Lost Lady Page 6

One eye appeared in the slit, and Marty held out his badge. “Miss Laverne?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “May we come in?”

  Again that hesitation. Then she slipped the bolt and opened the door. But before following us into the apartment she glanced swiftly up and down the hall.

  “Looking for someone?” I asked, and she gave me a quick glance that indicated that I might easily become unpopular with her.

  We stepped through a small foyer into a beautiful living room. But it wasn’t the room that caught my eye, it was the dame in it.

  If Dean Halliday was paying for that, he was getting his money’s worth, whatever it cost him. Dolores was the show-girl type, and she wasn’t bashful about showing it. She was blonde as noon and her complexion was something you could make color photographs of. She was wearing a hostess robe that she’d been a trifle careless about closing, and underneath was a sheer—a very sheer-nightgown. Her feet had been shoved into a pair of gold mules, and she looked as if she might have been in bed, but not asleep.

  “What’s wrong?” she inquired, looking at us as though she didn’t know whether to be friendly or hostile.

  “Nothing,” answered Marty. “Just want to have a little chat with you.”

  “About what?”

  “Oh, nothing special.” He was walking around the room without appearing to do so, and I was going through the same routine.

  “Nice place you got, Miss Laverne.”

  “It’s O.K.”

  “Bet they nick you heavy for it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Been working recently?”

  Her eyes froze. She said, “You might call it that.”

  “Where?”

  She walked in front of him, apparently having decided to play it tough. She said, “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want with me. Whatever you want, let’s get it over with.”

  “Sure. Sure. Whatever you say, Miss Laverne. You here alone? Now, I mean.”

  “Of course I’m alone.”

  Marty moved fast. He went through a door, was out of sight perhaps three seconds, and came back.

  With him was a man about thirty-two years of age, slim, dark, Latin type. He was about five-nine and weighed perhaps 160. He was startled, but he didn’t look as though he were afraid. He had one of those faces that tell you nothing. Marty said to Dolores, “Of course you’re alone.”

  I was looking at the slim, dark man. I imagine he’d have looked fancy as hell if he’d been dressed in street clothes. But he wasn’t. He had on pajamas, which seemed to check with Dolores’ nightgown.

  Marty smiled frostily at Dolores Laverne. “Shame on you,” he chided. “What will Dean Halliday say when he hears about this?”

  Chapter Eight

  Dolores Laverne had a beautiful mouth, the sort that magazine advertisements call kissable. She opened those rich red lips now and said something. What she said was “You lousy cop bastard.”

  Marty Walsh took it smiling. He said, “What’s the matter? The wrong policeman make a pass at you once?”

  I flashed him a quick look. He was needling Dolores, and that was my cue. This is how it works: You’ve got some important interrogation to do on someone you think is going to hold out on you. So one member of the investigating team plays rough and tough, the other one tries to pacify him. The one that’s gentle—in this case it was going to be me—usually gets the information.

  Dolores was so mad she was quivering, and when that gal quivered it was something to watch.

  “Who makes passes at me,” snapped Dolores, “is none of your damn business. But I never sunk so low as to take on a cop.”

  “That ain’t the way I heard it.”

  I said, “Take it easy, Marty. No sense getting mad.”

  “Who says there ain’t? Is she co-operating? Didn’t she lie when she said she was alone? Didn’t she call me a cop bastard?”

  I said, “Where’s this getting us? You’re mad, Marty, and so is Miss Laverne. You stand up there calling each other names. It doesn’t figure to pay off.”

  Marty snapped, “It’ll pay off. Now listen, Miss Laverne, and answer this straight: When did you last see the guy that’s keeping you—this Halliday character?”

  “I’m telling you nothing.” She turned to me. “You look like a half-decent sort,” she said grudgingly. “How can you stand working with a horses’s ass like him?”

  “Keep your shirt on, Dolores,” I advised, thinking at the same time it’d be a lot more fun if she didn’t. “Marty’s a real good detective. He just blows his cork once in a while. What he’s asking is reasonable. It’s why we’re here.

  We need some answers, and we hoped you could come up with them.”

