77 Sunset Strip Page 13

  Rita said, “Do you have to go?”

  Crukston said nothing.

  I found my way out without any help. No one threw any knives at me. As I closed the apartment door I heard a faint, high-pitched voice saying, “What’s the matter, lunkin?”

  TWENTY-ONE

  I went away with an idea—a bit frail, a little contradictory, but an idea. And this was a case in which a wraith of nothing would make fine company. The idea was that Crukston was afraid that Trist might have been on to something far more important than whether or not Crukston was making a play for his wife. And he was afraid now that Trist might have passed that information on to me.

  I had some hash and eggs in the lunchroom over in the Hart Building and then went on up to the office. I called the Federal Building and asked for Jack Sawyer. I had done Jack a favor not long ago, and he was just across the street from the Hall of Records.

  When he came on the phone, I asked if he had fifteen minutes, and he said, “All the time in the world.”

  “Fine. Over in the Hall of Records they have lists of properties by owner. I want you to get me the addresses of the business properties owned by Gordon Trist. It may show joint ownership with a Greg Crukston.”

  “Do they let just anybody at those records?”

  “Yeah—even Federal employees.”

  “Okay, Stu. Spell those names.”

  I spelled them and we hung up. I spent the next twenty minutes cleaning up the office and talking to Suzanne. Then Jack called back and gave me nine addresses. I wrote them on an envelope. Most of them were out of the city limits, and one of them was in the same block with one of the biggest bookie offices in the county.

  I decided to go out and pick a horse or two and see what was new with the ponies. I parked three doors down from the place, but I didn’t go in. I didn’t go in, because the address of the bookie office was the same as the address on the envelope. I went back to the car and drove out past two more of the Crukston-Trist properties. One of them was a two-story building advertising Exclusive Portraiture, but it didn’t seem to be open for business. The other was a used-car lot with a low bungalow office—a much larger office than a lot that size would need. I had been past that lot before. There was a funny thing about it. In the daytime there were very few cars on display. At night the lot was packed with the latest models. That’s life, growing ever more complex, even for the leisure class.

  I drove back to the office wondering how much Crukston had made that he hadn’t told Trist about. I was only guessing, but it seemed a simple picture: Crukston’s books would show normal rentals for all the properties being used for the higher pleasures, and the extra dividends he would pocket for himself. Neat, if your partner doesn’t get around much. Unpleasant, if he finds out about it. Particularly unpleasant if the boys who are renting from you find out you’re playing both ends against the middle.

  I had checked on Trist and I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t play landlord to a county syndicate. But I was only guessing, so it was time to call on Crukston again.

  Back at the office I picked up the phone book and looked under the C’s. No phone listed for Greg Crukston. I called information and she told me in a knife-edge voice that was as polite as you can get and still be insulting, that the number was unlisted. That was Mr. Crukston, trying hard to be one of the Hollywood folk. I called Mrs. Gordon Trist and asked her for Crukston’s number. She told me she had just tried to call Crukston herself and no one answered. That was frank of her. So I didn’t ask what she was calling him about. I asked for Sara Franzen’s number instead.

  She gave it to me and said, “I thought you’d be getting around to that.”

  I got around to it right away. Sara’s voice was even warmer and huskier over the phone.

  I said, “This is Stuart Bailey. Name was Tate when you met me.”

  “Hello, killer,” she drawled. “I heard you were out of the bastille. Did you shoot your way out?”

  “I promised not to do it again.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while. Then, “It isn’t really very funny, though, is it?”

  “Not even slightly. But no one seems to want to weep about it—not when I’m around, anyway.”

  “Which shows what a bad detective you are. I’m all cried out. And I think you’ll find that Freddie, in his own quaint way, is a bit broken up inside.”

  “And the widow?”

  “I haven’t seen her.”

  “You’ve seen Freddie, then?”

  “No, I haven’t seen anyone.”

