Trouble Is My Business Read online

  George got out beside me. “Why me, brother?”

  “I didn’t fire. I was watching that pretty hip draw of yours. It was sweeter than honey.”

  “Thanks, pal. They were after Mister Gerald, of course. I usually ferry him home from the club about this time, full of liquor and bridge losses.”

  We went over to the little man and looked down at him. He wasn’t anything to see. He was just a little man who was dead, with a big slug in his face and blood on him.

  “Turn some of those damn lights off,” I growled. “And let’s get away from here fast.”

  “The house is just across the street.” George sounded as casual as if he had just shot a nickel in a slot machine instead of a man.

  “The Jeeters are out of this, if you like your job. You ought to know that. We’ll go back to my place and start all over.”

  “I get it,” he snapped, and jumped back into the big car. He cut the foglights and the sidelights and I got in beside him in the front seat.

  We straightened out and started up the hill, over the brow. I looked back at the broken window. It was the small one at the extreme back of the car and it wasn’t shatterproof. A large piece was gone from it. They could fit that, if they got around to it, and make some evidence. I didn’t think it would matter, but it might.

  At the crest of the hill a large limousine passed us going down. Its dome light was on and in the interior, as in a lighted showcase, an elderly couple sat stiffly, taking the royal salute. The man was in evening clothes, with a white scarf and a crush hat. The woman was in furs and diamonds.

  George passed them casually, gunned the car and we made a fast right turn into a dark street. “There’s a couple of good dinners all shot to hell,” he drawled, “and I bet they don’t even report it.”

  “Yeah. Let’s get back home and have a drink,” I said. “I never really got to like killing people.”

  FIVE

  We sat with some of Miss Harriet Huntress’ Scotch in our glasses and looked at each other across the rims. George looked nice with his cap off. His head was clustered over with wavy dark-brown hair and his teeth were very white and clean. He sipped his drink and nibbled a cigarette at the same time. His snappy black eyes had a cool glitter in them.

  “Yale?” I asked.

  “Dartmouth, if it’s any of your business.”

  “Everything’s my business. What’s a college education worth these days?”

  “Three squares and a uniform,” he drawled.

  “What kind of guy is young Jeeter?”

  “Big blond bruiser, plays a fair game of golf, thinks he’s hell with the women, drinks heavy but hasn’t sicked up on the rugs so far.”

  “What kind of guy is old Jeeter?”

  “He’d probably give you a dime—if he didn’t have a nickel with him.”

  “Tsk, tsk, you’re talking about your boss.”

  George grinned. “He’s so tight his head squeaks when he takes his hat off. I always took chances. Maybe that’s why I’m just somebody’s driver. This is good Scotch.”

  I made another drink, which finished the bottle. I sat down again.

  “You think those two gunnies were stashed out for Mister Gerald?”

  “Why not? I usually drive him home about that time. Didn’t today. He had a bad hangover and didn’t go out until late. You’re a dick, you know what it’s all about, don’t you?”

  “Who told you I was a dick?”

  “Nobody but a dick ever asked so goddam many questions.”

  I shook my head. “Uh-uh. I’ve asked you just six questions. Your boss has a lot of confidence in you. He must have told you.”

  The dark man nodded, grinned faintly and sipped. “The whole set-up is pretty obvious,” he said. “When the car started to swing for the turn into the driveway these boys went to work. I don’t figure they meant to kill anybody, somehow. It was just a scare. Only that little guy was nuts.”

  I looked at George’s eyebrows. They were nice black eyebrows, with a gloss on them like horsehair.

  “It doesn’t sound like Marty Estel to pick that sort of helpers.”

  “Sure. Maybe that’s why he picked that sort of helpers.”

  “You’re smart. You and I can get along. But shooting that little punk makes it tougher. What will you do about that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “O.K. If they get to you and tie it to your gun, if you still have the gun, which you probably won’t, I suppose it will be passed off as an attempted stick-up. There’s just one thing.”

  “What?” George finished his second drink, laid the glass aside, lit a fresh cigarette and smiled.

