The Duchess of Skid Row, page 12
I turned slowly. I looked into Captain Ritter’s red face. And I looked into the muzzle of his police revolver.
Maslin was coming right behind him. I said, “Put that gun away, Captain. You’ve lost the hand. You haven’t got a prayer of tying me to the Combine.”
Ritter stepped into the room. He said, “I’ve got the evidence all right. And this about nails it down.”
I said, “If you have any evidence, Captain, you faked it. Because the Combine isn’t operating within a thousand miles of here.”
• • •
I looked wearily at Maslin, at the DA, at Ritter, Arch and Teddy Jenner. We were all in the DA’s office. It was four o’clock in the morning. My wound was patched and most of the grime was washed off me. I had two shots of the DA’s best bourbon inside me and a cup of coffee in my hand. But I still didn’t feel very sharp.
I said for the fifth time, “That’s the way it is. The Combine isn’t operating here at all. Spreading that rumor and the one about me was Stephanie’s idea. She knew Minto in L.A. He got in some kind of trouble and came up here to cool off. He looked her up. Then she got her idea. She hired Hoxey to help. He bugged the dictating equipment so she could keep herself posted on what happened in this office. She figured she had to get rid of me to make her plan work, so she started the rumors. I was wrong to blame Calumet. He didn’t know what was going on. But he knew something was, and he wanted no part of it. That’s why he took off and hid out tonight.”
Ritter sneered. He said, “If she did any of this, it was because you sweet-talked her into it, McKeon.”
He died hard, I thought. I said, “Produce your evidence, Captain, or shut up.”
“I’ll produce it at your hearing.”
The DA said in a flat voice, “There won’t be any hearing as long as I hold this office, Ritter.”
Maslin said quietly, surprisingly, “I’ll support that.”
Ritter glared around at us. Then he got angrily to his feet. He pulled a tape from his pocket. He said, “All right, damn it. Listen to this. It’s Itsuko’s last report.”
The room was silent as the DA took the tape and put it on his machine. I glanced around. Arch was sitting beside Teddy who was stretched out on the DA’s couch. Her eyes were bright, restless, but her face was still pale. She still looked as if she was partially in shock.
The machine warmed up. Suddenly Johnny Itsuko’s crisp voice leaped out at us. “Report from Number 7 concerning Combine operation. Problem; to check out rumor that Jeff McKeon involved. Procedure; to determine the truth of this in investigating several possible principals as local contacts for the Combine.”
Here followed a series of statements on Calumet, Arch, Hoxey, and Teddy Jenner. Johnny had originally linked them with me when he discovered Griselda owned the properties they leased. In a few words, he agreed Nick Calumet had told the truth when he claimed to have won his money on the horses. He cleared Arch as quickly. He had not yet been able to check out Teddy’s claim to inheriting the money she had used to remodel the Blue Beagle.
“I can prove it!” she said. Her voice was feeble.
The DA waved her to silence. Johnny’s voice said: “As for the charges against McKeon, there is no doubt that—” A loud high frequency squawk stabbed its way through my eardrums and into my brain. The squawk lasted perhaps thirty seconds. It stopped. There was no more of Johnny’s voice. The report was over.
Ritter said smugly, “He was interrupted right there. But you can fill in for yourself.”
Nobody said anything. I got up and went into the other office. I took the tape off Stephanie’s machine and brought it back. I handed it to the DA.
I said, “Sir, put this on and run it through. I was listening to it when Stephanie started sapping me. She erased it.”
He put it on the machine. He ran it through to the point where it gave out with the same high frequency squawk Ritter’s tape had emitted.
He said, “Well?”
I said, “Sir, if you back these tapes up to a certain point and then hit the erase button, they make that squawk at that particular point. You know that.”
I looked at Ritter. I said, “Kay Itsuko told me that Johnny sat out in his car the other night and finished his report. So he wasn’t interrupted, Captain. And since that time nobody but you and Kay have had their hands on the tape. She didn’t have access to a machine, so she couldn’t have erased it back to the point where that squawk came. No one could have but you.”
Ritter just looked at me. I said, “I can fill in the rest of Johnny’s last sentence—the part you didn’t want to hear because it didn’t agree with what you wanted to believe. It probably went like this, Captain: ‘As for the charges against McKeon, there is no doubt that they were made in an effort to frame him and thus discredit the District Attorney’s office.’ ”
Ritter didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. His face did all the talking that was necessary. He turned and lumbered from the room.
Maslin said sadly, “In most ways, he’s a damn good police officer.”
“I think,” the DA said, “he needs a change of scene. To a desk job in Records, let’s say.” He picked up his coffee. “And that about winds it up.”