  I decided to let that one pass for the time being. “It’s time you did,” I said, “and you might be able to help me on something.”

  “Fine. On the way over, you can be thinking about where to take me for dinner. It’s four-three-four North Maysfield. I live in what is optimistically known as the penthouse. Take the elevator to the sixth floor, turn right, and the stairs take you right to my door.”

  “Be there in ten minutes.”

  A stout lady and her poodle were coming out as I came up the steps, so I didn’t have to use the alcove phone. I took the self-help elevator to six and got out. I turned right and noticed that the hall turned again in just a few feet.-

  I made the turn and then stopped abruptly and ducked back. But it was too late. Something came down across my head and set up a chain reaction that carried right on through the floor. I dropped into a great well of darkness into greater darkness beyond.

  TWENTY-TWO

  It may have been two or twenty minutes later that I began the long hard climb that brought me back to where I found myself stretched out in the gray dimness of the corridor. I was all alone. I stood up and took an inventory. Nothing missing from wallet, nothing missing from pockets—not even my favorite clue, the ten-cent ash tray.

  Then I saw something that made me feel worse than the shillelagh had. The little corridor that I had started to turn into led to the stairs, but they didn’t go up, they went down. I hadn’t forgotten. Sara Franzen had said, “Turn right.”

  I went back to the elevator and on down the hall. About eight feet down, there were stairs, going up. I went on up and knocked at Sara Franzen’s door.

  She wasn’t dressed for the street, and she was giving me the kind of smile that goes with not being dressed for the street. But I must have been mistaken, because she had company—Mrs. Gordon Trist.

  Sara Franzen nodded me in and said, “I thought you’d probably changed your mind.”

  I looked at Mrs. Trist and said, “I’m the inquisitive type. Would you mind telling me how long you’ve been here?”

  She looked faintly surprised and a little irritated. But she smiled and said, “Not at all. Just a few minutes; perhaps ten.”

  Sara Franzen said, “Stop talking like a policeman and let me get you a drink. You look horrible. You’re not one of those dissipated detectives, are you?” She went into the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

  She came back with three old-fashioneds that had a dark and earnest look about them. I waited until we were all settled and ready for some light conversation. Then I said, “You gave me the wrong turn. The stairs are to the left. I went right and somebody hit me with one of the crossbeams.”

  Sara Franzen cocked her head at me skeptically and said, “I’m always getting that turn wrong, but you’re kidding, aren’t you?”

  “Not even a little bit. But nothing’s missing. Maybe it was a tenant waiting for her husband.”

  Mrs. Trist and Sara Franzen looked at each other for a moment, and Mrs. Trist took on a look of worried concern and said, “You’ve uncovered something, haven’t you? Someone was trying to kill you!”

  “If I’ve discovered anything, I don’t know about it.”

  “Mr. Bailey, I can’t keep you from doing what you want to do, but as far as I’m concerned, you’ve more than earned the money Gordon gave you. I want you to understand that.”

  I nodded.

  She finished her drink and s
tood up. She looked at me as if she had more to say, then sighed gently and said, “I’ll leave you two to talk.”

  Sara Franzen showed her to the door. She came back and said, “I thought you were putting on some kind of act for Mildred. Did it really happen like you said?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guessed as much.”

  “You gave me the wrong turn.”

  “Mildred lied to you. She had been here closer to fifteen minutes.”

  “So what? Why would she have come up here? She could have had her fun with my head and gone her gruesome way. The fact that she was sitting here makes her look innocent, not guilty.”

  “Now I know you’re no detective. You say you were hit in the little corridor leading to the stairs. What if she had been there waiting for you, expecting to sneak up on you when you turned left? Then you come her way and she lets you have it. She looks for whatever it is she thinks you have, and then hears someone coming up the stairs.” She paused and asked, “Was the elevator still on the sixth floor when you came to?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “All right. No elevator, someone coming up the stairs, so she does the natural thing—pays me a visit.”

