“Phooey. I’m a damn good-looking heart wrecker.”
“Their features were strictly assembly line. Neither looked Italian. Each picked up a flight suitcase. One suitcase was gray with two red and white stripes up and down, about six or seven inches from the ends, the other a blue and white tartan. I didn’t know there was such a tartan.”
“There is, but I forget the name of it.”
“I thought you knew everything.”
“Just almost everything. Run along home now”
“Do I get a dinner and maybe a kiss?”
“Later, and if you’re not careful you’ll get more than you want.”
“A rapist, eh? I’ll carry a gun. You’ll take over and follow them?”
“If they’re the right men, they’ll follow me. I already took an apartment across the street from Ikky. That block on Poynter and the two on each side of it have about six lowlife apartment houses to the block. I’ll bet the incidence of chippies is very high.”
“It’s high everywhere these days.”
“So long, Anne. See you.”
“When you need help.”
She hung up. I hung up. She puzzled me. Too wise to be so nice. I guess all nice women are wise too. I called Ikky. He was out. I had a drink from the office bottle, smoked for half an hour and called again. This time I got him.
I told him the score up to then, and said I hoped Anne had picked the right men. I told him about the apartment I had taken.
“Do I get expenses?” I asked.
“Five grand ought to cover the lot.”
“If I earn it and get it. I heard you had a quarter of a million,” I said at a wild venture.
“Could be, pal; but how do I get at it? The high boys know where it is. It’ll have to cool a long time.”
I said that was all right. I had cooled a long time myself. Of course I didn’t expect to get the four thousand, even if I brought the job off. Men like Ikky Rosenstein would steal their mother’s gold teeth. There seemed to be a little good in him somewhere—but little was the operative word.
I spent the next half hour trying to think of a plan. I couldn’t think of one that looked promising. It was almost eight o’clock and I needed food. I didn’t think the boys would move that night. Next morning they would drive past Ikky’s place and scout the neighborhood.
I was ready to leave the office when the buzzer sounded from the door of my waiting room. I opened the communicating door. A small tight-looking man was standing in the middle of the floor rocking on his heels with his hands behind his back. He smiled at me, but he wasn’t good at it. He walked towards me.
“You Marlowe?”
“Who else? What can I do for you?”
He was close now. He brought his right hand around fast with a gun in it. He stuck the gun in my stomach.
“You can lay off Ikky Rosenstein,” he said in a voice that matched his face, “or you can get your belly full of lead.”
4
He was an amateur. If he had stayed four feet away, he might have had something. I reached up and took the cigarette out of my mouth and held it carelessly.
“What makes you think I know any Ikky Rosenstein?”
He laughed a high-pitched laugh and pushed his gun into my stomach.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” The cheap sneer, the empty triumph of that feeling of power when you hold a fat gun in a small hand.
“It would be fair to tell me.”
As his mouth opened for another crack, I dropped the cigarette and swept a hand. I can be fast when I have to. There are boys that are faster, but they don’t stick guns in your stomach. I got my thumb behind the trigger and my hand over his. I kneed him in the groin. He bent over with a whimper. I twisted his arm to the right and I had his gun. I hooked a heel behind his heel and he was on the floor. He lay there blinking with surprise and pain, his knees drawn up against his stomach. He rolled from side to side groaning. I reached down and grabbed his left hand and yanked him to his feet. I had six inches and forty pounds on him. They ought to have sent a bigger, better-trained messenger.
“Let’s go into my thinking parlor,” I said. “We could have a chat and you could have a drink to pick you up. Next time don’t get near enough to a prospect for him to get your gun hand. I’ll just see if you have any more iron on you.”
He hadn’t. I pushed him through the door and into a chair. His breath wasn’t quite so rasping. He grabbed out a handkerchief and mopped at his face.
“Next time,” he said between his teeth. “Next time.”
“Don’t be an optimist. You don’t look the part.”
I poured him a drink of Scotch in a paper cup, set it down in front of him. I broke his .38 and dumped the cartridges into the desk drawer. I clicked the chamber back and laid the gun down.
“You can have it when you leave—if you leave.”
“That’s a dirty way to fight,” he said, still gasping.
“Sure. Shooting a man is so much cleaner. Now, how did you get here?”
“Screw yourself.”
“Don’t be a crumb. I have friends. Not many, but some. I can get you for armed assault, and you know what would happen then. You’d be out on a writ or on bail and that’s the last anyone would hear of you. The biggies don’t go for failures. Now who sent you and how did you know where to come?”
“Ikky was covered,” he said sullenly. “He’s dumb. I trailed him here without no trouble at all. Why would he go see a private eye? People want to know”
“More.”
“Go to hell.”
“Come to think of it, I don’t have to get you for armed assault. I can smash it out of you right here and now”
I got up from the chair and he put a flat hand out.
“If I get knocked about, a couple of real tough monkeys will drop around. If I don’t report back, same thing. You ain’t holding no real high cards. They just look high,” he said.
“You haven’t anything to tell. If this Ikky guy came to see me, you don’t know why, nor whether I took him on. If he’s a mobster, he’s not my type of client.”
