Part 17 (2/2)

Twenty.

That, of course, was just about all of it. Except the mopping up. I got an ambulance ride to the Loma Drive Receiving Hospital. It was possible that, in all the excitement, I didn't explain to the police as well as I might have just what was going on at Frank Quinn's party. But as it turned out, only one officer was shot, and even he wasn't badly hurt. Two more of the hoodlum guests were wounded seriously enough to require hospitalization, but the rest were herded together and taken down to the police building without undue trouble.

A very large percentage of the guests were booked, on suspicion of half the crimes in the book, and there was little that even their smart lawyers could do about it, since there were already two corpses on the premises when the police arrived: Jim Lester, and the clown - who turned out to be just a poor safe-man who'd happened to wear a clown outfit. I later learned from Barracuda that the clown had been in the room adjoining Quinn's office with a little brunette when Barracuda walked in on them; from the outfit, and the brunette, and the way they were carrying on, Barracuda had just automatically a.s.sumed that the guy was Sh.e.l.l Scott.

From Barracuda I also got the explanation for something else that had puzzled me. I knew he had seen me buying my clown outfit at the Twenty-Centuries Costume Center; I knew he had shot the clown, thinking it was me. What I hadn't been able to figure out was why, if he'd told Frank Quinn that Sh.e.l.l Scott might show up at the party dressed as a clown, Quinn and ten other thugs hadn't grabbed me as soon as I walked inside.

The explanation was simple. Barracuda hadn't told Quinn or anybody else. And, really, it was Quinn's own d.a.m.ned fault. He had spread the word that he would pay ten thousand clams to the guy who killed me, and the word - fortunately for me - reached Barracuda before he pa.s.sed on to Quinn his exciting news. So Barracuda, sensibly enough kept the exciting news all to himself, because he wanted to keep those ten exciting G's all to himself. Naturally, then, a good part of his shock upon seeing me after he'd shot the clown was not only the impossibility of my being alive, but also the vision of ten thousand winged clams flying away, which would shock anybody.

How come the word reached Barracuda so late? Because by the time he got back from the California border - where he had finally caught up with that Greyhound bus - the word was all over town.

Also bleeding on the premises that night when the police arrived, were Hal the Cad, whom I'd plugged in the leg, the man I'd drilled with Barracuda's .32, and the guy I'd peppered with double-ought buckshot. In the room with the still unconscious Frank Quinn and Barracuda was, of course, Quinn's open safe, the contents of which the police could thus quite legitimately examine. That led to a large number of indictments, among which the indictment of Quinn himself was almost incidental.

As for Jay - to whom I personally gave those last two pictures - I'm not sure whether he got off easy or not. He didn't go to jail; but he fell heir to what remained of the mob - and what remained of Maude Quinn. I suppose, in a way, it was Justice.

My first night in the hospital, before conking out for a good sleep, I made sure that the police got the straight story on Ross Miller. The info I'd stuffed into my pockets, and the other material found in Quinn's safe, was enough to indicate that Miller had been framed by Quinn. It was certain that in the next few days the proof one way or another would be forthcoming. You can always postpone an execution, but you can't undo one. Under the circ.u.mstances the governor had no choice. He granted the stay.

While I was still in the hospital, some of Quinn's a.s.sociates broke down and spilled all they knew about him, including details of Quinn's payoffs through K. C. Flagg - and his ordering the murders of little Weiss, Heigman, and the lovely Lolita. The Raleigh Prentice suicide note helped to ruin not only Quinn but more than a dozen other men, including all those who'd met with Quinn that Tuesday at noon. More careful study of the note than I'd had time to give revealed that Prentice had made the appointment with Frank Quinn on that night four years ago because he wanted a hard-boiled gunman to do a job for him - the job being the murder of his a.s.sociate and friend, George Schuyler. Schuyler, after much deliberation, including talks with Prentice, had decided to break with his partners in thievery and take the consequences, confessing everything - which, naturally, would implicate his fellow thieves. Including Raleigh Prentice. Prentice was a thief, yes, but he'd never been partner to murder. While waiting for Quinn to show up that night the enormity of what he was about to do had sickened him, and he'd known he couldn't go through with it. But if he didn't, he knew he would be exposed, shamed, sent to prison. So he had written his note, put a gun to his head, and pulled the trigger.

Quinn never admitted it, but it was evident that after finding the note while in Prentice's home that night, and reading in it that George Schuyler was going to blow the whistle, he had - to keep that whistle from being blown - on the next night shot Schuyler five times, including once in the back.

At any rate, not only was the L.A. jail pretty well filled and hoodlums fleeing in all directions over the landscape, but it was also obvious that Frank Quinn was totally washed up. Not only did it look as if he would be tagged with complicity in the murders of Weiss, Heigman, and Lolita, but he was made for the killing of K. C. Flagg. And that finished the clearing of Ross Miller. The machinery for his release started grinding, and the day I got out of the hospital, he was scheduled to be freed. It seemed like nice timing.

