James Chase - Lay Her Among the Lilies

“Well, it sounds like him. I’ve seen him in that hat.”

I went over the description again, in detail and carefully.

“Yeah,” Mike said. “That sounds like him all right. He’s never without a cheroot and his nose and right ear are flattened. Must be the guy.”

I felt vaguely excited.

“Well, thanks, Mike.”

I went back to the other two who had been watching me from across the room.

“Mike’s identified Big Boy,” I told them. “He’s a guy named Benny Dwan, and guess what: he works for Salzer.”

“Isn’t it marvellous how you find things out?” Kerman said, grinning. “So what are you going to do?”

“Tip Mifflin,” I said. “Wait a second, will you? I’ll call him now.”

They told me at Police Headquarters that Mifflin had gone home. I turned up his home telephone number in the book and put the call through. After a delay, Mifflin’s voice came over the line. He sounded sleepy and exasperated.

“This is Malloy,” I told him. “Sorry to wake you up, Tim, but I’m pretty sure I can identify the guy who rubbed out Eudora Drew.”

“You can?” Mifflin’s voice brightened. “Say, that’s fine. Who is he?”

“Benny Dwan. And get this, Tim. He works for Salzer. If you go out to the sanatorium right now you might lay your hooks into him.”

There was a long, heavy silence. I waited, grinning, imagining Mifflin’s expression.

“Salzer?” he said at last. His voice sounded as if he had a mouth full of hot potatoes.

“That’s right. Brandon’s little pal.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“Yeah. Anyway, I’ll identify him for you, and so will Paula. We’d be glad to.”

“You will?” Indecision and agony crept into his voice.

“Sure. Of course, Salzer may be annoyed, but apart from Brandon, who cares about Salzer?”

“Aw, hell!” Mifflin said in disgust. “I’ll have to have a word with Brandon. I’m not stirring up that kind of trouble.”

“Go ahead and have a word with him. Be sure to tell him I’m phoning the night editor of the Herald with this story. I wouldn’t like Dwan to slip through your fingers because Brandon doesn’t want to upset his little pal.”

“Don’t do that!” Mifflin yelled. “Listen, Vic, for God’s sake, don’t go monkeying with the press. That’s something Brandon won’t stand for.”

“Pity, because that’s what I’m going to do. Tell him, and get after Dwan unless you want the press to get after you. So long, Tim,” and while he was still yelling I hung up.

Paula and Kerman had come over to the phone booth and were listening.

“Got him in an uproar?” Kerman asked, rubbing his hands.

“Just a little hysterical. They don’t seem anxious to annoy Salzer.” I dialled, waited, then, when a man’s voice announced, “Herald Offices”, I asked to be put through to the night editor.

It took me about two minutes to give him the story. He accepted it the way a starving man accepts a five-course lunch.

“Salzer sort of pampers Brandon,” I explained. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t try to hush this up.”

“It won’t be my fault if he succeeds,” the night editor said with a ghoulish laugh. “Thanks, Malloy. I’ve been looking for a club to beat that rat with. Leave it to me. I’ll fix him.”

I hung up and moved out of the booth.

“Something tells me I’ve started a little trouble,” I said. “If my bet’s right, Brandon won’t have pleasant dreams tonight.”

“What a shame,” Kerman said.

Drive North along Orchid Boulevard, past the Santa Rosa Estate, and eventually you will come to a narrow road which leads to the sand dunes and my cabin.

As a place to live in, it’s nothing to get excited about, but at least it’s out of ear-shot of anyone’s radio, and if I want to yodel in my bath no one cares. It is a four-room bungalow made of Canadian knotty pine with a garden the size of a pocket handkerchief, kept reasonably tidy by Toni, my Filipino boy. A hundred yards from my front door is the blue

Pacific Ocean, and at the back and to the right and left are scrub bushes, sand and a half-circle of blue palmetto trees. It is as lonely and as quiet as a pauper’s grave, but I like it. I have lived and slept there for more than five years, and I wouldn’t care to live or sleep anywhere else.

After I had left Finnegan’s bar, I drove along the sandy road, heading for home. The time was twenty minutes to midnight. There was a big water-melon moon in the sky, and its fierce white rays lit up the scrub and sand like a searchlight. The sea looked like a black mirror. The air was hot and still. If there had been a blonde within reach it would have been a romantic night.

Tomorrow, I told myself as I drove along, would be a busy day. Paula had promised to check both Macdonald and Janet Crosby’s wills as soon as County Buildings opened. I wanted to see Nurse Gurney again. I wanted to find out who Maureen Crosby’s lawyer was and have a talk to him. If I could I wanted more information about Douglas Sherrill. If the wills didn’t produce anything of interest, if Maureen’s lawyer was satisfied with the set-up, and if there appeared to be nothing sinister about Douglas Sherrill then I decided I’d hand back the five hundred dollars and consider the case closed. But I was pretty sure at the back of my mind that I wouldn’t close the case, although I was open to be convinced I was wasting my time.

I pulled up before the pine-wood hut that serves me as a garage, ploughed through hot loose sand to open the doors. I got back into the Buick, drove in, switched off the engine and paused to light a cigarette. As I did so I happened to look into the driving-mirror. A movement in the moonlit bushes caught my eye.

I flicked out the match and sat very still, watching the clump of bushes in the mirror. It was, at a guess, about fifty yards away, and in direct line with the back of the car. It moved again, the branches bending and shivering, and then became motionless once more.

There was no wind, no reason why those bushes should move. No bird could be big enough to cause a movement like that, and it seemed to me someone—a man or possibly a woman—was hiding behind them, and had either pushed back the branches to see more clearly, or else had lost balance and had grabbed at the branches to save himself from falling.

I didn’t like this. People don’t lurk in bushes unless they’re up to no good. In the past Paula had repeatedly told me the cabin was dangerously lonely. In my job I made enemies, and there had been quite a few who had threatened at one time or the other to rub me out. I reached forward and stubbed out my cigarette. This spot was temptingly isolated for anyone with evil intentions. You could have started a miniature war right here without anyone hearing it, and I thought regretfully of the .38 Police special in my wardrobe drawer.

After I had cut the car engine I had dowsed the headlights, and it was pitch dark in the garage. If whoever was lurking in those bushes planned to start something, the time to do it would be when I stepped out of the garage into the moonlight to shut the doors. As a target in that light and from that distance I couldn’t be missed.

If I was to surprise the hidden hand I would have to do something fast. The longer I sat in the car, the more alert and suspicious he would become—if it was a he. And if I didn’t buck up he might even start blazing away at the back of the car in the hope a stray slug might find me, always supposing he had a play-pretty, and I fervently hoped he hadn’t.

I opened the car door and slid out into the darkness. From where I stood I could see the stretch of beach, the thick shrubs, the trees startlingly sharp in the moonlight. It would be a crazy thing to walk out there into that blaze of white light, and I wasn’t going to do it. I stepped back and ran my hands over the rough planks of the rear wall. Some time ago, after I had had a night out with Jack Kerman, I had driven a little too fast into the garage and had very nearly succeeded in driving right through it. I knew some of the planks had never recovered, and the idea now was to force an opening and slide out that way.