“He passed the bar examination,” Green said. “You can’t fool around with Dayton.”
I got up slowly and went over to the bookshelves. I took down the bound copy of the California Penal Code. I held it out to Dayton.
“Would you kindly find me the section that says I have to answer the questions?”
He was holding himself very still. He was going to slug me and we both knew it. But he was going to wait for the break. Which meant that he didn’t trust Green to back him up if he got out of line.
He said: “Every citizen has to co-operate with the police. In all ways, even by physical action, and especially by answering any questions of a non-incriminating nature the police think it necessary to ask.” His voice saying this was hard and bright and smooth.
“It works out that way,” I said. “Mostly by a process of direct or indirect intimidation. In law no such obligation exists. Nobody has to tell the police anything, any time, anywhere.”
“Aw shut up,” Green said impatiently. “You’re crawfishing and you know it. Sit down. Lennox’s wife has been murdered. In a guesthouse at their place in Encino. Lennox has skipped out. Anyway he can’t be found. So we’re looking for a suspect in a murder case. That satisfy you?”
I threw the book in a chair and went back to the couch across the table from Green. “So why come to me?” I asked. “I’ve never been near the house. I told you that.”
Green patted his thighs, up and down, up and down. He grinned at me quietly. Dayton was motionless in the chair. His eyes ate me.
“On account of your phone number was written on a pad in his room during the past twenty-four hours,” Green said. “It’s a date pad and yesterday was torn off but you could see the impression on today’s page. We don’t know when he called you up. We don’t know where he went or why or when. But we got to ask, natch.”
“Why in the guesthouse?” I asked, not expecting him to answer, but he did.
He blushed a little. “Seems she went there pretty often. At night. Had visitors. The help can see down through the trees where the lights show. Cars come and go, sometimes late, sometimes very late. Too much is enough, huh? Don’t kid yourself. Lennox is our boy. He went down that way about one in the A.M. The butler happened to see. He come back alone, maybe twenty minutes later. After that nothing. The lights stayed on. This morning no Lennox. The butler goes down by the guesthouse. The dame is as naked as a mermaid on the bed and let me tell you he don’t recognize her by her face. She practically ain’t got one. Beat to pieces with a bronze statuette of a monkey.”
“Terry Lennox wouldn’t do anything like that,” I said. “Sure she cheated on him. Old stuff. She always had. They’d been divorced and remarried. I don’t suppose it made him happy but why should he go crazy over it now?”
“Nobody knows that answer,” Green said patiently. “It happens all the time. Men and women both. A guy takes it and takes it and takes it. Then he don’t. He probably don’t know why himself, why at that particular instant he goes berserk. Only he does, and somebody’s dead. So we got business to do. So we ask you one simple question. So quit horsing around or we take you in.”
“He’s not going to tell you, Sergeant,” Dayton said acidly. “He read that law book. Like a lot of people that read a law book he thinks the law is in it.”
“You make the notes,” Green said, “and leave your brains alone. If you’re real good we’ll let you sing ‘Mother Machree’ at the police smoker.”
“The hell with you, Sarge, if I may say so with proper respect for your rank.”
“Let’s you and him fight,” I said to Green. “I’ll catch him when he drops.”
Dayton laid his note pad and ballpoint aside very carefully. He stood up with a bright gleam in his eyes. He walked over and stood in front of me.
“On your feet, bright boy. Just because I went to college don’t make me take any guff from a nit like you.”
I started to get up. I was still off balance when he hit me. He hooked me with a neat left and crossed it. Bells rang, but not for dinner. I sat down hard and shook my head. Dayton was still there. He was smiling now.
“Let’s try again,” he said. “You weren’t set that time. It wasn’t really kosher.”
I looked at Green. He was looking at his thumb as if studying a hangnail. I didn’t move or speak, waiting for him to look up. If I stood up again, Dayton would slug me again. He might slug me again anyhow. But if I stood up and he slugged me, I would take him to pieces, because the blows proved he was strictly a boxer. He put them in the right place but it would take a lot of them to wear me down.
Green said almost absently: “Smart work. Billy boy. You gave the man exactly what he wanted. Clam juice.”
Then he looked up and said mildly: “Once more, for the record, Marlowe. Last time you saw Terry Lennox, where and how and what was talked about, and where did you come from just now. Yes—or no?”
Dayton was standing loosely, nicely balanced. There was a soft sweet sheen in his eyes.
“How about the other guy?” I asked, ignoring him.
“What other guy was that?”
“In the hay, in the guesthouse. No clothes on. You’re not saying she had to go down there to play solitaire,”
“That comes later—when we get the husband.”
“Fine. If it’s not too much trouble when you already have a patsy.”
“You don’t talk, we take you in, Marlowe.”
“As a material witness?”
“As a material my foot. As a suspect. Suspicion of accessory after the fact of murder. Helping a suspect