  I nodded. “And the people coming up the stairs just step over me and go on their way.”

  “Don’t be silly. Maybe she heard someone coming out of an apartment on five and just thought they were on the stairs. Don’t make me do all your thinking for you.”

  I took the ash tray out of my pocket, put it on the end table beside me and thought what nice slim hips Sara Franzen had.

  She came back with two more drinks, handed me one and sat down again. She looked at me sourly and said, “Where are you taking me to dinner?”

  “El Lobo’s food isn’t too good, but they carry my brand of cigar. How about there?”

  “That sounds cozy,” she said. “Why are you working on this thing? You’re in the clear, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t really know. Maybe I like having my head pulped up. I tell myself it’s because I owe it to somebody, either to Gordon Trist or whoever he left behind who might care who killed him.” I knocked an ash into my tray, and when I looked up, Sara Franzen was staring at me with a blank fascination.

  She said, “Bailey, tell me, are you a little touched? Just slightly, in a harmless, cockeyed way?”

  “Would you like me to be?”

  “No! But . . . what about that?” She was pointing at the ash tray. “Do you find it necessary to carry around your own ash tray? It really isn’t, you know!”

  I laughed, and then I told her about the tray, not trying to be cagey.

  We finished the drinks and went out to dinner, and when the evening was over I knew nothing more about Sara Franzen than I had when it began.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The relentless ringing of the phone pulled me from sleep into a kind of restful coma. I got up and went in and washed my face. When I came back, it was still ringing. It was Quint.

  “Had any brainstorms about the Trist deal?” He sounded casual and unhurried, like a man using up some unscheduled time.

  “Not a one.”

  “You’ve been getting around, calling on people, spending time. You ought to have the case wrapped in cellophane by now, a big operator like you.”

  “You must have made an arrest”

  “No, but we’re thinking about it.”

  “Just somebody you don’t like or someone you can make it stick to?”

  “We think it can be made to stick.”

  “Crukston, huh?”

  “Crukston!”

  “Who else?”

  “Man, you’re off the beam. We checked Crukston. His books are clear and he made Trist a better-than-average return on his investments. We got that straight from Trist’s attorney.”

  “You should have started at the other end.”

  “What have you got, Bailey?”

  “Who are you planning to put the finger on?”

  “Like that, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your stuff had better be good. It’s the Franzen babe.”

  “How did you build that?”

  “Strange doings in that bunch. Trist left exactly one frogskin to his widow. The rest he divided more or less equally between his kid and Sara Franzen. It seems he put her through school and sort of supported her for several years, until she came into a little dough of her own.”

  I didn’t say anything for a while. Then, “Any evidence that Miss Franzen knew about the windfall?”

  “The lawyer says she didn’t. But the setup’s dear as day, isn’t it? Trist would have cooed it into her ear one night.”

  “When was the will made?”

  “Let’s hear from you for a change. What’s this about Crukston?”

  “I’ll tell you when it was made. Within the last few weeks.”

  “I guess you’ve been getting around, at that,” Quint growled.

  “You’re making a mistake, Quint. I know that sometime in the past few weeks Trist got the idea that his wife was cheating on him with Crukston. That’s why he called me. But the night Trist was killed, Crukston gave Trist some pretty good evidence that he was wrong about his wife. The will was changed in favor of Franzen before Trist got that evidence, and I doubt if Trist ever told either of them about the change.”

  Silence.

  “Okay,” Quint said. “About Crukston—understand, we’d have uncovered it anyway, don’t get the idea you got away with something.”

  “Several of the rentals that Crukston managed—I don’t know how many—are fronts. I’d guess that most of them are syndicate joints.”

  “Not in L.A.”

  “Could be. The ones I know of are all in the county.

  I think Crukston was pocketing the premiums those boys are used to paying. Trist wouldn’t have gone in for that stuff. He wouldn’t have to, with his money.”

