Blondes are Skin Deep (12 page)

“T
HAT’S
the most stupid thing you’ve done yet,” I told Powers. “Arrest me on a charge like that and I’ll bounce you and your whole department into Puget Sound.”

I tried to make it sound big but inside I wasn’t half so confident. Powers was the cautious type; he never went off half-cocked.

Chimp chewed on his cigar, looking from one to the other of us with interest, but not saying anything.

“It’s my worry,” Powers said. “I’ll take the chance.”

He sounded too damned smug. I thought again just how cautious a cop he was. “Kidnapping,” I said. “Kidnapping who?”

“Whom?” Chimp said.

Powers ignored him. “Maretta Considine,” he said to me.

That was the only answer I had been able to figure out at all, and it didn’t make sense. I put out a tentative bluff. “Who is Maretta Considine?”

Powers made a snorting sound. “Let’s go,” was all he said.

“What if I don’t want to go?” I asked. I tested my balance, watching Powers directly and Chimp from the corner of my eye. He was being one hell of a lot of help.

“Don’t make a fool of yourself,” Powers warned.

“You have extradition papers?”

“Do I need them?”

I knew that this wasn’t doing me any good. It was a sucker’s play on Powers’ part, whether he knew it or not. But I couldn’t see any way out of it.

“Yes,” I said, “you have to get extradition papers.” It was a sucker’s trick on my part, too, but I didn’t know what else to do. I needed time; maybe this way I would get it.

“Get smart, Mercer.”

“Let’s go to my hotel and talk this thing over,” I said. “Maybe we can work out a deal.”

“I don’t make deals.”

“Right now,” I told him, “I’m one up on you. If you use your head I might even let you take me back home. If you get tough, it’s going to cause trouble and cost your department dough.”

Powers said, with no emphasis, “I brought my gun, Mercer.”

“So did Chimp,” I said, and stepped back a little, leaving Chimp and Powers facing each other without me between them.

“I’m not in this,” Chimp said quickly. “This isn’t my business.”

I said, “Think back, Chimp. And think wise. A kidnapping rap has tentacles. You know that Powers thinks I’m in on it. Maybe he’ll think the same about you after a while.”

Chimp was silent. Powers was equally silent. I just waited, letting each man work it out in his own way. I couldn’t see much hope, but if this did pan out I had an idea to gamble with. If that worked, I’d have something. If it fell flat …

I stopped thinking about it. Chimp said, “Yeh,” in a thoughtful voice. “Yeh, I see what you mean.” His cigar bobbed in the dim light. “Powers, I think maybe we ought to talk this over.”

Powers said, “Don’t get in my way. And don’t let Mercer bluff you. You’re in the clear as far as I know. Don’t tangle yourself in it now.”

Chimp sounded apologetic. “I hate to do this, Powers, but Mercer has something in what he says. I hate to argue with the cops but maybe I’ll have to.”

I wondered if this wasn’t the first decision he had made on his own since starting to work for Hall. If so, it was a good one from my point of view. Chimp’s soft voice carried a lot of weight. He wasn’t menacing the Lieutenant, he just made it sound very reasonable and sensible. At that moment I appreciated him.

Powers said reluctantly, “All right, we’ll go talk. It won’t do you a damned bit of good, Mercer, but we’ll go talk.”

“That’s better,” I said. Getting into the cab between Powers and Chimp, I sat back, trying to think this thing out. I didn’t get very far.

The ride was too quick. I did manage to wonder what Powers’ angle was. If Chimp had seen him at the airport as he claimed, the Lieutenant had killed an hour someplace when he could just as easily have been putting the clamp on me. Maybe, I thought, he had tried a little interviewing.

I said casually, “Have you see Edna Loomis lately, Powers?”

I could feel Chimp stiffen at my side. Powers said, “What about her?”

“I thought maybe you’d like to know where she was when Hall got shot, that’s all.”

“What for?” Powers asked. “She didn’t shoot him.”

“Oh?” I wriggled around, reaching for my cigarets. The cab pulled up at the hotel. I got a cigaret and lighted it as we stepped to the sidewalk. After Powers paid, I said, “Who did?”

“Johnny.”

“Bah,” I said.

Powers made a shrugging motion and headed for the hotel doors. “Or his sister Nelle.

“Or me,” I said. “Or this Maretta Considine. Or Chimp here. You know one hell of a lot, don’t you?”

Powers sounded sore. “Bleat,” he said. “You aren’t changing anything.”

