Free Built for Trouble by Al Fray Page B

the picture industry. The movie moguls aren’t as skittish as they once were and some pretty strong raps have been beaten. Dope parties. Wild orgies in night clubs. Even a couple of stars posing for nudes managed to survive when the exposé washed over the newspapers. You can say boys-will-be-boys and you can cover a lot of things with “the poor girl was down to a crust of bread and her mother needed an operation,” but when you go as far as peddling it… that’s all. No producer in the country would try to buck that kind of publicity at the box office, and everyone knows it. Hank Sawyer knew it and pushed too hard when he saw a big pay-off shaping up. Now Eddie Baker held the whip.
    The police? I thought about it for a lot of miles as I rolled toward L.A. So far I wasn’t in very deep; mine were minor offenses. And she’d killed Hank, so maybe I ought to run to the cops and—But what the hell was Sawyer to me? He’d been in on the swindle—he had helped her set Eddie Baker up, for the kiss-off. The two of them were running hand in hand. Was it my fault if he got too greedy and careless and let her palm off some poisoned hooch on him? Hell, no!
    Even so, I did have evidence of murder and legally I was supposed to go to the authorities and…
    I got a little sore about then. What would it get me? What besides thanks? And there’s no drawer in the cash register for that kind of pay-off. Sure as hell nobody had been very anxious to see that Baker got a fair deal. Call it a blackout and wash the man out—that’s the easiest answer. But I’d scrounged around on my own and I’d come up with some answers. I was entitled to put in my bill. And the lady with the stars in her eyes was going to pay. I goosed the Ford up to sixty-five, glanced into the mirror for a speed-cop check, and ran the needle up to eighty. I had work to do in Los Angeles.

 
Chapter 6
     
    I PARKED THE CAR at Union Station, hurried in, and slipped the key into the locker. My suitcase was still there. I carried it out to the car, opened it, and unwrapped the Lucky Lager can. Hank’s thumbprint was there, nice and clear. Now it was time to check the celluloid separator in my wallet.
    The light smear of grease on the celluloid had done well. Nola’s thumbprint on the beer can wouldn’t be absolutely necessary but it would help. I found a lead pencil, scraped a tiny pile of black dust from the end with my pocket knife, and blew it across the greasy print with a quick breath. Then I rubbed a spot clean on the can a little above Hank’s thumb mark, pressed the bit of celluloid tightly against the tin, and rolled Nola’s thumbprint onto the beer can. When I held it up for close examination, it looked fairly good. The next stop would be a photographer.
    Not a big outfit. What I wanted was a small one-man enterprise and I found one out on Jefferson Boulevard, a shoestring operation someone had started in a little bungalow sandwiched in between half a dozen shops lining the street. It would do nicely. I rolled on past, stopped at a supermarket on the next corner, begged a big cardboard carton, and bought a roll of scotch tape.
    Sitting in my car, I cut one side off the carton and began to flatten out the snapshots of Nola Norton, all five of them. When I had them taped down on the reverse side of the cardboard in a loose fan-shaped arch, I put a strip of cellophane tape around the Lucky Lager tin and fastened it in the center. Then I fished Nola’s earring out of my pocket, fastened it just above the can, and held the cardboard up for a look.
    It was tight. She’d just given me the earring yesterday and there wasn’t any way she could doubt that I had all the evidence in my possession. The pictures, the beer tin—I had Nola over the well-known barrel and the only way she could get off would be to settle with Baker. I put my display card down and drove over to the small photography shop. There were framed photographs all over the tiny display room,