Paul Cain - The Paul Cain Omnibus

Outside, sultry thunder rumbled and rain whipped against the windows. Kells slid a note off the sheaf in his breast pocket, went over and handed it to her. It was a thousand-dollar note.

She looked at it dully, slowly stood up. Then she stuffed the note into the pocket of her suit and went quickly to the chair where Kells had thrown her coat.

Kells said: “Give me the Bellmann stuff.”

Beery was staring open-mouthed at Kells. “God! Gerry, you can’t do this,” he said. “I told Tommy we had the girl...”

“She escaped.”

Granquist put on her coat. She looked at Kells and her eyes were soft, wet. She went to him and took a heavy manila envelope out of her pocket, handed it to him. She stood a moment looking up at him and then she turned and went to the door. She put her hand on the knob and turned it, and then took her hand away from the knob and held it up to her face. She stood like that for a little while and then she said “All right,” very low.

She said, “All right,” again, very low and distinctly, and turned from the door and went back to the big chair and sat down.

Kells said: “Okay, Shep.”

About ten minutes later Beery got up and let Captain Hayes of the Hollywood Division in. There were two plainclothes men and an assistant coroner following close behind him.

The assistant coroner examined Bellmann’s body and looked up in a little while and said: “Instantaneous — two wounds, probably .32 caliber — one touched the heart.” He stood up. “Dead about twenty minutes.”

Hayes picked up the gun from where Kells had replaced it under the table, examined it, wrapped it carefully.

Kells smiled at him. “Old school,” he said, “along with silencers and dictaphones. Nowadays they wear gloves.”

Hayes said: “What’s your name?”

Beery said: “Oh, I’m sorry — I thought you knew each other. This is Gerry Kells... Captain Hayes.”

“What were you doing here?” Hayes was a heavily built man with bright brown eyes. He spoke very rapidly.

“Shep and I came up to call on my girlfriend here” — Kells indicated Granquist who was still sitting with her coat on, staring at them all in turn, expressionlessly. “We found it just the way you see it.”

Hayes glanced at Beery, who nodded. Hayes spoke to Granquist. “Is that right, Miss?”

She looked up at him blankly for a moment, then nodded slowly.

“That’ll be about all, I guess.” Hayes looked at Kells. “You still at the Lancaster?” Kells nodded.

“You can always reach me through Shep.”

Hayes said, “Come on, Miss.”

Granquist got up and went into the dressing room and packed a few things in a small traveling bag.

One of the plainclothesmen opened the door, let two ambulance men in. They put Bellmann’s body on a stretcher and carried it out.

Kells leaned against the doorframe of the dressing room, watched Granquist. “I’ll be down in the morning with an attorney,” he said. “In the meantime, keep quiet.”

She nodded vaguely and closed the bag, came out of the dressing-room. She said: “Let’s go.”

The manager of the apartment house was in the corridor with one of the Filipino bellboys, a reporter from the Journal and a guest.

The manager was wringing his hands. “I can’t understand it — no one heard the shots,” he said.

One of the plainclothesmen looked superiorly at the manager. He said, “The thunder covered the shots.”

They all went down the corridor except Beery and Kells. Beery said, “So long,” to the captain.

The manager stayed behind a moment. “I’ll close up Miss Granquist’s apartment.”

Kells said: “Never mind — I’ll bring the key down.”

The manager was doubtful.

Kells looked very stern. He whispered: “Special investigator.” He and Beery went back into the apartment.

Beery called his paper again with additional information: “... Captain Hayes made the arrest... And don’t forget — the Chronicle is always first with the latest...” He hung up, lighted a new cigarette from the butt of another. “From now on,” he said, “I’m going to follow you around and phone in the story of my life, from day to day.”

Kells asked: “Are you giving it an extra?”

“Sure. It’s on the presses now — be on the streets in a little while.”

“That’s dandy.”

Kells went into the kitchen, switched on the light. He looked out the kitchen window and then he went to a tall cupboard — the kind of cupboard where brooms are kept in a modern apartment — opened the door.

Fenner came out, blinking in the bright light. He said: “I would have had” — he swallowed — “would have had to come out in another minute. I nearly smothered.”

“That’s too bad.”

Beery stood in the doorway. He said: “For the love of God!”

Fenner went into the living room and sat down. He was breathing hard.

Kells strolled in behind him and sat down across the room, facing him.

Fenner took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his mouth and forehead. He said: “I followed her as you suggested, and when she went in through the lobby, I came up the side stair intending to meet her up here.”

Kells smiled gently, nodded.

“I didn’t want to be seen following her through the lobby, you know.”

“No.”

Beery was still standing in the kitchen doorway, staring bewilderedly at Fenner.

“I knocked but she hadn’t come up yet,” Fenner went on, “so I opened the door — it was unlocked — and came in.”

Kells said: “The door was unlocked?”

Fenner nodded. “In a few minutes I heard her coming up the hall and she was talking to a man. I went into the kitchen, of course, and she and Bellmann came in. They were arguing about something. Bellmann went into the bathroom I think, and then I heard the two shots during one of the peals of thunder. I didn’t know what to do — and then when I was about to come out and see what had happened, you knocked at the door.”

Fenner paused, took a long breath. “I didn’t know it was you, of course, so I hid in the cupboard.”

Kells said: “Oh.”

“I thought it would be better if I didn’t get mixed up in a thing of this kind, anyway.”

Kells said, “Oh,” again. Then he looked up at Beery. “Sit down, Shep,” he said. “I want to tell you a story.”

Beery sat down near the door.

Kells stretched one long leg over the arm of his chair, made himself as comfortable as possible. “This afternoon I told Mister Fenner” — he inclined his head towards Fenner in one slow emphatic movement — “that I knew a gal who had some very hot political info that she wanted to sell.”

Beery nodded almost imperceptibly.

“He was interested and asked me to send her to his hotel tonight. I had a talk with her, and the stuff sounded so good that I got interested too — took her to Fenner’s myself.”

Fenner was extremely uncomfortable. He looked at Kells and dabbed at his forehead; his lips were bent into a faint forced smile.

“We offered the information — information of great political value — to Mister Fenner at a very fair price,” Kells went on. “He agreed to it and called the manager of his hotel and asked him to bring up an envelope containing a large amount in cash”

Kells turned his eyes slowly from Beery to Fenner. “When the manager came in a couple of benders came in with him. They’d been waiting in the next apartment, listening across the airshaft to find out what they had to heist — it was supposed to look like Rose’s stick-up — or Bellmann’s...”

Fenner stood up.

Kells said: “But it was Mister Fenner’s. Mister Fenner wanted to eat his cake and have crumbs in his bed, too.”