Chimp was laughing silently to himself. I could tell it by the way his cigar bobbed. I wondered what was so funny. But I didn’t ask him. I spoke to Powers.

“So now Nelle’s worked into this, too?”

“The kidnapping charge includes her.”

I swore at him. Chimp seemed to find the whole thing funnier than ever and a softly explosive laugh popped out around his cigar. Powers ignored us both. He was carefully putting his taxi receipt into his wallet.

I said, “How about a phone call, Powers?”

“Lawyer?”

“Same as.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “We’ve got you sewed up.”

He walked beside me to the lobby booth and stood beside it while I went inside. I made no effort to conceal my call to the Oxnan.

I got Quist on the line. He sounded as if he were on the bottle again. I said, “Ring me three-thirty-six.”

“That room ain’t occupied.”

“This is Mercer. Just ring it.”

“Listen, Nick. The cops …”

“Are with me here. Just ring, damn it.”

Quist rang. On the third buzz someone lifted the telephone. I could hear quick breathing. I said, “This is Nick Mercer, Maretta.”

From the corner of my eye I could see Lieutenant Powers stiffen and then press his ear a little tighter to the side of the booth. I grinned and opened the door a crack. He glowered but he took advantage of it anyway.

Maretta said, “I don’t know what to do now.”

“I suppose you’ve heard,” I said, “that Johnny and I are being hung with a kidnapping rap.”

“I know,” she said. “Mr. Hall told me.”

That one nearly floored me. Mr. Hall, indeed. She went on to explain that Johnny had told her not to stir, no matter what had happened. But after he left she started worrying and finally went to Kane Hall. He told her about the trouble, advised her to sit tight, and told her to let me handle it.

“It was nice of him,” I said. “Did Johnny drag you forcibly from Portland to the hotel?”

She sounded surprised and very young. “No. How could he?”

“That’s what the cops think,” I told her. “And with my help—and Nelle’s.”

“They’re silly,” she said. “Johnny and I are married. A man doesn’t kidnap his own wife.”

It took me a minute to digest that, but it made a lot of things clearer: her attitude toward Johnny; his toward her, the lapse of days when they had completely disappeared; and Edna Loomis’ occasional, seemingly snide remarks.

I was so still I guess she started worrying again. She said, “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” I assured her. “I love you. I love you dearly. Now where is Johnny?”

“There,” she said. “In Portland.”

“I know. But where here?”

“At my place, I suppose.”

“Then you can stop worrying,” I said. “Tell Hall to give you a better room. That’s a rathole.” I wound up with, “Everything is rosy now.”

I stepped out of the booth with a wide grin on my face. I could see that it irritated Powers and made Chimp raise his eyebrows in surprise. I didn’t say anything. Powers had got just enough from my side of the conversation to make himself curious—that was obvious. I let him be irritated while we went to my room.

I took a seat on the bed. Chimp snatched the easy chair and that left Powers only the straight one.

“Now,” he said, “let’s get this over with.”

He was really sore. He had never sounded quite so tough with me before. I said, “Your kidnapping rap is as flat as stale beer. And you know it.”

“I told you once to stop messing around,” he said. “Get to the point.”

“You could have got her any time you wanted,” I said. “If you thought she was kidnapped you still had a pretty good idea where she was. Why didn’t you pick her up?”

“Department business,” Powers said curtly.

Meaning that she was socially prominent and therefore would have to be handled delicately. That was his implication. I said, “The fact is that you got orders to smoke us out this way. Okay, I’m smoked even if Johnny isn’t. But it won’t do you a damned bit of good.”

He just looked at me. I added, “Johnny and Maretta are married.”

Powers looked as if I had hit him below the belt. Chimp went on laughing. It was obviously something that Powers had not known.

He recovered without too much trouble, though. He said, very slowly, “That really puts the finger on Johnny, doesn’t it? He marries the guy’s daughter a few days after he’s killed the man.”

“You’ve got too many pronouns in that sentence,” I said. “Who killed who?”

My humor fell on its face and Powers proceeded to step on it. He said, “The Portland cops will get Johnny before long. When they get through with him—if they ever do—I want him. For attempted murder.”

“And kidnapping,” I reminded him.

“We’re not through with that charge, Mercer.” He went to my phone and lifted the receiver. “We left Maretta Considine at the Oxnan because we hoped Johnny might show up, and not because she was too hot to handle.”

He put a call through to his office and issued a pick-up order on Maretta Considine Doane. “Suspicion of murder,” he said. “The Kane Hall shooting. Make that attempted murder,” he corrected himself, “and let the papers have it.” He hung up.

