Max Collins - Mourn The Living

“You going to stay in Chelsey, Vicki?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I have... have a problem or two that may keep me here.”

“It’s your business,” Nolan shrugged.

She smiled. “I guess you think I was out of line a minute ago with my dimestore psychology. Now here I am keeping secrets from you. But... everybody needs a few secrets.”

“Sure.”

The phone rang.

“Who the hell would call you at this hour?”

“Nobody.”

“You better get it.”

“Are you here, Nolan?”

“Earl Webb is.”

“Okay...”

“Careful,” he told her. “Too goddamn late for a phone call. It’s going to mean something, whatever it is.”

“Even a wrong number?” She laughed.

“Answer it before they give up.”

She climbed out of bed and threw a filmy negligee over her creamy-white skin. She flew down the spiral staircase that connected the balcony to the living room and grabbed up the phone, which was on the bar in the kitchenette. Upstairs, Nolan leaned back and took a cigarette from the half-empty pack and popped it into his mouth.

From below, her voice came, “It’s for you, Earl.”

He got out of bed, slipped into his pants and shoes and went down the spiral staircase, taking his .38 with him.

“This is Webb.”

“This is George, George Franco...”

“What do you want, George? A little late for you to be up, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I know it’s late, Mr. Nolan...”

“Webb.”

“Sorry, Mr. Webb ... but I have to talk to you!”

“About what?”

“I can help you take Elliot down.”

There was a hesitation at Franco’s end.

“What’s wrong, George?”

“Just a second, Nolan, I mean Webb , the door, I think my girl friend might be back. Jus’ a second.”

There was silence and Nolan looked at Vicki and said, “Think he’s been into the cooking sherry again.”

She smiled in confusion and Nolan half-grinned and the receiver coughed the sound of a gun-shot.

Nolan dropped the receiver as if it were molten and ran out the door and down the steps to street level. He wasn’t wearing a jacket — just a T-shirt — and the cold air hit him like a pail of water.

From the doorway above Vicki called down, “Nolan... what are you doing...?”

“Wait here,” he said. “Somebody just got shot. Stay put, don’t let anybody in but me.”

“But...”

“Shut the door and wait, Vicki,” he told her, wheeling around to face the deserted courthouse square, marked only by a few scattered parked cars whose owners lived in apartments over stores. Down the street a light was on in George’s penthouse above the Berry Drug.

Nolan ran to the corner, turned and slowed into the alley. He kept the .38 in front of him and made sure the alley was empty. Then he jumped up and pulled down the fire escape and climbed to where he had used his glass cutter to get in the day before. He elbowed the cardboard patch and it gave way easily. He slipped in his hand, unlocked the window and crawled into the apartment.

There was no one inside except George, and he was over by the door, dead, his head cracked like a bloody egg.

The killer had used a .45, Nolan thought, or possibly a .38 at close range. Plugged George right square in the forehead with it. Effective. Not particularly original, but effective.

The killer hadn’t bothered to hang up the phone, which was making the loud noises the Bell people use to persuade you to hang the damn thing up. Nolan slipped it onto the hook and heard sounds coming from the drug store below.

He climbed back out the window and down the ’scape and dropped silently to the ground. Cautiously he made his way around to the front of the store, wondering if the killer had made his way out yet.

Then Nolan heard tires squealing away from a curb down the street from behind him.

In the alley he found a back door, still open, where the killer had hot-footed it from the drug store to a car parked along the side street. Nolan could see it in the distance, blocks down. It was a dark blue Cadillac having no trouble at all disappearing.

He stood there for a while thinking, cold as hell and just as he was wishing he’d brought his cigarettes along, a blue-and-white squad car sidled up next to him. “Chelsey Police” was written on the door in small print, as if they were ashamed of it.

A man in a nicely-pressed light brown business suit stepped out of the squad car, flanked by two uniformed officers. The plainclothes cop had a tanned, weathered face, a shrewd, tough cop’s face, and that was one of the worst kinds. The cop being a plainclothes meant he was probably one of the smartest, most experienced officers of the Chelsey force. Which didn’t necessarily mean much. Nolan figured being a top cop on Chelsey’s force was an honor akin to being the harem’s head eunuch.

The cop motioned the uniformed pair up the ’scape and into George’s apartment, everyone obviously knowing just what to expect. A few minutes after they went in, one of them, a scrubbed-faced type, looked down at the cop who was standing below with Nolan and said, “Yup.”

The cop smiled. “What’s that you got in your hand?”

“It’s a gun.”

“You got that filed with the city?”

“I got,” Nolan said, stuffing the .38 in his waist band, “a closed mouth till I see a lawyer.”

“I’d tell you to keep your shirt on, pal, if you were wearing one.” The cop’s tough face broke into a wide grin. “I sure hope you haven’t fired that thing lately.”

Nolan didn’t say anything. Why didn’t the cop take the gun from him?

The cop kicked at the loose gravel in the alley, like a kid kicking pebbles into a stream. “You might be interested to know that within the past hour, hour and a half or so, the fair city of Chelsey has been seriously blemished. Blemished by three, count them, three... murders. Murders committed, strangely enough, with a .38.”

“Who’s dead?”

“So you decided to open your mouth? I don’t see any lawyers around.”

“Who?”

“You’re a regular owl, aren’t you? Okay mister, I’ll tell you. The Police Chief, one Philip Saunders, found dead on the floor of his apartment, a bullet in the head. An alleged musician at the Third Eye, one Broome, no other name known, found dead on the floor of his dressing room, a bullet in the head. And I assume we have a similar problem with George Franco, up there. You might say fat George has a weight problem — a dead weight problem.”

“You might say that,” Nolan said, “if you were a fucking comedian.”

“You’re getting nasty, mister, you aren’t in any position to get...”

“I got an alibi.”

“Swell,” he said.

“An on-the-level alibi. She’s got a name and everything.”

The cop’s mouth twisted. “You really do have an alibi, don’t you?”

“That’s right.”

He scratched his head, shrugged. “Well, then... you’re free to go. Nice talking to you... mister, uh, Nolan, isn’t it?”

Nolan froze.

“It’s Webb,” he said. “Name’s Earl Webb. From Philadelphia.”

“Tell me all about it.”

“You going to charge me with something?”

The cop scratched his head again. He did that a lot. “I would, but I can’t make up my mind between breaking-and-entering, carrying a handgun without a permit, and, well, murder. You got a three-sided coin on you?”

“Take me in or don’t take me in.”

“What if I said I got a deal to make with you, mister... ah... Webb. And that if you keep your side of the bargain, I’ll let you walk. Without so much as a citation for loitering. Interested?”

“Maybe.”

“You got somewhere private we could go?”