Killer in the Rain Read online

I said: ‘Steiner isn’t here, Mister Slade. We don’t know just where he is.’

  He nodded and touched his long chin with the brim of his hat.

  ‘You friends of his?’

  ‘We just dropped by for a book,’ I said, and gave him back his smile. ‘The door was half open. We knocked, then stepped inside. Just like you.’

  ‘I see,’ Slade said thoughtfully. ‘Very simple.’

  I didn’t say anything. Carmen didn’t say anything. She was staring fixedly at his empty sleeve.

  ‘A book, eh?’ Slade went on. The way he said it told me things. He knew about Steiner’s racket, maybe.

  I moved over towards the door. ‘Only you didn’t knock,’ I said.

  He smiled with faint embarrassment. ‘That’s right. I ought to have knocked. Sorry.’

  ‘We’ll trot along now,’ I said carelessly. I took hold of Carmen’s arm.

  ‘Any message – if Steiner comes back?’ Slade asked softly.

  ‘We won’t bother you.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ he said, with too much meaning.

  I let go of Carmen’s arm and took a slow step away from her. Slade still had his hat in his hand. He didn’t move. His deep-set eyes twinkled pleasantly.

  I opened the door again.

  Slade said: ‘The girl can go. But I’d like to talk to you a little.’

  I stared at him, trying to look very blank.

  ‘Kidder, eh?’ Slade said nicely.

  Carmen made a sudden sound at my side and ran out through the door. In a moment I heard her steps going down the hill. I hadn’t seen her car, but I guessed it was around somewhere.

  I began to say: ‘What the hell –’

  ‘Save it,’ Slade interrupted coldly. ‘There’s something wrong here. I’ll just find out what it is.’

  He began to walk around the room carelessly – too carelessly. He was frowning, not paying much attention to me. That made me thoughtful. I took a quick glance out of the window, but I couldn’t see anything but the top of his car above the hedge.

  Slade found the potbellied flagon and the two thin purple glasses on the desk. He sniffed at one of them. A disgusted smile wrinkled his thin lips.

  ‘The lousy pimp,’ he said tonelessly.

  He looked at the books on the desk, touched one or two of them, went on around the back of the desk and was in front of the totem pole thing. He stared at that. Then his eyes went down to the floor, to the thin rug that was over the place where Steiner’s body had been. Slade moved the rug with his foot and suddenly tensed, staring down.

  It was a good act – or else Slade had a nose I could have used in my business. I wasn’t sure which – yet, but I was giving it a lot of thought.

  He went slowly down to the floor on one knee. The desk partly hid him from me.

  I slipped a gun out from under my arm and put both hands behind my body and leaned against the wall.

  There was a sharp, swift exclamation, then Slade shot to his feet. His arm flashed up. A long, black Luger slid into it expertly. I didn’t move. Slade held the Luger in long, pale fingers, not pointing it at me, not pointing it at anything in particular.

  ‘Blood,’ he said quietly, grimly, his deep-set eyes black and hard now. ‘Blood on the floor there, under a rug. A lot of blood.’

  I grinned at him. ‘I noticed it,’ I said. ‘It’s old blood. Dried blood.’

  He slid sideways into the black chair behind Steiner’s desk and raked the telephone towards him by putting the Luger around it. He frowned at the telephone, then frowned at me.

  ‘I think we’ll have some law,’ he said.

  ‘Suits me.’

  Slade’s eyes were narrow and as hard as jet. He didn’t like my agreeing with him. The veneer had flaked off him, leaving a well-dressed hard boy with a Luger. Looking as if he could use it.

  ‘Just who the hell are you?’ he growled.

  ‘A shamus. The name doesn’t matter. The girl is my client. Steiner’s been riding her with some blackmail dirt. We came to talk to him. He wasn’t here.’

  ‘Just walk in, huh?’

  ‘Correct. So what? Think we gunned Steiner, Mister Slade?’

  He smiled slightly, thinly, but said nothing.

  ‘Or do you think Steiner gunned somebody and ran away?’ I suggested.

  ‘Steiner didn’t gun anybody,’ Slade said. ‘Steiner didn’t have the guts of a sick cat.’

