The Little Sister pm-5 Page 16

  “Stein?” she asked softly. “Who is Stein?”

  “A Cleveland hot shot that got himself gunned in front of your apartment house last February. He had an apartment there. I thought perhaps you might have met him.”

  She let out a silvery little laugh. “Amigo, there are men I do not know. Even at the Chateau Bercy.”

  “Reports say he was gunned two blocks away,” I said. “I like it better that it happened right in front. And you were looking out of the window and saw it happen. And saw the killer run away and just under a street light he turned back and the light caught his face and darned if it wasn’t old man Steelgrave. You recognized him by his rubber nose and the fact that he was wearing his tall hat with the pigeons on it.”

  She didn’t laugh.

  “You like it better that way,” she purred.

  “We could make more money that way.”

  “But Steelgrave was in jail,” she smiled. “And even if he was not in jail—even if, for example, I happened to be friendly with a certain Dr. Chalmers who was county jail physician at the time and he told me, in an intimate moment, that he had given Steelgrave a pass to go to the dentist—with a guard of course, but the guard was a reasonable man—on the very day Stein was shot—even if this happened to be true, would it not be a very poor way to use the information by blackmailing Steelgrave?”

  “I hate to talk big,” I said, “but I’m not afraid of Steelgrave—or a dozen like him in one package.”

  “But I am, amigo. A witness to a gang murder is not a very safe position in this country. No, we will not blackmail Steelgrave. And we will not say anything about Mr. Stein, whom I may or may not have known. It is enough that Mavis Weld is a close friend of a known gangster and is seen in public with him.”

  “We’d have to prove he was a known gangster,” I said.

  “Can we not do that?”

  “How?”

  She made a disappointed mouth. “But I felt sure that was what you had been doing these last couple of days.”

  “Why?”

  “I have private reasons.”

  “They mean nothing to me while you keep them private.”

  She got rid of the brown cigarette stub in my ashtray. I leaned over and squashed it out with the stub of a pencil. She touched my hand lightly with a gauntleted finger. Her smile was the reverse of anesthetic. She leaned back and crossed her legs. The little lights began to dance in her eyes. It was a long time between passes—for her.

  “Love is such a dull word,” she mused. “It amazes me that the English language so rich in the poetry of love can accept such a feeble word for it. It has no life, no resonance. It suggests to me little girls in ruffled summer dresses, with little pink smiles, and little shy voices, and probably the most unbecoming underwear.”

  I said nothing. With an effortless change of pace she became businesslike again.

  “Mavis will get $75,000 a picture from now on, and eventually $150,000. She has started to climb and nothing will stop her. Except possibly a bad scandal.”

  “Then somebody ought to tell her who Steelgrave is,” I said. “Why don’t you? And incidentally, suppose we did have all this proof, what’s Steelgrave doing all the time we’re putting the bite on Weld?”

  “Does he have to know? I hardly think she would tell him. In fact, I hardly think she would go on having anything to do with him. But that would not matter to us—if we had our proof. And if she knew we had it.”

  Her black gauntleted hand moved towards her black bag, stopped, drummed lightly on the edge of the desk, and so got back to where she could drop it in her lap. She hadn’t looked at the bag. I hadn’t either.

  I stood up. “I might happen to be under some obligation to Miss Weld. Ever think of that?”

  She just smiled.

  “And if that was so,” I said, “don’t you think it’s about time you got the hell out of my office?”

  She put her hands on the arms of her chair and started to get up, still smiling. I scooped the bag before she could change direction. Her eyes filled with glare. She made a spitting sound.

  I opened the bag and went through and found a white envelope that looked a little familiar. Out of it I shook the photo at The Dancers, the two pieces fitted together and pasted on another piece of paper.

  I closed the bag and tossed it across to her.

  She was on her feet now, her lips drawn back over her teeth. She was very silent.

