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  IT STARTED OUT AS A DOG OF A CASE—with Johnny Liddell keeping tabs on a drunken movie star for a fat producer.

  But it picked up interest when the actor was found dead in a phony auto accident. Then, two blondes and one brunette later (as Liddell figured time), somebody put a bullet through the producer’s fat skull.

  A killer seemed bent on giving the morgue a little extra business. Three more customers, to be exact, and one of them was named Johnny Liddell.

  The New York Times rated it: “Murder and mayhem in abundant measure.”

  THE FATAL

  FOURSOME

  (Originally titled: ABOUT FACE)

  Frank Kane

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Time to Prey

  Also Available

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE POSTAGE-STAMP-SIZED DANCE FLOOR was packed. Décolleté ingenues swayed with writers and production men in open-necked sports shirts. A wavy-haired juvenile, whose face was as familiar as the slogan of the hair tonic he endorsed, managed to move on the outer fringe where he was certain to be seen. Here and there scattered through the crowd could be seen tourists, recognizable by their bewildered expressions and stares of stupefaction at the nearness of the great. And the noise of the band was deafening. The Clover Club might not be up to the movies’ conception of the last word in hot spots, but what it lacked in glamour it more than made up in clamor.

  Hollywood hadn’t changed too much, Johnny Liddell decided. He leaned comfortably on the bar with the ease born of long experience, and ordered a double rye.

  “Where’d a guy find Julian Goodman, the producer, bud?” he demanded. “They told me I’d probably locate him here.”

  The bartender looked Johnny over appraisingly, then squinted into the spotlight. He ran his eyes over the crowd clustered around the dance floor.

  “Ringside table, third one from the band.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the blare of a corny trumpet.

  Liddell’s eyes found the table. “And the upholstered broad with him?” he asked. “The one in the black dress.”

  “Name’s Mona Varden,” the bartender grunted.

  Johnny downed his rye with a gulp, poured a handful of silver on the bar, and shouldered his way through the mob.

  “Goodman?” he asked the man who seemed to overflow the tiny chair behind the table.

  The producer nodded. He was not only fat, but soft-looking. Dark, damp ringlets made a futile effort to cover the bald spot that gleamed and matched the pinkness of his cheeks and lips. His eyes, two shiny black marbles, were almost lost behind puffy balls of flesh.

  “What can I do for you?” His voice sounded choked by the heaviness of his jowls and chins.

  “Name’s Liddell. Acme Agency in New York.”

  As Johnny answered, his eyes were taking in the fat man’s table companion. Mona Varden was sleek and svelte, and looked to be a few inches taller than Goodman. The low cut of the neckline of her dress revealed the deep hollow between her breasts and served to accentuate their prominence and perfect roundness.

  She smiled up at Liddell as she felt his eyes on her. Full, soft-looking lips opened to reveal flawlessly white teeth.

  “Turn off the glamour, babe,” Goodman growled at her. “Go comb your hair or something. I got business with this guy.”

  He added something under his breath that Johnny Liddell missed. Liddell thought he caught a quick flash of resentment in the girl’s handsome eyes. She merely smiled, however, patted the thick, glistening black coils that were caught up in a knot at the nape of her neck, and rose to her feet. The producer watched the supple figure with poorly disguised interest as it moved across the room. Finally he tore his eyes away reluctantly and focused them on Johnny.

  “You the dick Acme’s putting on the Harvey Randolph matter, eh?” His eyes gave Liddell a fast going over.

  Liddell dropped into the chair vacated by the girl, fumbled through his pockets, came up with a battered pack of cigarettes. “All I know is that I’m to catch up with you. You got a story to tell. I get paid for listening.”

  He shook one badly mangled cigarette loose from the folds of the pack, hung it from his lower lip and settled back.

  Goodman scowled. “Okay. But what I got to tell you is confidential, plenty confidential. I don’t want no damn reporters snooping around and I don’t want nobody except maybe us two in on it. For all I know he’s maybe got himself some little floozie and lammed off for a weekend in the country.”

  Liddell scratched a paper match negligently across the thin strip of sandpaper on the bottom of the folder. “Maybe if you broke down and let me in from the ground floor I could get more worked up about Randolph and his Lost Weekend. So far it ain’t very exciting.”

  The fat man leaned his elbow on the edge of the table, brought his face closer to the detective’s. A new hard note crept into his voice. “Get this,” he said. “I contacted Acme because back in the old days when I operated from New York, they was a good agency. They used to have some good dicks on their books who could do like they was told and keep their mouth shut. That’s what I want. A good dick who can do like he’s told and keep his mouth shut. I don’t want no comedians. I got too many of those on my payroll already.”

  Johnny’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Sure,” he said evenly. “That’s understood. And now—what’s America’s Pretty Boy Number One got himself into?”

  Goodman grinned, exposing the yellowed stubs of his teeth. “Don’t let them sell you on that Pretty Boy stuff, chum. It wouldn’t pay you to take too many bets that he couldn’t take you.”

