Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Long-Legged Models

“Hear anything from Homer Garvin?” Mason asked her after she had hung up.

“Senior or Junior?”

“Either.”

“Junior telephoned. He’s tickled to death with the publicity. He’s sold five cars to prospective purchasers who originally came in to survey the damage in the desk.”

“He’d better give me a commission,” Mason said. “Hear anything from Stephanie Falkner?”

“Not a word.”

“That’s a little strange, Della.”

“She may be a late sleeper,” Della Street said.

Mason frowned. “Give her a ring. Wake her up.”

Della Street picked up the phone, said, “Ring the Lodestar Apartments, Gertie. We want to talk with Stephanie Falkner.”

While she was waiting, Paul Drake’s knuckles tapped the code knock on the door.

Mason got up to let him, and Della Street said, “She doesn’t seem to answer, Chief.”

“Tell Gertie to keep trying,” Mason said. “Hi, Paul, what’s new?”

Drake said, “George Casselman had a criminal record. He served time, once for pimping, once for extortion. He was killed sometime between seven and eleven-thirty o’clock Tuesday night by a .38 caliber bullet which was fired from a gun that was held against Casselman’s chest. It made what is described in medical circles as a contact wound. You know what a contact wound is.

“The muzzle of the gun is held directly against the body into which the shot is fired. The bullet not only enters the body, but a lot of explosive gases from the gun also enter and cause quite a bit of internal damage.”

“Anyone hear the shot?” Mason asked.

“Apparently not. In cases of contact wounds, the sound of the shot may not be much louder than that of an inflated paper bag being smashed.”

“Then no one heard it?”

“No one heard it.”

“What else, Paul?”

Before Drake could answer, the telephone on Della Street’s desk rang again.

Della Street picked up the telephone, said, “Hello,” in a subdued voice, then said, “Yes, he’s here,” turned to Paul Drake and said, “For you, Paul. It’s your office. They say it’s most important.”

Drake moved over to the telephone, said, “Hi, this is Paul,” waited a moment, then said, “The devil!..” There was a long silence. Then, “They’re sure...? Okay.”

Drake hung up the phone and stood for a moment in puzzled perplexity.

“Well,” Mason said impatiently.

“This,” Paul said, “is the best-kept secret of the day. Police knew about it yesterday and managed to keep it buttoned up.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Bullets fired from the gun police found in Stephanie Falkner’s apartment match the fatal bullet that killed George Casselman.”

“Which gun?” Mason asked sharply.

“Which?” Drake asked in surprise. “Why, there’s only one, the one Garvin gave her.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed.

Drake said, “This means that you had the fatal gun in your possession and that you discharged one shell into the desk at Homer Garvin’s office in the used car lot. Quite naturally police felt at first that you were engaged in some sort of a hocus-pocus trying to confuse the issue somehow. They picked young Garvin up and are giving him a shakedown. The original idea was that you must have planted the murder weapon in his desk.”

“They’ve changed their minds now?” Mason asked tonelessly.

“They’re changing their minds,” Drake said. “At the moment they have a brand new suspect, in the person of Mrs. Homer Garvin, Jr. It seems she was employed as a resident hostess, bathing beauty and ornamental model at one of the Las Vegas hotels out on the strip. She knew Casselman. No one seems to know how well. They found Casselman’s unlisted number written down on a memo pad by her telephone.

“Casselman was a blackmailer. The young woman just got married. Figure that one out and you have a perfect sequence.

“That, in the words of the police, makes your clumsy attempt to fake a didn’t-know-it-was-loaded accident at Garvin’s used car lot a diabolically clever attempt to mix up the ballistic experts.

“Police don’t like that. The ruse almost worked. They’re examining all the evidence carefully. The D.A. would love to book you. If he could catch you tampering with evidence, he’d turn the department upside down trying to get a conviction.”

Mason nodded to Della Street. “Tell Gertie to get Junior on the telephone. He probably won’t be in, but have Gertie leave word for him to call.”

Mason pushed back the chair from his desk, got up and began pacing the floor. Abruptly he turned, said to the detective, “Paul, I want to know what’s going on. I want all the information you can get on what the police are doing. They probably have both Stephanie Falkner and Garvin, Jr. Thank heavens Senior is across the State line! They’ll have to unwind some red tape before they can drag him in. There’s something fishy about this whole business.”

Drake said, “Watch yourself, Perry. Keep in the clear on this thing. Police are going to want to know how it was that you had such unerring insight as to go out to Garvin’s used car lot, ask for a gun, fire a bullet into Garvin’s desk, and then take the gun up and leave it with Stephanie Falkner in a place where police would be sure to find it.”

“You aren’t telling me anything,” Mason said, “but there’s a lot back of all this that you don’t know. Get busy and start finding things out.”

Drake nodded, left the office.

Mason continued pacing the floor for a while, then whirled to face Della Street. “There’s only one answer, Della.”

“What?” she asked.

“Homer Garvin, Sr.,” Mason said, “must have a key to the office at Junior’s used car lot. Garvin, Sr. had possession of the murder gun. He knew that Garvin, Jr. kept a gun in his desk. So Garvin, Sr. went out and substituted guns. He put the murder gun, which must have been reloaded, in Junior’s desk where police would never think of looking, then took Junior’s gun out of the desk. He fired one shot through that gun, then took it up and left it in Stephanie Falkner’s apartment. His idea was that the police would find the gun with the empty shell, think that Stephanie had killed Casselman, and then be forced to abandon that theory because they would find that the gun she had hadn’t been used in the crime. That’s why he was so anxious to have me do everything I could for Stephanie.”

“Go on from there,” Della Street said.

“So that’s where I inadvertently nullified everything he had done,” Mason said. “Feeling certain that the police would pick up Stephanie Falkner for questioning and feeling that, by that time, they could well have found out Garvin, Sr. had given her a gun, or that they would search for a gun, I conceived the idea of having Garvin, Jr. also give her a gun. In that way, if the police found the one gun, they would hardly keep on searching for another gun. And if they knew Garvin, Sr. had left a gun with her and demanded she produce it, she could have produced the gun that Garvin, Jr. left and so mixed the case all up.

“As it happens by one of those particular coincidences which sometimes occur in real life, my brilliant idea backfired. I went out and got the very gun that Garvin, Sr. was trying to keep from ever being associated with Stephanie Falkner. I took that gun to Stephanie Falkner’s apartment and left it right where police would be sure to find it.”

“Where does that leave you?” Della Street asked apprehensively.

“I’m darned if I know where it leaves me , Della. The police can’t say I was concealing evidence. I went out and dug up the very bit of evidence they wanted so badly, and placed it in the possession of the woman they probably had pegged as their number one suspect.