  “Interesting,” I said and snapped a digit at the glazed surface of the print. “If it’s not a fake. Is that Steelgrave?”

  The silvery laugh bubbled up again. “You are a ridicules character, amigo. You really are. I did not know they made such people any more.”

  “Prewar stock,” I said. “We’re getting scarcer every day. Where did you get this?”

  “From Mavis Weld’s purse in Mavis Weld’s dressing room. While she was on the set.”

  “She know?”

  “She does not know.”

  “I wonder where she got it?”

  “From you.”

  “Nonsense.” I raised my eyebrows a few inches. “Where would I get it?”

  She reached the gauntleted hand across the desk. Her voice was cold. “Give it back to me, please.”

  “I’ll give it back to Mavis Weld. And I hate to tell you this, Miss Gonzales, but I’d never get anywhere as a blackmailer. I just don’t have the engaging personality.”

  “Give it back to me,” she said sharply. “If you do not—”

  She cut herself off. I waited for her to finish. A look of contempt showed on her smooth features.

  “Very well,” she said. “It is my mistake. I thought you were smart, I can see that you are just another dumb private eye. This shabby little office,” she waved a black gloved hand at it, “and the shabby little life that goes on here—they ought to tell me what sort of idiot you are.”

  “They do,” I said.

  She turned slowly and walked to the door. I got around the desk and she let me open it for her.

  She went out slowly. The way she did it hadn’t been learned at business college.

  She went on down the hail without looking back. She had a beautiful walk.

  The door bumped against the pneumatic door-closer and very softly clicked shut. It seemed to take a long time to do that. I stood there watching it as if I had never seen it happen before. Then I turned and started back towards my desk and the phone rang.

  I picked it up and answered it. It was Christy French. “Marlowe? We’d like to see you down at headquarters.”

  “Right away?”

  “If not sooner,” he said and hung up.

  I slipped the pasted-together print from under the blotter and went over to put it in the safe with the others. I put my hat on and closed the window. There was nothing to wait for. I looked at the green tip on the sweep hand of my watch. It was a long time until five o’clock. The sweep hand went around and around the dial like a door-to-door salesman. The hands stood at four-ten. You’d think she’d have called up by now. I peeled my coat off and unstrapped the shoulder harness and locked it with the Luger in the desk drawer. The cops don’t like you to be wearing a gun in their territory. Even if you have the right to wear one. They like you to come in properly humble, with your hat in your hand, and your voice low and polite, and your eyes full of nothing.

  I looked at the watch again. I listened. The building seemed quiet this afternoon. After a while it would be silent and then the madonna of the dark-gray mop would come shuffling along the hall, trying doorknobs.

  I put my coat back on and locked the communicating door and switched off the buzzer and let myself out into the hallway. And then the phone rang. I nearly took the door off its hinges getting back to it. It was her voice all right, but it had a tone I had never heard before. A cool balanced tone, not flat or empty or dead, or even childish. Just the voice of a girl I didn’t know and yet did know. What was in that voice I knew before she said more than
three words.

  “I called you up because you told me to,” she said. “But you don’t have to tell me anything. I went down there.”

  I was holding the phone with both hands.

  “You went down there,” I said. “Yes. I heard that. So?”

  “I—borrowed a car,” she said. “I parked across the street. There were so many cars you would never have noticed me. There’s a funeral home there. I wasn’t following you. I tried to go after you when you came out but I don’t know the streets down there at all. I lost you. So I went back.”

  “What did you go back for?”

  “I don’t really know. I thought you looked kind of funny when you came out of the house. Or maybe I just had a feeling. He being my brother and all. So I went back and rang the bell. And nobody answered the door. I thought that was funny too. Maybe I’m psychic or something. All of a sudden I seemed to have to get into that house. And I didn’t know how to do it, but I had to.”

  “That’s happened to me,” I said, and it was my voice, but somebody had been using my tongue for sandpaper.

