Chapter 10

Thursday, June 26th, 1947, 9:00 p.m.

I knew I had my wallet when I went into the Niagara. I hadn’t thought to check for it when I came to. I was sure it had disappeared while I was “asleep” in the Harlow Suite. I figured there was no point in looking for it there—I’d call Fritz in the morning just in case—so I went home.

The rain had stopped, it looked like for good. On the way, a little sun made its way through the gray sky, but by the time I got there, it had set and a fog was settling in. I pulled the two days’ mail from my mailbox, clambered into the elevator, and rode express—well, nonstop, anyway—to five, glancing through the envelopes on the way. A couple of bills that Lizabeth Duryea’s five hundred dollars and Dan Scott’s sixteen were gonna make easier to pay, my Ellery Queen magazine, an invitation to a July Fourth barbeque from Wally and Phyllis that I’d decline: It was the day after The Day that was a year, next Thursday. I didn’t expect I’d be very good company.

The rest were typed and looked official. I ignored them.

Before I had the door unlocked, I heard Greenstreet’s yowl and The Song playing. I dropped the mail on the bar, fed the cat, turned the fan to high and the radio off, changed into dry clothes, and called Lizabeth’s number. There was no answer, which was no surprise. Then I called the number she’d given me for Dan Scott. No answer there, either. Just in case, I looked through the telephone directory; there were a dozen Scotts listed whose first names were Dan, Daniel, or D. None of them was in Westwood, and none of their numbers matched the one Jacques had written down. I called that, too.

There was no answer.

I decided I’d look for it tomorrow. McPherson knew people at the phone company.

Despite the coffee and the sandwich, my head and my stomach were still at war, so I took a couple more aspirin. They could battle it out over who’d be relieved; I’d feel better no matter which one won. Then I took the garbage to the incinerator. I wasn’t around often enough to have much besides Greenstreet’s empty cans, my empty bottles, and a few eggshells and bread wrappers, but the smell of cat food residue and kitty litter reminded me it was time. When I came back, I poured a drink. That would mollify the loser of the aspirin war—maybe the winner, too. That’s when I heard the elevator thump to a halt and its doors grind open. Over his protests, I shut Greenstreet, food dish and all, in the bedroom, switched off the lights, took my spare gun from the silverware drawer, and waited for the knock.

* * *

When it came, it was a light tap. I was hidden in the archway that connected the dark kitchen to the short hallway that led to the living room, where there was only a faint glow from the fogbound streetlights. My gun was at the ready. The knock was repeated, followed by a long moment of silence. Then a soft voice called, “Robert?”

Another tap on the door. “Robert? Are you there?”

I waited. The door wasn’t locked. The knob jiggled; the door opened quietly. Someone stepped through and stood a moment—acclimating to the darkness, I supposed. I heard more taps, on the wall: the search for a light switch. Then the overhead flicked on. The voice repeated, “Robert?” The door clicked closed.

From where I stood, I could only see the shadow cross the floor. But I knew the voice.

In the bedroom, Greenstreet yowled. The shadow turned toward it hastily, and its voice said a startled “Hello?” Greenstreet didn’t answer. Neither did I.

I watched the shadow move into the room, gradually becoming a pair of shoes that were all but covered by an ankle-length black wool coat. Lizabeth Duryea appeared, purse in hand, stepping stealthily into the center. She looked around again. Then, seeing and hearing no one, she went to a window and waved. She waited a moment, then turned back into the room.

I was standing there, my gun pointing at her chest. “Robert,” she said again. She tried to smile.

I flicked the gun toward a chair. “Have a seat, Miss Duryea. It’ll take him a while to get up here. The elevator’s slow. You probably noticed.”

“Robert, it’s not what you think. You must believe me.”

“Must I?”

“Yes,” she insisted. “You must. It wasn’t only you. I, I was a victim, too: They, they knock’ me out.”

“Yeah?” She nodded. “Let me feel the lump.”

“No. They, they use’—floracorn?” She covered her mouth with a glove and wheezed. “Then they dragg’ me out of the hotel room.”

I smiled. That floracorn sounded awful. “How’d you get away?”

Lizabeth’s eyes opened as wide as I’d ever seen eyes open. They sparkled like roman candles. “I . . . don’t know. When I woke up, I was in a strange alley. With only my purse, but all the money was gone, an’ this.” She reached toward a coat pocket.

“Unh-uh,” I said.

“But . . .”

I pointed. “That pocket?”

“Yes.”

“Put down your bag.” She hesitated. “Go on!” She let the purse fall beside her. “Now: Put one hand into the air and reach in your pocket with the other, very slowly, just your fingers.” She did as told. Slowly. The fingers came out with my wallet.