I was watching Arch and Teddy. He was staring at her like an adolescent kid. She looked better. There was color in her cheeks and her eyes weren’t so bright with shock. She put out a hand and touched him.
I said, dully, “No, sir, it isn’t all wound up. I didn’t finish what I was saying about Stephanie.”
“Is it important, McKeon?”
I said, “I don’t like loose ends. The way I saw it, Stephanie was the brains behind this whole set-up. And she had Johnny and Hoxey killed by Pooly to protect herself from exposure.”
“It’s logical,” Maslin said.
I said, “To a point. Only I remember how Minto acted the night Stephanie pulled him off me. He was scared she would shoot him. He wasn’t acting, either. And then there’s the way Stephanie beat on me. Soap in a towel can kill a man. And if she had been behind the deal, she would have killed me. But she didn’t. Because she wasn’t a killer. All she wanted was to get away from me and go tell her boss the whole deal had blown up.”
The DA said, “You aren’t making much sense, Jeff. You’re killing your own theory.”
I said, “I will make sense, sir. You see, when I found Stephanie dead in that room, she had three bullet holes in her. But I only took two shots into the room because I only had two shells in my gun.”
Silence. I took a deep breath. “Six shots came from the room, but only three of the bullets were aimed at me. The others were the ones that went into Stephanie.”
I stood up and set down my coffee cup. “After shooting Stephanie, Teddy went into the bathroom and cracked her own head open on the edge of the washbowl. Then she waited for Arch and me to come and find her.”
Teddy rolled away from Arch and got to her feet. Arch put out a hand to calm her. He glared at me.
She said, “That’s insane! Why do you hate me so much? Can’t you ever forget that one mistake I made?”
“You made a lot of them, Teddy. The first was tying in with Minto in California. The second was getting the idea I credited to Stephanie. It wasn’t Stephanie Minto contacted when he came up here. It was you. And so you got the bright idea. You pulled Stephanie in on it, promising her Hollywood at her stupid feet if she played along.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said.
“Hardly. Figure it out. Where would Stephanie get the money to build that room, equip it, dig a new tunnel, hire someone like Hoxey? Sorry, Teddy. There’s no case against her. There’s a perfect case against you.”
Arch stepped in front of her and started for me. I said, “I thought Stephanie drove the car that tried to run me down. But it was Teddy. Because Stephanie was already in the room, waiting for Teddy to dispose of her. When Stephanie beat me up and ran, she went to Teddy—not to warn her but to demand an explanation. I think for the first time Stephanie realized that Minto was part of your organization, Teddy, and that you were the actual murderer.”
I took another breath. “Stack Stephanie alongside yourself. Which of you is big enough to beat a man to death? Which of you knew Hoxey well enough to figure out he was holding back stuff that could put a noose around your neck? Or knew him well enough to know that he was weak, that if I put on enough pressure he would crack? You, baby.”
Arch yelled, “It’s a damn lie, McKeon. Lieutenant, listen to me. McKeon hates Teddy. She told me so. You can see that. Damn it….”
He charged me like an express train. Maslin surged to his feet and got between us. Arch rammed into Maslin, The three of us went down together.
I heard a shout from Maslin. I rolled out from under the pile and got to my knees. Teddy Jenner was backing toward the door. She had Maslin’s gun in her hand. I stopped moving.
She said, “Someday I’ll come back to look at your grave, McKeon.”
She swung the gun toward me. I was a kneeling target. I had never felt more helpless in my life.
The door behind her swung open. Ritter stalked into the room. He had his gun out, and he didn’t wait to ask questions. He shot her twice before she could pull the trigger.
I watched her fall to the floor.
• • •
Ritter said almost apologetically, “I got to thinking it over and I came back to explain. I didn’t erase that tape on purpose. But after I did, I realized that I had. It fit in too well with what I’d heard … As I came back to tell you that, I heard that woman talking.”
I said fervently, “Captain, I’m willing to call it a truce. I’ll even buy you a drink.”
Before Ritter could answer, the phone rang. The DA picked it up. He listened a moment and then frowned at his clock. It read 5:10 A.M. He said, “For you, Jeff.”
I took the phone. Griselda said in my ear, “Where have you been, lover? I couldn’t find you at home or at Stephanie’s or at my place. And Griselda is hungry and lonesome.”
I said, “Where are you?”
“I’m home,” she said, “I got in by jet a little while ago.”
I said, “Just stay there.”
I hung up. I said, “I’ll make an official report tomorrow. Right now, I’m tired.”
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Copyright © 1960 by Louis Trimble.
Copyright © renewed 1988 by Louis Trimble.
Published by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4230-9
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4230-5
Cover art © 123RF/Carlo Dapino
Louis Trimble, The Duchess of Skid Row
