There was nothing womanish in the room except a full length mirror with a clear sweep of floor in front of it.
I was half-sitting and half-lying in a deep chair with my legs on a footstool. I had had two cups of black coffee, then I had had a drink, then I had had two soft-boiled eggs and a slice of toast broken into them, then some more black coffee with brandy laced in it. I had had all this in the breakfast room, but I couldn’t remember what it looked like any more. It was too long ago.
I was in good shape again. I was almost sober and my stomach was bunting towards third base instead of trying for the centerfield flagpole.
Anne Riordan sat opposite me, leaning forward, her neat chin cupped in her neat hand, her eyes dark and shadowy under the fluffed out reddish-brown hair. There was a pencil stuck through her hair. She looked worried. I had told her some of it, but not all. Especially about Moose Malloy I had not told her.
“I thought you were drunk,” she said. “I thought you had to be drunk before you came to see me. I thought you had been out with that blonde. I thought—I don’t know what I thought.”
“I bet you didn’t get all this writing,” I said, looking around. “Not even if you got paid for what you thought you thought.”
“And my dad didn’t get it grafting on the cops either,” she said. “Like that fat slob they have for chief of police nowadays.”
“It’s none of my business,” I said.
She said: “We had some lots at Del Rey. Just sand lots they suckered him for. And they turned out to be oil lots.”
I nodded and drank out of the nice crystal glass I was holding. What was in it had a nice warm taste.
“A fellow could settle down here,” I said. “Move right in. Everything set for him.”
“If he was that kind of fellow. And anybody wanted him to,” she said.
“No butler,” I said. “That makes it tough.”
She flushed. “But you—you’d rather get your head beaten to a pulp and your arm riddled with dope needles and your chin used for a backboard in a basketball game. God knows there’s enough of it.”
I didn’t say anything. I was too tired.
“At least,” she said, “you had the brains to look in those mouthpieces. The way you talked over on Aster Drive I thought you had missed the whole thing.”
“Those cards don’t mean anything.”
Her eyes snapped at me. “You sit there and tell me that after the man had you beaten up by a couple of crooked policemen and thrown in a two-day liquor cure to teach you to mind your own business? Why the thing stands out so far you could break off a yard of it and still have enough left for a baseball bat.”
“I ought to have said that one,” I said. “Just my style. Crude. What sticks out?”
“That this elegant psychic person is nothing but a high-class mobster. He picks the prospects and milks the minds and then tells the rough boys to go out and get the jewels.”
“You really think that?”
She stared at me. I finished my glass and got my weak look on my face again. She ignored it.
“Of course I think it,” she said. “And so do you.”
“I think it’s a little more complicated than that.”
Her smile was cozy and acid at the same time. “I beg your pardon. I forgot for the moment you were a detective. It would have to be complicated, wouldn’t it? I suppose there’s a sort of indecency about a simple case.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said.
“All right. I’m listening.”
“I don’t know. I just think so. Can I have one more drink?”
She stood up. “You know, you’ll have to taste water sometime, just for the hell of it.” She came over and took my glass. “This is going to be the last.” She went out of the room and somewhere ice cubes tinkled and I closed my eyes and listened to the small unimportant sounds. I had no business coming here. If they knew as much about me as I suspected, they might come here looking. That would be a mess.
She came back with the glass and her fingers cold from holding the cold glass touched mine and I held them for a moment and then let them go slowly as you let go of a dream when you wake with the sun in your face and have been in an enchanted valley.
She flushed and went back to her chair and sat down and made a lot of business of arranging herself in it.
She lit a cigarette, watching me drink.
“Amthor’s a pretty ruthless sort of lad,” I said. “But I don’t somehow see him as the brain guy of a jewel mob. Perhaps I’m wrong. If he was and he thought I had something on him, I don’t think I’d have got out of that dope hospital alive. But he’s a man who has things to fear. He didn’t get really tough until I began to babble about invisible writing.”
She looked at me evenly. “Was there some?”
I grinned. “If there was, I didn’t read it.”
“That’s a funny way to hide nasty remarks about a person, don’t you think? In the mouthpieces of cigarettes. Suppose they were never found.”
“I think the point is that Marriott feared something and that if anything happened to him, the cards would be found. The police would go over anything in his pockets with a fine-tooth comb. That’s what bothers me. If Amthor’s a crook, nothing would have been left to find.”
“You mean if Amthor murdered him—or had him murdered? But what Marriott knew about Amthor may not have had any direct connection with the murder.”
I leaned back and pressed my back into the chair and finished my drink and made believe I was thinking that over. I nodded.
“But the jewel robbery had a connection with the murder. And we’re assuming Amthor had a connection with the jewel robbery.”
Her eyes were a little sly. “I bet you feel awful,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like to go to bed?”
“Here?”
She flushed to the roots of her hair. Her chin stuck out. “That was the idea. I’m not a child. Who the devil cares what I do or when or how?”
I put my glass aside and stood up. “One of my rare moments of delicacy is coming over me,” I said. “Will you drive me to a taxi stand, if you’re not too tired?”
