I lit one of her cigarettes. She got up and shut the window, saying: “I get enough of that hotel smell on the job.”
She sat down again, went on: “It’s nineteen years ago. They had the guy in Leavenworth fifteen and it’s four since they let him out. A big lumberman from up north named Sol Leander bought them for his wife—the pearls, I mean—just two of them. They cost two hundred grand.”
“It must have taken a hand truck to move them,” I said.
“I see you don’t know a lot about pearls,” Kathy Home said. “It’s not just size. Anyhow they’re worth more today and the twenty-five-grand reward the Reliance people put out is still good.”
“I get it,” I said. “Somebody copped them off.”
“Now you’re getting yourself some oxygen.” She dropped her cigarette into a tray and let it smoke, as ladies will. I put it out for her. “That’s what the guy was in Leavenworth for, only they never proved he got the pearls. It was a mail-car job. He got himself hidden in the car somehow and up in Wyoming he shot the clerk, cleaned out the registered mail and dropped off. He got to B.C. Before he was nailed. But they didn’t get any of the stuff—not then. All they got was him. He got life.”
“If it’s going to be a long story, let’s have a drink.”
“I never drink until sundown. That way you don’t get to be a heel.”
“Tough on the Eskimos,” I said. “In the summertime anyway.”
She watched me get my little flat bottle out. Then she went on: “His name was Sype—Wally Sype. He did it alone. And he wouldn’t squawk about the stuff, not a peep. Then after fifteen long years they offered him a pardon, if he would loosen up with the loot. He gave up everything but the pearls.”
“Where did he have it?” I asked. “In his hat?”
“Listen, this ain’t just a bunch of gag lines, I’ve had a lead to those marbles.”
I shut my mouth with my hand and looked solemn.
“He said he never had the pearls and they must have halfway believed him because they gave him the pardon. Yet the pearls were in the load, registered mail, and they were never seen again.”
My throat began to feel a little thick. I didn’t say anything.
Kathy Horne went on: “One time in Leavenworth, just one time in all those years, Wally Sype wrapped himself around a can of white shellac and got as tight as a fat lady’s girdle. His cell mate was a little man they called Peeler Mardo. He was doing twenty-seven months for splitting twenty-dollar bills. Sype told him he had the pearls buried somewhere in Idaho.”
I leaned forward a little.
“Beginning to get to you, eh?” she said. “Well, get this. Peeler Mardo is rooming at my house and he’s a coke hound and he talks in his sleep.”
I leaned back again. “Good grief,” I said. “And I was practically spending the reward money.”
She stared at me coldly. Then her face softened. “All right,” she said a little hopelessly. “I know it sounds screwy. All those years gone by and all the smart heads that must have worked on the case, postal men and private agencies and all. And then a cokehead to turn it up. But he’s a nice little runt and somehow I believe him. He knows where Sype is.”
I said: “Did he talk all this in his sleep?”
“Of course not. But you know me. An old policewoman’s got ears. Maybe I was nosy, but I guessed he was an ex-con and I worried about him using the stuff so much. He’s the only roomer I’ve got now and I’d kind of go in by his door and listen to him talking to himself. That way I got enough to brace him. He told me the rest. He wants help to collect.”
I leaned forward again. “Where’s Sype?”
Kathy Home smiled, and shook her head. “That’s the one thing he wouldn’t tell, that and the name Sype is using now. But it’s somewhere up north, in or near Olympia, Washington. Peeler saw him up there and found out about him and he says Sype didn’t see him.”
“What’s Peeler doing down here?” I asked.
“Here’s where they put the Leavenworth rap on him. You know an old con always goes back to look at the piece of pavement he slipped on. But he doesn’t have any friends here now.”
I lit another cigarette and had another little drink.
“Sype has been out four years, you say. Peeler did twenty-seven months. What’s he been doing with all the time since?”
Kathy Home widened hem china-blue eyes pityingly. “Maybe you think there’s only one jailhouse he could get into.”
