The Little Sister pm-5 Read online

  “And canned cornbeef hash to eat,” Beifus put in cheerfully.

  “Strictly speaking, it wouldn’t be legal,” French said. “But we do it all the time. Like you do a few things which you hadn’t ought to do maybe. Would you say you were legal in this picture?”

  “No.”

  Maglashan let out a deep throated, “Ha!”

  I looked across at the orange queen who was back to her notebook, silent and indifferent.

  “You got a client to protect,” French said.

  “Maybe.”

  “You mean you did have a client. She ratted on you.”

  I said nothing.

  “Name’s Orfamay Quest,” French said, watching me.

  “Ask your questions,” I said.

  “What happened down there on Idaho Street?”

  “I went there looking for her brother. He’d moved away, she said, and she’d come out here to see him. She was worried. The manager, Clausen, was too drunk to talk sense. I looked at the register and saw another man had moved into Quest’s room. I talked to this man. He told me nothing that helped.”

  French reached around and picked a pencil off the desk and tapped it against his teeth. “Ever see this man again?”

  “Yes. I told him who I was. When I went back downstairs Clausen was dead. And somebody had torn a page out of the register. The page with Quest’s name on it. I called the police.”

  “But you didn’t stick around?”

  “I had no information about Clausen’s death.”

  “But you didn’t stick around,” French repeated. Maglashan made a savage noise in his throat and threw the carpenter’s pencil clear across the room. I watched it bounce against the wall and floor and come to a stop.

  “That’s correct,” I said.

  “In Bay City,” Maglashan said, “we could murder you for that.”

  “In Bay City you could murder me for wearing a blue tie,” I said.

  He started to get up. Beifus looked sideways at him and said: “Leave Christy handle it. There’s always a second show.”

  “We could break you for that,” French said to me without inflexion.

  “Consider me broke,” I said. “I never liked the business anyway.”

  “So you came back to your office. What then?”

  “I reported to the client. Then a guy called me up and asked me over to the Van Nuys Hotel. He was the same guy I had talked to down on Idaho Street, but with a different name.”

  “You could have told us that, couldn’t you?”

  “If I had, I’d have had to tell you everything. That would have violated the conditions of my employment.”

  French nodded and tapped his pencil. He said slowly: “A murder wipes out agreements like that. Two murders ought to do it double. And two murders by the same method, treble. You don’t look good, Marlowe. You don’t look good at all.”

  “I don’t even look good to the client,” I said, “after today.”

  “What happened today?”

  “She told me her brother had called her up from this doctor’s house. Dr. Lagardie. The brother was in danger. I was to hurry on down and take care of him. I hurried on down. Dr. Lagardie and his nurse had the office closed. They acted scared. The police had been there.” I looked at Maglashan.

  “Another of his phone calls,” Maglashan snarled.

  “Not me this time,” I said.

  “All right. Go on,” French said, after a pause.

  “Lagardie denied knowing anything about Orrin Quest. He sent his nurse home. Then he slipped me a doped cigarette and I went away from there for a while. When I came to I was alone in the house. Then I wasn’t. Orrin Quest, or what was left of him, was scratching at the door. He fell through it and died as I opened it. With his last ounce of strength he tried to stick me with an ice pick.” I moved my shoulders. The place between them was a little stiff and sore, nothing more.

  French looked hard at Maglashan. Maglashan shook his head, but French kept on looking at him. Beifus began to whistle under his breath. I couldn’t make out the tune at first, and then I could. It was “Old Man Mose is Dead.”

  French turned his head and said slowly: “No ice pick was found by the body.”

  “I left it where it fell,” I said.

  Maglashan said: “Looks like I ought to be putting on my glove again.” He stretched it between his fingers. Somebody’s a goddamn liar and it ain’t me.”

  “All right,” French said. “All right. Let’s not be theatrical. Suppose the kid did have an ice pick in his hand, that doesn’t prove he was born holding one.”