“You damned sap,” she said angrily. “You’ve been beaten to a pulp and shot full of God knows how many kinds of narcotics and I suppose all you need is a night’s sleep to get up bright and early and start out being a detective again.”
“I thought I’d sleep a little late.”
“You ought to be in a hospital, you damn fool!”
I shuddered. “Listen,” I said. “I’m not very clearheaded tonight and I don’t think I ought to linger around here too long. I haven’t a thing on any of these people that I could prove, but they seem to dislike me. Whatever I might say would be my word against the law, and the law in this town seems to be pretty rotten.”
“It’s a nice town,” she said sharply, a little breathlessly, “You can’t judge—”
“Okey, it’s a nice town. So is Chicago. You could live there a long time and not see a Tommy gun. Sure, it’s a nice town. It’s probably no crookeder than Los Angeles. But you can only buy a piece of a big city. You can buy a town this size all complete, with the original box and tissue paper. That’s the difference. And that makes me want out.”
She stood up and pushed her chin at me. “You’ll go to bed now and right here. I have a spare bedroom and you can turn right in and—”
“Promise to lock your door?”
She flushed and bit her lip. “Sometimes I think you’re a world-beater,” she said, “and sometimes I think you’re the worst heel I ever met.”
“On either count would you run me over to where I can get a taxi?”
“You’ll stay here,” she snapped. “You’re not fit. You’re a sick man.”
“I’m not too sick to have my brain picked,” I said nastily.
She ran out of the room so fast she almost tripped over the two steps from the living room up to the hall. She came back in nothing flat
with a long flannel coat on over her sIack suit and no hat and her reddish hair looking as mad as her face. She opened a side door and threw it away from her, bounced through it and her steps clattered on the driveway. A garage door made a faint sound lifting. A car door opened and slammed shut again. The starter ground and the motor caught and the lights flared past the open French door of the living room.
I picked my hat out of a chair and switched off a couple of lamps and saw that the French door had a Yale lock. I looked back a moment before I closed the door. It was a nice room. It would be a nice room to wear slippers in.
I shut the door and the little car slid up beside me and I went around behind it to get in.
She drove me all the way home, tight-lipped, angry. She drove like a fury. When I got out in front of my apartment house she said good night in a frosty voice and swirled the little car in the middle of the street and was gone before I could get my keys out of my pocket.
They locked the lobby door at eleven. I unlocked it and passed into the always musty lobby and along to the stairs and the elevator. I rode up to my floor. Bleak light shone along it. Milk bottles stood in front of service doors. The red fire door loomed at the back. It had an open screen that let in a lazy trickle of air that never quite swept the cooking smell out. I was home in a sleeping world, a world as harmless as a sleeping cat.
I unlocked the door of my apartment and went in and sniffed the smell of it, just standing there, against the door for a little while before I put the light on. A homely smell, a smell of dust and tobacco smoke, the smell of a world where men live, and keep on living.
I undressed and went to bed. I had nightmares and woke out of them sweating. But in the morning I was a well man again.
TWENTY-NINE
I was sitting on the side of my bed in my pajamas, thinking about getting up, but not yet committed. I didn’t feel very well, but I didn’t feel as sick as I ought to, not as sick as I would feel if I had a salaried job. My head hurt and felt large and hot and my tongue was dry and had gravel on it and my throat was stiff and my jaw was not untender. But I had had worse mornings.
It was a gray morning with high fog, not yet warm but likely to be. I heaved up off the bed and rubbed the pit of my stomach where it was sore from vomiting. My left foot felt fine. It didn’t have an ache in it. So I had to kick the corner of the bed with it.
I was still swearing when there was a sharp tap at the door, the kind of bossy knock that makes you want to open the door two inches, emit the succulent raspberry and slam it again.
I opened it a little wider than two inches. Detective-Lieutenant Randall stood there, in a brown gabardine suit, with a pork pie lightweight felt on his head, very neat and clean and solemn and with a nasty look in his eye.
He pushed the door lightly and I stepped away from it. He came in and closed it and looked around. “I’ve been looking for you for two days,” he said. He didn’t look at me. His eyes measured the room.
“I’ve been sick.”
He walked around with a light springy step, his creamy gray hair shining, his hat under his arm now, his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t a very big man for a cop. He took one hand out of his pocket and placed the hat carefully on top of some magazines.
“Not here,” he said.
“In a hospital.”
“Which hospital?”
“A pet hospital.”
He jerked as if I had slapped his face. Dull color showed behind his skin.
“A little early in the day, isn’t it—for that sort of thing?”
I didn’t say anything. I lit a cigarette. I took one draw on it and sat down on the bed again, quickly.
“No cure for lads like you, is there?” he said. “Except to throw you in the sneezer.”
“I’ve been a sick man and I haven’t had my morning coffee. You can’t expect a very high grade of wit.”
“I told you not to work on this case.”
“You’re not God. You’re not even Jesus Christ.” I took another drag on the cigarette. Somewhere down inside me felt raw, but I liked it a little better.