  I said: ‘You don’t see anybody here, do you? Maybe Steiner had chicken for dinner, and liked to kill his chickens in the parlour.’

  ‘I don’t get it. I don’t get your game.’

  I grinned again. ‘Go ahead and call your friends downtown. Only you won’t like the reaction you’ll get.’

  He thought that over without moving a muscle. His lips went back against his teeth.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked finally, in a careful voice.

  I said: ‘I know you, Mister Slade. You run the Aladdin Club down on the Palisades. Flash gambling. Soft lights and evening clothes and a buffet supper on the side. You know Steiner well enough to walk into his house without knocking. Steiner’s racket needed a little protection now and then. You could be that.’

  Slade’s finger tightened on the Luger, then relaxed. He put the Luger down on the desk, kept his fingers on it. His mouth became a hard white grimace.

  ‘Somebody got to Steiner,’ he said softly, his voice and the expression on his face seeming to belong to two different people. ‘He didn’t show at the store today. He didn’t answer his phone. I came up to see about it.’

  ‘Glad to hear you didn’t gun Steiner yourself,’ I said.

  The Luger swept up again and made a target of my chest. I said:

  ‘Put it down, Slade. You don’t know enough to pop off yet. Not being bullet-proof is an idea I’ve had to get used to. Put it down. I’ll tell you something – if you don’t know it. Somebody moved Steiner’s books out of his store today – the books he did his real business with.’

  Slade put his gun down on the desk for the second time. He leaned back and wrestled an amiable expression on to his face.

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said.

  ‘I think somebody got to Steiner too,’ I told him. ‘I think that blood is his blood. The books being moved out from Steiner’s store gives us a reason for moving his body away from here. Somebody is taking over the racket and doesn’t want Steiner found till he’s all set. Whoever it was ought to have cleaned up the blood. He didn’t.’

  Slade listened silently. The peaks of his eyebrows made sharp angles against the white skin of his indoor forehead. I went on:

  ‘Killing Steiner to grab his racket was a dumb trick, and I’m not sure it happened that way. But I am sure that whoever took the books knows about it, and that the blonde down in the store is scared stiff about something.’

  ‘Any more?’ Slade asked evenly.

  ‘Not right now. There’s a piece of scandal dope I want to trace. If I get it, I might tell you where. That will be your muscler in.’

  ‘Now would be better,’ Slade said. Then he drew his lips back against his teeth and whistled sharply, twice.

  I jumped. A car door opened outside. There were steps.

  I brought the gun around from behind my body. Slade’s face convulsed and his hand snatched for the Luger that lay in front of him, fumbled at the butt.

  I said: ‘Don’t touch it!’

  He came to his feet rigid, leaning over, his hand on the gun, but the gun not in his hand. I dodged past him into the hallway and turned as two men came into the room.

  One had short red hair, a white, lined face, unsteady eyes. The other was an obvious pug; a good-looking boy except for a flattened nose and one ear as thick as a club steak.

  Neither of the newcomers had a gun in sight. They stopped, stared.

  I stood behind Slade in the doorway. Slade leaned over the desk in front of me, didn’t stir.

  The pug’s mouth opened in a wide snarl, showing sharp, white te
eth. The redhead looked shaky and scared.

  Slade had plenty of guts. In a smooth, low, but very clear voice he said:

  ‘This heel gunned Steiner, boys. Take him!’

  The redhead took hold of his lower lip with his teeth and snatched for something under his left arm. He didn’t get it. I was all set and braced, I shot him through the right shoulder, hating to do it. The gun made a lot of noise in the closed room. It seemed to me that it would be heard all over the city. The redhead went down on the floor and writhed and threshed about as if I had shot him in the belly.

  The pug didn’t move. He probably knew there wasn’t enough speed in his arm. Slade grabbed his Luger up and started to whirl. I took a step and slammed him behind the ear. He sprawled forward over the desk and the Luger shot against a row of books.

  Slade didn’t hear me say: ‘I hate to hit a one-armed man from behind, Slade. And I’m not crazy about the show-off. You made me do it.’

  The pug grinned at me and said: ‘Okay, pal. What next?’