  “I’ll talk to you,” she said. I smiled inside. The routine had hit the pay dirt even quicker than we had expected. “I saw Dean Halliday tonight. He left here maybe an hour ago.”

  “Was this lad here when Halliday was?”

  She smiled ever so slightly. “Be yourself, feller. That ain’t how it works. Halliday is business. Vince is fun.”

  Marty edged back into the scene, addressing his words to the man in pajamas. “Vince who?” he asked.

  “Montero.” The voice was low, flat, expressionless.

  “Mex?”

  “American.”

  “You Dolores’ pimp?” That was throwing it at him pretty strong, but he never changed expression. “What else do you do for a living?” asked Marty.

  “Shill.”

  “Where?”

  “County. Out of your territory.”

  “Got a job now?”

  “You know better. Heat’s on in the county. Ever since the grand jury started raising a stink, the sheriff’s office decided dice games were illegal.”

  “Where was this dice game?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Could you show us the house?”

  “I could find you a couple of deputies who might know.”

  “Wise guy, huh?”

  Vince Montero said nothing. Marty had been studying Montero’s long, slender fingers.

  “So you were a dice switcher in a protected spot, huh?”

  “Shill,” corrected Montero.

  “Kind of game you was working, they don’t need a shill. When they got customers, it’s because those customers want to play. They don’t need a come-on. But the house needs a guy like you. Fast with his hands. Ring in new dice according to whether they’re playing the pass or don’t-pass.”

  Montero merely shrugged.

  “Dean Halliday one of your customers?” Marty asked.

  “I don’t know Halliday.”

  “Ever have any women customers?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Girl named Iris Kent?”

  “I didn’t know any of them by name. I was just the shill.”

  “You got a goddamn bad memory. Maybe if I took you into a private room down at the station and worked you over a little, you might start remembering.”

  Vince said nothing.

  Dolores had kept silent long enough. She said to me, “What’s this all about, Officer?”

  I told her my name was O’Leary. Danny O’Leary. She smiled her thanks for the information, as though it were important, and she had a lot of promise wrapped up in that smile. It was as though she said, “You play on my team and you won’t regret it.”

  “Just something we wanted to know,” I said. “You and the boy friend are playing it wrong. One way or the other, we’ll come up with the answers. You can make it easy for us, is all.”

  “Answers about what?”

  I caught the go-ahead signal in Marty’s eye. “Mostly Dean Halliday. Just for the record, and so we can quit a lot of unnecessary horsing around, we know how you and Halliday stand. We know he’s giving you the money to pay for this layout. I been around enough to know the score. Montero, for instance. We’re not interested in your morals. We don’t care who’s keeping you, and we care even
less if you’re cheating on him. But you know a lot of things about Halliday that could be interesting. Have I been frank enough?”

  She nodded. “It sounds reasonable. What about Halliday?”

  “Was he here last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “The night before?”

  “For a while.”

  “How much of a while?”

  She backed away from that one. She said, “I don’t remember exactly.”

  Vince Montero broke in. He was a cool customer, that lad. “Almost all night,” he said. “And how I know is that I telephoned twice to find out was the coast clear. Dolores and I got signals. Halliday was here.”

  Marty said, “Nice going, Vince. You figure we hoped she’d say Halliday left early.”

  Laverne spoke to me again. “What’s Dean got into?”

  I said, “You’ll know in the morning, anyway, so I might as well tell you. He’s messed up in a murder.”

  A quick warning glance passed between her and Montero. I didn’t miss it and neither did Marty.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I don’t kid about murder. Marty Walsh, here, works Homicide.”

  “Well, let him work it, then. Anything so long as he keeps away from me.”

  “Someday, sister,” growled Marty, “you’re gonna get your ears pinned back.”

  I said, “Ah, for Christ’s sake, Marty, lay off the girl, will you? How she lives is her business. She had a right getting sore the way we barged in. You two keep fighting like a pair of alley cats, we’re wasting our time.”

  “Look who’s telling me off,” sneered Marty, putting on a good show. “A goddamn sergeant.”