  “Filed down,” I said. “Short. Three inches from the handle to the tip of the point. That’s not the way they come from the hardware store.”

  “Why would he want to stick you?” Beifus asked with a derisive grin. “You were his pal. You were down there to keep him safe for his sister.”

  “I was just something between him and the light,” I said. “Something that moved and could have been a man and could have been the man that hurt him. He was dying on his feet. I’d never seen him before. If he ever saw me, I didn’t know it.”

  “It could have been a beautiful friendship,” Beifus said with a sigh. “Except for the ice pick, of course.”

  “And the fact that he had it in his hand and tried to stick me with it could mean something.”

  “For instance what?”

  “A man in his condition acts from instinct. He doesn’t invent new techniques. He got me between the shoulder blades, a sting, the feeble last effort of a dying man. Maybe it would have been a different place and a much deeper penetration if he had had his health.”

  Maglashan said: “How much longer we have to barber round with this monkey? You talk to him like he was human. Leave me talk to him my way.”

  “The captain doesn’t like it,” French said casually.

  “Hell with the captain.”

  “The captain doesn’t like small-town cops saying the hell with him,” French said.

  Maglashan clamped his teeth tight and the line of his jaw showed white. His eyes narrowed and glistened. He took a deep breath through his nose.

  “Thanks for the co-operation,” he said and stood up. “I’ll be on my way.” He rounded the corner of the table and stopped beside me. He put his left hand out and tilted my chin up again.

  “See you again, sweetheart. In my town.”

  He lashed me across the face twice with the wrist end of the glove. The buttons stung sharply. I put my hand up and rubbed my lower lip.

  French said: “For Chrissake, Maglashan, sit down and let the guy speak his piece. And keep your hands off him.”

  Maglashan looked back at him and said: “Think you can make me?”

  French just shrugged. After a moment Maglashan rubbed his big hand across his mouth and strolled back to his chair. French said:

  “Let’s have your ideas about all this, Marlowe.”

  “Among other things Clausen was probably pushing reefers,” I said. “I sniffed marijuana smoke in his apartment. A tough little guy was counting money in the kitchen when I got there. He had a gun and a sharpened rat-tail file, both of which he tried to use on me. I took them away from him and he left. He would be the runner. But Clausen was liquored to a point where you wouldn’t want to trust him any more. They don’t go for that in the organizations. The runner thought I was a dick. Those people wouldn’t want Clausen picked up. He would be too easy to milk. The minute they smelled dick around the house Clausen would be missing.”

  French looked at Maglashan. “That make any sense to you?”

  “It could happen,” Maglashan said grudgingly.

  French said: “Suppose it was so, what’s it got to do with this Orrin Quest?”

  “Anybody can smoke reefers,” I said. “If you’re dull and lonely and depressed and out of a job, they might be very attractive. But when you smoke them you get warped ideas and calloused emotions. And marijuana affects different people differ
ent ways. Some it makes very tough and some it just makes never-no-mind. Suppose Quest tried to put the bite on somebody and threatened to go to the police. Quite possibly all three murders are connected with the reefer gang.”

  “That don’t jibe with Quest having a filed-down ice pick,” Beifus said.

  I said: “According to the lieutenant here he didn’t have one. So I must have imagined that. Anyhow, he might just have picked it up. They might be standard equipment around Dr. Lagardie’s house. Get anything on him?”

  He shook his head. “Not so far.”

  “He didn’t kill me, probably he didn’t kill anybody,” I said. “Quest told his sister—according to her—that he was working for Dr. Lagardie, but that some gangsters were after him.”

  “This Lagardie,” French said, prodding at his blotter with a pen point, “what do you make of him?”

  “He used to practice in Cleveland. Downtown in a large way. He must have had his reasons for hiding out in Bay City.”

  “Cleveland, huh?” French drawled and looked at a corner of the ceiling. Beifus looked down at his papers. Maglashan said:

  “Probably an abortionist. I’ve had my eye on him for some time.”

