The girl behind me breathed hard, but she didn’t speak. I held the light on his face. He had been beaten to a pulp. One of his hands was flung out in a frozen gesture, the fingers curled. His overcoat was half twisted under him, as though he had rolled as he fell. His legs were crossed. There was a trickle as black as dirty oil at the corner of his mouth.
“Hold the flash on him,” I said, passing it back to her. “If it doesn’t make you sick.”
She took it and held it without a word, as steady as an old homicide veteran. I got my fountain pen flash out again and started to go through his pockets, trying not to move him.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she said tensely. “You shouldn’t touch him until the police come.”
“That’s right,” I said. “And the prowl car boys are not supposed to touch him until the K-car men come and they’re not supposed to touch him until the coroner’s examiner sees him and the photographers have photographed him and the fingerprint man has taken his prints. And do you know how long all that is liable to take out here? A couple of hours.”
“All right,” she said. “I suppose you’re always right. I guess you must be that kind of person. Somebody must have hated him to smash his head in like that.”
“I don’t suppose it was personal,” I growled. “Some people just like to smash heads.”
“Seeing that I don’t know what it’s all about, I couldn’t guess,” she said tartly.
I went through his clothes. He had loose silver and bills in one trouser pocket, a tooled leather keycase in the other, also a small knife. His left hip pocket yielded a small billfold with more currency, insurance cards, a driver’s license, a couple of receipts. In his coat loose match folders, a gold pencil clipped to a pocket, two thin cambric handerchiefs as fine and white as dry powdered snow. Then the enamel cigarette case from which I had seen him take his brown gold-tipped cigarettes. They were South American, from Montevideo. And in the other inside pocket a second cigarette case I hadn’t seen before. It was made of embroidered silk, a dragon on each side, a frame of imitation tortoiseshell so thin it was hardly there at all. I tickled the catch open and looked in at three oversized Russian cigarettes under the band of elastic. I pinched one. They felt old and dry and loose. They had hollow mouthpieces.
“He smoked the others,” I said over my shoulder. “These must have been for a lady friend. He would be a lad who would have a lot of lady friends.”
The girl was bent over, breathing on my neck now. “Didn’t you know him?”
“I only met him tonight. He hired me for a bodyguasd.”
“Some bodyguard.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“I’m sorry,” she almost whispered. “Of course I don’t know the circumstances. Do you suppose those could be jujus? Can I look?”
I passed the embroidered case back to her.
“I knew a guy once who smoked jujus,” she said. “Three highballs and three sticks of tea and it took a pipe wrench to get him off the chandelier.”
“Hold the light steady.”
There was a rustling pause. Then she spoke again.
“I’m sorry.” She handed the case down again and I slipped it back in his pocket. That seemed to be all. All it proved was that he hadn’t been cleaned out.
I stood up and took my wallet out. The five twenties were still in it.
“High class boys,” I said. “They only took the large money.”
The flash was drooping to the ground. I put my wallet away again, clipped my own small flash to my pocket and reached suddenly for the little gun she was still holding in the same hand with the flashlight. She dropped the flashlight, but I got the gun. She stepped back quickly and I reached down for the light. I put it on her face for a moment, then snapped it off.
“You didn’t have to be rough,” she said, putting her hands down into the pockets of a long rough coat with flaring shoulders. “I didn’t think you killed him.”
I liked the cool quiet of her voice. I liked her nerve. We stood in the darkness, face to face, not saying anything for a moment. I could see the brush and light in the sky.
I put the light on her face and she blinked. It was a small neat vibrant face with large eyes. A face with bone under the skin, fine drawn like a Cremona violin. A very nice face.
“Your hair’s red,” I said. “You look Irish.”
“And my name’s Riordan. So what? Put that light out. It’s not red, it’s auburn.”
I put it out. “What’s your first name?”
“Anne. And don’t call me Annie.”
“What are you doing around here?”
“Sometimes at night I go riding. Just restless. I live alone. I’m an orphan. I know all this neighborhood like a book. I just happened to be riding along and noticed a light flickering down in the hollow. It seemed a little cold for love. And they don’t use lights, do they?”
“I never did. You take some awful chances, Miss Riordan.”
“I think I said the same about you. I had a gun. I wasn’t afraid. There’s no law against going down there.”
“Uh-huh. Only the law of self preservation. Here. It’s not my night to be clever. I suppose you have a permit for the gun.” I held it out to her, butt first.
She took it and tucked it down into her pocket. “Strange how curious people can be, isn’t it? I write a little. Feature articles.”
“Any money in it?”
“Very damned little. What were you looking for — in his pockets?”
“Nothing in particular. I’m a great guy to snoop around. We had eight thousand dollars to buy back some stolen jewelry for a lady. We got hijacked. Why they killed him I don’t know. He didn’t strike me as a fellow who would put up much of a fight. And I didn’t hear a fight. I was down in the hollow when he was jumped. He was in the car, up above. We were supposed to drive down into the hollow but there didn’t seem to be room for the car without scratching it up. So I went down there on foot and while I was down there they must have stuck him up. Then one of them got into the car and dry-guiched me. I thought he was still in the car, of course.”
“That doesn’t make you so terribly dumb,” she said.
“There was something wrong with the job from the start. I could feel it. But I needed the money. Now I have to go to the cops and eat dirt. Will you drive me to Montemar Vista? I left my car there. He lived there.”
“Sure. But shouldn’t somebody stay with him? You could take my car — or I could go call the cops.”
I looked at the dial of my watch. The faintly glowing hands said that it was getting towards midnight.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know why not. I just feel it that way. I’ll play it alone.”
She said nothing. We went back down the hill and got into her little car and she started it and jockeyed it around without lights and drove it back up the hill and eased it past the barrier. A block away she sprang the lights on.
My head ached. We didn’t speak until we came level with the first house on the paved part of the street. Then she said:
“You need a drink. Why not go back to my house and have one? You can phone the law from there. They have to come from West Los Angeles anyway. There’s nothing up here but a fire station.”
“Just keep on going down to the coast. I’ll play it solo.”
“But why? I’m not afraid of them. My story might help you.”
“I don’t want any help. I’ve got to think. I want to be by myself for a while.”
“I — okey,” she said.
She made a vague sound in her throat and turned on to the boulevard. We came to the service station at the coast highway and turned north to Montemar Vista and the sidewalk cafe there. It was lit up like a luxury liner. The girl pulled over on to the shoulder and I got out and stood holding the door.
I fumbled a card out of my wallet and passed it in to her. “Some day you may need a strong back,” I said. “Let me know. But don’t call me if it’s brain work.”