  “I called the police and told them I had heard shots,” she said. “They came and one of them got into the house through a window. And then he let the other one in. And after a while they let me in. And then they wouldn’t let me go. I had to tell them all about it, who he was, and that I had lied about the shots, but I was afraid something had happened to Orrin. And I had to tell them about you too.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I’d have told them myself as soon as I could get a chance to tell you.”

  “It’s kind of awkward for you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will they arrest you or something?”

  “They could.”

  “You left him lying there on the floor. Dead. You had to, I guess.”

  “I had my reasons,” I said. “They won’t sound too good, but I had them. It made no difference to him.”

  “Oh you’d have your reasons all right,” she said. “You’re very smart. You’d always have reasons for things. Well, I guess you’ll have to tell the police your reasons too.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Oh yes, you will,” the voice said, and there was a ring of pleasure in it I couldn’t account for. “You certainly will. They’ll make you.”

  “We won’t argue about that,” I said. “In my business a fellow does what he can to protect a client. Sometimes he goes a little too far. That’s what I did. I’ve put myself where they can hurt me. But not entirely for you.”

  “You left him lying on the floor, dead,” she said. “And I don’t care what they do to you. If they put you in prison, I think I would like that. I bet you’ll be awfully brave about it.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Always a gay smile. Do you see what he had in his hand?”

  “He didn’t have anything in his hand.”

  “Well, lying near his hand.”

  “There wasn’t anything. There wasn’t anything at all. What sort of thing?”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I’m glad of that. Well, goodbye. I’m going down to headquarters now. They want to see me. Good luck, if I don’t see you again.”

  “You’d better keep your good luck,” she said. “You might need it. And I wouldn’t want it.”

  “I did my best for you,” I said. “Perhaps if you’d given me a little more information in the beginning—”

  She hung up while I was saying it.

  I put the phone down in its cradle as gently as if it was a baby. I got out a handkerchief and wiped the palms of my hands. I went over to the washbasin and washed my hands and face. I sloshed cold water on my face and dried off hard with the towel and looked at it in the mirror.

  “You drove off a cliff all right,” I said to the face.

  24

  The center of the room was a long yellow oak table. Its edges were unevenly grooved with cigarette burns. Behind it was a window with wire over the stippled glass. Also behind it with a mess of papers spread out untidily in front of him was Detective-Lieutenant Fred Beifus. At the end of the table leaning back on two legs of an armchair was a big burly man whose face had for me the vague familiarity of a face previously seen in a halftone on newsprint. He had a jaw like a park bench. He had the butt end of a carpenter’s pencil between his teeth. He seemed to be awake and breathing, but apart from that he just sat.

  There were two roll top desks at the other side of the table and there was another window. One of the roll top desks was backed to the window. A woman with orange-colored hair was typing out a report on a typewriter stand beside the desk. At the other desk, which was endways to the window, Christy French sat in a tilted-back swivel chair with his feet on the corner of the desk. He was looking out of the window, which was open and afforded a magnificent view of the police parking lot and the back of a billboard.

  “Sit down there,” Beifus said, pointing.

  I sat down across from him in a straight oak chair without arms. It was far from new and when new had not been beautiful.

  “This is Lieutenant Moses Maglashan of the Bay City police,” Beifus said. “He don’t like you any better than we do.”

  Lieutenant Moses Maglashan took the carpenter’s pencil out of his mouth and looked at the teeth marks in the fat octagonal pencil butt. Then he looked at me. His eyes went over me slowly exploring me, noting me, cataloging me. He said nothing. He put the pencil back in his mouth.

  Beifus said: “Maybe I’m a queer, but for me you don’t have no more sex appeal than a turtle.” He half turned to the typing woman in the corner. “Millie.”

  She swung around from the typewriter to a shorthand notebook. “Name’s Philip Marlowe,” Beifus said. “With an ‘e’ on the end, if you’re fussy. License number?”