“Okey,” I said. “Will he talk to me? I guess he wants help to deal with the insurance people, in case there are any pearls and Sype will put them right in Peeler’s hand and so on. Is that it?”
Kathy Home sighed. “Yes, he’ll talk to you. He’s aching to. He’s scared about something. Will you go out now, before he gets junked up for the evening?”
“Sure—if that’s what you want.”
She took a flat key out of her bag and wrote an address on my pad. She stood up slowly.
“It’s a double house. My side’s separate. There’s a door in between, with the key on my side. That’s just in case he won’t come to the door.”
“Okey,” I said. I blew smoke at the ceiling and stared at her.
She went towards the door, stopped, came back. She looked down at the floor.
“I don’t rate much in it,” she said. “Maybe not anything. But if I could have a grand or two waiting for Johnny when he came out, maybe—”
“Maybe you could hold him straight,” I said. “It’s a dream, Kathy. It’s all a dream, But if it isn’t, you cut an even third.”
She caught her breath and glared at me to keep from crying. She went towards the door, stopped and came back again.
“That isn’t all,” she said. “It’s the old guy—Sype. He did fifteen years. He paid. Paid hard. Doesn’t it make you feel kind of mean?”
I shook my head. “He stole them, didn’t he? He killed a man. What does he do for a living?”
“His wife has money,” Kathy Horne said. “He just plays around with goldfish.”
“Goldfish?” I said. “To hell with him.”
She went on out.
2
The last time I had been in the Gray Lake district I had helped a D.A.’s man named Bernie Ohls shoot a gunman named Poke Andrews. But that was higher up the hill, farther away from the lake. This house was on the second level, in a loop the street made rounding a spur of the hill. It stood on a terrace, with a cracked retaining wall in front and several vacant lots behind.
Being originally a double house it had two front doors and two sets of front steps. One of the doors had a sign tacked over the grating that masked the peep window: Ring 1432.
I parked my car and went up right-angle steps, passed between two lines of pinks, went up more steps to the side with the sign. That should be the roomer’s side. I rang the bell. Nobody answered it, so I went across to the other door. Nobody answered that one either.
While I was waiting a gray Dodge coupe whished around the curve and a small neat girl in blue looked up at me for a second. I didn’t see who else was in the car. I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t know it was important.
I took out Kathy Home’s key and let myself into a closed living room that smelled of cedar oil. There was just enough furniture to get by, net curtains, a quiet shaft of sunlight under the drapes in front. There was a tiny breakfast room, a kitchen, a bedroom in the back that was obviously Kathy’s, a bathroom, another bedroom in front that seemed to be used as a sewing room. It was this room that had the door cut through to the other side of the house.
I unlocked it and stepped, as it were, through a mirror. Everything was backwards, except the furniture. The living room on that side had twin beds, didn’t have the look of being lived in.
I went towards the back of the house, past the second bathroom, knocked at the shut door that corresponded to Kathy’s bedroom.
No answer. I tried the knob and went in. The little man on the bed was prob
ably Peeler Mardo. I noticed his feet first, because although he had on trousers and a shirt, his feet were bare and hung over the end of the bed. They were tied there by a rope around the ankles.
They had been burned raw on the soles. There was a smell of scorched flesh in spite of the open window. Also a smell of scorched wood. An electric iron on a desk was still connected. I went over and shut it off.
I went back to Kathy Home’s kitchen and found a pint of Brooklyn Scotch in the cooler. I used some of it and breathed deeply for a little while and looked out over the vacant lots. There was a narrow cement walk behind the house and green wooden steps down to the street.
I went back to Peeler Mardo’s room. The coat of a brown suit with a red pin stripe hung over a chair with the pockets turned out and what had been in them on the floor.
He was wearing the trousers of the suit, and their pockets were turned out also. Some keys and change and a handkerchief lay on the bed beside him, and a metal box like a woman’s compact, from which some glistening white powder had spilled. Cocaine.