  Liddell flicked some ash into a saucer on the table. “Okay, okay. So he’s Superman, Jack Dempsey and two panzer divisions all rolled into one. What’s cooking?”

  The producer looked about as if to discover possible eavesdroppers. “He’s disappeared,” he whispered. “A week or ten days ago. Ain’t seen him since.”

  Across the floor, Mona Varden had left the powder room. Liddell made a mental note that she bounced just a trifle more than was necessary as she walked, but he heartily approved of the effect.

  Goodman started to say something further, caught sight of the girl and stopped.

  “We can’t talk here. Better catch up with me at my office in the morning.” He pulled a calling card from his jacket pocket, turned it over, and with the stub of a pencil scribbled an address on the back and passed it over to Liddell. “Make sure you’re there by eleven.”

  The girl reached the table. Trouble with these voluptuous wenches is that they always turn to fat, Liddell mused. But until they do …

  “Okay. See you in the
morning then.”

  He got to his feet and helped the girl into her chair. She thanked him with her eyes, and the fat man glowered.

  Back at the bar Liddell ordered another rye. His watch showed it to be nearly eleven-thirty. He wondered morosely whether he should go to bed or try to find a wandering crap game and lose the rest of his expense money.

  He decided against bed, but even a crap game didn’t sound too appealing.

  Suddenly he remembered Doc Morrissey. Good old Doc who, as county coroner, helped him break the Macaulay killing.

  “Give me a Los Angeles telephone book,” he called over to the bartender, “and fill this up again.”

  His stubby finger ran speedily through the listings and stopped at the line proclaiming, “City Hospital … Gouverneur Street.” He gulped down the rye, fumbled through his pockets for a nickel and headed for the telephone booth.

  A clear young voice answered on the other end. “City Hospital.”

  “Let me speak to Doc Morrissey.” Was his voice getting thick, Liddell wondered, or was that the damned receiver? “Matter of life ‘n’ death …”

  He heard the girl’s sharp intake of breath, then the buzzing as she rang Morrissey’s phone.

  “Coroner’s office, Dr. Morrissey speaking,” the telephone proclaimed.

  “Hello, Doc, you old body snatcher! This is Johnny Liddell of Acme.”

  Doc’s voice sounded glad. “Hello, Johnny. Where are you?”

  “Over at the Clover Club.”

  “Hop a cab and come up here. The rye’s better and there’s no cover charge. Take you only a few minutes and you’re just the guy I want to talk to.”

  “Be right over,” Johnny promised.

  A mist had blown in from the ocean and City Hospital loomed through it like a sixteen-story ghost, its upper stories lost in the swirling fog. The cab dropped Liddell in front of the long gray flight of stairs that led to its second-story entrance. He peeled a bill from the roll he took from his pocket, tossed it to the driver.

  Johnny swore his way to the top of the stairs and addressed the resplendently dressed guardian of the door.

  “Hi, Admiral,” he panted. “I’m looking for the coroner.”

  The doorman sized him up carefully, then without a change of expression, grunted, “Any more cracks about the uniform, chum, and all you’ll have to do is open your eyes. You’ll find him bending over you.”

  Liddell shook his head sadly. “Brother, after a climb like I just had, I’ll take back talk from Margaret O’Brien. All I want to know is where do I find Doc Morrissey, the coroner.”

  The doorman swung the door open ceremoniously. “The information desk is in the lobby, sir.”

  A heavy, sickish sweet fog of iodoform descended on Johnny Liddell as he skidded across the highly polished tile lobby. The girl at the switchboard looked freshly scrubbed in her white uniform. Wavy wisps of auburn hair cascaded toward the whiteness of her neck from under the jaunty little starched cap that sat perched on the top of her head. She turned her attention from a pair of white-clad internes as the detective crossed the floor to her desk.

  “Whom did you wish to see, sir?”

  “Doc Morrissey, the coroner. I’m a corpse and I’ve come to give myself up.”

  The girl smiled patiently. “Yes, of course. But what name should I give him?”

  Johnny Liddell was still puffing softly. “Just tell him that Johnny Liddell made the balloon ascension of the front steps safely.”

  The girl nodded, started plugging wires in the switchboard. She relayed the message, then directed Johnny Liddell to the third floor. “Third door from the end of the corridor, sir. You can’t miss it.”

  Doc Morrissey jumped up from his chair behind the desk as Johnny Liddell walked into the room. He was small and chipper with a thatch of untidy gray hair that belied the youthfulness of the grin that split his face from ear to ear.

  “Well, well. Back in Hollywood, eh, Johnny? Crime must be picking up.”

  Liddell acknowledged the greeting and plopped into a convenient chair. “The guy that built that flight of stairs in front of this butcher shop must’ve had the same kind of sense of humor as the guy that put the hill in front of the poor house.” He looked around hopefully. “What do they use around here to revive a guy that’s on the verge of collapse?”

  “Spirits of ammonia,” the coroner informed him.

