Richard Deming: No Pockets in a Shroud

Wade said, “I just wanted to know,” and went on smoking.

Lieutenant Hannegan of Homicide brought the squad car. When I opened the door he said: “Your feud with the old man catches me right in the middle.”

“He loves it,” I told him. “He’d be hurt if I gave him a respectful answer.”

Stepping aside to let him in, I performed introductions. “Lieutenant Hannegan... Byron Wade... Danny. He hasn’t got a last name”

Hannegan’s brow creased at Wade’s name. “How long you been here?” he asked bluntly.

“Since seven-thirty.”

Hannegan turned to me. “That right?”

“Yeah. Didn’t seem to want to leave. When was Bagnell killed?”

“Eight o’clock. How do you know he was killed?”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Sure. But the inspector didn’t say how he died.”

“I know,” I said. “They’re calling in Homicide for heart attacks now.”

Hannegan continued to regard me suspiciously. “What was that crack about Wade not wanting to leave?”

“I started to throw him out at eight, but he talked himself into staying. Makes a nice alibi in case he knew something was scheduled to happen to Bagnell.”

“Hey!” objected Wade. “What you trying to do?”

I turned my head at him. “Teach you not to use me as a sucker.”

Wade said: “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I could be all wrong,” I told Hannegan. “But Bagnell’s pushing off is awfully convenient for Wade. And I don’t like the idea of being the alibi for a gang boss while one of his stooges was making a corpse.”

“You got the wrong idea.” Wade licked his lips and looked from one of us to the other.

Hannegan scratched his head thoughtfully as he turned things over in his mind. “You figure he sicked one of his guns on Bagnell, then leeched on to you in order to keep himself in the clear?”

“Something like that.”

“Why pick you? A nightclub would do as well.”

I said: “I’ve got an idea about that too. I’ll hold it till we see the inspector.”

Hannegan pointed his thumb first at Wade and then at Danny. “You guys are coming too. The inspector will want to see you.”

Our, city, like Los Angeles, claims half the countryside in all directions. So although El Patio lies ten miles beyond the edge of the populated area, it still is within the city limits.

Twenty minutes after leaving my apartment we swung between squat stone pillars marking the driveway entrance to El Patio’s grounds. To our left the car lights splashed against a ten-foot wrought-iron fence which followed the curve of the driveway clear from the highway to the near edge of the fortress-like building called El Patio.

“Lot of iron in that fence,” Hannegan remarked.

At the far end of the building the fence started again, ran about fifteen yards and made a ninety degree turn to the left. The drive also continued past the building and turned with the fence toward a parking lot at the rear. Our policeman chauffeur dropped us in front of broad steps descending from the massive bronze-doored entrance and then continued on to the lot.

A uniformed cop had replaced the dinner-jacketed ex-pug who usually guarded the portals of El Patio. He saluted Hannegan and stepped aside to let us in.

Like Gaul, El Patio is divided into three parts. The entrance leads directly into the gaming room and bar. Wide doors either side of the casino open respectively into a table-crowded ballroom and an even more table-crowded dining-room. Most of the patrons from these two rooms had collected in the center one and were wearing their coats and hats, ready to leave. Though the room was packed, no one was playing. The crowd had divided into individual groups, most of which quietly waited for something to happen. In place of the conversational drone you would expect from a crowd of two hundred jammed into one room, you could hear only occasional low toned sentences.

In the hallway outside Louis Bagnell’s private office three chairs from the dining room lined the wall. Vance Caramand occupied the first, and Fausta Moreni, the house’s best blackjack dealer, sat next to Vance.

Probably Fausta’s ability rested less on her skill with cards than on the demoralizing effect of her golden brown beauty on the players, but nevertheless she was one of the highest paid dealers in the country. Before the war, when Fausta was a naive Italian immigrant freshly escaped from Fascist Italy, her delightful accent fascinated me into thinking of her in connection with a future fireplace, slippers and a pipe. Long since we tacitly agreed to forget our plans, but I still felt sudden lightness when we met. Tilted against the wall in the third chair sat Mouldy Greene, who derived his nickname from a persistent case of acne. Mouldy had been in my outfit overseas, but since discharge assisted Caramand in guarding Louis Bagnell’s body. Apparently neither of them had done a very good job.

As we approached, Mouldy said, “Hi, Sarge,” in the pleased voice of an ex-soldier greeting an old comrade.

Fausta rose. I stopped and she touched my hands lightly with her fingertips.

“Manny,” she said. “Is it only murder can bring you to see me?”

I said, “Hello, Fausta,” and could think of nothing else because my eyes were full of the sleekness of her blonde hair and the way it emphasized the Latin darkness of her skin and eyes.

Hannegan said to Wade: “You and your punk wait here. The inspector will want Moon first.”

As Hannegan reached for the knob of Bagnell’s door, I noticed the lock had been shattered by a bullet. Before he could turn the handle, the door opened inward. Hannegan stepped back as two men carried out a sheet-covered figure on a stretcher. A police doctor followed behind them. The procession over, we went through the door in time to catch a flash bulb square in the eyes. For a few moments I saw nothing but floating red and green lights, then as they began to dim I made out three people in the room. Apparently we arrived just in time for the photographer’s last picture, for he was packing equipment.

Inspector Warren Day’s gaunt figure drooped in front of a woman seated on a sofa near the window. The woman was dressed for the street, complete to a startlingly small black hat and matching leather gloves. Her fingers played nervously along the zipper of an oversized bag in her lap as Day talked to her. She had the type of face painters set on canvas: precisely regular, and its whiteness framed by ebony hair, shoulder length and waveless. Her skin was translucent and glowed as though a hidden light burned somewhere within her. Except for the bright red of her sensual lips, she wore no coloring or makeup. She had been crying.

Warren Day turned, bent his skinny bald head until he could see over his glasses and rolled a dead cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other.

“You!” he said.

Settling myself in a chair, I started fire to a cigar. Day approached until his spare body arched over mine and his face was nearly horizontal with the floor from his attempt to keep me in focus over his spectacles.

I said: “Why don’t you sit down before you fall in my lap?”

“Start talking, Moon!”

I blew cigar smoke up at him. “Look, Inspector. I’m tired of this routine. You snarl at me a while and I tell you to go to the devil, and finally you stop being nasty and tell me what old pals we are, and won’t I please tell you what I know, and then I tell you what I know. Why don’t you save time by cutting out the preliminaries and acting human from the start?”