SELINA STONE AND FRANK Giovanni, they were the axles around which twin wheels of intrigue seemed to revolve. Were they connected? Somewhere on the periphery there had to be a connection. So far they were connected only through Tip Malone; he had been Selina’s lover and a friend (?) of Frank’s niece.
Why was I covering for Miss Stone? I had promised Gina Ronico I wouldn’t reveal her to the police, but Miss Ronico’s uncle had long ago invalidated the need to keep that promise. He had given me her name. But his stooges hadn’t bothered her. Now, why?
There had been an hour of full, hot sunshine while I’d been sitting around the West Side Station, and the damp spots in the road were steaming and mist was rising from the wet hills.
That used-car confidence man, that Lawrence (Larry?) Crewe had fallen under the spell of Selina Stone. It wasn’t hard to do. Because of it he had taken some lumps. My lumps had come from a visit to Lily Chen, but that probably wasn’t the whole reason I’d been pushed over the cliff.
After fourteen months Larry was still conscious of his lumps and ready to go hunting with me. I was still conscious of my own lumps but the men who had given them to me had just been released by my allies, the L.A.P.D. This cooperation should be a two-way street.
The flivver began to groan; we were climbing again. This much I would gain from the case, I would learn to know the typography of Malibu and the Gollago Lake section. The way things were going, it could easily be all I would ever learn from an investigation of Tip Malone’s scantily lamented demise.
And who would mourn Harry Adler? His sister Bertha, for sure. His ex-wife, in some rational moment? His sons, working their way through Columbia? Brother, we die alone.
The Aston-Martin was in the carport and there was no other car in sight. Miss Stone must be alone.
She came to the door and said, “My God, the unconquerable! And just in time for dinner, as usual.”
“I brought your radio back,” I said. “It afforded me many pleasant moments.”
“Come in,” she said, “Are you supposed to be up and around? You’re looking gloomy.”
“I am gloomy. My allies are deserting me and my enemies are growing stronger.” I came into the living room.
“Sit down,” she said. “Some beer?”
“Once or twice a year I try the hard stuff,” I said. “Now seems like a good time.”
“A martini,” she suggested, “dry and cold. A double martini.”
“Okay.” I put the radio on a table and sat in a big plastic upholstered chair. “Has anybody bothered you?”
“Nobody. Not even the police. I suppose I have you to thank for that?”
I smiled. “In your own way, in your own time. There are a couple of hoodlums floating around this area and I was sure they would have dropped in here by now.”
She had been on her way to the liquor cabinet. She turned and stared at me. “Why …? Are you serious?”
“I’m serious. Because they’re investigating the death of Tip Malone. Because their boss, Frank Giovanni, told me about you and Tip.”
She was stationary and staring. “Do you think they killed Tip?”
“I have no idea. They could have. Though they wouldn’t normally use a knife, I don’t believe.” I took a breath. “Harry Adler was killed sometime yesterday. I found his body this afternoon.”
She began to tremble. She sat down quickly in the nearest chair and said, “My God, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know. Harry was investigating Tip’s death, the way it looks. It’s reasonable to guess that’s why he was killed.”
“But you’re going to continue? And probably get killed yourself.” Her voice was tight and strained. “For what—three dollars an hour and overtime?”
“A little more than that,” I told her gently. “Why do you worry? Don’t tell me you’ve become emotionally involved with me?”
“Of course I have. You know I have!” She leaned forward and put her head into her trembling hands. “Men …! What monstrous idiots men are.” She sniffed. “I mean idiotic monsters.”
“I’m here,” I said quietly, “and everything is temporarily under control. Let’s get to the drink.”
She looked up. “And forget the world?”
It wasn’t easy to keep from laughing. But I managed it, saying seriously and sonorously, “Yes, and forget the world.”
These Continental carnal-knowledge type singers were certainly weirdies. She would have been completely at home in a Beat Generation coffee house, among those strange people who really relished Edgar Guest but quoted Ezra Pound.