  Johnny nodded sadly. “I might have known. I’ll save my collapse for the more hospitable surroundings of a bar.” He sighed contentedly as the doctor produced a bottle and two glasses from a bottom drawer of the desk. “That kind of ammonia I’ll take.”

  Doc Morrissey poured two stiff hookers, put the bottle back in the drawer. “I’m on call tonight,” he explained. “Got to take it easy.” He looked Johnny Liddell over with knowing eyes. “You’re looking top shape, Johnny. Out here on a case?”

  Johnny Liddell nodded. “A dog. Trying to find some playboy who wandered off, for a fat producer named Goodman.” He tasted the jigger experimentally, grimaced. “Not like the good old days with a couple of spicy murders.” He tossed off the drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  The coroner shook his head. “Wish we had you out here about a week or ten days ago, Johnny. Somebody killed old Maurer.”

  Johnny Liddell sat up. “Doc Maurer? Who’d want to kill him? Why, he didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

  Morrissey nodded. “Just the same, somebody did. Shot him four times at close range. Any one of the bullets would have been enough.”

  The private detective reached over to the desk, helped himself to a cigar from the humidor. “Four shots, eh? Sounds like a professional killer. Those boys never let one do when they can keep squeezing lead out.”

  The coroner’s eyes followed the spiral of white smoke as it went ceilingward. “Funny you should say that, Johnny,” he said.

  Liddell studied the older man’s face. “Why?”

  “Fogarty over in Homicide made the same point the night we found Maurer. Tried to intimate that Doc was messing around with the racket boys, fixing them up and not reporting. All that sort of thing.”

  Johnny tapped a light film of ash from the end of the cigar. “Nuts,” he said. “Doc Maurer wasn’t the type to be a gang doctor. He was overloaded with ethics.” He noted the troubled look on the other man’s face. “There’s something else, ain’t there, Doc?”

  The coroner nodded. He settled back, fumbled through his pockets, came up with a pack of cigarettes. “When we got to Maurer’s office, all his instruments were out and the basket was filled with bloodied gauze squares.”

  Liddell’s eyes narrowed. “An operation, eh?”

  “Yeah. But worse than that. First thing Fogarty spotted were bits of paraffin on the instrument stand and a set of penciled notes.” He indicated the metal filing case with a shake of his head. “I have ‘em in there.” He took his time about lighting a cigarette. “Johnny,” he said finally, “that paraffin and those notes meant only one thing: Maurer had performed a plastic surgery operation before he was killed.”

  Johnny Liddell rolled the cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “No idea who he did it on?” Doc Morrissey shook his head. “That does look bad. You don’t suppose he had been messing around with those babies?”

  “I don’t know, Johnny,” the coroner admitted frankly. “I hope not. Doc Maurer was a friend of mine and I have a lot of faith in his integrity.” He shrugged his shoulders in a tired way. “But I haven’t been able to make Fogarty or the others at Homicide see it that way. They’ve been smearing that gang angle over every tabloid in town.”

  Johnny Liddell shook his head. “No sign of the killer?”

  “No. Not a chance of getting him either. In the first place, even if we knew who he was, the only one who had any idea what he’ll look like after the bandages come off is dead. No, Johnny, I’m afraid we’ll never know who killed old Doc.” He touched a match to the cigarette, blew it o
ut carefully. “The only thing we can do for him is clear his name. I’m afraid we have our job really cut out for us there.”

  Liddell grinned, shook his head. “Not us, Doc. You. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m out here for old Acme to do or die for dear old Goodman. That, my dear Doctor, puts it right back into your lap.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  ELEVEN O’CLOCK the following morning found Johnny Liddell outside the frosted door that bore the legend, Julian Goodman—Private.

  The reception room wall was heavily lined with autographed photos of movie greats, near greats, have-beens and never-were. A buxom blonde in a dark green sweater sat at a desk in a railing-enclosed space. She stabbed listlessly at the keys of a large desk typewriter, taking excessive care not to fracture the finish on the carefully shellacked fingernails. Above her desk Johnny recognized the cameolike profile of Harvey Randolph.

  “Goodman in?” he asked the bored blonde.

  She stopped jabbing at the typewriter keys long enough for a pair of unblinking chestnut-colored eyes to approve Johnny’s broad shoulders, his pugnacious jaw, and the unruly brown hair spiked with gray.

  “Might be,” she admitted. “Who wants to know?”

  He tossed the penciled notation the producer had given him the night before onto the girl’s desk.

  “Liddell. Acme Agency. I’ve got an appointment with him for eleven.”

  The girl studied him with new interest. “A dick, huh? Don’t look much like one.” She went back to her typing. “He’s got somebody in there. Be with you in a few minutes.”

  Liddell slid into a chair near a table stacked with magazines. He fingered through them, finding little of interest. After a bit, the door marked Private swung open and a man came out.

  He was beetle-browed, with a gray fedora pulled down low to hide a pair of cold slate eyes. From the set of his bulging shoulders, the bent nose and the hand in the jacket pocket, it didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to tag him as a professional bodyguard.