“You’re not the police?”
“No.”
It finally registered. She let out a long sigh. “What—what do you want?”
“Who killed him?”
Her shoulders jerked in the checkered coat, but nothing changed much in her face. Her eyes slowly got furtive.
“Who—who else knows?”
“About Steiner? I don’t know. Not the police, or someone would be here. Maybe Marty.”
It was just a stab in the dark, but it got a sudden, sharp cry out of her.
“Marty!”
We were both silent for a minute. I puffed on my cigarette and she chewed on her thumb.
“Don’t get clever,” I said. “Did Marty kill him?”
Her chin came down an inch. “Yes.”
“Why did he do it?”
“I—I don’t know,” very dully.
“Seen much of him lately?”
Her hands clenched. “Just once or twice.”
“Know where he lives?”
“Yes!” She spat it at me.
“What’s the matter? I thought you liked Marty.”
“I hate him!” she almost yelled.
“Then you’d like him for the spot,” I said.
She was blank to that. I had to explain it. “I mean, are you willing to tell the police it was Marty?”
Sudden panic flamed in her eyes.
“If I kill the nude photo angle,” I said soothingly.
She giggled.
That gave me a nasty feeling. If she had screeched, or turned white, or even keeled over, that would have been fairly natural. But she just giggled.
I began to hate the sight of her. Just looking at her made me feel dopey.
Her giggles went on, ran around the room like rats. They gradually got hysterical. I got off the desk, took a step towards her, and slapped her face.
“Just like last night,” I said.
The giggling stopped at once and the thumb-chewing started again. She still didn’t mind my slaps apparently. I sat on the end of the desk once more.
“You came here to look for the camera plate—for the birthday suit photo,” I told her.
Her chin went up and down again.
“Too late. I looked for it last night. It was gone then. Probably Marty has it. You’re not kidding me about Marty?”
She shook her head vigorously. She got out of the chair slowly. Her eyes were narrow and sloe-black and as shallow as an oyster shell.
“I’m going now,” she said, as if we had been having a cup of tea.
She went over to the door and was reaching out to open it when a car came up the hill and stopped outside the house. Somebody got out of the car.
She turned and stared at me, horrified.
The door opened casually and a man looked in at us.
9
He was a hatchet-faced man in a brown suit and a black felt hat. The cuff of his left sleeve was folded under and pinned to the side of his coat with a big black safety pin.
He took his hat off, closed the door by pushing it with his shoulder, looked at Carmen with a nice smile. He had close-cropped black hair and a bony skull. He fitted his clothes well, He didn’t look tough.
“I’m Guy Slade,” he said. “Excuse the casual entrance. The bell didn’t work. Is Steiner around?”
He hadn’t tried the bell. Carmen looked at him blankly, then at me, then back at Slade. She licked her lips but didn’t say anything.
I said: “Steiner isn’t here, Mr. Slade. We don’t know just where he is.”
He nodded and touched his long chin with the brim of his hat.
“You friends of his?”
“We just dropped by for a book,” I said, and gave him back his smile. “The door was half open. We knocked, then stepped inside. Just like you.”
“I see,” Slade said thoughtfully. “Very simple.”
I didn’t say anything. Carmen didn’t say anything. She was staring fixedly at his empty sleeve.
“A book, eh?” Slade went on. The way he said it told me things. He knew about Steiner’s racket, maybe.
I moved over towards the door. “Only you didn’t knock,” I said.
He smiled with faint embarrassment. “That’s right. I ought to have knocked, Sorry.”
“We’ll trot along now,” I said carelessly. I took hold of Carmen’s arm.
“Any message—if Steiner comes back?” Slade asked softly.
“We won’t bother you.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, with too much meaning.
I let go of Carmen’s arm and took a slow step away from her. Slade still had his hat in his hand. He didn’t move. His deep-set eyes twinkled pleasantly.
I opened the door again.
