Paul Cain - The Paul Cain Omnibus

I said: “You murdered Mae Jackman.”

His face didn’t change. He stopped drumming on the desk with his fingers and he was entirely still for maybe ten or fifteen seconds. He was looking straight at me and he was still smiling. Then he shook his head very slowly and said: “No.”

I said something a little while ago about a gift for figuring whether people mean what they say. Something like fifteen years of intensive study and research into the intricacies of draw and stud poker are pretty fair training for that sort of thing. I mean I’m not exactly a sucker for a liar, and so help me I believed Steinlen.

I said: “Who did?”

Steinlen shook his head again slowly. “Aricci, I suppose.” By that time my sails were flapping. I’d been so sure Steinlen was it, and now I was so sure he wasn’t — I felt like I’d been double-crossed. Anyway, I wasn’t going to let it go at that. My hunch was that Steinlen was telling the truth but I don’t play my hunches that far. I wanted to know.

I said: “Aricci didn’t do it.” I said it as if I was sure of it.

Steinlen laughed a little. “You are very sure.”

I told him I was very sure and told him why. I told him that if Aricci had killed Mae the check would have figured in it and if Aricci had the check he, Steinlen, wouldn’t be alive to be talking about it.

When I mentioned the check Steinlen’s expression changed for the first time. His face became almost eager. He said: “Are you sure the police did not find the check?”

I nodded.

He asked: “Who, besides yourself, knew about it?”

“Only you,” I said, “and, evidently, whoever has it now.” I lit a cigarette and watched Steinlen’s face. I said: “As long as that check is in existence it’s an axe over your head. If the police get it, it will tie you up with the murder. If Aricci gets it or finds out about it, he’ll kill you as sure as the two of us are sitting here.”

Steinlen was staring blankly out the window. He nodded slightly.

“I think you’d better tell me all you know about the whole business,” I went on. “Maybe I can get an angle.”

He swung around in the swivel chair to face me; he was smiling again. He said: “Did you come here to arrest me?”

I shook my head. “Not necessarily. I wouldn’t put the pinch on anyone unless there wasn’t anything else left to do. I came here convinced that you did the trick and I intended getting it in writing and then giving you about twenty-four hours head start. I wasn’t especially fond of Mae, and I think her check idea was pretty raw, but I like Tony pretty well and I know he’s innocent and I’m not going to have him holding the bag.”

He said: “And you are sure of my innocence, too?”

I smiled a little and said: “Pretty sure.”

He started drumming on the desk again. He said: “Mae telephoned me about two this morning. She was very drunk. She said that Tony had gone out, that she was alone.”

I said: “Uh-huh. Tony went to Long Beach. He left the apartment about one-thirty.”

Steinlen scratched his nose. “Can’t he establish an alibi in Long Beach?”

“Not with the people he was doing business with. They wouldn’t be worth a nickel as an alibi .”

Steinlen nodded, went on: “Mae told me what she wanted — twenty-five thousand dollars in cash. She said if I didn’t give it to her she was going to Mrs Steinlen with my check and tell her that I had seduced her and then tried to buy her off for twenty-five hundred...” He smiled crookedly. “Her idea was very sound — the check was irrefutable proof. Picture producers don’t give extra girls twenty-five-hundred-dollar checks as birthday gifts...”

I said: “That was a very chump piece of business for you to do. How come?”

Steinlen laughed shortly, bitterly, shook his head. “I guess we all think we’re character sharks,” he said. “I thought she was on the level.”

One of the phones on his desk rang and he picked it up and told his secretary to put whoever was calling on. While the connection was being made he said, “Pardon me,” and then he said, “Hello, Sheila,” into the phone. He talked to her for several minutes; he asked her how the location trip had been and whether she had received his last letter. Every fifth word was darling or baby or honey. Finally he asked her if she was coming to the studio and said he’d try to get home early and hung up.

He said; “That was Mrs Steinlen — she just got back from location in Arizona.”

Then he went on about Mae. He said she’d insisted on his meeting her at the corner of Rosewood and Larchmont — she didn’t want him to come to the Mara because somebody might see him come in. The corner of Rosewood and Larchmont was only a couple blocks from the Mara . He explained to her that he couldn’t get the money in the middle of the night, but she was very drunk; she said he’d better get it and hung up on him. He’d decided to meet her and reason with her and talk her out of it until the next day, anyway, so he’d have time to figure out what he was going to do. He went to the corner of Rosewood and Larchmont and waited from two thirty-five until almost four o’clock. She didn’t show, so he figured that Tony had come back and she couldn’t get away; he went home and tried to sleep. The first thing he knew about the murder was when he read it in the paper after he got to the studio, about ten o’clock.

The more he talked the dizzier I got about the whole layout. It would have been a cinch for Tony to start to Long Beach and then sneak back — he was suspicious of Mae, anyway — and catch her going out to meet Steinlen. He would probably have knocked her down and frisked her and found the check and that would have been that. Tony was a pretty bad boy when he was mad. But if that’s the way it had been and Tony had put on that act for me so I’d help him — then Tony was the greatest actor in the world and wasting his time bootlegging. He was not only the greatest actor in the world but I was degenerating into a prize sucker and losing my eyesight.

On the other hand, Steinlen didn’t even have the alibi of having been at home. He said he’d been on the corner of Rosewood and Larchmont from two-thirty-five till almost four. Mae had been killed around three-thirty. Steinlen could have pulled that off very nicely — he didn’t have a leg to stand on, except that I thought he was telling the truth. Maybe Steinlen was the world’s greatest actor. It was a cinch Mae hadn’t strangled herself.

I began to think very seriously about chucking the whole thing — after all, it was none of my business — if I wasn’t careful I’d be getting myself jammed up.

Steinlen said suddenly: “I’ll give five thousand dollars for that check.”

That made it my business. I told Steinlen I’d call him later and left the studio.

Tony had gone. Opal said he’d sat at the window for about a half hour without saying anything and then jumped up suddenly and gone.

I went back down to my room and lay down on the bed and tried to figure things out. Tony and Steinlen were both naturals to have put the chill on Mae, but unless I was entirely screwy neither of them had.

It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I’d been overlooking a bet in Cora. Maybe there’d been some kind of jealous play on Tony that I didn’t know anything about. I remembered how long he’d stayed with her the night before and how much he’d carried on about her guy walking out on her. That might have been a gag to cover up something else. It was a pretty long shot but I was mixed up enough about the whole business by that time to try anything. I called Cora and she wasn’t in. I told the switchboard girl to ask her to call me. Then I lay down again and fell asleep.