  He looked back at me. I told him. The orange queen wrote without looking up. To say she had a face that would have stopped a clock would have been to insult her. It would have stopped a runaway horse.

  “Now if you’re in the mood,” Beifus told me, “you could start in at the beginning and give us all the stuff you left out yesterday. Don’t try to sort it out. Just let it flow natural. We got enough stuff to check you as you go along.”

  “You want me to make a statement?”

  “A very full statement,” Beifus said. “Fun, huh?”

  “This statement is to be voluntary and without coercion?”

  “Yeah. They all are.” Beifus grinned.

  Maglashan looked at me steadily for a moment. The orange queen turned back to her typing. Nothing for her yet. Thirty years of it had perfected her timing.

  Maglashan took a heavy worn pigskin glove out of his pocket and put it on his right hand and flexed his fingers.

  “What’s that for?” Beifus asked him.

  “I bite my nails times,” Maglashan said. “Funny. Only bite ‘em on my right hand.” He raised his slow eyes to stare at me. “Some guys are more voluntary than others,” he said idly. “Something to do with the kidneys, they tell me. I’ve known guys of the not so voluntary type that had to go to the can every fifteen minutes for weeks after they got voluntary. Couldn’t seem to hold water.”

  “Just think of that,” Beifus said wonderingly.

  “Then there’s the guys can’t talk above a husky whisper,” Maglashan went on. “Like punch-drunk fighters that have stopped too many with their necks.”

  Maglashan looked at me. It seemed to be my turn.

  “Then there’s the type that won’t go to the can at all,” I said. “They try too hard. Sit in a chair like this for thirty hours straight. Then they fall down and rupture a spleen or burst a bladder. They over co-operate. And after sunrise court, when the tank is empty, you find them dead in a dark corner. Maybe they ought to have seen a doctor, but you can’t figure everything, can you, Lieutenant?”

  “We figure pretty close down in Bay City,” he said. “When we got anything to figure with.”

  There were hard lumps of muscle at
the corners of his jaws. His eyes had a reddish glare behind them.

  “I could do lovely business with you,” he said staring at me. “Just lovely.”

  “I’m sure you could, Lieutenant. I’ve always had a swell time in Bay City—while I stayed conscious.”

  “I’d keep you conscious a long long time, baby. I’d make a point of it. I’d give it my personal attention.”

  Christy French turned his head slowly and yawned. “What makes you Bay City cops so tough?” he asked. “You pickle your nuts in salt water or something?”

  Beifus put his tongue out so that the tip showed and ran it along his lips.

  “We’ve always been tough,” Maglashan said, not looking at him. “We like to be tough. Jokers like this character here keep us tuned up.” He turned back to me. “So you’re the sweetheart that phoned in about Clausen. You’re right handy with a pay phone, ain’t you, sweetheart?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m talking to you, sweetheart,” Maglashan said. “I asked you a question, sweetheart. When I ask a question I get answered. Get that, sweetheart?”

  “Keep on talking and you’ll answer yourself,” Christy French said. “And maybe you won’t like the answer, and maybe you’ll be so damn tough you’ll have to knock yourself out with that glove. Just to prove it.”

  Maglashan straightened up. Red spots the size of half-dollars glowed dully on his cheeks.

  “I come up here to get co-operation,” he told French slowly. “The big razzoo I can get to home. From my wife. Here I don’t expect the wise numbers to work out on me.”

  “You’ll get co-operation,” French said. “Just don’t try to steal the picture with that nineteen-thirty dialogue.” He swung his chair around and looked at me. “Let’s take out a clean sheet of paper and play like we’re just starting this investigation. I know all your arguments. I’m no judge of them. The point is do you want to talk or get booked as a material witness?”

  “Ask the questions,” I said. “If you don’t like the answers, you can book me. If you book me, I get to make a phone call.”

  “Correct,” French said, “if we book you. But we don’t have to. We can ride the circuit with you. It might take days.”