  “It’s pretty hard to tell a car from in front—at night. Even with all those lights. It might have been a visitor.”

  He shrugged and nodded. “But if it’s a scare, that would do just as well. Because the family would hear about it and the old man would guess whose boys they were—and why.”

  “Hell, you really are smart,” I said admiringly, and the phone rang.

  It was an English-butler voice, very clipped and precise, and it said that if I was Mr. Philip Marlowe, Mr. Jeeter would like to speak to me. He came on at once, with plenty of frost.

  “I must say that you take your time about obeying orders,” he barked. “Or hasn’t that chauffeur of mine—”

  “Yeah, he got here, Mr. Jeeter,” I said. “But we ran into a little trouble. George will tell you.”

  “Young man, when I want something done—”

  “Listen, Mr. Jeeter, I’ve had a hard day. Your son punched me on the jaw and I fell and cut my head open. When I staggered back to my apartment, more dead than alive, I was stuck up by a couple of hard guys with guns who told me to lay off the Jeeter case. I’m doing my best but I’m feeling a little frail, so don’t scare me.”

  “Young man—”

  “Listen,” I told him earnestly, “if you want to call all the plays in this game, you can carry the ball yourself. Or you can save yourself a lot of money and hire an order taker. I have to do things my way. Any cops visit you tonight?”

  “Cops?” he echoed in a sour voice. “You mean policemen?”

  “By all means—I mean policemen.”

  “And why should I see any policemen?” he almost snarled.

  “There was a stiff in front of your gates half an hour ago. Stiff meaning dead man. He’s quite small. You could sweep him up in a dustpan, if he bothers you.”

  “My God! Are you serious?”

  “Yes. What’s more he took a shot at George and me. He recognized the car. He must have been all set for your son, Mr. Jeeter.”

  A silence with barbs on it. “I thought you said a dead man,” Mr. Jeeter’s voice said very coldly. “Now you say he shot at you.”

  “That was while he wasn’t dead,” I said. “George will tell you. George—”

  “You come out here at once!” he yelled at me over the phone. “At once, do you hear? At once!”

  “George will tell you,” I said softly and hung up.

  George looked at me coldly. He stood up and put his cap on. “O.K., pal,” he said. “Maybe some day I can put you on to a soft thing.” He started for the door.

  “It had to be that way. It’s up to him. He’ll have to decide.”

  “Nuts,” George said, looking back over his shoulder. “Save your breath, shamus. Anything you say to me is just so much noise in the wrong place.”

  He opened the door, went out, shut it, and I sat there still holding the telephone, with my mouth open and nothing in it but my tongue and a bad taste on that.

  I went out to the kitchen and shook the Scotch bottle, but it was still empty. I opened some rye and swallowed a drink and it tasted sour. Something was bothering me. I had a feeling it was going to bother me a lot more before I was through.

  They must have missed George by a whisker. I heard the elevator come up again almost as soon as it had stopped going down. Solid steps grew louder along the hallway.
A fist hit the door. I went over and opened it.

  One was in brown, one in blue, both large, hefty and bored.

  The one in brown pushed his hat back on his head with a freckled hand and said: “You Philip Marlowe?”

  “Me,” I said.

  They rode me back into the room without seeming to. The one in blue shut the door. The one in brown palmed a shield and let me catch a glint of the gold and enamel.

  “Finlayson, Detective Lieutenant working out of Central Homicide,” he said. “This is Sebold, my partner. We’re a couple of swell guys not to get funny with. We hear you’re kind of sharp with a gun.”

  Sebold took his hat off and dusted his salt-and-pepper hair back with the flat of his hand. He drifted noiselessly out to the kitchen.

  Finlayson sat down on the edge of a chair and flicked his chin with a thumbnail as square as an ice cube and yellow as a mustard plaster. He was older than Sebold, but not so good-looking. He had the frowsy expression of a veteran cop who hadn’t got very far.

  I sat down. I said: “How do you mean, sharp with a gun?”

  “Shooting people is how I mean.”

  I lit a cigarette. Sebold came out of the kitchen and went into the dressing room behind the wall bed.

