Trouble Is My Business Read online

He pushed me into the elevator and said “Eight” in a fat cheerful voice and up we sailed and out we got and slid along the corridor. Hawkins had a hard hand and knew where to hold an arm. I was interested enough to let him get away with it. He pushed the buzzer beside Miss Huntress’ door and Big Ben chimed inside and the door opened and I was looking at a deadpan in a derby hat and a dinner coat. He had his right hand in the side pocket of the coat, and under the derby a pair of scarred eyebrows and under the eyebrows a pair of eyes that had as much expression as the cap on a gas tank.

  The mouth moved enough to say: “Yeah?”

  “Company for the boss,” Hawkins said expansively.

  “What company?”

  “Let me play too,” I said. “Limited Liability Company. Gimme the apple.”

  “Huh?” The eyebrows went this way and that and the jaw came out. “Nobody ain’t kiddin’ anybody, I hope.”

  “Now, now, gents—” Hawkins began.

  A voice behind the derby-hatted man interrupted him. “What’s the matter, Beef?”

  “He’s in a stew,” I said.

  “Listen, mugg—”

  “Now, now, gents—” as before.

  “Ain’t nothing the matter,” Beef said, throwing his voice over his shoulder as if it were a coil of rope. “The hotel dick got a guy up here and he says he’s company.”

  “Show the company in, Beef.” I liked this voice. It was smooth quiet, and you could have cut your name in it with a thirty-pound sledge and a cold chisel.

  “Lift the dogs,” Beef said, and stood to one side.

  We went in. I went first, then Hawkins, then Beef wheeled neatly behind us like a door. We went in so close together that we must have looked like a three-decker sandwich.

  Miss Huntress was not in the room. The log in the fireplace had almost stopped smoldering. There was still that smell of sandalwood on the air. With it cigarette smoke blended.

  A man stood at the end of the davenport, both hands in the pockets of a blue camel’s hair coat with the collar high to a black snap-brim hat. A loose scarf hung outside his coat. He stood motionless, the cigarette in his mouth lisping smoke. He was tall, black-haired, suave, dangerous. He said nothing.

  Hawkins ambled over to him. “This is the guy I was telling you about, Mr. Estel,” the fat man burbled. “Come in earlier today and said he was from you. Kinda fooled me.”

  “Give him a ten, Beef.”

  The derby hat took its left hand from somewhere and there was a bill in it. It pushed the bill at Hawkins. Hawkins took the bill, blushing.

  “This ain’t necessary, Mr. Estel. Thanks a lot just the same.”

  “Scram.”

  “Huh?” Hawkins looked shocked.

  “You heard him,” Beef said truculently. “Want your fanny out the door first, huh?”

  Hawkins drew himself up. “I gotta protect the tenants. You gentlemen know how it is. A man in a job like this.”

  “Yeah. Scram,” Estel said without moving his lips.

  Hawkins turned and went out quickly, softly. The door clicked gently shut behind him. Beef looked back at it, then moved behind me.

  “See if he’s rodded, Beef.”

  The derby hat saw if I was rodded. He took the Luger and went away from me. Estel looked casually at the Luger, back at me. His eyes held an expression of indifferent dislike.

  “Name’s Philip Marlowe, eh? A private dick.”

  “So what?” I said.

  “Somebody’s goin’ to get somebody’s face pushed into somebody’s floor,” Beef said coldly.

  “Aw, keep that crap for the boiler room,” I told him. “I’m sick of hard guys for this evening. I said ‘so what,’ and ‘so what’ is what I said.”

  Marty Estel looked mildly amused. “Hell, keep your shirt in. I’ve got to look after my friends, don’t I? You know who I am. O.K., I know what you talked to Miss Huntress about. And I know something about you that you don’t know I know.”

  “All right,” I said. “This fat slob Hawkins collected ten from me for letting me up here this afternoon—knowing perfectly well who I was—and he has just collected ten from your iron man for slipping me the nasty. Give me back my gun and tell me what makes my business your business.”