“He come to get you to try to save his hide.”
“Who from?”
“That’d be talking.”
“Go right ahead. Your mouth seems to work fine. And tell the boys any time I front for a hood, that will be the day.”
You have to lie a little once in a while in my business. I was lying a little. “What’s Ikky done to get himself disliked? Or would that be talking?”
“You think you’re a lot of man,” he sneered, rubbing the place where I had kneed him. “In my league you wouldn’t make pinch runner.”
I laughed in his face. Then I grabbed his right wrist and twisted it behind his back. He began to squawk. I reached into his breast pocket with my left hand and hauled out a wallet. I let him go. He reached for his gun on the desk and I bisected his upper arm with a hard cut. He fell into the customer’s chair and grunted.
“You can have your gun,” I told him. “When I give it to you. Now be good or I’ll have to bounce you just to amuse myself.”
In the wallet I found a driver’s license made out to Charles Hickon. It did me no good at all. Punks of his type always have slangy pseudonyms. They probably called him Tiny, or Slim, or Marbles, or even just “you.” I tossed the wallet back to him. It fell to the floor. He couldn’t even catch it.
“Hell,” I said, “there must be an economy campaign on, if they sent you to do more than pick up cigarette butts.”
“Screw yourself.”
“All right, mug. Beat it back to the laundry. Here’s your gun.”
He took it, made a business of shoving it into his waistband, stood up, gave me as dirty a look as he had in stock, and strolled to the door, nonchalant as a hustler with a new mink stole. He turned at the door and gave me the beady eye.
“Stay clean, tinhorn. Tin bends easy.”
With this blinding piece of repartee he opened the door and
drifted out.
After a little while I locked my other door, cut the buzzer, made the office dark, and left. I saw no one who looked like a life-taker. I drove to my house, packed a suitcase, drove to a service station where they were almost fond of me, stored my car and picked up a Hertz Chevrolet. I drove this to Poynter Street, dumped my suitcase in the sleazy apartment I had rented early in the afternoon, and went to dinner at Victor’s. It was nine o’clock, too late to drive to Bay City and take Anne to dinner. She’d have cooked her own long ago.
I ordered a double Gibson with fresh limes and drank it, and I was as hungry as a schoolboy.
5
On the way back to Poynter Street I did a good deal of weaving in and out and circling blocks and stopping, with a gun on the seat beside me. As far as I could tell, no one was trying to tail me.
I stopped on Sunset at a service station and made two calls from the box. I caught Bernie Ohls just as he was leaving to go home.
“This is Marlowe, Bernie. We haven’t had a fight in years. I’m getting lonely.”
“Well, get married. I’m chief investigator for the Sheriff’s Office now. I rank acting-captain until I pass the exam. I don’t hardly speak to private eyes.”
“Speak to this one. I could need help. I’m on a ticklish job where I could get killed.”
“And you expect me to interfere with the course of nature?”
“Come off it, Bernie. I haven’t been a bad guy. I’m trying to save an ex-mobster from a couple of executioners.”
“The more they mow each other down, the better I like it.”
“Yeah. If I call you, come running or send a couple of good boys. You’ll have had time to teach them.”
We exchanged a couple of mild insults and hung up. I dialed Ikky Rosenstein’s number. His rather unpleasant voice said: “Okay, talk.”
“Marlowe. Be ready to move out about midnight. We’ve spotted your boy friends and they are holed up at the Beverly-Western. They won’t move to your street tonight. Remember, they don’t know you’ve been tipped.”
“Sounds chancy.”
“Good God, it wasn’t meant to be a Sunday School picnic. You’ve been careless, Ikky. You were followed to my office. That cuts the time we have.”
He was silent for a moment. I heard him breathing. “Who by?” he asked.
“Some little tweezer who stuck a gun in my belly and gave me the trouble of taking it away from him. I can only figure why they sent a punk on the theory that they don’t want me to know too much, in case I don’t know it already.”
“You’re in for trouble, friend.”
“When not? I’ll come over to your place about midnight. Be ready. Where’s your car?”
“Out front.”
“Get it on a side street and make a business of locking it up. Where’s the back door of your flop?”
“In back. Where would it be? On the alley.”
“Leave your suitcase there. We walk out together and go to your car. We drive the alley and pick up the suitcase or cases.”
“Suppose some guy steals them?”
“Yeah. Suppose you get dead. Which do you like better?”
“Okay,” he grunted. “I’m waiting. But we’re taking big chances.”
“So do race drivers. Does that stop them? There’s no way to get out but fast. Douse your lights about ten and rumple the bed well. It would be good if you could leave some baggage behind. Wouldn’t look so planned.”
He grunted another okay and I hung up. The telephone box was well lighted outside. They usually are, at service stations. I took a good long gander around while I pawed over the collection of giveaway maps inside the station. I saw nothing to worry me. I took a map of San Diego just for the hell of it and got into my rent car.
