THERE WAS NO ANSWER to the phone in Muggsy Kiely’s apartment. Johnny Liddell dropped the receiver back on its hook, scooped his coin from the return slot, and stepped out of the booth. He slid onto a stool at the lunch counter and ordered ham and eggs and coffee. When he had finished, he stepped back into the booth, re-dialed Muggsy’s number, but drew another blank. The clock on the wall over the counter showed eleven forty-five.
He walked out, signaled a cab. A man was leaning against a building a few stores away, reading a newspaper. Liddell noticed the black sedan parked at the curb in a restricted area, gave no sign that he saw it.
“Farmer’s Market,” he told the cabby. “And step on it. I’ve got a lunch date.”
The cabby, unimpressed, merely nodded.
Liddell sank onto the back cushion, twisted around so he could see out the rear window. As the cab pulled away from the curb, the man on the sidewalk leisurely folded his newspaper, walked over to the black sedan. It melted into the string of cars behind the cab.
At Farmer’s Market, a sprawling colony of booths, restaurants, and stores on the south side of Los Angeles, Liddell pushed a bill up at the cabby, jumped out, and ran into the teeming mob of tourists that overflowed from one booth to another. He heard the screaming skid as the black sedan braked to a stop outside, burrowed in among the crowd. He walked in through the open meat booths, the exotic groceries, elbowed his way through the crowd that gathered around the Mexican and Guatemalan novelties in the International display, came out half a block north of where the black sedan stood parked at the curb. He hailed a cruising taxi, gave the address of Eddie Richards’s office. The black sedan was still at the curb down the street as his cab swung west toward Hollywood.
As he pushed open the frosted glass door to Eddie Richards’s office, the blonde at the typewriter looked up, frowningly. The frown melted down into a smile as she recognized the private detective.
“Well, if it isn’t Liddell,” she greeted him. “I thought you’d forgotten all about me.”
“Not a chance, baby.” Liddell shook his head. “I just had some business I had to get out of the way.”
“Monkey business, I’ll bet.” The blonde nodded. “Making any progress?”
“Not so’s you could notice.” He nodded at the inner office. “No word from him, I suppose?”
Margy Winslow shook her head. “The police have been here a couple of times looking for him. Do you suppose something’s happened to him?”
Liddell shrugged. “Nothing fatal. Hiding a body like his would be a trick. As soon as anything does happen, you’ll read about it.”
“They think Yale Stanley’s got him, don’t they?”
“I guess he has. Some stoolie reported seeing Richards in a car with Yale right after the kid’s body was found.” He sat on the corner of the desk, stared down at her. “They seem to think maybe Richards and Yale were in it together.”
“That’s crazy, Johnny. I told you Richards hated Yale. They gave the boss a bad time a couple of years ago when Richards owed some money he didn’t want to pay.”
“Did you know Richards then, Marge?”
The blonde nodded. “As I told you, I’ve been around a long time. Miss Chenango County of 1940. Remember?”
Liddell nodded absently. “I remember. About when was that?”
Margy wrinkled her brow in concentration. “I couldn’t say exactly, but I’d make a guess at about five, six years ago.” She bit on the end of a long, lacquered nail, shook her head. “I couldn’t make it any closer than that.”
“That’s good enough,” Liddell nodded. “You know this Terry Devine? The one Shad was chasing?”
Margy Winslow made a moue of distaste. “Of course I know her. I know a lot of undesirable characters.”
“Think back. Was she around at the time Richards was having trouble with Yale Stanley?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Never mind. Was she?”
The blonde stared at him, shrugged. “I don’t know. I could probably find out if it’s important.”
“It could be.”
The blonde got up, straightened the folds out of her tightly fitted skirt, walked over to the filing-cabinet. She pulled open one drawer, didn’t find what she wanted, then tried another. She pulled out a Manila folder and leafed through it.
“She could have been here.” She nodded. “She started working for the studio back in ‘46.” She checked off an item with her thumbnail. “Claimed she was sixteen, but a gal like that is forty the day she learns how to talk.” She ran through several other papers in the file. “Did some bits for Richards in ‘47 and the early part of ‘48. We dropped her option in March ‘48.” She replaced the papers in the file, shut the drawer. “That what you wanted?” She walked back to the desk slowly, stopped in front of Liddell, pushed some stray hairs into place with the tips of her fingers. “Don’t tell me the divine Terry has her hooks into you, too?”
Liddell shook his head. “This Shad character must have started chasing young. He’s not twenty-one yet and this is ‘52. That means he was only fifteen or sixteen when Richards tossed Terry off the lot for playing house with him?”
The blonde ridged her forehead. “Come again?”
“That’s what Richards told me. He ruled Terry off the lot because she got tough with him when he told her to lay off his kid.”
“That’s ridiculous. If anybody was playing games with her it was Richards himself. Ask her, why don’t you?”
“I would. Only she’s among the missing, too.”
Margy’s eyes widened. “She is? Since when?”
“Last night, apparently. You’ll read all about it in the afternoon papers. There was a gunfight in her apartment and one guy decided to wait around to greet the coroner. No sign of Terry or the other guy.”
The blonde pursed her lips, whistled noiselessly. “Richards?” she asked.