He was pretty cute at that. The papers and radio would have a field day, Johnny would hear the news and, in his impulsive way, go steaming back to town. Into the hands of the cops.

I got up, moving toward the door. “You don’t leave me much choice, do you, Powers?”

He moved quickly, getting between me and the door. His hand went for his gun. “You aren’t going anywhere but home, Mercer.”

I looked over Powers’ shoulder at Chimp. He was sitting with the stub of his gnawed down cigar between his lips. He shrugged. “This is one I have no connection with.”

“No help,” Powers said. “Just sit back down and relax.”

“All right, dammit,” I said, and stepped sideways. Powers did the relaxing, and that was his mistake. I swung on him. But he was no sucker. He backpedalled, got his gun out and twisted around. His long face was sad but his eyes were wary.

I crowded my advantage while he was still a little off balance, and got inside his reach before the gun could level on me. I rapped a toe against his skin, cut the edge of my palm against his wrist, and then looped a left.

He took it on the side of the jaw, still off balance, and went straight into Chimp, bowling him over as Chimp got halfway out of his chair. I had the door open and was headed down the hall before the final crash of Powers, Chimp, and chair punctuated the silence.

The elevator stayed where it was. I took the service stairs three at a time to the ground floor. The delivery entrance was on my left and I barreled into the parking lot, and into heavy darkness. An alley stretched away from me and I went pelting down it, skirting trash barrels and garbage cans and coming out for air a good block from the hotel.

I went up a sidestreet at a fast walk and, when I hit a thoroughfare, started hunting for a cab. I caught one quickly, tumbled in, and gave Edna Loomis’ address. The cab cut across to Burnside and went left.

I peered at the top floor as the apartment house came into sight. There was a good deal of light. I looked along the street as the cab turned into it. There was no sign of a prowl car.

The driver swung up to the entrance. I paid him and ran into the building. The small lobby was empty. The elevator was down, waiting. It seemed to crawl as I got it headed for the fifth floor. I was in a real hurry this time. I had made up my mind that Edna Loomis was going to answer my questions one way or another.

I pounded down the hall to her door. I hammered on it and got no answer. I rattled the knob and the door came open, fading away from my hand.

She should have had better sense than that, I thought, and went on in.

The overhead lights were off but three floor lamps and a small table lamp were lit. They cast quite a glow. The room was empty. I passed on into the bedroom, not hesitating at all.

There was a bedlamp shining down on the bed, showing the wrinkled sheets, and emptiness.

I crossed the room and put my hand on the sheets. They were cold. I stood there looking around, disturbed. There was only the silence.

Deliberately I went to the closet and opened it. No one was there. I tried the bathroom door and it came open, letting pent-up steam surge against my face. I brushed at it and stepped on in. The shower curtains were drawn close around the tub and heavy beads of moisture hung in the air, on the curtain, and frosted over the face of the medicine chest mirror.

She had slept late, too late for the maid to get in and make up the bed. Then she had showered and gone out. That was the way it stacked up.

She had gone out, leaving the front door unlocked?

It had been recent, too, I thought, or the steam would have been more completely dissipated. On the other hand she had been out of bed for some time. It could mean nothing or it could mean a great deal.

I went to the shower curtains and drew them aside.

Edna Loomis’ beautiful model’s body was stretched out in the tub, face up. A shower cap was over her golden hair, hiding all but a few damp strands at the base of her neck.

She would still have been beautiful except for the ugly hole in the center of her forehead.

I
WASN’T
SURPRISED
. I felt no emotion at all but anger, and at first that was directed at Edna Loomis. She was a fool. Walking a fence and trying to play on both sides.

And, too often, this was the way it ended.

I began to understand a lot of things as I stared down at Edna Loomis. My anger began to change direction. I could feel it boiling, working up to a head inside me. I left her there and went back into the living room, charging for the hall door.

The noise caught me in full step. I stopped and swung around. There was nothing behind me. There was no repetition of the noise. I stood listening, trying to recapture it, to hear it again.

A faint tinkling, a clatter of something metallic against wood. My mind caught and held that idea and then tried to locate the source of the noise.

“Nerves,” I said hopefully to myself.

But it didn’t ring right and so I moved now with slow, cautious steps, placing one foot gently in front of the other and letting my weight down on it before bringing the other one forward. That way I managed to inch over the rug without sound until I came to the kitchen door. It could only be the kitchen; I had already checked the emptiness of the bedroom and its closet.