On Poynter I parked around the corner and went up to my second-floor sleazy apartment and sat in the dark watching from my window. I saw nothing to worry about. A couple of medium-class chippies came out of Ikky’s apartment house and were picked up in a late model car. A man about Ikky’s height and build went into the apartment house. Various people came and went. The street was fairly quiet. Since they put in the Hollywood Freeway nobody much uses the off-the-boulevard streets unless they live in the neighborhood.
It was a nice fall night—or as nice as they get in Los Angeles’ spoiled climate—clearish but not even crisp. I don’t know what’s happened to the weather in our overcrowded city, but it’s not the weather I knew when I came to it.
It seemed like a long time to midnight. I couldn’t spot anybody watching anything, and no couple of quiet-suited men paged any of the six apartment houses available. I was pretty sure they’d try mine first when they came, and if Anne had picked the right men, and if anybody had come at all, and if the tweezer’s message back to his bosses had done me any good or otherwise. In spite of the hundred ways Anne could be wrong, I had a hunch she was right. The killers had no reason to be cagey if they didn’t know Ikky had been warned. No reason but one. He had come to my office and been tailed there. But the Outfit, with all its arrogance of power, might laugh at the idea he had been tipped off or come to me for help. I was so small they would hardly be able to see me.
At midnight I left the apartment, walked two blocks watching for a tail, crossed the street and went into Ikky’s dive. There was no locked door, and no elevator. I climbed steps to the third floor and looked for his apartment. I knocked lightly. He opened the door with a gun in his hand. He probably looked scared.
There were two suitcases by the door and another against the far wall. I went over and lifted it. It was heavy enough. I opened it. It was unlocked.
“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “It’s got everything a guy could need for three-four nights, and nothing except some clothes that I couldn’t glom off in any ready to wear place.”
I picked up one of the other suitcases. “Let’s stash this by the back door.”
“We can leave by the alley too.”
“We leave by the front door. Just in case we’re covered—though I don’t think so—we’re just two guys going out together. Just one thing. Keep both hands in your coat pockets and the gun in your right. If anybody calls out your name behind you, turn fast and shoot. Nobody but a life-taker will do it. I’ll do the same.”
“I’m scared,” he said in his rusty voice.
“Me too, if it helps any. But we have to do it. If you’re braced, they’ll have guns in their hands. Don’t bother asking them questions. They wouldn’t answer in words. If it’s just my small friend, we’ll cool him and dump him inside the door. Got it?”
He nodded, licking his lips. We carried the suitcases down and put them outside the back door. I looked along the alley. Nobody, and only a short distance to the side street. We went back in and along the hall to the front. We walked out on Poynter Street with all the casualness of a wife buying her husband a birthday tie.
Nobody made a move. The street was empty. We walked around the corner to Ikky’s rent car. He unlocked it. I went back with him for the suitcases. Not a stir. We put the suitcases in the car and started up and drove to the next street.
A traffic light not working, a boulevard stop or two, the entrance to the Freeway. There was plenty of traffic on it even at midnight. California is loaded with people going places and making speed to get there. If you don’t drive eighty miles an hour, everybody passes you. If you do, you have to watch the rear-view mirror for highway patrol cars. It’s the rat race of rat races.
Ikky did a quiet seventy. We reached the junction to Route 66 and he took it. So far nothing. I stayed with him to Pomona.
“This is far enough for me,” I said. “I’ll grab a bus back if there is one, or park myself in a motor court. Drive to a service station and we’ll ask for the bus stop. It should be close to the Freeway. Take us towards the business section.”
He did that and stopped midway of a block. He reached out his pocketbook, and held out four thousand-dollar bills to me.
“I don’t really feel I’ve earned all that. It was too easy.”
He laughed with a kind of wry amusement on his pudgy face. “Don’t be a sap. I have it made. You didn’t know what you was walking into. What’s more, your troubles are just beginning. The Outfit has eyes and ears everywhere. Perhaps I’m safe if I’m damn careful. Perhaps I ain’t as safe as I think I am. Either way, you did what I asked. Take the dough. I got plenty.”
I took it and put it away. He drove to an all-night service station and we were told where to find the bus stop. “There’s a cross-country Greyhound at 2.25 A.M.,” the attendant said, looking at a schedule. “They’ll take you, if they got room.”
Ikky drove to the bus stop. We shook hands and he went gunning down the road towards the Freeway. I looked at my watch and found a liquor store still open and bought a pint of Scotch. Then I found a bar and ordered a double with water.
My troubles were just beginning, Ikky had said. He was so right.
I got off at the Hollywood bus station, grabbed a taxi and drove to my office. I asked the driver to wait a few moments. At that time of night he was glad to. The colored night man let me into the building.
“You work late, Mr. Marlowe. But you always did, didn’t you?”
“It’s that sort of a business,” I said. “Thanks, Jasper.”
Up in my office I pawed the floor for mail and found nothing but a longish narrowish box, Special Delivery, with a Glendale postmark.
It contained nothing at all but a new freshly-sharpened pencil, the mobster’s mark of death.
6
I didn’t take it too hard. When they mean it, they don’t send it to you. I took it as a sharp warning to lay off. There might be a beating arranged. From their point of view, that would be good discipline. “When we pencil a guy, any guy that tries to help him is in for a smashing.” That could be the message.