Liddell shrugged. “Could be, I suppose. Only, I can’t quite see the fat boy standing up to a professional gunman and burning him down.” He reached out, rested his hands on the girl’s hips, drew her closer. “Still want me to find who killed Shad?”
“If you promise to be careful doing it,” she told him softly. “I don’t like the way they’re playing, Johnny.” She ran her fingers through his hair, patted up the wave. “Yale Stanley has nothing to lose now by killing you. Don’t give him a chance to.”
“Not if I see him first.” He pulled the blonde down, covered her mouth with his. After a moment, she pushed him back, kissed him lightly, slid out of his arms.
“If only you had happened ten years ago.” She grinned at him crookedly. “I know you would have loved Miss Chenango County of 1940.”
“Where the hell is Chenango County?”
The blonde stuck her tongue out at him and walked around the desk. “You’re a detective. You find out.” She slid into her chair, grinned up at him. “Anything else on your mind, as if I didn’t know?”
“So you think your boss was messing around with Terry, eh?” he resumed. “Maybe they’re hiding out together?”
The blonde considered it, shook her head. “Not a chance. Richards really hates her insides. I never did get the whole picture but he was pretty bitter when he tossed her off the lot.”
“This dough he owed Yale, this gambling debt. Is Richards much of a plunger?” He brought out a pack of cigarettes, lit two, passed one to the girl.
She took a deep drag, let the smokes dribble lazily from half-parted lips. “He hasn’t done any gambling at all that I know of in the past few years.”
“How about before?”
“You couldn’t prove it by me. He never took me to Yale’s place or any of the other game rooms.”
“Funny.”
“Half the charge a slob like Richards gets out of knowing a dish like you is to parade her around to make the yokels drool. What better place than a joint like Yale’s where all the movie gang congregates?”
Margy shrugged. “Maybe he figured the divine Terry was better for parading purposes.”
“At sixteen?”
The blonde puzzled over it, shook her head. “You’re driving at something, Johnny, but you’re over my head like a sheet in a motor court raid. What do you really want to know?”
“I stumbled on something yesterday, Margy. If I’m right, neither Richards nor the kid owed Stanley money for gambling losses.”
“But you said yourself — ”
Liddell nodded. “There were IOU’s. I saw them. But suppose Yale and Terry were working a badger game. She puts the suckers on the spot, he puts the shake on. They sign the IOU’s to get off the hook, and he collects them as gambling losses. How about it?”
Margy caught her lower lip between her teeth, worried it for a second, shook her head. “Not Richards. What would he have to lose?”
“About twenty years. Don’t forget Terry was under age at that time. The expression in my circles is San Quentin quail.”
The blonde’s eyes widened. “I see what you mean.”
“Buy it?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“Okay. Then, let’s work on the assumption that that’s what happened. Richards and the kid were only two of the suckers. I want to have a talk with some of the others.”
The blonde shook her head. “What others?”
“Know a character named Carter Sales?”
“Who doesn’t? He’s the hottest thing in the studio.” She leaned forward, her eyes wide. “You don’t mean him, too?”
“I don’t know,” Liddell admitted. “I want to have a talk with him. That’s where you come in. I want to know where to reach him.”
The blonde leaned back in her chair, shook her head. “No can do, Johnny. His address is on the restricted file.”
“But it’s on file?”
“I couldn’t get it for you, Johnny.” The blonde shook her head firmly. “There’d be murder around here.”
“There already has been. I’m just trying to see to it that there’s no more of it.”
She continued to shake her head, but without conviction. “I can’t.”
“Everybody connected with the lot has to file their address in case of emergency. Right?”
“Yes, but-”
“Baby, this is an emergency. Shad Reilly’s dead, and for all we know so are Richards and Terry. If they’re not, they’re liable to be unless I can get to them damn soon.”
“There must be another way,” the blonde wailed.
Liddell shook his head. “Without him I’m up against a stone wall. The only other leads are out of circulation. There’s just a chance he may know something that will break that stone wall. I’ve got to have it.”
“They’ll trace it to me,” she protested weakly.
“How would they? If I’m right, Sales won’t be doing any talking. Nobody will even know I was there.”
Margy wavered. “Suppose you’re wrong. Suppose he doesn’t even know Terry or Yale? How can you be sure?”
Liddell grinned wryly. “You can take my word for it, baby. Carter Sales knows both Yale Stanley and Terry Devine. You’ll have to take my word for it.”
The blonde wet her lips with the tip of a pink tongue. “I have a feeling I’m going to hate myself in the morning, but if you say so.” She opened an oversized purse that sat on the corner of the desk, fumbled in its depths, and came up with a small ring of keys. She fitted one of the keys to a small lock on the bottom drawer of the desk.
The steel-lined drawer rolled out easily. She reached in, brought out a small index card file. “Only two people have a key to that drawer,” she pointed out wryly, “and Richards isn’t around. So if this goes wrong, you know whose lap it’s going to be sitting in.” She opened the file, picked out a small card, handed it to Liddell. “He lives out in Bel-Air. About a half-hour drive.”
Liddell nodded, copied down the address on the back of an envelope. “Stop worrying, baby. Carter Sales isn’t going to make any beef.”
The blonde returned the card to the file, locked it in the drawer. “You’ll let me know how you make out?”
“It may be awfully late.”
The blonde took a deep puff on the cigarette, blew the smoke at him in a long feathery stream. “It won’t be too late.”