Dexter. With the door open, the stench was beginning to pour into the room. I pushed Barry forward, and Eleanor took Brooks's arm.
'I think you should go inside, Mr. Brooks,' she said politely.
Brooks was in shock. 'Thank you, my dear,' he said in a courtly manner. 'I believe I will.' He looked older than J. Paul Getty.
All of us filed in. I closed the door against the smell. Dexter, the automatic trained squarely on Barry, said into the headset, 'Th-th-that's all, folks,' and took it off. Then he gave me the broadest smile I'd ever seen.
'That's all,' Brooks repeated lifelessly.
'Any trouble getting in?' I asked Dexter.
'Trouble?' Dexter said. 'I tell the man I come for the dead animal and he almost pick me up and carry me in.' He beamed.
'Five million dollars,' Merryman said from the floor.
Dexter gave me a quick glance. 'Say what?' he said.
'Five million. Cash. Today,' Merryman said. He gave up looking at me and looked at Dexter. 'Seven million. In an hour, if necessary.'
'Dick,' I said, 'Your little girl just did a spiritual minstrel show. It's going to be on TV for some time to come.'
'I can fix it.' Merryman stopped craning his neck and rolled onto his back. 'I'll think of something.'
'Man don't let go,' Dexter said admiringly.
'We can do business,' Merryman said. 'Seven million dollars.'
'Must be makin' a pile of money.'
'Oh, he likes the money, all right,' I said, 'but what he loves is the little girls.'
Dexter stared at Merryman and made his eyes glimmer. Merryman, after a moment, looked away. 'I ain't forgettin' that,' Dexter said softly. 'You gone be a big hit in the joint,' he said to Merryman. 'All them teeth. Man, they gone to be linin' up for you. You a two-cartons-of-Marlboro man any day. In about two weeks, you gone to have a rear end you can slip your head into. Probably you be pretty flexible by then, too.'
He got up and crossed the room to Merryman, towering over him. 'So I gone do you a favor,' he said, 'slow them boys down a week or two. Give you a little time to get acclimated. You'll thank me later.' Then he lifted his foot and put his shoe on Merryman's face. It was a very big shoe, black and highly polished. He ground it around for a while over Merryman's mouth and nose as though he were putting out a cigarette.
'What about Angel?' Eleanor said, watching with a kind of clinical interest.
'Thank you, Eleanor,' I said. 'Go out and get her and Mary Claire, would you? Mary Claire may take a little persuasion.'
She left the room and I turned to Dexter. 'May I borrow one of your guns?' I said.
'Wif pleasure.' He reversed it and handed it to me with a flourish, butt-first. 'You,' I said to Barry. 'Down on your knees.'
He looked from me to Dexter. Merryman was trying very quietly to spit out the taste of Dexter's shoe. His nose was bleeding nicely. Brooks was staring at a wall, looking like a man trying to do long division in his head. Barry went down on one knee and gave me a great sacrificial gaze.
'You're doing great,' I said. 'Keep going.' He closed his eyes and knelt.
'Now turn around. Face the wall.' I held out a hand to Dexter, and Dexter materialized his other pistol from the waistband of his uniform trousers. He handed it to me.
I pressed the barrel of the automatic against the base of Barry's well-barbered skull. An involuntary muscular ripple ran down his back. 'You enjoyed yourself with Sally Oldfield,' I said, 'and with Eleanor. You enjoyed yourself so much with Sally that you left a little souvenir on her face, didn't you? After you pulled out her fingernails. If you hadn't done that, Barry,' I said, 'if you hadn't masturbated on her, I think I probably would have given you to the police. As it is, I won't.'
'No,' he said. 'Please. You can't.'
'I sure can,' I said. Dexter was watching me with one eyebrow elevated. I even had Merryman's attention.
'Good-bye, Barry,' I said. I pushed the gun against his head sharply and pulled the trigger of the other one.
Barry swayed once and collapsed. He lay on the floor like something swatted.
Eleanor came in with Angel. She was carrying Angel's kitten. She looked from Barry to me with wide eyes. I held up the other gun, the one I'd fired into the floor.
'He fainted,' I said. 'Let's call Hammond.'
Hammond brought five men with him, one of them the redoubtable Um Hinckley. They stood there clutching handkerchiefs to their faces and looking bewildered at the two men on the floor, the vacant lawyer, and the little girl.
'Welcome,' I said, 'to the Burned-Over District.'
Hammond ranted at me while I told him what had happened. He ranted at me while his men put cuffs on Merryman, Brooks, and Barry and hauled them out to patrol cars. He continued to rant while his men brought in Mary Claire, who'd been hiding behind the podium. He stopped ranting when I took him down into the basement and showed him Ellis Fauntleroy hanging from his meat hook with his sign around his neck. When he saw Fauntleroy, he had a photographer start taking pictures.
'The Santa Monica TraveLodge,' I said. 'Room three-eleven.'
'Tell me the whole thing again,' he growled. 'I wasn't listening.'
I told it again while I led him on a tour of the basement. 'Macaroons,' he said, 'this'll make the news. Hell, it'll make Time.'
'You're out of Records,' I said. 'It's all yours.'
'You mean that?' he said suspiciously.
'You figure out how to keep me to a minimum,' I said. 'This is the work of Alvin Hammond, grade-A cop.'
In a drawer in Merryman's office we found stacks of small bills, almost thirty thousand dollars' worth. I flipped through it, counting, while Hammond watched.
'Mad money?' Hammond asked.
'He was pretty mad,' I said. 'But we didn't find this,' I added, pocketing it. Hammond looked at me, the picture of innocence.
'Find what?' he said.
The only time he went stubborn was when we had to decide what to do with Angel. Merryman had brought her out of her trance as we all watched, and she had watched the proceedings in silence ever since, shrugging off Eleanor's attempts to comfort her.
'She goes to the Hall,' Hammond said doggedly. 'Her mother's in the can.'
'Her father isn't,' I said. 'She hasn't done anything wrong.' We were back in the dressing room.
'She's a material witness.'
'She's a little girl.'
'They got a place for little girls at the Hall.' Hammond's mouth was as straight and implacable as the center line in a game of tug-of-war. Angel looked up at us indifferently. She might have been sleepwalking.
'Al,' I said curtly, 'she's going home.'
'Little girl belongs at home,' Dexter said. It was the first time he'd spoken since the police arrived.
'Thank you for your opinion,' Hammond said with the charm he reserves for black people.
'Tell your cops to go outside,' I said to Hammond.
He gave me a hard, stubborn stare, then motioned them out of the room. I took the money from Merryman's desk out of my pocket and gave roughly half of it to Dexter. Hammond scratched the back of his neck in disbelief.
'Without this man,' I said to Hammond, 'You'd still be watching Um Hinckley pick his nose.'
'How you doin',' Dexter said to Hammond with the aloofness of a subatomic particle that can pass through a cubic foot of solid lead without hitting anything. He put the money into his pocket.
'This is the Spirit Darnell,' I said to Hammond. 'Also known as Dexter Smith.'