  “Plenty. First off, Harriet’s not home. We’re waiting for her on account of a thing that happened. I can’t wait any longer. Got to go to work at the club. So what did you come after this time?”

  “Looking for the Jeeter boy. Somebody shot at his car tonight. From now on he needs somebody to walk behind him.”

  “You think I play games like that?” Estel asked me coldly.

  I walked over to a cabinet and opened it and found a bottle of Scotch. I twisted the cap off, lifted a glass from the tabouret and poured some out. I tasted it. It tasted all right.

  I looked around for ice, but there wasn’t any. It had all melted long since in the bucket.

  “I asked you a question,” Estel said gravely.

  “I heard it. I’m making my mind up. The answer is, I wouldn’t have thought it—no. But it happened. I was there. I was in the car—instead of young Jeeter. His father had sent for me to come to the house to talk things over.”

  “What things?”

  I didn’t bother to look surprised. “You hold fifty grand of the boy’s paper. That looks bad for you, if anything happens to him.”

  “I don’t figure it that way. Because that way I would lose my dough. The old man won’t pay—granted. But I wait a couple of years and I collect from the kid. He gets his estate out of trust when he’s twenty-eight. Right now he gets a grand a month and he can’t even will anything, because it’s still in trust. Savvy?”

  “So you wouldn’t knock him off,” I said, using my Scotch. “But you might throw a scare into him.”

  Estel frowned. He discarded his cigarette into a tray and watched it smoke a moment before he picked it up again and snubbed it out. He shook his head.

  “If you’re going to bodyguard him, it would almost pay me to stand part of your salary, wouldn’t it? Almost. A man in my racket can’t take care of everything. He’s of age and it’s his business who he runs around with. For instance, women. Any reason why a nice girl shouldn’t cut herself a piece of five million bucks?”

  I said: “I think it’s a swell idea. What was it you knew about me that I didn’t know you knew?”

  He smiled, faintly. “What was it you were waiting to tell Miss Huntress—the thing that happened?”

  He smiled faintly again.

  “Listen, Marlowe, there are lots of ways to play any game.

  I walked over to a cabinet and opened it and found a bottle of Scotch. I twisted the cap off, lifted a glass from the tabouret and poured some out. I tasted it. It tasted all right.

  I looked around for ice, but there wasn’t any. It had all melted long since in the bucket.

  “I asked you a question,” Estel said gravely.

  “I heard it. I’m making my mind up. The answer is, I wouldn’t have thought it—no. But it happened. I was there. I was in the car—instead of young Jeeter. His father had sent for me to come to the house to talk things over.”

  “What things?”

  I didn’t bother to look surprised. “You hold fifty grand of the boy’s paper. That looks bad for you, if anything happens to him.”

  “I don’t figure it that way. Because that way I would lose my dough. The old man won’t pay—granted. But I wait a couple of years and I collect from the kid. He gets his estate out of trust when he’s twenty-eight. Right now he gets a grand a month and he can’t even will anything, because it’s still in trust. Savvy?”

  “So you wouldn’t knock him off,” I said, using my Scotch. “But you might throw a scare into him.”

  Estel frowned. He discarded his cigarette into a tray and watched it smoke a moment before he picked it up again and snubbed it out. He shook his head.

  “If you’re going to bodyguard him, it would almost pay me to stand part of
your salary, wouldn’t it? Almost. A man in my racket can’t take care of everything. He’s of age and it’s his business who he runs around with. For instance, women. Any reason why a nice girl shouldn’t cut herself a piece of five million bucks?”

  I said: “I think it’s a swell idea. What was it you knew about me that I didn’t know you knew?”

  He smiled, faintly. “What was it you were waiting to tell Miss Huntress—the thing that happened?”

  He smiled faintly again.

  “Listen, Marlowe, there are lots of ways to play any game. I play mine on the house percentage, because that’s all I need to win. What makes me get tough?”

  I rolled a fresh cigarette around in my fingers and tried to roll it around my glass with two fingers. “Who said you were tough? I always heard the nicest things about you.”