  “We understand you’re a private-license guy,” Finlayson said heavily.

  “That’s right.”

  “Give.” He held his hand out. I gave him my wallet. He chewed it over and handed it back. “Carry a gun?”

  I nodded. He held out his hand for it. Sebold came out of the dressing room. Finlayson sniffed at the Luger, snapped the magazine out, cleared the breech and held the gun so that a little light shone up through the magazine opening into the breech end of the barrel. He looked down the muzzle, squinting. He handed the gun to Sebold. Sebold did the same thing.

  “Don’t think so,” Sebold said. “Clean, but not that clean. Couldn’t have been cleaned within the hour. A little dust.”

  “Right.”

  Finlayson picked the ejected shell off the carpet, pressed it into the magazine and snapped the magazine back in place. He handed me the gun. I put it back under my arm.

  “Been out anywhere tonight?” he asked tersely.

  “Don’t tell me the plot,” I said. “I’m just a bit-player.”

  “Smart guy,” Sebold said dispassionately. He dusted his hair again and opened a desk drawer. “Funny stuff. Good for a column. I like ’em that way—with my blackjack.”

  Finlayson sighed. “Been out tonight, shamus?”

  “Sure. In and out all the time. Why?”

  He ignored the question. “Where you been?”

  “Out to dinner. Business call or two.”

  “Where at?”

  “I’m sorry, boys. Every business has its private files.”

  “Had company, too,” Sebold said, picking up George’s glass and sniffing it. “Recent—within the hour.”

  “You’re not that good,” I told him sourly.

  “Had a ride in a big Caddy?” Finlayson bored on, taking a deep breath. “Over West L. A. direction?”

  “Had a ride in a Chrysler–over Vine Street direction.”

  “Maybe we better just take him down,” Sebold said, looking at his fingernails.

  “Maybe you better skip the gang-buster stuff and tell me what’s stuck in your nose. I get along with cops—except when they act as if the law is only for citizens.”

  Finlayson studied me. Nothing I had said made an impression on him. Nothing Sebold said made any impression on him. He had an idea and he was holding it like a sick baby.

  “You know a little rat named Frisky Lavon?” he sighed. “Used to be a dummy-chucker, then found out he could bug his way outa raps. Been doing that for say twelve years. Totes a gun and acts simple. But he quit acting tonight at seven-thirty about. Quit cold—with a slug in his head.”

  “Never heard of him,” I said.

  “You bumped anybody off tonight?”

  “I’d have to look at my notebook.”

  Sebold leaned forward politely. “Would you care for a smack in the kisser?” he inquired.

  Finlayson held his hand out sharply. “Cut it, Ben. Cut it. Listen, Marlowe. Maybe we’re going at this wrong. We’re not talking about murder. Could have been legitimate. This Frisky Lavon got froze off tonight on Calvello Drive in Bel-Air. Out in the middle of the street. Nobody seen or heard anything. So we kind of want to know.”

  “All right,” I growled. “What makes it my business? And keep that piano tuner out of my hair. He has a nice suit and his nails are clean, but he bears down on his shield too hard.”

  “Nuts to you,” Sebold said.

  “We got a funny phone call,” Finlayson said. “Which is where you come in. We ain’t just throwing our weight around. And we want a forty-five. They ain’t sure what kind yet.”

  “He’s smart. He threw it under the bar at Levy’s,” Sebold sneered.

  “I never had a forty-five,” I said. “A guy who needs that much gun ought to use a pick.”

  Finlayson scowled at me and counted his thumbs. Then he took a deep breath and suddenly went human on me. “Sure, I’m just a dumb flatheel,” he said. “Anybody could pull my ears off and I wouldn’t even notice it. Let’s all quit horsing around and talk sense.

  “This Frisky was found dead after a no-name phone call to West L. A. police. Found dead outside a big house belonging to a man named Jeeter who owns a string of investment companies. He wouldn’t use a guy like Frisky for a penwiper, so there’s nothing in that. The servants didn’t hear nothing, nor the servants at any of the four houses on the block. Frisky is lying in the street and somebody run over his foot, but what killed him was a forty-five slug smack in his face. West L. A. ain’t hardly started the routine when some guy calls up Central and says to tell Homicide if they want to know who got Frisky Lavon, ask a private eye named Philip Marlowe, complete with address and everything, then a quick hang-up.

