George go.”
Breeze drank some more of his drink and scratched his chin with a thumbnail like the blade of a shovel.
“After that George worked in a general store at Simi for a man named Sutcliff. It was a credit business with little books for each customer and George would have trouble with the books. He would forget to write the stuff down or write it in the wrong book and some of the customers would straighten him out and some would let George forget. So Sutcliff thought maybe George would do better at something else, and George came to L.A. He had come into a little money, not much, but enough for him to get a license and put up a bond and get himself a piece of an office. I was over there. What he had was desk room with another guy who claims he is selling Christmas cards. Name of Marsh. If George had a customer, the arrangement was Marsh would go for a walk. Marsh says he didn’t know where George lived and George didn’t have any customers. That is, no business came into the office that Marsh knows about. But George put an ad in the paper and he might have got a customer out of that. I guess he did, because about a week ago Marsh found a note on his desk that George would be out of town for a few days. That’s the last he heard of him. So George went over to Court Street and took an apartment under the name of Anson and got bumped off. And that’s all we know about George so far. Kind of a pathetic case.”
He looked at me with a level uncurious gaze and raised his glass to his lips.
“What about this ad?”
Breeze put the glass down and dug a thin piece of paper out of his wallet and put it down on the cocktail table. I went over and picked it up and read it. It said:
Why worry? Why be doubtful or confused? Why be gnawed by suspicion? Consult cool, careful, confidential, discreet investigator. George Anson Phillips. Glenview 9521.
I put it down on the glass again.
“It ain’t any worse than lots of business personals,” Breeze said. “It don’t seem to be aimed at the carriage trade.”
Spangler said: “The girl in the office wrote it for him. She said she could hardly keep from laughing, but George thought it was swell. The Hollywood Boulevard office of the Chronicle.”
“You checked that fast,” I said.
“We don’t have any trouble getting information,” Breeze said. “Except maybe from you.”
“What about Hench?”
“Nothing about Hench. Him and the girl were having a liquor party. They would drink a little and sing a little and scrap a little and listen to the radio and go out to eat once in a while, when they thought of it. I guess it had been going on for days. Just as well we stopped it. The girl has two bad eyes. The next round Hench might have broken her neck. The world is full of bums like Hench—and his girl.”
“What about the gun Hench said wasn’t his?”
“It’s the right gun. We don’t have the slug yet, but we have the shell. It was under George’s body and it checks. We had a couple more fired and comparisoned the ejector marks and the firing pin dents.”
“You believe somebody planted it under Hench’s pillow?”
“Sure. Why would Hench shoot Phillips? He didn’t know him.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know it,” Breeze said, spreading his hands. “Look, there are things you know because you have them down in black and white. And there are things you know because they are reasonable and have to be so. You don’t shoot somebody and then make a lot of racket calling attention to yourself, and all the time you have the gun under your pillow. The girl was with Hench all day. If Hench shot anybody, she would have some idea. She doesn’t have any such idea. She would spill, if she had. What is Hench to her? A guy to play around with, no more. Look, forget Hench. The guy who did the shooting hears the loud radio and knows it will cover a shot. But all the same he saps Phillips and drags him into the bathroom and shuts the door before he shoots him. He’s not drunk. He’s minding his own business, and careful. He goes out, shuts the bathroom door, the radio stops, Hench and the girl go out to eat. Just happens that way.”
“How do you know the radio stopped?”
“I was told,” Breeze said calmly. “Other people live in that dump. Take it the radio stopped and they went out. Not quiet. The killer steps out of the apartment and Hench’s door is open. That must be because otherwise he wouldn’t think anything about Hench’s door.”
“People don’t leave their doors open in apartment houses. Especially in districts like that.”
“Drunks do. Drunks are careless. Their minds don’t focus well. And they only think of one thing at a time. The door was open—just a little maybe, but open. The killer went in and ditched his gun on the bed and found another gun there. He took that away, just to make it look worse for Hench.”
“You can check the gun,” I said.
“Hench’s gun? We’ll try to, but Hench says he doesn’t know the number. If we find it, we might do something there. I doubt it. The gun we have we will try to check, but you know how those things are. You get just so far along and you think it is going to open up for you, and then the trail dies out cold. A dead end. Anything else you can think of that we might know that might be a help to you in your business?”
“I’m getting tired,” I said. “My imagination isn’t working very well.”
“You were doing fine a while back,” Breeze said. “On the Cassidy case.”
I didn’t say anything. I filled my pipe up again but it was too hot to light. I laid it on the edge of the table to cool off.
“It’s God’s truth,” Breeze said slowly, “that I don’t know what to make of you. I can’t see you deliberately covering up on any murder. And neither can I see you knowing as little about all this as you pretend to know.”
I didn’t say anything, again.
Breeze leaned over to revolve his cigar butt in the tray until he had killed the fire. He finished his drink, put on
