“Reading the funnies to my kid. He ought to be in bed. What’s doing?”
“Remember over at the Van Nuys yesterday you said a man could make a friend if he got you something on Weepy Moyer?”
“Yeah.”
“I need a friend.”
He didn’t sound very interested. “What you got on him?”
“I’m assuming it’s the same guy. Steelgrave.”
“Too much assuming, kid. We had him in the fishbowl because we thought the same. It didn’t pan any gold.”
“You got a tip. He set that tip up himself. So the night Stein was squibbed off he would be where you knew.”
“You just making this up—or got evidence?” He sounded a little less relaxed.
“If a man got out of jail on a pass from the jail doctor, could you prove that?”
There was a silence. I heard a child’s voice complaining and a woman’s voice speaking to the child.
“It’s happened,” French said heavily. “I dunno. That a tough order to fill. They’d send him under guard. Did he get to the guard?”
“That’s my theory.”
“Better sleep on it. Anything else?”
“I’m out at Stillwood Heights. In a big house where they were setting up for gambling and the local residents didn’t like it.”
“Read about it. Steelgrave there?”
“He’s here. I’m here alone with him.”
Another silence. The kid yelled and I thought I heard a slap. The kid yelled louder. French yelled at some body.
“Put him on the phone,” French said at last.
“You’re not bright tonight, Christy. Why would I call you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Stupid of me. What’s the address there?”
“I don’t know. But it’s up at the end of Tower Road in Stillwood Heights and the phone number is Halldale 9- 5033. I’ll be waiting for you.”
He repeated the number and said slowly: “This time you wait, huh?”
“It had to come sometime.”
The phone clicked and I hung up.
I went back through the house putting on lights as I found them and came out at the back door at the top of the stairs. There was a floodlight for the motor yard. I put that on. I went down the steps and walked along to the oleander bush. The private gate stood open as before. I swung it shut, hooked up the chain and clicked the padlock. I went back, walking slowly, looking up at the moon, sniffing the night air, listening to the tree frogs and the crickets. I went into the house and found the front door and put the light on over that. There was a big parking space in front and a circular lawn with roses. But you had to slide back around the house to the rear to get away.
The place was a dead end except for the driveway through the neighboring grounds. I wondered who lived there. A long way off through trees I could see the lights of a big house. Some Hollywood big shot, probably, some wizard of the slobbery kiss, and the pornographic dissolve.
I went back in and felt the gun I had just fired. It was cold enough. And Mr. Steelgrave was beginning to look as if he meant to stay dead.
No siren. But the sound of a car coming up the hill at last. I went out to meet it, me and my beautiful dream.
29
They came in as they should, big, tough and quiet their eyes flickering with watchfulness and cautious with disbelief.
“Nice place,” French said. “Where’s the customer?”
“In there,” Beifus said, without waiting for me to answer.
They went along the room without haste and stood in front of him looking down solemnly.
“Dead, wouldn’t you say?” Beifus remarked, opening up the act.
French leaned down and took the gun that lay on the floor with thumb and finger on the trigger guard. His eyes flicked sideways and he jerked his chin. Beifus took the other white-handled gun by sliding a pencil into the end of the barrel.
“Fingerprints all in the right places, I hope,” Beifus said. He sniffed. “Oh yeah, this baby’s been working. How’s yours, Christy?”
“Fired,” French said. He sniffed again. “But not recently.” He took a clip flash from his pocket and shone it into the barrel of the black gun. “Hours ago.”
“Down at Bay City, in a house on Wyoming Street,” I said.