  “Which eye?” Beifus asked him mildly.

  Maglashan flushed.

  French said: “Probably the one he didn’t have on Idaho Street.”

  Maglashan stood up violently. “You boys think you’re so goddamn smart it might interest you to know that we’re just a small town police force. We got to double in brass once in a while. Just the same I like that reefer angle. It might cut down my work considerable. I’m looking into it right now.”

  He marched solidly to the door and left. French looked after him. Beifus did the same. When the door closed they looked at each other.

  “I betcha they pull that raid again tonight,” Beifus said.

  French nodded.

  Beifus said: “In a flat over a laundry. They’ll go down on the beach and pull in three or four vagrants and stash them in the flat and then they’ll line them up for the camera boys after they pull the raid.”

  French said: “You’re talking too much, Fred.”

  Beifus grinned and was silent. French said to me: “If you were guessing, what would you guess they were looking for in that room at the Van Nuys?”

  “A claim check for a suitcase full of weed.”

  “Not bad,” French said. “And still guessing where would it have been?”

  “I thought about that. When I talked to Hicks down at Bay City he wasn’t wearing his muff. A man doesn’t around the house. But he was wearing it on the bed at the Van Nuys. Maybe he didn’t put it on himself.”

  French said: “So?”

  I said, “Wouldn’t be a bad place to stash a claim check.”

  French said: “You could pin it down with a piece of scotch tape. Quite an idea.”

  There was a silence. The orange queen went back to her typing. I looked at my nails. They weren’t as clean as they might be. After the pause French said slowly: “Don’t think for a minute you’re in the clear, Marlowe. Still guessing, how come Dr. Lagardie to mention Cleveland to you?”

  “I took the trouble to look him up. A doctor can’t change his name if he wants to go on practicing. The ice pick made you think of Weepy Moyer. Weepy Moyer operated in Cleveland. Sunny Moe Stein operated in Cleveland. It’s true the ice-pick technique was different, but it was an ice pick. You said yourself the boys might have learned. And always with these gangs there’s a doctor somewhere in the background.”

  “Pretty wild,” French said. “Pretty loose connection.”

  “Would I do myself any good if I tightened it up?”

  “Can you?”

  “I can try.”

  French sighed. “The little Quest girl is okay,” he said. “I talked to her mother back in Kansas. She really did come out here to look for her brother. And she really did hire you to do it. She gives you a good write-up. Up to a point. She really did suspect her brother was mixed up in something wrong. You make any money on the deal?”

  “Not much,” I said. “I gave her back the fee. She didn’t have much.”

  “That way you don’t have to pay income tax on it,” Beifus said.

  French said, “Let’s break this off. The next move is up to the D.A. And if I know Endicott, it will be a week from Tuesday before he decides how to play it.” He made a gesture towards the door.

  I stood up. “Will it be all right if I don’t leave town?” I asked.

  They didn’t bother to answer that one.

  I just stood there and looked at them. The ice-pick wound between my shoulders had a dry sting, and the flesh around the place was stiff. The side of my face and mouth smarted where Maglashan had sideswiped me with his well-used pigskin glove. I was in the deep water. It was dark and unclear and the taste of the salt was in my mouth.

  They just sat there and looked back at me. The orange queen was clacking her typewriter. Cop talk was no more treat to her than legs to a dance director. They had the calm weathered faces of healthy men in hard condition. They had the eyes they always have, cloudy and gray like freezing water. The firm set mouth, the hard little wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, the hard hollow meaningless stare, not quite cruel and a thousand miles from kind. The dull ready-made clothes, worn without style, with a sort of contempt; the look of men who are poor and yet proud of their power, watching always for ways to make it felt, to shove it into you and twist it and grin and watch you squirm, ruthless without malice, cruel and yet not always unkind. What would you expect them to be? Civilization had no meaning for them. All they saw of it was the failures, the dirt, the dregs, the aberrations and the disgust.