  “O.K. The guy on the board gives me the dope and I don’t know Frisky from a hole in my sock, but I ask Identification and sure enough they have him and just about the time I’m looking it over the flash comes from West L. A. and the description seems to check pretty close. So we get together and it’s the same guy all right and the chief of detectives has us drop around here. So we drop around.”

  “So here you are,” I said. “Will you have a drink?”

  “Can we search the joint, if we do?”

  “Sure. It’s a good lead—that phone call, I mean—if you put in about six months on it.”

  “We already got that idea,” Finlayson growled. “A hundred guys could have chilled this little wart, and two-three of them maybe could have thought it was a smart rib to pin it on you. Them two-three is what interests us.”

  I shook my head.

  “No ideas at all, huh?”

  “Just for wisecracks,” Sebold said.

  Finlayson lumbered to his feet. “Well, we gotta look around.”

  “Maybe we had ought to have brought a search warrant,” Sebold said, tickling his upper lip with the end of his tongue.

  “I don’t have to fight this guy, do I?” I asked Finlayson. “I mean, is it all right if I leave him his gag lines and just keep my temper?”

  Finlayson looked at the ceiling and said dryly: “His wife left him day before yesterday. He’s just trying to compensate, as the fellow says.”

  Sebold turned white and twisted his knuckles savagely. Then he laughed shortly and got to his feet.

  They went at it. Ten minutes of opening and shutting drawers and looking at the backs of shelves and under seat cushions and letting the bed down and peering into the electric refrigerator and the garbage pail fed them up.

  They came back and sat down again. “Just a nut,” Finlayson said wearily. “Some guy that picked your name outa the directory maybe. Could be anything.”

  “Now I’ll get that drink.”

  “I don’t drink,” Sebold snarled.

&n
bsp; Finlayson crossed his hands on his stomach. “That don’t mean any liquor gets poured in the flowerpot, son.”

  I got three drinks and put two of them beside Finlayson. He drank half of one of them and looked at the ceiling. “I got another killing, too,” he said thoughtfully. “A guy in your racket, Marlowe. A fat guy on Sunset. Name of Arbogast. Ever hear of him?”

  “I thought he was a handwriting expert,” I said.

  “You’re talking about police business,” Sebold told his partner coldly.

  “Sure. Police business that’s already in the morning paper. This Arbogast was shot three times with a twenty-two. Target gun. You know any crooks that pack that kind of heat?”

  I held my glass tightly and took a long slow swallow. I hadn’t thought Waxnose looked dangerous enough, but you never knew.

  “I did,” I said slowly. “A killer named Al Tessilore. But he’s in Folsom. He used a Colt Woodsman.”

  Finlayson finished the first drink, used the second in about the same time, and stood up. Sebold stood up, still mad.

  Finlayson opened the door. “Come on, Ben.” They went out.

  I heard their steps along the hall, the clang of the elevator once more. A car started just below in the street and growled off into the night.

  “Clowns like that don’t kill,” I said out loud. But it looked as if they did.

  I waited fifteen minutes before I went out again. The phone rang while I was waiting, but I didn’t answer it.

  I drove towards the El Milano and circled around enough to make sure I wasn’t followed.

  SIX

  The lobby hadn’t changed any. The blue carpet still tickled my ankles while I ambled over to the desk, the same pale clerk was handing a key to a couple of horse-faced females in tweeds, and when he saw me he put his weight on his left foot again and the door at the end of the desk popped open and out popped the fat and erotic Hawkins, with what looked like the same cigar stub in his face.

  He hustled over and gave me a big warm smile this time, took hold of my arm. “Just the guy I was hoping to see,” he chuckled. “Let’s us go upstairs a minute.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Matter?” His smile became broad as the door to a two-car garage. “Nothing ain’t the matter. This way.”