He was a little man, not more than five feet four, with thin brown hair and large ears. His eyes had no particular color. They were just eyes, and very wide open and quite dead. His arms were pulled out from him and tied at the wrists by a rope that went under the bed.
I looked him over for bullet or knife wounds, didn’t find any. There wasn’t a mark on him except his feet. Shock or heart failure or a combination of the two must have done the trick. He was still warm. The gag in his mouth was both warm and wet.
I wiped off everything I had touched, looked out of Kathy’s front window for a while before I left the house.
It was three-thirty when I walked into the lobby of the Mansion House, over to the cigar counter in the corner. I leaned on the glass and asked for Camels.
Kathy Horne flicked the pack at me, dropped the change into my outside breast pocket, and gave me her customer’s smile.
“Well? You didn’t take long,” she said, and looked sidewise along her eyes at a drunk who was trying to light a cigar with the old-fashioned flint and steel lighter.
“It’s heavy,” I told her. “Get set.”
She turned away quickly and flipped a pack of paper matches along the glass to the drunk. He fumbled for them, dropped both matches and cigar, scooped them angrily off the floor and went off looking back over his shoulder, as if he expected a kick.
Kathy looked past my head, her eyes cool and empty.
“I’m set,” she whispered.
“You cut a full half,” I said. “Peeler’s out. He’s been bumped off—in his bed.”
Her eyes twitched. Two fingers curled on the glass near my elbow. A white line showed around her mouth. That was all.
“Listen,” I said. “Don’t say anything until I’m through. He died of shock. Somebody burned his feet with a cheap electric iron. Not yours, I looked. I’d say he died rather quickly and couldn’t have said much. The gag was still in his mouth. When I went out there, frankly, I thought it was all hooey. Now I’m not so sure. If he opened up, we’re through, and so is Sype, unless I can find him first. Those workers didn’t have any inhibitions at all. If he didn’t give up, there’s still time.”
Her head turned, her set eyes looked towards the revolving door at the lobby entrance. White patches glared in her cheeks.
“What do I do?” she breathed.
I poked at a box of wrapped cigars, dropped her key into it. Her long fingers got it out smoothly, hid it.
“When you get home you find him. You don’t know a thing. Leave the pearls out, leave me out. When they check his prints they’ll know he had a record and they’ll just figure it was something caught up with him.”
I broke my cigarettes open and lit one, watched her for a moment. She didn’t move an inch.
“Can you face it down?” I asked. “If you can’t, now’s the time to speak.”
“Of course.” Her eyebrows arched. “Do I look like a torturer?”
“You married a crook,” I said grimly.
She flushed, which was what I wanted. “He isn’t! He’s just a damn fool! Nobody thinks any the worse of me, not even the boys down at Headquarters.”
“All right. I like it that way. It’s not our murder, after all. And if we talk now, you can say goodbye to any share in any reward—even if one is ever paid.”
“Darn tootin’,” Kathy Home said pertly. “Oh, the poor little runt,” she almost sobbed.
I patted her arm, grinned as heartily as I could and left the Mansion House.
3
The Reliance Indemnity Company had offices in the Graas Building, three small rooms that looked like nothing at all. They were a big enough outfit to be as shabby as they liked.
The resident manager was named Lutin, a middle-aged baldheaded man with quiet eyes, dainty fingers that caressed a dappled cigar. He sat behind a large, well-dusted desk and stared peacefully at my chin.
“Marlowe, eh? I’ve heard of you.” He touched my card with a shiny little finger. “What’s on your mind?”
I rolled a cigarette around in my fingers and lowered my voice. “Remember the Leander pearls?”
His smile was slow, a little bored. “I’m not likely to forget them. They cost this company one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I was a cocky young adjuster then.”
I said: “I’ve got an idea. It may be all haywire. It very likely is. But I’d like to try it out. Is your twenty-five grand reward still good?”