Slade said: “The girl can go. But I’d like to talk to you a little.”
I stared at him, trying to look very blank.
“Kidder, eh?” Slade said nicely.
Carmen made a sudden sound at my side and ran out through the door. In a moment I heard her steps going down the hill. I hadn’t seen her car, but I guessed it was around somewhere.
I began to say: “What the hell—”
“Save it,” Slade interrupted coldly. “There’s something wrong here. I’ll just find out what it is.”
He began to walk around the room carelessly—too carelessly. He was frowning, not paying much attention to me. That made me thoughtful. I took a quick glance out of the window, but I couldn’t see anything but the top of his car above the hedge.
Slade found the potbellied flagon and the two thin purple glasses on the desk. He sniffed at one of them. A disgusted smile wrinkled his thin lips.
“The lousy pimp,” he said tonelessly.
He looked at the books on the desk, touched one or two of them, went on around the back of the desk and was in front of the totem pole thing. He stared at that. Then his eyes went down to the floor, to the thin rug that was over the place where Steiner’s body had been. Slade moved the rug with his foot and suddenly tensed, staring down.
It was a good act—or else Slade had a nose I could have used in my business. I wasn’t sure which—yet, but I was giving it a lot of thought.
He went slowly down to the floor on one knee. The desk partly hid him from me.
I slipped a gun out from under my arm and put both hands behind my body and leaned against the wall.
There was a sharp, swift exclamation, then Slade shot to his feet. His arm flashed up. A long, black Luger slid into it expertly. I didn’t move. Slade held the Luger in long, pale fingers, not pointing it at me, not pointing it at anything in particular.
“Blood,” he said quietly, grimly, his deep-set eyes black and hard now. “Blood on the floor there, under a rug. A lot of blood.”
I grinned at him. “I noticed it,” I said. “It’s old blood. Dried blood.”
He slid sideways into the black chair behind Steiner’s desk and raked the telephone towards him by putting the Luger around it. He frowned at the telephone, then frowned at me.
“I think we’ll have some law,” he said.
“Suits me.”
Slade’s eyes were narrow and as hard as jet. He didn’t like my agreeing with him. The veneer had flaked off him, leaving a well-dressed hard boy with a Luger. Looking as if he could use it.
“Just who the hell are you?” he growled.
“A shamus. The name doesn’t matter. The girl is my client. Steiner’s been riding her with some blackmail dirt. We came to talk to him. He wasn’t here.”
“Just walk in, huh?”
“Correct. So what? Think we gunned Steiner, Mr. Slade?”
He smiled slightly, thinly, but said nothing.
“Or do you think Steiner gunned somebody and ran away?” I suggested.
Steiner didn’t gun anybody,” Slade said. “Steiner didn’t have the guts of a sick cat.”
I said: “You don’t see anybody here, do you? Maybe Steiner had chicken for dinner, and liked to kill his chicken
s in the parlor.”
“I don’t get it. I don’t get your game.”
I grinned again. “Go ahead and call your friends downtown. Only you won’t like the reaction you’ll get.”
He thought that over without moving a muscle. His lips went back against his teeth.
“Why not?” he asked finally, in a careful voice.
I said: “I know you, Mr. Slade. You run the Aladdin Club down on the Palisades. Flash gambling. Soft lights and evening clothes and a buffet supper on the side. You know Steiner well enough to walk into his house without knocking. Steiner’s racket needed a little protection now and then. You could be that.”
Slade’s finger tightened on the Luger, then relaxed. He put the Luger down on the desk, kept his fingers on it. His mouth became a hard white grimace.
“Somebody got to Steiner,” he said softly, his voice and the expression on his face seeming to belong to two different people. “He didn’t show at the store today. He didn’t answer his phone. I came up to see about it.”
“Glad to hear you didn’t gun Steiner yourself,” I said.
