Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0) Read Free Page A

fifteen feet above the ground. Nobody could have entered quietly from that direction.
    The third window appeared to be an even less probable entrance. It opened on the side of the house that stood on the cliff edge. Outside that window and about four feet below the sill was a cracked ledge about two feet wide, but the ledge dwindled away toward the back of the house so it was impossible to gain access to it from there. At the front, the porch ran right to the lip of the precipice, cutting off any approach to the ledge from that direction.
    Craning my neck, I could see that it was fifty or sixty feet down an impossible precipice, and then a good two hundred feet that was almost as steep, but could be scaled by a daring man. The last sixty feet, though, made the way entirely impracticable.
    The crack that crossed the ledge was three to four inches wide and about nine or ten inches deep. In the sand on the edge of a split in the rock was a track resembling that of a large gila monster, an idea that gave me no comfort. I was speculating on that when Jerry Loftus called me.
    NIGHT WALKER
    A T THE DOOR I was confronted by three people. Nobody needed to tell me which was Blacky Caronna, and I had already seen Johnny Holben, but it was the third one that caught me flat-footed with my hands down and my chin wide open.
    Karen Bitner was the sort of girl no man could look at and ever be the same afterward. She was slim and lovely in whipcord riding breeches and a green wool shirt that didn’t have that shape when she bought it. Her hair was red-gold and her eyes a gray-green that shook me to my heels.
    Caronna started the show. He looked like a bulldozer in a flannel shirt. “You!” His voice sounded like a hobnailed boot scraping on a concrete floor. “Where have you been? Why didn’t you come and look me up? Who’s payin’ you, anyway?”
    “Take it easy. I came up here to investigate a murder. I’m doing it.”
    Caronna grabbed me by the arm. “Come over here a minute!” He had a build like a heavyweight wrestler and a face that reminded me of Al Capone with a broken nose.
    When we were out of earshot of the others, he thrust his face at me and said angrily, “Listen, you! I gave that outfit of yours a grand for a retainer. You’re to dig into this thing an’ pin it on that dame. She’s the guilty one, see? I ain’t had a hand in a killin’ in—in years.”
    “Let’s get this one thing straight right now,” I said. “I didn’t come up here to frame anybody. You haven’t got money enough for that. You hired an investigator, and I’m him. I’ll dig up all I can on this case and if you’re in the clear you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
    His little eyes glittered. “You think I’d hire you if I were guilty? Hell, I’d get me a mouthpiece. I think the babe did it. She stands to get the old boy’s dough, so why not? He’d had it long enough, anyway. Just my luck the old billygoat would jump me before he gets knocked off. It’s inconvenient, that’s what it is!”
    “What was your trouble with him?”
    He looked up at me and his black eyes went flat and deadly. “That’s my business! I ain’t askin’ you to investigate
me
. It’s that babe’s scalp we want. Now get busy.”
    “Look,” I said patiently, “I’ve got to have more. I’ve got to know something to work on. I don’t give a damn what your beef was, just so you didn’t kill him.”
    “I didn’t,” he said. He hauled a roll from his pocket and peeled off several of the outer flaps, all of them showing a portrait of Benjamin Franklin. “Stick these in your kick. A guy can’t work without dough. If you need more, come to me. I can’t stand no rap, get me? I can’t even stand no trial.”
    “That’s plain enough,” I told him, “and it answers a couple of questions I had. Now, one thing more. Did you actually stop before you got to the house? If I knew whether the old man was alive or dead at that hour, I’d know