I left the hospital, hale and hearty, on a Friday afternoon. It was a bright day, with a sharp nip in the air. Invigorating. Bracing. I felt good. And I felt like seeing Doris Miller. I drove to her apartment.

n.o.body was there. And then I realized it was almost the hour when Ross Miller was to be released. Naturally his sister would be on hand to welcome him. Fortunately, so could I be, if I hurried. The prisoner had already been transferred from San Quentin to the jail in L.A.'s Police Building, from which he was about to be released. I jumped into the Cad and made time back downtown. I hurried at just the right rate of speed so that I got there as Ross Miller was enfolding his sister in his arms, while flashbulbs popped and reporters hovered. I hovered with them. Let Ross and Doris, I thought, have their moment.

But it was more than a moment, and gradually it occurred to me that this egg did not seem to be kissing Doris the way a brother kisses a sister. They came up for air, as the saying goes, and then went back down in the carbon dioxide. More flashbulbs popped.

It took a couple minutes, I guess, to work my way over close to them and attract Doris' attention. When she saw me, her lips parted and her blue eyes got very wide. Those eyes which I'd thought a little strange when we met.

She gasped.

Ross Miller, his arms around her waist, looked at her. ”What's the matter, Jane, honey?” he asked Doris.

She didn't answer him. Looking at my chin she said, ”Sh.e.l.l . . . ah, I . . . there's something I didn't tell you.”

I got it then, finally, but all of a sudden, as if I were belatedly telepathic And, oddly enough, right at the same moment I figured out what was wrong with those bright blue eyes of Doris Miller's - or whatever her name was; Jane French, it would be of course, the fiancee, not the sister.

She never looked at me. Never looked at my eyes, that is. She always looked at my chin, as she was doing now, or my ear, or shoulder, or off into s.p.a.ce. Never straight and clean and true, into my eyes. Because she'd been lying to me from the beginning. There had been a weird sameness, a pattern, to our meetings - not as if I'd planned them, but because she had planned it that way. Those eyes should have told me, those eyes that broke the promise of her lips.

”I'm sorry, Sh.e.l.l,” she said, looking at my collarbone. ”It . . . well, I had to have help. And Weiss had talked to me just the day before. I didn't think if I told you who I really was that you would . . .”

She was having a hard time getting the words out. ”Skip it,” I said. And then I added to myself, ”Brother, I am sure the world's greatest detective. I'm Sherlock Holmes and Javert all wrapped up in Li'l Abner. What a thinker! I should never have thrown away all those rocks . . .”

I went down to the street, and got into my Cad, started it and headed out the Hollywood Freeway toward home. Life, I thought, is cruel. Life is shallow. Life is lifeless. I thought all sorts of things like that until I reached the Spartan Apartment Hotel. As I pa.s.sed the desk, the clerk called my name and handed me a stack of mail.

I glanced at it on the way up to the second floor. Bills mostly. Bills - there was a letter from the Twenty-Centuries Costume Center.

It was a nice, pleasant, not-very-businesslike letter saying that the firm had enjoyed doing business with me and hoped that everything was satisfactory. The last sentence was, ”Please remember that we have the largest private stock of costumes in Hollywood - including many special costumes for special occasions.” And it was signed, Marie.

At the bottom of the letter was a short P.S., ”As in Antoinette.”

In less than fifteen minutes I was walking into the Twenty-Centuries Costume Center. The little honey-blonde was behind the counter reading a magazine. I didn't look at the t.i.tle; enough of my illusions had already been shattered this day, and it would have been too much to bear if she had been reading about Donald Duck.

She looked up. ”Well, h.e.l.lo,” she said musically. She was in the harem costume again. Or still. Maybe she always wore it in the shop. She did if the boss was smart.

”Hi,” I said. ”I ruined the clown outfit I rented. I had a hunch that might happen, remember?”

She nodded, looking at me from those soft brown eyes. Looking at my eyes. Obviously she had nothing to hide. And she wasn't making much effort to hide it.

I went on, ”Are you Marie?”

She laughed. ”Oh, you got my note. Well . . . I just signed it Marie for fun. You know, for a joke?”

”I see. That's dandy. Yes, that's good.”

”My name isn't really Marie. It's actually - ”

”Woops. What do you say, for a while anyway, we just leave it Marie?”

”As in Antoinette,” she said, and smiled.

Yes, I was thinking, I'd had it all wrong a little while ago. Life is not cruel and shallow and lifeless. It is indeed the very opposite, chock full of goodness. It's all in your point of view. Life is exciting, exhilarating, wonderful - especially at costume parties. From now on, that is.

And, this time, I was right.

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