  Dolores said, “I ain’t got anything to hide, but I’m not being shoved around, either. If you’ll get that cockroach out of here, O’Leary, I’ll tell you what I know.”

  I looked at Marty and left it up to him. He growled and fumed, but finally he checked out. Said he’d be waiting in the car downstairs. Just before making his exit he said, “Better keep Vince in the act, Dolores. This smart cop might start beating his time.”

  It was a fine exit line. As soon as the door closed behind Marty, Dolores started sounding off about what she thought of Marty Walsh. Marty would have loved it. What it added up to was that his strategy was paying off. It meant she’d tell me just about anything that didn’t spoil her graft with Halliday, even if only to make a bum out of Walsh.

  Vince disappeared just long enough to slip a robe over his pajamas. He came back with a cigarette between his lips. He was still impassive, expressionless. He looked at me and said, “Sure I switched dice. Operating around here, you gotta win all the time or they don’t get out from under.”

  I said, “Thanks, Vince.”

  “I ain’t doing it for you. I’m doing it because I got sense enough to know you could find out anyway.”

  “Iris Kent ever come around to the spots you worked?”

  “I think so. What I mean is that I don’t positively know her. But someone told me one night she was Halliday’s sister-in-law.”

  “Halliday ever show up with his wife?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Dolores broke in. She was a different person now that Marty had checked out. “Who got murdered,” she asked, “and where does Dean figure?”

  “We don’t know where he comes in,” I said with apparent candor. “But his wife’s the one who got knocked off. We found her body tonight in a motel.”

  Dolores smiled, then threw back her head and laughed. She thought it was excruciatingly funny: Halliday playing and all the time his wife cheating on him. That’s the only way a motel could figure to her, and I wasn’t telling her different.

  I said, “Could be soft for you, Dolores. Mrs. Halliday had the dough. Maybe he inherits.”

  The gleam in her eye was avaricious. “Might be a break, at that,” she conceded.

  “Interesting thought,” I said.

  “Not that interesting.” She was one jump ahead of me. “My racket is simple. Oldest profession. Pleasant work. I’m not interested in murder.”

  I turned back to Vince. I was careful to be friendly, but not to overplay it. They had to be reminded that I was a working cop, or they’d get suspicious.

  “It happened night before last,” I said. “If Halliday spent the night here like you say, Vince, that clears him. He couldn’t ask for a better alibi. It also makes me wonder what you were doing.”

  He gave me a thin, mirthless smile. “I been feeling my way,” he admitted. “I didn’t know what Walsh was driving at. But first of all let me make one thing clear: I wouldn’t be mixed up in this. Nothing to gain.”

  “No? Suppose on account of Mrs. Halliday dying, her husband inherits a packet of dough. Dolores comes in for special treatment. You’re still Dolores’ boy friend. Yeah, you figure, all right.”

  “Halliday left about ten,” interrupted Dolores. “Half an hour later Vince was here with me. He stayed until after breakfast.”

  “Says who? Just you and him?”

  “Just us. But that’s how it was. I can’t give any proof except negative.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning you won’t be able to prove that Vince was anywhere else after ten o’clock, and sooner or later you might turn up a little evidence that Halliday was not here.”

  I said that was reasonable enough, though not exactly conclusive. Then I said, “Halliday been worried lately?”

  She hesitated, but only briefly. “He’s been having some trouble with his wife about money, but that’s nothing new.”

  We tossed the ball back and forth for a while longer. Then I got up and said I’d be traveling. Dolores asked when she’d see me again. I grinned and said that if Vince wasn’t there I’d try to date her up. She let me understand —and let him understand, too—that I needn’t be too squeamish. What went on between her and Vince was nice, clean romance. He wasn’t concerned about her peddling her hips to Dean Halliday for money or to me for police friendship. They didn’t say it in so many words, but I got the idea. A pimp might get jealous of another pimp, but a business deal wouldn’t ever make him mad.

  Marty was sitting in the car smoking when I climbed under the wheel. He said, “How’d you make out, Danny?”

