Hard Case Crime: Shooting Star & Spiderweb (19 page)
Read Hard Case Crime: Shooting Star & Spiderweb Online
Authors: Robert Bloch
She wasn’t stopping. I saw the gun come up, noted the silencer attachment for the first time, realized that it explained why no one had heard the shot when Trent died. No one would hear the shot now, either.
This was it. A silly way to die, sitting in an armchair in a big house out in Laurel Canyon, watching a woman’s hand move, watching her finger squeeze the trigger on a gun mounted with a silencer.
She squeezed.
Funny. I heard the shot after all.
No, it wasn’t a shot. Somebody must have thrown a stone through the glass of the front window. Yes, because Daisy was turning to look.
Wrong again. She hadn’t turned to look. She’d turned to fall. And it was a shot after all, but not from her gun. Somebody had fired through the window.
I watched her drop to the carpet, watched the redness run out of her mouth.
Daisy Bannock lay on the floor, her body curled like a question mark.
I stood up. I walked over to her and started to kneel down.
Then the question mark straightened out once and for all, and Al Thompson walked into the room.
You never feel clean after a murder.
That’s what I’d tried to tell Daisy, and that’s what I found out now.
Hastings’ death had been a mess. Lucky for me, because when they went through his room they’d run across a notebook inside his mattress. Names of clients, including Daisy Bannock.
That’s what brought Al Thompson out to see her, and saved me.
For a while there, I wasn’t even happy about being saved. Not when I had to watch them break the news to Harry. They found him at his office, and he took it hard. The poor guy had never suspected. I felt bad about that.
I wasn’t rejoicing when they managed to pick up Joe Dean and Estrellita Juarez, either. They were traced to San Bernardino, where they’d holed up on a piece of property his brother Andy owned. Yes, they got Andy and this big guy Fritz, too. I had to testify against them.
They made a deal with Kolmar to drop his charges about the gun and the assault, so I was in the clear. And I did what I could to help in the weeks that followed.
It was some consolation to know that this particular reefer pushing outfit was broken up; turned out Dean’s brother Andy and his friend Fritz were both peddling for Hastings, too.
But they never were able to trace Hastings’ source. If there was anyone higher up, the police couldn’t find him.
And of course, I never got any eleven grand from Harry Bannock, either.
I haven’t seen him for months, but that’s my fault, I suppose. I could call him up and ask how’s tricks, sweetheart, and did he ever sell his films to See-More?
But I haven’t, and I won’t.
I just sit here in the office and tend to business. The literary agenting business, where all the murders are on paper and nothing is red except the ink of a typewriter ribbon.
Sometimes, though, when I happen to be working overtime, at night, I stop and stare out the window.
I can see across the city from here, and look down into the streets. And no matter what the hour, the streets are never empty.
They’re always moving down there, moving all over town—this town and every big town. The pushers and their customers, the big dealers and the little squealers, the future killers and the future victims. Along with a lot of other people: guys like Al Thompson, who do their best, and the anonymous thousands like Harry Bannock who never suspect.
When I stare out the window, I see them all, realize what’s happening outside. And I say to myself,
It never ends, does it? What you knew was just a tiny fraction of the whole. Somewhere out there tonight there’ll be another murder. Another chapter in a book that’s never finished, even though it started way back with Cain.
That’s what I say to myself when I look out the window.
And then, I pull down the shades and go back to work.
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