  “Yeah. Well, thanks, Shamus. I was just baiting you. We didn’t have an arrest in mind.”

  “That’s all right, Lieutenant. Crukston didn’t kill Trist, either.”

  I hung up, went in and showered, got dressed, had some coffee, put my ash tray in my pocket, and went to call on Crukston.

  I stepped out of the Wilshire Tower elevator on the eighth floor, and two cops in uniform stepped up and asked me politely where I was going. I glanced to the right. There was activity around Crukston’s door. The door was open.

  I said, “I’m from the Internal Revenue Bureau. Something wrong?”

  “Who’d ya wanta see?”

  “I think the name was Crukston.”

  “Forget it. He’s dead. Better take the elevator back down. No hanging around up here.”

  I got back into the elevator. The elevator boy said, “Sorry. I knew you wouldn’t get anywhere, but I was told to keep my trap shut.”

  “Crukston, huh?”

  “Yeah. Stabbed.”

  “They find a weapon?”

  “I heard they didn’t. Nobody seen anybody go in, either.”

  We were at the ground floor. In the lobby there were newspapers headlining the Trist case and featuring the weapon that had “slipped through the incompetent fingers of the Detective Bureau.” Tomorrow the headlines would be bigger. I drove home.

  The perfume hit me first, although it isn’t fair to say “hit.” It enveloped me gently as I opened the door, and began to take the edge off my mood. The fount of the fragrance was Miss Rita Rogell, sitting in my deep chair, looking up at me with eyes that were troubled and unhappy and provocative all at the same time.

  I sat down across from her.

  She smiled. “Your apartment manager’s a fan of mine. She let me in. Of course, I told her you sent me.”

  “I have a place I call an office.”

  “You weren’t there.”

  “How you got in here isn’t important. The question with the big punch is: Why?”

  “Greg’s been killed.” She said it calmly, a
nd it didn’t sound like the calm that sometimes masks an imminent wing-ding.

  “Sorry to hear it, Airs. Crukston. Did you do it?”

  She raised her head so that the light fell across her face, and it wasn’t the insipid, nubilous face I’d been thinking of when I thought of Rita Rogell.

  She said, “I like that hard gritty line you’ve developed for yourself. Some other time it would be fun to listen to it. But not now.”

  “I take it you didn’t do it. I didn’t think you did.”

  “I like you, cowboy, well enough to rattle a little warning. I’m not really as dumb as you think. I’ve found that it pays to have men think I’m not quite bright.”

  “Thanks, but you didn’t have to tell me. And you didn’t come up here to talk about yourself.”

  “No. I came up to ask you to do something for me.”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you have a drink in the place?”

  I went out and mixed two highballs and brought them back. She had moved over to the davenport and had taken off her coat. She wasn’t wearing a dress. In her circle they call it a “creation.” This one was smooth and clinging, with nothing on it to detract from the main features. She took her drink and smiled at me.

  We drank. We didn’t say anything. A wagon rattled by, a child shouted, and a siren sounded urgently down on Wilshire. We finished our drinks.

  “I like your taste in liquor, Stuart.”

  I went out and made two more drinks.

  When I came back, I said, “You’ve got me tagged all right, angel. I’m a sucker for a babe, especially after a couple of drinks. What do you want done?”

  “Stop it, Bailey. We could be good friends.”

  “I don’t think I’d like that.”

  She turned just her head—and said, “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  I gave her my warm smile—the one with the leer—and said, “All right, Mrs. Crukston. I know what I get now. How about telling me what I do?”

  She sat up. For a brief hung moment I thought I was going to get the rest of her drink in my face. But Rita was a lady, and she liked my liquor. She took a drink of it and said, “Wrong. The name isn’t Crukston.” She put the glass down and turned toward me. “That’s what I want you to do for me. You’ll be questioned. Can you forget that I was at Greg’s yesterday, and that he introduced me as his wife?”