The slow, snail-like progress irritated me. By the time I reached the kitchen doorway I was ready to explode inside. Taking a deep breath I plunged into the kitchen. My foot slapped on the linoleum. I tore a piece out of my fingernail in a wild lunge at the light switch. I caught it and flicked it down.

The bright lights overhead burst out at me, bouncing from harsh white walls. I couldn’t help it: my eyes squeezed themselves shut involuntarily.

Something hit me in the stomach. Something hard and at the same time yielding. I got my eyes open but still I couldn’t see anything. I reached blindly, got a handful of cloth and then hair. I tried to keep my balance by back-pedalling but all I could see were blurring, spinning walls, and I went down. There was a grunt and I felt the cloth and hair in my hands twist.

I closed my fingers down harder, rolled, and shot out a knee. The grunt became a sob of pain. I let loose, swearing.

“You damned fool,” I said, getting up. Reaching down, I helped Nelle to her feet. Her face was twisted as if she were badly hurt, but there was no pain in her eyes. She was about ready to bawl.

“Sorry,” I said, “but you shouldn’t have tried it.”

I put an arm about her waist and started for the big divan. Nelle was fighting back tears; I could feel her trembling beneath my fingers.

When we reached the divan her tears did cut loose. I sat down and drew her onto my lap. She tucked her head into my shoulder and bawled. I didn’t give a damn for anything right then.

Nelle came out of it first. With a final sniffle she stood up, then sat down a little distance from me on the divan. She rubbed her hip where my knee had hit it.

“Thanks, Nick,” she said.

“Where were you?” I asked inanely. As if I cared.

“Broom closet,” she said. She colored a little. “When I heard you I got scared and bolted out. The light came on and I put my head down. I thought I could …” She stopped and reached for a handkerchief. She used it. “… could,” she went on, “bull my way through. Like you do.”

“And the same thing happened to both of us,” I observed. “We get knocked on our respective cans.” Reaching out I took one of her hands.

“Did you see her?” I asked.

Nelle nodded with a jerky motion. She looked helpless sitting there. Her hair was tousled where my fingers had gone through it and the dark green blouse she wore was awry at the neckline. Reaching out, I straightened it.

“Did you …” I began. I changed it to, “Did Johnny?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I would have this morning. But I changed my mind.”

I knew that. I asked, “What changed it?”

She looked down at her hand in mine and then raised her eyes. A nerve twitched at the corner of her wide mouth. “Johnny,” she said.

I could feel the misery in her voice. I said, “Let’s get out of here.”

She let me draw her to her feet. Her voice was dull. “We’d better call the police,” she said.

“Not a chance. Powers is down here looking for me—for both of us.”

“That’s all right,” she said. She began to cry again, but with soft, half-hidden sobs right now. “They were right all along, Nick. I found out that—Johnny …”

“Not the way I see it,” I interrupted her.

“I wish you were right,” she said. “But I saw him. He was running out of here.” She stopped, refusing to look at me. “Edna Loomis hadn’t been dead long when I got up here.”

• • •

I said, “Keep going.”

Nelle’s hand was tightly in mine and I could feel her weight more and more as weariness dragged her steps. I spotted a dark doorway ahead and drew her in with a quick jerk. She sagged against me and I could feel her trembling, and feel her breast as it transmitted the violent beating of her heart.

“I can’t run any more,” she said.

“We can’t stay here,” I told her. “Take deep breaths, take as many as you can.”

I released her reluctantly and stepped to the edge of the doorway. I looked both ways along the darkened street. There was only darkness, with a lone street lamp dim at a distant corner. The nightmarish aspects of the past thirty minutes made me feel as if I were in the middle of a bad dream, needing desperately to awaken and yet unable to quite make it.

“We’ve got a chance,” I whispered to Nelle. I reached for her hand.

I could feel that she was about through. Her breathing was agonized and her whole weight seemed to be dragging against my hand right now. My own breath was about gone, too. There was a bitter, brassy taste in my mouth. But ahead was the street I wanted, and at last we stopped in the silent shadows by the corner.

There was no present pursuit and it made me wonder momentarily if it hadn’t been imagination before. But I knew better. Just as I knew it had been no accident that a prowl car was outside Edna Loomis’ apartment house when Nelle and I left there.