He chuckled. “Twenty grand, Marlowe. We spent the difference ourselves. You’re wasting time.”
“It’s my time. Twenty it is then. How much cooperation can I get?”
“What kind of co-operation?”
“Can I have a letter identifying me to your other branches? In case I have to go out of the state. In case I need kind words from some local law.”
“Which way out of the state?”
I smiled at him. He tapped his cigar on the edge of a tray and smiled back. Neither of our smiles was honest.
“No letter,” he said. “New York wouldn’t stand for it. We have our own tie-up. But all the co-operation you can use, under the hat. And the twenty grand, if you click. Of course you won’t.”
I lit my cigarette and leaned back, puffed smoke at the ceiling.
“No? Why not? You never got those marbles. They existed, didn’t they?”
“Darn right they existed. And if they still do, they belong to us. But two hundred grand doesn’t get buried for twenty years—and then get dug up.”
“All right. It’s still my own time.”
He knocked a little ash off his cigar and looked down his eyes at me. “I like your front,” he said, “even if you are crazy. But we’re a large organization. Suppose I have you covered from now on. What then?”
“I lose. I’ll know I’m covered. I’m too long in the game to miss that. I’ll quit, give up what I know to the law, and go home.”
“Why would you do that?”
I leaned forward over the desk again. “Because,” I said slowly, “the guy that had the lead got bumped off today.”
“Oh—oh,” Lutin rubbed his nose.
“I didn’t bump him off,” I added.
We didn’t talk any more for a little while. Then Lutin said: “You don’t want any letter. You wouldn’t even carry it. And after your telling me that you know damn well I won’t dare give it you.”
I stood up, grinned, started for the door. He got up himself, very fast, ran around the desk and put his small neat hand on my arm.
“Listen, I know you’re crazy, but if you do get anything, bring it in through our boys. We need the advertising.”
“What the hell do you think I live on?” I growled.
“Twenty-five grand.”
“I thought it was twenty.”
“Twenty-five. And you’re still crazy. Sype never had those pearls. If he had, he’d have made some kind of terms with us many years ago.”
??
?Okey,” I said. “You’ve had plenty of time to make up your mind.”
We shook hands, grinned at each other like a couple of wise boys who know they’re not kidding anybody, but won’t give up trying.
It was a quarter to five when I got back to the office. I had a couple of short drinks and stuffed a pipe and sat down to interview my brains. The phone rang.
A woman’s voice said: “Marlowe?” It was a small, tight, cold voice. I didn’t know it.
“Yeah.”
“Better see Rush Madder. Know him?”
“No,” I lied. “Why should I see him?”
There was a sudden tinkling, icy-cold laugh on the wire. “On account of a guy had sore feet,” the voice said.
The phone clicked. I put my end of it aside, struck a match and stared at the wall until the flame burned my fingers.
Rush Madder was a shyster in the Quorn Building. An ambulance chaser, a small-time fixer, an alibi builder-upper, anything that smelled a little and paid a little more. I hadn’t heard of him in connection with any big operations like burning people’s feet.
4
It was getting toward quitting time on lower Spring Street. Taxis were dawdling close to the curb, stenographers were getting an early start home, streetcars were clogging up, and traffic cops were preventing people from making perfectly legal right turns.
The Quorn Building was a narrow front, the color of dried mustard, with a large case of false teeth in the entrance. The directory held the names of painless dentists, people who teach you how to become a letter carrier, just names, and numbers without any names, Rush Madder, Attorney-at-Law, was in Room 619.
I got out of a jolting open-cage elevator, looked at a dirty spittoon on a dirty rubber mat, walked down a corridor that smelled of butts, and tried the knob below the frosted glass panel of 619. The door was locked, I knocked.
A shadow came against the glass and the door was pulled back with a squeak. I was looking at a thick-set man with a soft round chin, heavy black eyebrows, an oily complexion and a Charlie Chan mustache that made his face look fatter than it was.