  ‘I’d like to get out of here, if I can do it without any more shooting. Or I can stick around for some law. It’s all one to me.’

  He thought it over calmly. The redhead was making moaning noises on the floor. Slade was very still.

  The pug put his hands up slowly and clasped them behind his neck. He said coolly:

  ‘I don’t know what it’s all about, but I don’t give a good — damn where you go or what you do when you get there. And this ain’t my idea of a spot for a lead party. Drift!’

  ‘Wise boy. You’ve more sense than your boss.’

  I edged around the desk, edged over towards the open door. The pug turned slowly, facing me, keeping his hands behind his neck. There was a wry but almost good-natured grin on his face.

  I skinned through the door and made a fast break through the gap in the hedge and up the hill, half expecting lead to fly after me. None came.

  I jumped into the Chrysler and chased it up over the brow of the hill and away from that neighbourhood.

  10

  It was after five when I stopped opposite the apartment house on Randall Place. A few windows were lit up already and radios bleated discordantly on different programmes. I rode the automatic elevator to the fourth floor. Apartment 405 was at the end of a long hall that was carpeted in green and panelled in ivory. A cool breeze blew through the hall from open doors to the fire escape.

  There was a small ivory push-button beside the door marked ‘405’. I pushed it.

  After a long time a man opened the door a foot or so. He was a long-legged, thin man with dark-brown eyes in a very brown face. Wiry hair grew far back on his head, giving him a great deal of domed brown forehead. His brown eyes probed at me impersonally.

  I said: ‘Steiner?’

  Nothing in the man’s face changed. He brought a cigarette from behind the door and put it slowly between tight brown lips. A puff of smoke came towards me, and behind it words in a cool, unhurried voice, without inflexion. ‘You said what?’

  ‘Steiner. Harold Hardwicke Steiner. The guy that has the books.’

  The man nodded. He considered my remark without haste. He glanced at the tip of his cigarette, said:

  ‘I think I know him. But he doesn’t visit here. Who sent you?’

  I smiled. He didn’t like that. I said:

  ‘You’re Marty?’

  The brown face got harder. ‘So what? Got a grift – or just amusin’ yourself?’

  I moved my left foot casually, enough so that he couldn’t slam the door.

  ‘You got the books,’ I said. ‘I got the sucker list. How’s to talk it over?’

  Marty didn’t shift his eyes from my face. His right hand went behind the panel of the door again, and his shoulder had a look as if he was making motions with a hand. There was a faint sound in the room behind him – very faint. A curtain ring clicked lightly on a rod.

  Then he opened the door wide. ‘Why not? If you think you’ve got something,’ he said coolly.

  I went past him into the room. It was a cheerful room, with good furniture and not too much of it. French windows in the end wall looked across a stone porch at the foothills, already getting purple in the dusk. Near the windows a door was shut. Another door in the same wall at the near end of the room had curtains drawn across it, on a brass rod below the lintel.

  I sat down on a davenport against the wall in which there were no doors. Marty shut the door and walked sideways to a tall oak writing-desk studded with square nails. A cedarwood cigar box with gilt hinges rested on the lowered leaf of the desk. Marty picked it up without taking his eyes off me, carried it to a low table beside an easy chair. He sat down in the easy chair.

  I put my hat beside me and opened the top button of my coat and smiled at Marty.

  ‘Well – I’m listening,’ he said.

  He stubbed his cigarette out, lifted the lid of the cigar box and took out a couple of fat cigars.

  ‘Cigar?’ he suggested casually, and tossed one at me.

  I reached for it and that made me a sap. Marty dropped the other cigar back into the box and came up very swiftly with a gun.

  I looked at the gun politely. It was a black police Colt, a .38. I had no argument against it at the moment.

  ‘Stand up a minute,’ Marty said. ‘Come forward just about two yards. You might grab a little air while you’re doing that.’ His voice was elaborately casual.

  I was mad inside, but I grinned at him. I said:

  ‘You’re the second guy I’ve met today that thinks a gun in the hand means the world by the tail. Put it away, and let’s talk.’

  Marty’s eyebrows came together and he pushed his chin forward a little. His brown eyes were vaguely troubled.

