LITMIR.BIZ

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a wise guy in real life, Farran, so he went over to use that phone.

      Then he felt—it was really too soft to hear—a movement and he jerked his head round so quickly he heard his neck crick.

      There was a girl huddled against the wall not a yard to his left. He just hadn’t seen her because a corpse—especially the corpse of a man who had shared a blanket with you on a football bench—compels a whole lot of attention.

      She was blonde and soft and young and probably pretty. But right now her face was whiter than the snows of Alaska, and her straining eyes were so big they looked as if something was shoving hard up behind them. There was an expression of dazed agony on that small, uptilted face.

      Farran looked and realised that though those eyes were fixed roughly in his direction, they weren’t focusing. The girl was looking, but she wasn’t seeing much.

      He forgot the phone for a minute. Afterwards he thought; “The heck, that’s just how it happens in a movie!” And then, of course, a big lug like Sydney Greenstreet smiles in at the doorway, beans you, and rings for the police. They find you with a gun in your hand and everyone says, “You done it, pal. Quit arguing, can’t yer?” All except the heroine. There’s always a heroine to believe—the heck, didn’t Hollywood build itself up on glamour?

      But just at that moment Farran didn’t think any of that. He quite naturally went and bent over the girl. His voice demanded, “What’s happened? Who are you? Who killed Joe?” Like that. He was good at firing questions, even if unions no longer made it possible for the boss to fire employees.

      And the girl just said nothing.

      She couldn’t. Farran took a look behind her blonde head and decided the lump could have come from a bang against a wall. He was still so unprepared for criminal answers to problems that he didn’t think someone might have bent a rod over the head instead.

      He took hold of her under her arms. She was wearing a thin, attractive summer dress. He lifted, and the head at first lolled back and he saw the bloodless lips part as a moan came through, and then pain brought the swift movement of life and her head came forward and erect again. He held her, though she was all weight in his arms, and her face went tight with the agony of returning consciousness, and she looked to be fighting a rising tide of sickness.

      Farran stuck her on the desk, still holding her. His eyes were on that phone again. He rapped, “Sit up, can you? I’ve got some phoning to do.” Terse. There were a lot of women out at his plant on the edge of the desert; he was used to them about.

      His words got through. The blonde made an effort, and sat swaying feebly holding the edge of the desk with hands that, unusual for L.A., didn’t have points to their fingers and colour on the nails. Her eyes were looking at Farran now, focusing.

      Farran got the phone; put a call through to police. The girl listened. “Someone’s been killed.… Yeah, I know his name—Joe McMee, ex-F.B.I.” That’d bring ’em up in their chairs. Cops didn’t like death in the family, and G-men were cops. “I’ll wait,” he told them, and gave the address.

      One minute later a prowl car must have got the radio and came screaming along the street outside. The L.A. cops weren’t slouches.

      The blonde was recovering fast. The eyes weren’t out so much now. She was slim, her face was almost thin. A nice face. Nothing special about it, just—nice. And there weren’t many nice faces so near Hollywood; they were all too special for that.

      She said, “It is real?” and there were tears rolling down her cheeks faster than rain at a barbeque.

      He said, “About Joe? Getting shot?” He looked at the silent Joe, lying on his back with his foot inside the WPB. “Yeah, I guess it’s real.” And then he added, “The G-man got his. Poor Joe.” He didn’t get sentimental; he hadn’t been brought up to be that way. But he didn’t like to see a man who had been his friend lying like that. Killed. Murdered.

      She went on weeping silently, her blue eyes caught on Farran’s, as if she felt she was anchoring on to a strength she badly needed at that moment. When she spoke it was through lips that were nearly without movement, so that Farran could hardly hear her.

      “You knew Joe? Not many people knew he’d been a G-man.”

      “Yeah. I knew Joe. We played football at college together.” He nearly added, “I played; he sat most of the time on the benches.” Not quite as good. But he refrained; it wasn’t necessary, and he had a vague idea it was even a bit irreverent.

      The girl began to sway, and her eyes started to go a bit ga-ga. He caught her, steadied her, demanded, “Who’re you? Did you see it happen?”

      She started to shake her head, then winced at a stab of pain. Her head began to droop forward as she spoke, so he kept hold of her. “I came in.” That slow, tired whisper. She’d had enough, that girl. Too much. “He was—just like that. Dead.” She was becoming heavier in his arms, her tired head almost touching his chest.

      He asked again, “Who are you? Come on, who are you?” Demanding, because he had asked the question three times now, and he wasn’t used to asking a question more than once before getting an answer.

      This time it came. Two words. “His…wife.…”

      She was all weight when a police sergeant came shoving a face heavy with suspicion round the door. There was another cop with him, chewing. The sergeant tried shock tactics.

      He looked at Joe with his foot in the basket, looked at Farran, holding Joe McMee’s unconscious widow. And he said, “You did it.” And it was no question.

      Farran looked sour. Really sour. Sourer than most men ever get even once in their life. And when he came back with his answer, it zipped, tore holes into that fresh cop. “You say that again, and my attorney’ll go for your department for slander.”

      He didn’t take talk from fresh guys, not even cops.

      The sergeant got it, that this tall, lean, brown-faced hombre didn’t let wise guys go to play with him. He got more than that—that this jaw-jutting, brittle-eyed guy was someone, even in a state where there were a lot of someones.

      The cop with the chew paused, said, “Dat guy’s Farran. Him with all them airplanes, Sarge.” Then went on chewing. And the accent wasn’t Californian. Strictly Brooklyn—or to stretch a point, maybe Yonkers. East Coast, not West. But a dumb cop at that, even if he bad recognised Farran.

      The sergeant climbed down. “I said, ‘Who did it’?”

      Farran grunted. The sergeant took a look round, then he did some grunting. “They’ll be along with an ambulance in a few minutes,” he said. “Homicide.” Then he took a long gander at the corpse, as if it fascinated him.

      Farran watched them, thinking it might be interesting to see professionals at work, but they never did a thing. Then there was the sound of a lot of sirens down in the street below, and a few moments later the room became solid with men all doing a job.

      Mrs. McMee came to life again with all the noise, but she was still pretty sick, and Farran found she was holding on to his arm very tightly for support. He sat up on the desk beside her and held her. After a time she realised what he was doing and he heard her say, “Thanks…I feel—bad.”

      Farran looked over her shoulder at big Joe. He thought, “Now, what do you do in such situations?” He had to think things out, because when you are bred to millions it’s usually other people who have to be considerate. But he got an idea very soon.

      “Look, you’d better get away from—him,” he told her. “I’ll take you out into the passage.” It wasn’t good for a girl to be sitting almost on top of a husband—deceased. He helped her off the desk and got her across the room.

      The cop who chewed was leaning on the door. He said, “You don’t go out. Nobody goes out. I got orders.”

      Farran stood there, holding the girl. “You fetch me the

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