  “What you standing there for?” Beifus asked sharply. “You want us to give you a great big spitty kiss? No snappy comeback, huh? Too bad.” His voice fell away to a dull drone. He frowned and reached a pencil off the desk. With a quick motion of his fingers he snapped it in half and held the two halves out on his palm.

  “We’re giving you that much break,” he said thinly, the smile all gone. “Go on out and square things up. What the hell you think we’re turning you loose for? Maglashan bought you a rain check. Use it.”

  I put my hand up and rubbed my lip. My mouth had too many teeth in it.

  Beifus lowered his eyes to the table, picked up a paper and began to read it. Christy French swung around in his chair and put his feet on the desk and stared out of the open window at the parking lot. The orange queen stopped typing. The room was suddenly full of heavy silence, like a fallen cake.

  I went on out, parting the silence as if I was pushing my way through water.

  25

  The office was empty again. No leggy brunettes, no little girls with slanted glasses, no neat dark men with gangster’s eyes.

  I sat down at the desk and watched the light fade. The going-home sounds had died away. Outside the neon signs began to glare at one another across the boulevard. There was something to be done, but I didn’t know what. Whatever it was it would be useless. I tidied up my desk, listening to the scrape of a bucket on the tiling of the corridor. I put my papers away in the drawer, straightened the pen stand, got out a duster and wiped off the glass and then the telephone. It was dark and sleek in the fading light. It wouldn’t ring tonight. Nobody would call me again. Not now, not this time. Perhaps not ever.

  I put the duster away folded with the dust in it, leaned back and just sat, not smoking, not even thinking. I was a blank man. I had no face, no meaning, no personality, hardly a name. I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t even want a drink. I was the page from yesterday’s calendar crumpled at the bottom of the wastebasket.

  I pulled the phone towards me and dialed Mavis Weld’s number. It rang and rang and rang. Nine times. That’s a lot of ringing, Marlowe. I guess there’s nobody home. Nobody home to you. I hung up. Who would you like to call now? You got a friend somewhere that might like to hear your voice? No. Nobody.

&nbs
p; Let the telephone ring, please. Let there be somebody to call up and plug me into the human race again. Even a cop. Even a Maglashan. Nobody has to like me. I just want to get off this frozen star.

  The telephone rang.

  “Amigo,” her voice said. “There is trouble. Bad trouble. She wants to see you. She likes you. She thinks you are an honest man.”

  “Where?” I asked. It wasn’t really a question, just a sound I made. I sucked on a cold pipe and leaned my head on my hand, brooding at the telephone. It was a voice to talk to anyway.

  “You will come?”

  “I’d sit up with a sick parrot tonight. Where do I go?”

  “I will come for you. I will be before your building in fifteen minutes. It is not easy to get where we go.”

  “How is it coming back,” I asked, “or don’t we care?”

  But she had already hung up.

  Down at the drugstore lunch counter I had time to inhale two cups of coffee and a melted-cheese sandwich with two slivers of ersatz bacon imbedded in it, like dead fish in the silt at the bottom of a drained pool.

  I was crazy. I liked it.

  26

  It was a black Mercury convertible with a light top. The top was up. When I leaned in at the door Dolores Gonzales slid over towards me along the leather seat.

  “You drive please, amigo. I do not really ever like to drive.”

  The light from the drugstore caught her face. She had changed her clothes again, but it was still all black, save for a flame-colored shirt. Slacks and a kind of loose coat like a man’s leisure jacket.

  I leaned on the door of the car. “Why didn’t she call me?”

  “She couldn’t. She did not have the number and she had very little time.”

  “Why?”

  “It seemed to be while someone was out of the room for just a moment.”

  “And where is this place she called from?”

  “I do not know the name of the street. But I can find the house. That is why I come. Please get into the car and let us hurry.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “And again maybe I am not getting into the car. Old age and arthritis have made me cautious.”

  “Always the wisecrack,” she said. “It is a very strange man.”