  We stared at each other. I didn’t look at the pointed black slipper that showed under the curtains across the doorway to my left.

  Marty was wearing a dark-blue suit, a blue shirt and a black tie. His brown face looked sombre above the dark colours. He said softly, in a lingering voice:

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a tough guy – just careful. I don’t know hell’s first thing about you. You might be a life-taker for all I know.’

  ‘You’re not careful enough,’ I said. ‘The play with the books was lousy.’

  He drew a long breath and let it out silently. Then he leaned back and crossed his long legs and rested the Colt on his knee.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself I won’t use this, if I have to. What’s your story?’

  ‘Tell your friend with the pointed shoes to come in,’ I said. ‘She gets tired holding her breath.’

  Without turning his head Marty called out:

  ‘Come on in, Agnes.’

  The curtains over the door swung aside and the green-eyed blonde from Steiner’s store joined us in the room. I wasn’t very much surprised to see her there. She looked at me bitterly.

  ‘I knew damn’ well you were trouble,’ she told me angrily. ‘I told Joe to watch his step.’

  ‘Save it,’ Marty snapped. ‘Joe’s watchin’ his step plenty. Put some light on so I can see to pop this guy, if it works out that way.’

  The blonde lit a large floor lamp with a square red shade. She sat down under it, in a big velour chair and held a fixed painful smile on her face. She was scared to the point of exhaustion.

  I remembered the cigar I was holding and put it in my mouth. Marty’s Colt was very steady on me while I got matches out and lit it.

  I puffed smoke and said through the smoke: ‘The sucker list I spoke of is in code. So I can’t read the names yet, but there’s about five hundred of them. You got twelve boxes of books, say three hundred. There’ll be that many more out on loan. Say five hundred altogether, just to be conservative. If it’s a good active list and you could run it around all the books, that would be a quarter of a million rentals. Put the average rental low – say a dollar. That’s too low, but say a dollar. That’s a lot of money these days. Enough to spot a guy for.’

&
nbsp; The blonde yelped sharply: ‘You’re crazy, if you –’

  ‘Shut up!’ Marty swore at her.

  The blonde subsided and put her head back against the back of her chair. Her face was tortured with strain.

  ‘It’s no racket for bums,’ I went on telling them. ‘You’ve got to get confidence and keep it. Personally I think the blackmail angles are a mistake. I’m for shedding all that.’

  Marty’s dark-brown stare held coldly on my face. ‘You’re a funny guy,’ he drawled smoothly. ‘Who’s got this lovely racket?’

  ‘You have,’ I said. ‘Almost.’

  Marty didn’t say anything.

  ‘You shot Steiner to get it,’ I said. ‘Last night in the rain. It was good shooting weather. The trouble is, he wasn’t alone when it happened. Either you didn’t see that, or you got scared. You ran out. But you had nerve enough to come back and hide the body somewhere – so you could tidy up on the books before the case broke.’

  The blonde made one strangled sound and then turned her face and stared at the wall. Her silvered fingernails dug into her palms. Her teeth bit her lip tightly.

  Marty didn’t bat an eye. He didn’t move and the Colt didn’t move in his hand. His brown face was as hard as a piece of carved wood.

  ‘Boy, you take chances,’ he said softly, at last. ‘It’s lucky as all hell for you I didn’t kill Steiner.’

  I grinned at him, without much cheer. ‘You might step off for it just the same,’ I said.

  Marty’s voice was a dry rustle of sound. ‘Think you’ve got me framed for it?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘There’s somebody who’ll tell it that way.’

  Marty swore then. ‘That – damned little –! She would – just that – damn her!’

  I didn’t say anything. I let him chew on it. His face cleared slowly, and he put the Colt down on the table, kept his hand near it.

  ‘You don’t sound like chisel as I know chisel,’ he said slowly, his eyes a tight shine between dark narrowed lids. ‘And I don’t see any coppers here. What’s your angle?’

  I drew on my cigar and watched his gun hand. ‘The plate that was in Steiner’s camera. All the prints that have been made. Right here and right now. You’ve got it – because that’s the only way you could have known who was there last night.’