“Your license is in it. It shows where you live. Here.”

I took it and flipped it open. My PI and driver’s licenses were there. So was the eighteen dollars I recalled having, my Social Security card, and an extra office key, along with a couple pictures taken of us last year on the carousel at Santa Monica Pier. We were both smiling. I hadn’t looked at them in months, but I remembered they were there every time I reached for a dollar bill.

I closed it and crammed the wallet into my hip pocket. “Thanks. And I suppose Dan just happened to come along and you both thought it would be nice to pay me a visit.”

“Dan is not here,” she protested. “Dan hasn’t seen me. I am still fearful of him.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you are.”

“It was just a nice man who brought me here in a taxi. He was making sure I was all right. He is not there now. Look, you can see: The street is empty.”

I tilted the gun toward the sofa. “Move over there. And have that seat. Now!”

She went silently.

I waited until she was settled, then went to the window. The night was painted charcoal: Clouds covered the moon and stars, and the fog covered everything else. If Scott was down there, I couldn’t see him, and I had no idea how he’d managed to see Lizabeth waving five floors up. I looked anyway, just to be sure: Like I said, in the dark you looked out for things that might go bump.

And you listened for them. Things like the elevator screeching its lethargic way up the shaft. I looked at Lizabeth. I still wasn’t smiling. “Who’s that?”

She was trembling. I had to admit: The girl was good. “I . . . I don’t know,” she said with totally believable uncertainty.

I cracked the front door and stood to its side; I’d be invisible until someone walked in. “Yeah, well,” I said, “no one else lives on this floor. If it stops here, you better figure it out real quick, or you’re both gonna be sorry he made the trip.”

The elevator continued its rise, creaking up to five and, without stopping, past it. I breathed a sigh of relief. My head still hurt, my stomach ached, and I wasn’t up to wrestling with a guy as big as Dan Scott. I’d carried a gun since the day I got my PI license, but I’d never fired it at anyone. Of course I’d never had to face Goliath before and I hadn’t brought a slingshot.

“I—tol’ you he wasn’t there,” Lizabeth announced.

“Yeah, you told me.” I closed the door and sat across from her in a stuffed chair, the Smith and Wesson, still trained, in one hand and my drink in the other. “Now you can tell me some other things. For starters, who killed Bugsy Siegel, you or Dan?”

She looked flustered. “I . . . don’t know. I di’n’t know him. I only saw him the one—”

“You’re lying, Lizabeth.” I sipped my drink. It tasted really good and made me look forward to the next one. “Maybe you only ‘saw’ him the one time. That’s when he beat you up, so Dan made another date with him for you, but instead of doing what he wanted to do, you did what you wanted to: You shot him. I guess your aim wasn’t all that good—you only hit him two times out of nine tries, but that was plenty to make him very dead. That’s how it was, isn’t it.”

“No, I—”

“That would’ve been okay. Bugsy deserved it, and nobody’s really sorry he’s dead. You bumped him off and made it look like a professional hit—but then you had to make it look like someone else did it so Dan, who had some kind of deal going with him, wouldn’t suspect you. And for some reason—I haven’t been able to figure what it is—you decided I was the man of the hour. So right after you left my office Tuesday night, you called a guy who worked for Bugsy named Victor Bianco and told him I did it, and the proof was I had the bullets. I was trying to blackmail you with those bullets: If you didn’t pay me, I was gonna turn you over to the mob and tell ’em you gave them to me.” I swallowed more bourbon. My head and my stomach felt one swallow better. “And Vic called Moe Sedway, another mob guy—you ever meet him?” Lizabeth shook her head. “I didn’t think so. Anyway, Vic only got to tell Moe part of the story because while he was tellin’ it he had a heart attack—which was an inconvenient something you didn’t plan on. He only got as far as ‘Grahame has the bullets.’ He never even got around to saying it was a woman who called him.

“When you found out Vic was dead, that’s when things started getting messy, so you decided you wanted the bullets back, and you went to my office last night to take a long hard look all by yourself. But Gloria was there, so you killed her and took those bullets so the cops couldn’t match ’em to the ones that shot Bugsy, if they ever got hold of them.”

“No, Robert, I—”

“Oh, you were good, sweetheart, real good. In fact, you only made one mistake: You didn’t know I knew Moe Sedway. And that Moe knows everything that happens in the LAP—”

The apartment door flew open. There, framed by the light from the hall, wearing an ill-fitting brown morgue attendant’s uniform and a white lab coat, stood Gloria Mitchum.

In one hand, she held my Colt .38.