wasn't any need for
that .... I don't remember seeing anybody else out. I guess if it
hadn't been raining they would have been—you know, the drunks
making such a racket—but the way it was, it was just the people
from the closest apartments to them who were outside—though
probably everybody else was looking out their windows .... I don't
know what else I can . . . Oh, and just before Joe came up, somebody
did open the door of the apartment next to the landlady's. And that's
all I—what, sir? No, I they didn't come out on the porch, maybe
when they saw it was raining so hard—"

"They,” said Mendoza, excluding any excitement
from his tone.

"Two people, three, or what?"

"Oh—well," said Walsh vaguely, "I
don't know. I said ‘they' because I couldn't see whether it was a
man or woman who opened the door. The porch light wasn't on there. I
think there was a light inside but not in the living room, maybe, not
right by the door or behind it—I seem to I get that impression. I
couldn't see—I don't know if anybody else was there besides who
opened the door. I just, you know, sort of registered it in my mind,
the door opening . . . This what you want, Lieutenant, about that?
Well, let's see .... I remember thinking, they've finally tumbled
something's going on, and're looking out to see what—but I didn't
notice whoever it was—and it was just a minute before the door shut
again. Tell you the truth," said Walsh a little shamefacedly, "I
was looking at the lightning really, I just kind of saw that door
open out of the tail of my eye. I get a kick out of electric storms,
and we never used to get them out here much, you know, it's only the
last ten or twelve years .... I was waiting for the thunder .... "

"Yes,” said Mendoza. "Now, think about
this one carefully. Someone was standing in the open door of Number
Five—by the way, wide open?"

Walsh thought, shook his head. "I don't know. I
don't think so, but I can't say for sure."

"O.K. Someone's there, and there's lightning in
a flash—big stroke?"

"Pretty close. Lit up the whole sky—it was
fine."

"Yes. And about that time Bartlett was, maybe,
on his way to the car from Number Three? Could it be that whoever was
standing there saw Bartlett by that big flash, and thought Bartlett
might have seen him—or her?" But that was really reaching for
it, surely, he added to himself. A flash of lightning. One little
moment—to fix in mind the nondescript features of an ordinary
cop—and an hour and a bit later, catch up to him and kill him? And
Bartlett would probably have had his head down against the rain;
whoever was in that doorway would also see that he couldn't be
noticing ....