She made a pair of martinis, double for me and single for her. She sat on the davenport near my chair. She asked, “Were those men you mentioned the same ones you met at that gambler’s house?”
“That’s right. And today I found them looking down at the body of Harry Adler and I held them for the police and now they’ve been released. I’m sure that one of them is the man who pushed me over the cliff back of Lily Chen’s house.”
“This Lily Chen—is she really Frank Giovanni’s mistress?”
“Mmmmm-hmmm. Selina, do you remember a man named Larry Crewe?”
She frowned. “Dimly, I think. Is he a comedian?”
“Not consciously,” I said. “He—ah—met you when you were singing at that place in Santa Monica about fourteen months ago.”
“Met me? Once?”
“I guess. He sort of had a date with you but when he got home he was badly beaten up. By two men.”
“Got home? After the date?”
I looked at my martini and tried not to blush. “Well, the way it was, he claims you were going to meet him at his apartment after your last show. … I guess you didn’t come.”
“It’s a lie,” she said fiercely. “Look at me, Brock Callahan! Look at me when you say things like that.”
I looked at her. “I’m embarrassed. But if some pair of hoodlums were trying to—well, protect you, I was thinking there was a possibility it could be the same pair who are giving me trouble and maybe we could learn what the connection is and …” I broke off, not knowing where to go next.
“And maybe,” she said grimly, “we could learn that I killed Tip Malone? Is that where you were heading?”
“Of course not. If I thought that, would I have kept your name from the police?”
“I wish I knew,” she said. “I wish I could be sure you haven’t protected me because you would eventually be paid in my own way, in my own time.” She took a breath. “Those last were your words.”
“And jesting words. In bad taste, but not malice. Selina, let’s not fight. I’m sure we’re on the same side.”
Her face was momentarily naked and she said suddenly, “I remember Larry Crewe.” There was shame in her voice. “Let’s not talk about one night in a life. It was a bad time for me and I did some impulsive and regrettable things during that period. But I can’t talk about them.”
“I don’t want to,” I assured her. “I want to talk about hoodlums. Or anybody else who would have reason to be jealous of a man in whom you showed interest.”
“The man I worked for in Santa Monica,” she said softly, “had a terrific crush on me. And he was the kind of man who would hire thugs. It was probably his doing. He’s since sold out there and gone back east somewhere.”
Why had she added that last sentence? Lawrence Crewe had said the man had moved to Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is not “back east.”
She interrupted my meditations to ask, “So what possible connection could that—night have with Tip’s death?”
I sipped my drink. “Yes, that’s a question. I can’t answer it. Can you?”
“There can’t possibly be a connection,” she said firmly.
She had said it too firmly; no one but a liar or a fool could be that positive and she was no fool.
I sipped the cold martini and watched the sun bring the mist from the hills. On the shadowed side they were turning purple now but the sunny slopes were bright green. This area is so seldom green, we wallow in it when it happens.
“I seem to sense a—a weakening in rapport between us,” she said quietly.
I shook my head. “No. It’s been a—depressing day, a day to bring out my cynicism. It will go away.”
“I’m making beef Stroganoff,” she said. “Share it with me?”
I nodded. “Thank you.” I turned to look at her. “Selina, two men have been killed. Let’s think about it for a minute.”
She frowned and said nothing.
“Let’s have a minute of thoughtful silence,” I went on, “and realize all the implications of two murders and realize none of us can stay remote from acts like that.”
Her voice was only a whisper. “You think I’m involved, don’t you? Why do you think that?”
“I have no rational reasons. The pattern of my investigation so far indicates it very strongly. If my hunch is right and you confide in me, you’ll have a friend and a protector if you’re involved legally.”
“I didn’t kill Tip Malone or Harry Adler,” she said, “and I have no—knowledge of who did.”
“Do you have suspicions?”
She paused only briefly before shaking her head. I didn’t press her. She had a career to maintain. She had been on her own since she was fifteen and she was not going to cooperate with anyone who might destroy that career.
I said, “It’s not a polite question but how old are you?”
