Dell Shannon - Extra Kill

"Yes. And?"

Mendoza's long nose twitched. "I'm doing all the work. Can't you fill in a bit? Come on, think hard."

"Well-I think he wrote that note to Mrs. Bragg, to have it ready. He didn't want any backchat, or delay in getting away either. And it's nice to know he had the gun-it was his… Can we say he had a visitor, then? Before he got away, when he was nearly finished packing

… " Hackett fingered his jaw, looking troubled. "I don't know-"

"There are a lot of little things I don't know, but I know who the visitor was. Thanks to you."

"Now look-she-"

" Eso basta, you stop right there. I'm tired of listening. I think, though there are jobs you could do, you'd better take the rest of the day off. I'm worried about you-you're going to pieces. I could take time and explain, but I think it'll be salutary for you not to be told-force you to do a little thinking of your own."

"Are you ordering me?-" began Hackett stiffly.

" Es mas listo de lo que parece," said Mendoza to himself with a sigh. "Smarter than he 1ooks-I hope. You go and have a nice quiet drink somewhere, Arturo, and maybe take in a movie. And don't worry, trust your uncle Luis, everything will be O.K. with a little luck."

"Oh," said Hackett, staring at him. "You don't think- And what are you going to be doing, if I'm allowed to ask?"

"I have dispatched minions-that's a nice word, no question but English has certain advantages-to discover, if possible, where the coat was purchased, by whom, and when. I think we'll get it, because it was only yesterday, you see, it'll be fresh in the salesclerk's mind. And for other reasons too. De veras, this love of melodrama

… I am presently going to call on a new witness, or at least one we haven't thought very important, and meanwhile I am going to sit here and do some serious thinking, along the same line the famous idiot boy took with the lost horse. Goodbye, Arturo. Shut the door when you leave."

Hackett looked at him, opened his mouth, thought better of that and shut it, and stalked out.

Oddly enough, he did more or less what Mendoza had told him to do, though without conscious plan. He went and had a drink, and then he walked up Main Street for a little way, thinking-not to much purpose-and dropped into a newsreel theater.

He didn't take in much of the news; when he came out he went back for his car and drove up to Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood. He located the doctor's office and the pharmacy, and drove slowly on from there, watching the right side of the street. He stopped and parked twice, to go into large shops where luggage was sold, and drew blank. It was at the third place he got somewhere, a big department store branch; one of the clerks thought he remembered a man who looked like Twelvetrees' picture coming in to buy some luggage: he couldn't say exactly when, a couple of weeks back he thought, and he couldn't remember exactly what the man had bought.

Still, it all helped a little. Though the suitcases didn't matter, weren't important. But at least it gave him an illusion of working at it.

It was nearly four o'clock, and he remembered he hadn't had any lunch. He had a sandwich in a drugstore, and started back downtown, aimlessly.

He was on North Broadway, stopped at a light and looking around idly, when he saw the sign. It was an old movie house, newly refurbished in the desperate hope of better business, and for the same reason running a new gimmick to compete with TV. Like the fad for foreign films, there was a little boom these days in silent movies; maybe it made the middle-aged feel young again, and the kids superior; a lot of people seemed to get a kick out of saying, Did we ever think that was good? This house featured them once a week, so the sign said, and the one running now was called The Girlhood of Laura Kent-the name leaped at him from below the title-with Mona Ferne.

He turned into the next parking lot and walked back. On the way he suddenly found himself thinking about that gun. It had been lying on top of the bureau, Kingman said; so Twelvetrees had taken it out of the drawer, where Pickering had seen it, to pack. His visitor presumably had not (was that a fair deduction?) come with the idea of killing him, or he or she would have been prepared with a weapon. It was surprising how tough the human body was: you couldn't be sure of killing someone with a bang on the head-when it happened like that it was usually the sudden violent impulse and the blow landing just right at random. But if a suddenly enraged visitor snatched up that gun, why in hell hadn't he or she used the other end of it? A much surer way. The noise, yes: but that was the last thing anyone in a sudden violent rage would remember… So, the gun hadn't been loaded.

Yes, it was, he thought the next second. Or the cartridges for it were there. Because a while later it was used on Bartlett.

He stopped under the theater marquee, and in absent surprise he thought, Well, well: so he had come round to Mendoza's viewpoint on that, Walsh's thing.

He went up to the ticket window, past the resurrected poster where Mona Ferne's young, insipidly pretty face smiled. "This Laura Kent thing, when does it go on?"

"You're lucky, just starting now."

Hackett gave up his ticket stub to the door attendant and groped his way down the aisle. Even in the dark there was an empty feel to the house, and when his eyes were adjusted and he looked around, he saw that there were only about twenty people in the place. Wouldn't think it'd pay them to stay open…

As he watched the opening scenes of what could never have been a good picture (even allowing for changes in style) he thought of what Stanley Horwitz had said. Couldn't act-just took direction. Too true. And the kind of thing she had done: this was probably a fair sample. It must have been one of the earliest pictures she'd starred in, by the date: it was thirty-four years old. A year older than he was: but when his memory started, a few years later-well, it was hard to say, you remembered childhood backgrounds distorted, sometimes, but he'd have said that even then audiences would have been a trifle too sophisticated to go for this. But they must have: she'd done this kind of thing another nine or ten years and it had gone over pretty well.

It was supposed to be funny and what the posters still called heart-warming at the same time. The tired old plot of the tomboy who hates being a girl and goes swaggering about in jeans playing baseball (or riding broncs or driving racing cars or flying airplanes) until Love Enters Her Life and overnight she becomes a demure clinging vine

… Of course the photography wasn't so good, but it was interesting to see what she had been: he had an idea, now, of the goal she was aiming for with all the effort put out. This vapidly pretty girl with blond curls and spontaneous adolescent giggles.

The dramatic action was jerky, everything drearily spelled out. She waded in a stream, casting a line with what even Hackett could see was inept awkwardness. She rode in a horse show, smart and boyish in jodphurs. She went skeet-shooting with her distinguished sportsman father, in-

Suddenly he heard his own voice, loud and shocking in that place,

"My God!"-and found he was standing up. It couldn't be-but it was, he'd swear it was!

He sidestepped out to the aisle and ran up it. And as he ran, a few pieces fitted themselves together in his mind, and he thought, So that was it. The coat, the damned coat-but-

"Telephone?" he gasped to the doorman, who gaped at him and pointed out the public booth in the lobby. Hackett fumbled for a dime, slammed it into the slot… "Jimmy," he said when he got Sergeant Lake, "let me talk to him-I don't care if he's in conference with the Chief, I've got-"

"He isn't here, Art, you just missed him."