  “Fine. They called you a lot of dirty names.”

  He chuckled. “It sure worked good, didn’t it?”

  “I’ll say.” As we drove toward the station, I told him what had happened. He seemed to find it interesting.

  When I finished, I said, “You reckon they’re leveling, Marty?”

  “More or less. But we got to be sure. If Halliday was getting an all-night treatment, then we can figure Montero in. If he wasn’t there, Montero still might be mixed up in the Dorothy Halliday killing. Him alone or him and Dolores both. It might sound like a long chance, but in my experience I ain’t ever found a stronger murder motive than money.”

  Marty was just about to throw the car into gear when a couple of uniform boys from the station emerged from the driveway leading to the garage behind Dolores Laverne’s apartment house. They spotted us there at the curb and hurried over.

  “That you, Lieutenant?” one of them asked.

  “Yeah,” Marty answered. “What have you boys been up to back there?”

  “We just found Mrs. Halliday’s car. It’s in a garage back of this apartment house.”

  Chapter Nine

  The network of crime detection was spreading. Detective specialists from downtown and also from our division were out checking every conceivable angle. They wanted to know everything there was to know about everybody who might even be remotely concerned.

  Men were checking on the Hallidays, particularly on Dean Halliday; on their friends, including Robert Bayless; the maid and cook who worked at the Halliday home; the gardener who came in twice a week; the man who serviced their pool. They were tabbing on Dolores Laverne and on Vince Montero. Experts were pulling packages at the Record Bure
au and checking old crime reports. Ninety-nine per cent of all the work we were doing gave no promise of paying off. One per cent might. The trouble was nobody knew, at this stage of the game, which was the important one per cent.

  Bert Lane briefed us about the finding of Dorothy Halliday’s Cadillac convertible. At the rear of the house in which Dean Halliday rented an apartment for Dolores Laverne was a line of garages. There were overhead doors that could close, but Bert had been informed that they usually were not closed. There was space for one car per apartment. There were a few vacancies in the building, so that there were some vacant garage spaces, and certain two-car tenants had been in the habit of using double their allotment of space. One of these tenants who owned two cars had been somewhat annoyed when a nifty Cad had shown up forty-eight hours previously to occupy the space that his wife had been using. At first he’d thought nothing of it except that the apartment house had come up with a new tenant. He mentioned it to the superintendent when he saw him, and the super said there were no new tenants. When no one moved the car for two days the super got annoyed, thinking someone was playing him for a sucker for a free garage, and called the police. Barker happened to take the call, recognized the address as Dolores Laverne’s, and sent two of the boys to check at once. It could mean anything, everything, or nothing. The technical boys were giving the car the works.

  Maybe all this sounds diffuse and pointless, especially if you don’t know how police work is really done. There isn’t much Sherlock Holmes stuff in actual crime investigation. There isn’t any superman who sits in a paneled office and masterminds things.

  Deduction? Sure, and a hell of a lot of it. Even inspiration at times. But mostly it’s grind and legwork and losing sleep and not eating meals when you’re hungry; it’s using the tremendous facilities of a big crime-catching organization; it’s digging through old files and reports; it’s endless telephoning -and interviews, most of which don’t pay off. Except rarely, it isn’t pyrotechnic, it isn’t spectacular. It’s all based on the theory that if a crime has been committed, a trail has been left with an arrow pointing to the guilty person or persons. It’s founded on the certainty that the criminal cannot afford to make one single mistake; that if he does, he’s hooked. It’s based on the theory that the cops can make plenty of mistakes and that they’ve only got to do one right thing; the one right thing at the one right time that will get them the man they’re after. You commit a felony, and the machinery starts moving. Just a little bit of it moves at first, and then more and more and more—a chain reaction. It keeps on growing, reaching out in all directions. And ninety-nine times out of one hundred, the person you want is right there in the middle of it. If his foot has slipped anywhere along the line, that fact will eventually become evident. And when it does, there’s a pinch, an interrogation, a booking, and presentation of the facts to the district attorney’s office, and after that the cops are through except that when the case comes to trial they’re called as witnesses.