Say Yes to Murder - Todhunter Ballard (book club recommendations .TXT) 📗

that Ed Strong was staring back through the rear window of the cab.

“What’s the matter?” He, too, was looking through the small opening. Behind them was another car, its headlights showing like yellow balls in the gray of the fog.

Even as he looked the lights swung out as if the car were preparing to pass, but it did not. It pulled abreast and swung inward, forcing the cab toward the curb.

The driver swore, jamming on his brakes viciously. The right rear wheel gripped first, throwing them sideways. The cab climbed the curb, and as it did so both the driver and Strong wrenched open their doors. Lennox never knew which of the men struck the ground first. It seemed to be a tie, and they both struck running.

Unconsciously Lennox had thrown one arm around the girl’s shoulders and braced himself for the shock as the careening cab headed directly for a light pole. They struck with jarring impact, but after the first shivering shock Lennox was surprised to find that they were still on the seat and that no glass had broken.

In the street, the black car’s brakes howled as it slid to a stop some fifty feet beyond the cab. But before it could reverse a red searchlight came out of the fog and a siren wailed in the night.

The black car started with a jerk and went rolling away down the street. The next minute a police prowl car shot by in hot pursuit, its siren going full blast as it picked up speed.

Lennox watched the tail lamps bob ahead until they were diffused, then obscured, by the gray curtain. He opened the door of the cab and stepped out, calling Strong’s name as he did so.

Nothing happened, and there was no movement in the darkness. Both Strong and the driver seemed to have vanished. He hesitated, then climbed under the wheel and reached for the key.

Not until then did he realize why the crash had not been worse, but he knew now. The switch was turned off. The driver must have cut it instinctively before he jumped, and since the cab was in gear the motor had served as a brake.

Lennox hated to leave Strong, but he felt that with the girl in back it was safer to get out of the neighborhood as quickly as possible. The engine started with a roar. He put the car in reverse and tested it gently, backing cautiously down off the parking into the street. It ran all right, and Lennox sighed in relief, then looked around at the girl.

She was crouched in a corner of the rear seat. He watched her for a moment and shrugged, then put the car in first. With luck he could get out of the neighborhood before the police car returned. He had driven several blocks before he remembered his hat, took it off and dropped it on the floor. Cab drivers sometimes go around without caps, but never in a snap-brim Stetson.

Whatever damage the pole had done to the bumper or fender, it had not affected the mechanical performance of the taxi. Bill turned back toward the Parkway, managed to get up into it, and went through the tunnels as far as Sunset. Here he turned west, still not decided where he should take the girl. He’d crossed Western Avenue before he thought of Nancy Hobbs and headed for her place.

Nancy Hobbs was sleepy. She wore a robe of white toweling over dark silk pajamas. Her feet were tucked into black mules, and her face still had a flush put there by heavy sleep. She opened the small grilled window in the middle of the thick oak door and peered out.

“What is it?”

“Me,” said Lennox.

“Bill!” She fumbled with the night chain, and in another minute she had the door wide. “What is it, Bill? What happened now?”

The girl was still in the same position in the back seat, and he picked her up and carried her in, figuring it was easier than making her walk. Nancy held open the screen. She expressed no surprise at his burden.

“Crusading again?” she inquired.

Lennox did not answer until he had deposited the girl on the couch in the den, then he picked up the phone and called one of the studio doctors.

“Hello, Bob?”

The doctor sounded sleepy and ill-tempered. Lennox said: “This is Bill Lennox. I’ve got a girl here who’s been doped. No, I don’t know what was used. Yeah. I wish you would. And quick. What do I do until you get here?” He listened attentively, then hung up.

“Come on, help me, Nancy.” He got the girl off the couch with difficulty. Her legs seemed made of rubber, persistently bending at the wrong places.

“How about some hot coffee, kid?” he asked.

“Fine,” Nancy said and left Lennox alone with the girl.

He kept her walking back and forth, back and forth. He opened a couple of the windows, and the damp fog-laden air rolled in. It was getting light outside before the doctor arrived—a gray, cold, unhealthy-looking light which gave no promise of a nice day.

2.

The doctor said: “I think she’ll be all right now.” Almost two hours had passed since he had come, and they had all been very busy.

Nancy said, “I’ll get you some coffee,” and vanished into the kitchen.

The doctor looked at Lennox. “You never were one to tell your business, but if you want my opinion, that girl has been systematically doped for several days.”

The doctor nodded as Nancy Hobbs appeared in the doorway. “Bacon and eggs?”

The doctor said: “Thanks, but I’ll have to rush along.” Lennox went with him to the door. When he got back he found her frying bacon at the electric stove.

She turned from the stove. Her face was flushed a little, her hair soft and careless, caught back with bobby pins. She looked like a little girl in the blue corduroy house coat. “Who is she?”

“I don’t know. I got her out of Madam Honia’s via Lincoln Heights Jail.”