They turned a spot on us and Nelle bolted. Her panic started it and there was nothing I could do but follow. The damage had been done, all I could do was try to repair it. I got her into the basement garage and started hunting for Edna Loomis’ big car. Nelle knew it better than I, and so we located it quickly enough. The keys were in, as they were in any number of cars, and there was power enough to shoot us to the street and past the cops without even a hesitation of the big motor.

Nelle said that one of the cops was Powers. I wasn’t sure; I heard a” bullet whine by the window as we made a screaming skid and I couldn’t picture Powers as the kind to start shooting that way. Whoever it was started chasing us. And it didn’t seem that we had a chance. Besides being easily spotted in a car as fancy as Edna Loomis', we had the two-way radio set-up to pin us down.

At that we got enough head start to be out of sight just long enough to hide the car. We chose a neighborhood used car lot where the big job might go unobserved for a while. Then we caught a street car. We ended up where I wanted to go, in the deserted, silent warehouse district. But I knew it wouldn’t be long before Powers—if he was the one—figured that out, too, and came down on us.

Daylight wasn’t too far away and, with it, the warehouses would open. But I hoped for a few minutes breathing space before then. We came abreast of the doorway of Considine’s building and slipped into its partial shelter. I bent to study the lock. My shoulder hit the door and it swung inward. One look showed me that the lock had been jimmied.

“We weren’t first,” I said, and drew Nelle inside.

“This is Considine’s,” Nelle said.

“You’ve been here?”

“With Johnny,” she told me briefly.

We went up the stairs in heavy darkness. On Considine’s floor I lighted a match to locate the main doorway. It was like the one downstairs, hanging slightly open because the lock had been broken.

We stepped aside, away from the doorway. I put out the match and Nelle moved close to me. “I don’t like this,” I said. “Two doors jimmied.”

“Johnny had a key the other time,” Nelle said.

“When was this?”

“Last night.”

“After you left Edna Loomis?”

“Yes, after that.”

I said, “What did Johnny want?”

Her voice was low. “Papers. He hoped there was something the police might have missed.”

I was hoping the same thing. I said, “Unfortunately the cops don’t miss much.” I put a hand on her arm, silencing her, and listening. There was no noise at all from the outside. We might have been in a tomb.

I said, “What makes you think it was Johnny?” I added, “Besides seeing him run out of her place.”

She had some control over herself now and managed to speak without starting to cry. Some of the shock had worn off.

“The way he acted today,” she said. “This morning—yesterday morning, wasn’t it?—when I went back and told him about you hiring out to Edna Loomis. Johnny didn’t say anything then but he went out. He was gone a long time. When he came back it was late and he was terribly angry. He was mad at you and her and Kane Hall.”

“That leaves only you and Powers that he isn’t sore at,” I said. “But I still don’t see proof of his guilt.”

Nelle went on, her voice low and steady, “He kept saying that you’d turned on him. That you’d sold him out. I tried to show him that it didn’t make sense.” I could feel her hand on my arm, a light, warm pressure. “Because after I thought it over I knew you wouldn’t—not for ten thousand dollars or—or for her.”

“Nor both,” I said.

“I knew you had a reason,” Nelle said. “That you were playing some kind of game.”

I liked the feel of her close to me, of her hand touching my arm. “I was playing an angle,” I said. “But it went all to hell.”

“I tried to explain that to Johnny but he wouldn’t listen. He said, ‘He brought that damned Chimp up, didn’t he? He and Hall are helping Loomis sell me out.’ ”

“It doesn’t make much sense to me,” I said. “But it might to Johnny.”

“Then,” she said, “he went right out again. I was worried sick and I hurried to Edna Loomis’ apartment. I thought I could talk to her. I thought you might be there and—well, I might be able to find something to help.”

“When was this?”

“I got there shortly before you did.”

“I mean when was it that Johnny went out for the last time?”

“Just shortly before.” Nelle hesitated, judging it. “From the time he came in and accused you and Hall of helping sell him out until I—I found her wasn’t over a half hour.”

I said, “You were still willing to help Johnny when you went up to see Edna Loomis?”

“I am now,” she said quickly. “I’ll still help him, Nick. But I won’t lie for him any longer.”

“Johnny’s ranting made you change your mind?”

“No.” Her fingers tightened on my arm. “It was when I saw him running from her apartment. And then I found her like you did—in the bath.”

“Was the shower running when you found her?”

“Yes,” Nelle said. She sounded as if her throat held a huge, dry lump. “I turned it off—I thought it might help Johnny.”

“You thought he turned it on?”

Nelle said, “Yes, to hide the sound when he shot her.”