Free Hard Case Crime: Shooting Star & Spiderweb by Robert Bloch Page B

murderer’s responsibility, and neither Thompson nor anybody else was going to make me take the rap.
    I looked at Polly Foster a long time. At least, it seemed like a long time because I thought of so many things. I thought about a little girl with brown hair who was always bothered by the boys. Who grew up and was still bothered by the boys—the wrong kind of boys—until she got the wrong kind of slant on things. I thought about a woman who swore too much and drank too much and probably slept around too much, and I thought that maybe she did it because she was afraid too much. Afraid of a world that valued her only for her beauty. A ghoul-world, always after her body; wanting to photograph it, wanting to see it, wanting to paw it. Afraid, perhaps, of one particular ghoul who wanted to destroy it. And who succeeded.
    I was sorry about that, but I wasn’t to blame. And as I took my final glance, I wasn’t even sorry any more. I was angry. “Lay off,” Thompson had said. That’s what all of them wanted me to do, including the guy who had sat in my apartment with a monkey on his back.
    I stared at Polly Foster for the last time and if the dead can read minds, she knew that I was telling myself—and her—that I would never lay off now.
    Then I moved on.
    Thompson went over to talk to Abe Kolmar. He and most of the other big shots were going out to the cemetery. I didn’t feel like it. This new, sudden feeling of anger made me want to slug somebody. For the first time I was beginning to understand the meaning of murder.
    Sure, like the hammy preacher said, it was tragic to see someone ruthlessly trample a white rose. But it’s always a tragedy, even when someone tramples a weed. No one has that right. And who is even fit to sit in judgment, to separate the weeds from the roses?
    Weeds. Marijuana was a weed. A weed that made some people high, made them feel that they did have the right to judge, made them feel like trampling. I knew.
    And I was going to find out more. Somehow, some way, I’d find out.
    I headed for the door, almost bumping into a tall man who stood in the outer entry, talking to a girl.
    “Excuse me,” I said.
    “So it’s you again,” the man said. “The snooper!”
    I stared into Tom Trent’s face.
    “I ought to let you have it,” he said. “I ought to beat your brains out.”
    “You’ve got the wrong party,” I answered, softly. “Save it for the killer.”
    “One more word out of you and—”
    “I know,” I said. “I know how you feel. I’m sorry. And I’m going to do something about it. Can’t you forget what happened long enough to help?”
    “I’ve talked to the police. Any help I can give they’ll get. Now beat it, snooper, before I change my mind. I don’t want to be caught dead talking to you.”
    I turned away.
    Harry and Daisy Bannock came up to me as I reached the door.
    “Saw you talking to Trent just now,” Harry told me. “Did he have anything to say?”
    I shook my head. “He’s still sore. But he’ll cool down. At least, I hope he does. Because I’m positive he knows something about this business.”
    “You suspect him?” Daisy asked.
    “Of the actual killing? No. But there’s something he knows that he didn’t want to leak out. That’s why he called Polly Foster and warned her not to talk.”
    “What’s your plan?” Bannock asked.
    “Nothing definite. But I intend to have another visit with Trent, and soon. I’ll get the story out of him some way.”
    “You sound pretty determined all of a sudden,” Daisy said. “Yesterday you wanted to quit.”
    “I’ve been thinking it over. When I saw Polly Foster lying there in the coffin...”
    Harry Bannock stared at me. His voice was deliberately lowered when he spoke. “Don’t tell me you went for her? That little tramp?”
    I shook my head. “No. I didn’t go for her. But she wasn’t a tramp. She was a human being, a kid who came up the hard way, maybe even the wrong way. But she came up,