“My God,” said Nancy Hobbs.

“An infant swearing. Has your mouth been washed out with Sweetheart soap recently?”

“What are you going to do with the cab?”

He snapped his fingers. “I’d forgotten. I’ll have to get it away from here by daylight.”

“It’s daylight now,” Nancy was practical. “You’d better run it into the empty half of my garage.”

He took her suggestion, glad to escape for a moment from her questioning. When he came back, the scrambled eggs were ready, arranged neatly between chopped parsley on the small plates.

He said, “A slug of Scotch would help the day.”

“You’ll start it with tomato juice,” she told him. “If you don’t know when your stomach has been sufficiently insulted, your friends will have to tell you. Sit down and eat.”

He surprised himself by doing just that. When he had finished the second cup of coffee, he sighed his content. “You’re all right, Nancy.”

“I’m a fool,” she sounded almost vicious. “If you brought a whale to this house, I’d probably flood the cellar with water.”

He grinned. “You haven’t got a cellar.”

“Then I’d dig one.” Her brown eyes as they came up to meet his were more stormy than he had ever seen them. “Don’t bother explaining about the girl.”

He said. “Why, Nance.” His grin faded and they looked at each other silently across the table. “Why, kid…”

He wanted to say something to her, but he didn’t quite know how. He was conscious in a vague way that the easy companionship which had been theirs for years was missing. He said, surprised to be a little embarrassed, “That girl upstairs… she’s… she’s Ed Strong’s niece. I don’t know why she was where I found her. I won’t know until I locate Ed I… I had meant to leave her here.”

“Of course,” said Nancy, and again she had turned on the bright flippant manner which was what she called her Hollywood face. “The doctor will send a nurse, the nurse and I will watch over her. Now, you go home and get some sleep. Remember you don’t belong to yourself. You’re out on bail, and it isn’t fair to the County of Los Angeles to dissipate the health of its most valuable prisoner. Do you want them to have to carry you to the gas chamber in a wheelchair?”

He knew that he was supposed to laugh, but his lips felt a little stiff for laughter as he rose to go. “Thanks, pal.”

3.

Floyd Spellman was trying to be humorous and, instead, being heavy-handed. When Lennox opened his apartment door, Spellman and Stobert were standing in the hall, and Spellman said: “I’ve been promoted. I haven’t my new badge yet, but I’m looking for a stolen cab.”

Lennox didn’t say anything. It was a full hour since he’d left Nancy Hobbs’s house. He’d had a shave, a shower, and three drinks. He felt almost as if he’d had some sleep.

“So you’re looking for a stolen cab? Maybe I have it under the bed.”

Spellman grunted. “Stow it. Now listen, Bill. I wouldn’t be hunting a stolen cab if I didn’t think there was something screwy about the deal. I wouldn’t even know anything about it, but one of the lads over in the department is smart.

“This hacker came in with a complaint. He said that he’d picked you up in front of Lincoln Heights about three-thirty, that you had a girl with you, and that there was something the matter with her. He recognized you from your picture in the evening paper.”

Spellman waited a full minute for Lennox to say something, and when he didn’t the police captain continued: “The cab driver remembered the bondsman who helped you put the girl into the cab, so we went over and checked him. We found that you’d gone bail for one of Inky Kreach’s girls, then I checked with the vice squad and found that you’d been responsible for the raid on Madam Honia’s place. What are you up to?”

Lennox stifled another yawn. “Nothing.”

Stobert came out of the bedroom. “The bunk hasn’t been touched, skipper. The guy hasn’t been in bed.”

Lennox laughed. “You didn’t need to look at the bed to guess that. You should have been able to tell it by the circles under my eyes. They feel like someone burned them into my cheeks with a red-hot poker. No, Stobert, I haven’t been in bed. Have they got a law in this town now that says a man has to sleep in a bed? I usually hang from the chandelier.”

Spellman said: “We still want that girl. Keep on being funny and we’ll drag you in for stealing that cab.”

Lennox laughed more heartily. “What a come-down—from murderer to hot-car specialist. If I were going in for auto theft, I certainly wouldn’t pick on taxis. I don’t like them that well.”

Spellman glanced at Stobert as if expecting help. Receiving none, he climbed slowly to his feet and moved heavily to the door. It had hardly closed behind his retreating bulk when the phone rang.

Lennox heard Jean Jeffries say: “Bill, I’m glad I caught you. I’ve been so worried. I called you several times last evening, but there was no answer.”

He said: “I was getting drunk and being thrown out of places.”

“Oh, is that all,” she said, and sounded relieved. “I was afraid you’d been arrested again.”

“No such luck.”

“Luck?”

“For my enemies,” he explained. “I have them under every stone.”

“Are you still drunk?”

“A little,” he admitted. “I must have been pretty tight last night. A joint got knocked over and I was tender-hearted. I thought it would be fun to bail out one of the girls, only