The Luger swept up again and made a target of my chest. I said:
“Put it down, Slade. You don’t know enough to pop off yet. Not being bullet-proof is an idea I’ve had to get used to. Put it down. I’ll tell you something—if you don’t know it. Somebody moved Steiner’s books out of his store today—the books he did his real business with.”
Slade put his gun down on the desk for the second time. He leaned back and wrestled an amiable expression onto his face.
“I’m listening,” he said.
“I think somebody got to Steiner too,” I told him. “I think that blood is his blood. The books being moved out from Steiner’s store gives us a reason for moving his body away from here. Somebody is taking over the racket and doesn’t want Steiner found till he’s all set. Whoever it was ought to have cleaned up the blood. He didn’t.”
Slade listened silently. The peaks of his eyebrows made sharp angles against the white skin of his indoor forehead.
I went on: “Killing Steiner to grab his racket was a dumb trick, and I’m not sure it happened that way. But I am sure that whoever took the books knows about it, and that the blonde down in the store is scared stiff about something.”
“Any more?” Slade asked evenly.
“Not right now. There’s a piece of scandal dope I want to trace. If I get it, I might tell you where. That will be your muscler in.”
“Now would be better,” Slade said. Then he drew his lips back against his teeth and whistled sharply, twice.
I jumped. A car door opened outside. There were steps.
I brought the gun around from behind my body. Slade’s face convulsed and his hand snatched for the Luger that lay in front of him, fumbled at the butt.
I said: “Don’t touch it!”
He came to his feet rigid, leaning over, his hand on the gun, but the gun not in his hand. I dodged past him into the hallway and turned as two men came into the room.
One had short red hair, a white, lined face, unsteady eyes. The other was an obvious pug; a good-looking boy except for a flattened nose and one ear as thick as a club steak.
Neither of the newcomers had a gun in sight. They stopped, stared.
I stood behind Slade in the doorway. Slade leaned over the desk in front of me, didn’t stir.
The pug’s mouth opened in a wide snarl, showing sharp, white teeth. The redhead looked shaky and scared.
Slade had plenty of guts. In a smooth, low, but very clear voice he said:
“This heel gunned Steiner, boys. Take him!”
The redhead took hold of his lower lip with his teeth and snatched for something under his left arm. He didn’t get it. I was all set and braced. I shot him through the right shoulder, hating to do it. The gun made a lot of noise in the closed room. It seemed to me that it would be heard all over the city. The redhead went down on the floor and writhed and threshed about as if I had shot him in the belly.
The pug didn’t move. He probably knew there wasn’t enough speed in his arm. Slade grabbed his Luger up and started to whirl. I took a step and slammed him behind the ear. He sprawled forward over the desk and the Luger shot against a row of books.
Slade didn’t hear me say: “I hate to hit a one-armed man from behind, Slade, And I’m not crazy about the show-off. You made me do it.”
The pug grinned at me and said: “Okay, pal. What next?”
“I’d like to get out of here, if I can do it without any more shooting. Or I can stick around for some law. It’s all one to me.”
He thought it over calmly. The redhead was making moaning noises on the floor. Slade was very still.
The pug put his hands up slowly and clasped them behind his neck. He said coolly: “I don’t know what it’s all about, but I don’t give a good——damn where you go or what you do when you get there. And this ain’t my idea of a spot for a lead party. Drift!”
“Wise boy. You’ve more sense than your boss.”
I edged around the desk, edged over towards the open door. The pug turned slowly, facing me, keeping his hands behind his neck. There was a wry but almost good-natured grin on his face.
I skinned through the door and made a fast break through the gap in the hedge and up the hill, half expecting lead to fly after me. None came.
I jumped into the Chrysler and chased it up over the brow of the hill and away from that neighborhood.
10
It was after five when I stopped opposite the apartment house on Randall Place. A few windows were lit up already and radios bleated discordantly on different programs. I rode the automatic elevator to the fourth floor. Apartment 405 was at the end of a long hall that was carpeted in green and paneled in ivory. A cool breeze blew through the hall from open doors to the fire escape.