“You’d be amazed how much trouble I could make you.”
“Probably.”
“Do you know why I haven’t done it so far?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” He was leaning over a little, sharp as a terrier, with that stony look in his eyes they all get sooner or later.
“You couldn’t find me.”
He leaned back and rocked on his heels. His face shone a little. “I thought you were going to say something else,” he said. “And if you said it, I was going to smack you on the button.”
“Twenty million dollars wouldn’t scare you. But you might get orders.”
He breathed hard, with his mouth a little open. Very slowly he got a package of cigarettes out of his pocket and tore the wrapper. His fingers were trembling a little. He put a cigarette between his lips and went over to my magazine table for a match folder. He lit the cigarette carefully, put the match in the ashtray and not on the floor, and inhaled.
“I gave you some advice over the telephone the other day,” he said. “Thursday.”
“Friday.”
“Yes—Friday. It didn’t take. I can understand why. But I didn’t know at that time you had been holding out evidence. I was just recommending a line of action that seemed like a good idea in this case.”
“What evidence?”
He stared at me silently.
“Will you have some coffee?” I asked. “It might make you human.”
“No.”
“I will.” I stood up and started for the kitchenette.
“Sit down,” Randall snapped. “I’m far from through.”
I kept on going out to the kitchenette, ran some water into the kettle and put it on the stove. I took a drink of cold water from the faucet, then another. I came back with a third glass in my hand to stand in the doorway and look at him. He hadn’t moved. The veil of his smoke was almost a solid thing to one side of him. He was looking at the floor.
“Why was it wrong to go to Mrs. Grayle when she sent for me?” I asked.
“I wasn’t talking about that.”
“Yeah, but you were just before.”
“She didn’t send for you.” His eyes lifted and had the stony look still. And the flush still dyed his sharp cheekbones. “You forced yourself on her and talked about scandal and practically blackmailed yourself into a job.”
“Funny. As I remember it, we didn’t even talk job. I didn’t think there was anything in her story. I mean, anything to get my teeth into. Nowhere to start. And of course I supposed she had already told it to you.”
“She had. That beer joint on Santa Monica is a crook hideout. But that doesn’t mean anything. I couldn’t get a thing there. The hotel across the street smells too. Nobody we want. Cheap punks.”
“She tell you I forced myself on her?”
He dropped his eyes a little. “No.”
I grinned. “Have some coffee?”
“No.”
I went back into the kitchenette and made the coffee and waited for it to drip. Randall followed me out this time and stood in the doorway himself.
“This jewel gang has been working in Hollywood and around for a good ten years to my knowledge,” he said. “They went too far this time. They killed a man. I think I know why.”
“Well, if it’s a gang job and you break it, that will be the first gang murder solved since I lived in the town. And I could name and describe at least a dozen.”
“It’s nice of you to say that, Marlowe.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong.”
“Damn it,” he said irritably. “You’re not wrong. There were a couple solved for the record, but they were just rappers. Some punk took it for the high pillow.”
“Yeah. Coffee?”
“If I drink some, will you talk to me decently, man to man, without wise-cracking?”
“I’ll try. I don’t promise to sp
ill all my ideas.”
“I can do without those,” he said acidly.
“That’s a nice suit you’re wearing.”
The flush dyed his face again. “This suit cost twenty seven-fifty,” he snapped.
“Oh Christ, a sensitive cop,” I said, and went back to the stove.
“That smells good. How do you make it?”
I poured. “French drip. Coarse ground coffee. No filter papers.” I got the sugar from the closet and the cream from the refrigerator. We sat down on opposite sides of the nook.
“Was that a gag, about your being sick, in a hospital?”
“No gag. I ran into a little trouble—down in Bay City. They took me in. Not the cooler, a private dope and liquor cure.”
His eyes got distant. “Bay City, eh? You like it the hard way, don’t you, Marlowe?”
“It’s not that I like it the hard way. It’s that I get it that way. But nothing like this before. I’ve been sapped twice, the second time by a police officer or a man who looked like one and claimed to be one. I’ve been beaten with my own gun and choked by a tough Indian. I’ve been thrown unconscious into this dope hospital and kept there locked up and part of the time probably strapped down. And I couldn’t prove any of it, except that I actually do have quite a nice collection of bruises and my left arm has been needled plenty.”
He stared hard at the corner of the table. “In Bay City,” he said slowly.
“The name’s like a song. A song in a dirty bathtub.”
“What were you doing down there?”
“I didn’t go down there. These cops took me over the line. I went to see a guy in Stillwood Heights. That’s in L.A.”
“A man named Jules Amthor,” he said quietly. “Why did you swipe those cigarettes?”
I looked into my cup. The damned little fool. “It looked funny, him—Marriott—having that extra case. With reefers in it. It seems they make them up like Russian cigarettes down in Bay City with hollow mouthpieces and the Romanoff arms and everything.”
He pushed his empty cup at me and I refilled it. His eyes were going over my face line by line, corpuscle by corpuscle, like Sherlock Holmes with his magnifying glass or Thorndyke with his pocket lens.