“I’m thirty,” she said. “I was thirty March 7th.”
“Where are you from?”
“What difference does it make?”
I smiled. “I’d like to know about you. You’re an interesting girl. I have a feeling it was a rough fight, getting where you are.”
“It was. I was born in Oxnard, just forty miles up the coast. In the wrong part of Oxnard and it has a lot of wrong parts.”
“And you’ve been on your own since you were fifteen?”
“That’s right: My mother died in 1943. I’d done a little kid singing with a—Spanish trio that played for parties around Oxnard and Ventura, so I lied about my age and joined a USO troupe when Mama died. After the war I picked up what jobs I could, and then my agent, Jerry Kline, took me on and dreamed up—my present personality.”
“He’s a good operator, isn’t he, that Kline?”
“He’s a damned genius,” she said. “Another martini?”
“A single, please,” I said. “I’m not used to the hard stuff, and this double has just about put me over the edge.”
“I’ll make you one on the rocks,” she said, “and you can let the ice melt.” She came over to take my glass. “Are you my friend, Brock Callahan?”
“I want to be. I admire women who make it in this man’s world. I have an enormous respect for you, Selina Stone, eminent chanteuse.”
“You’re a strange mixture,” she said.
“Hell, yes,” I agreed. “Who isn’t?”
So we had dinner and talked of this and that and I imagine you think I was dallying and not tending to business like a first-rate investigator should. Who had a better right to dally, broken and bruised as I was?
But I wasn’t. I was learning, getting the pattern of a life. I was being smooth and discerning, two of my rarely used but undeniably strong, investigative talents.
I left at ten o’clock in case you’re wondering about that, as virginal going down the hill as I had been coming up. Going down the hill from Big Rock I had an eerie feeling that somehow I was getting closer to knowing on which rock he had built his Church.
Next week Selina Stone opened at the Hilton and from there she was going to New York and then to San Francisco. It would have been better, probably, for Harry Adler and Tip Malone if she had gone to New York a month ago. What I had was nebulous, and investigation might prove me a fool, but I had been up blind alleys before.
On the street in front of my apartment building a Chev was parked and it looked like a Chev I knew. I slowed and flicked the beam on my lights a few times, and Jan stepped out from the driver’s side and walked around to step on the curb.
I parked and she came over.
“Where in the world have you been?” she asked. “I was busy all day, but I went to the hospital tonight and they said you had sneaked out this morning. Are you crazy?”
“Just restless, darling,” I told her. “Harry Adler was killed.”
“I read the papers. It’s about the only way I can keep track of you Brock, are we breaking up?”
“Get in,” I said, “and kiss me.”
When she opened the door the interior lights went on, and she could see the cast on my foot and the crutch in the back seat.
She closed the door and said, “God! what drives you?”
I kissed her forehead. “The lust for a buck. What drives you?”
“Don’t be nasty. Kiss me again.”
I kissed her and she said, “You could come to my place and I could nurse you. You know you shouldn’t be up and around.”
“Two men have died,” I told her. “I’ve got to be up and around.”
“Does that drive you, too?” she asked me. “Some personal sense of justice?”
“I hate killers, yes. All the killers, spiritual, mental and physical.”
“But the Police Department has the men and the facilities to take care of killers, hasn’t it?”
“Everything in time,” I said, “and there are too many killings. And they have to operate by standardized procedures. I don’t. I can be more dishonest.”
“But you never are,” she said.
“When I need to be. I try to keep it within a limit, only when I need to be, only enough to survive and keep functioning.”
A silence, rather long, and she asked, “Are you tired?”
A meaningful question and I felt like a eunuch, as I answered, “Terribly tired, honey. I think I’m having a relapse from that fall.”
She said jestingly, “The fall from the cliff or some other fall?”
“A fall from honor, from fidelity, do you mean?” I asked.
“I was teasing. Good night, dearest. Please be careful.”
I promised her I would and sat there until the Chev’s taillights disappeared as she turned onto Wilshire. Then I drove around to my garage and painfully made my way up to bed.