There was a small ivory push button beside the door marked 405. I pushed it.
After a long time a man opened the door a foot or so. He was a long-legged, thin man with dark brown eyes in a very brown face. Wiry hair grew far back on his head, giving him a great deal of domed brown forehead. His brown eyes probed at me impersonally.
I said: “Steiner?”
Nothing in the man’s face changed. He brought a cigarette from behind the door and put it slowly between tight brown lips. A puff of smoke came towards me, and behind it words in a cool, unhurried voice, without inflection. “You said what?”
“Steiner. Harold Hardwicke Steiner. The guy that has the books.”
The man nodded. He considered my remark without haste. He glanced at the tip of his cigarette, said: “I think I know him, But he doesn’t visit here. Who sent you?”
I smiled. He didn’t like that. I said: “You’re Marty?”
The brown face got harder. “So what? Got a grift—or just amusin’ yourself?”
I moved my left foot casually, enough so that he couldn’t slam the door.
“You got the books,” I said. “I got the sucker list. How’s to talk it over?”
Marty didn’t shift his eyes from my face. His right hand went behind the panel of the door again, and his shoulder had a look as if he was making motions with a hand. There was a faint sound in the room behind him—very faint. A curtain ring clicked lightly on a rod.
Then he opened the door wide. “Why not? If you think you’ve got something,” he said coolly.
I went past him into the room. It was a cheerful room, with good furniture and not too much of it. French windows in the end wall looked across a stone porch at the foothills, already getting purple in the dusk. Near the windows a door was shut. Another door in the same wall at the near end of the room had curtains drawn across it, on a brass rod below the lintel.
I sat down on a davenport against the wall in which there were no doors. Marty shut the door and walked sideways to a tall oak writing desk studded with square nails. A cedarwood cigar box with gilt hinges rested on the lowered leaf of the desk. Marty picked it up w
ithout taking his eyes off me, carried it to a low table beside an easy chair. He sat down in the easy chair.
I put my hat beside me and opened the top button of my coat and smiled at Marty.
“Well—I’m listening,” he said.
He snubbed his cigarette out, lifted the lid of the cigar box and took out a couple of fat cigars.
“Cigar?” he suggested casually, and tossed one at me.
I reached for it and that made me a sap. Marty dropped the other cigar back into the box and came up very swiftly with a gun.
I looked at the gun politely. It was a black police Colt, a .38. I had no argument against it at the moment.
“Stand up a minute,” Marty said. “Come forward just about two yards. You might grab a little air while you’re doing that.” His voice was elaborately casual.
I was mad inside, but I grinned at him. I said: “You’re the second guy I’ve met today that thinks a gun in the hand means the world by the tail. Put it away, and let’s talk.”
Marty’s eyebrows came together and he pushed his chin forward a little. His brown eyes were vaguely troubled.
We stared at each other. I didn’t look at the pointed black slipper that showed under the curtains across the doorway to my left.
Marty was wearing a dark blue suit, a blue shirt and a black tie. His brown face looked somber above the dark colors. He said softly, in a lingering voice: “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a tough guy—just careful. I don’t know hell’s first thing about you. You might be a life-taker for all I know.”
“You’re not careful enough,” I said. “The play with the books was lousy.”
He drew a long breath and let it out silently. Then he leaned back and crossed his long legs and rested the Colt on his knee.
“Don’t kid yourself I won’t use this, if I have to. What’s your story?”
“Tell your friend with the pointed shoes to come on in,” I said. “She gets tired holding her breath.”
Without turning his head Marty called out: “Come on in, Agnes.”
The curtains over the door swung aside and the green-eyed blonde from Steiner’s store joined us in the room. I wasn’t very much surprised to see her there. She looked at me bitterly.
“I knew damn well you were trouble,” she told me angrily. “I told Joe to watch his step.”