  Marty Estel nodded and looked faintly amused. “I have sources of information,” he said quietly. “When I have fifty grand invested in a guy, I’m apt to find out a little about him. Jeeter hired a man named Arbogast to do a little work. Arbogast was killed in his office today—with a twenty-two. That could have nothing to do with Jeeter’s business. But there was a tail on you when you went there and you didn’t give it to the law. Does that make you and me friends?”

  I licked the edge of my glass, nodded. “It seems it does.”

  “From now on just forget about bothering Harriet, see?”

  “O.K.”

  “So we understand each other real good, now.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I’ll be going. Give the guy back his Luger, Beef.”

  The derby hat came over and smacked my gun into my hand hard enough to break a bone.

  “Staying?” Estel asked, moving towards the door.

  “I guess I’ll wait a little while. Until Hawkins comes up to touch me for another ten.”

  Estel grinned. Beef walked in front of him wooden-faced to the door and opened it. Estel went out. The door closed. The room was silent. I sniffed at the dying perfume of sandalwood and stood motionless, looking around.

  Somebody was nuts. I was nuts. Everybody was nuts. None of it fitted together worth a nickel. Marty Estel, as he said, had no good motive for murdering anybody, because that would be the surest way to kill chances to collect his money. Even if he had a motive for murdering anybody, Waxnose and Frisky didn’t seem like the team he would select for the job. I was in bad with the police, I had spent ten dollars of my twenty expense money, and I didn’t have enough leverage anywhere to lift a dime off a cigar counter.

  I finished my drink, put the glass down, walked up and down the room, smoked a third cigarette, looked at my watch, shrugged and felt disgusted. The inner doors of the suite were closed. I went across to the one out of which young Jeeter must have sneaked that afternoon. Opening it I looked into a bedroom done in ivory and ashes of roses. There was a big double bed with no footboard, covered with figured brocade. Toilet articles glistened on a built-in dressing table with a panel light. The light was lit. A small lamp on a table beside the door was lit also. A door near the dressing table showed the cool green of bathroom tiles.

  I went over and looked in there. Chromium, a glass stall shower, monogrammed towels on a rack, a glass shelf for perfume and bath salts at the foot of the tub, everything nice and refined. Miss Huntress did herself well. I hoped she was paying her own rent. It didn’t make any difference to me—I just liked it that way.

  I went back towards the living room, stopped in the doorway to take another pleasant look around, and noticed something I ought to have noticed the instant I stepped into the room. I noticed the sharp tang of cordite on the air, almost, but not quite gone. And then I noticed something else.

  The bed had been moved over until its head overlapped the edge of a closet door which was not quite closed. The weight of the bed was holding it from opening. I went over there to find out why it wanted to open. I went slowly and about halfway there I noticed that I was holding a gun in my hand.

  I leaned against the closet door. It didn’t move. I threw more weight against it. It still didn’t move. Braced against it I pushed the bed away with my foot, gave ground slowly.

  A weight pushed against me hard. I had gone back a foot or so before anything else happened. Then it happened suddenly. He came out—sideways, in a sort of roll. I put some more weight back on the door and held him like that a moment, looking at him.

  He was still big, still blond, still dressed in rough sporty material, with scarf and open-necked shirt. But his face wasn’t red any more.

  I gave ground again and he rolled down the back of the door, turning a little like a swimmer in the surf, thumped the floor and lay there, almost on his back, still looking at me. Light from the bedside lamp glittered on his head. There was a scorched and soggy stain on the rough coat—about where his heart would be. So he wouldn’t get that five million after all. And nobody would get anything and Marty Estel wouldn’t get his fifty grand. Because young Mister Gerald was dead.

  I looked back into the closet where he had been. Its door hung wide open now. There were clothes on racks, feminine clothes, nice clothes. He had been backed in among them, probably with his hands in the air and a gun against his chest. And then he had been shot dead, and whoever did it hadn’t been quite quick enough or quite strong enough to get the door shut. Or had been scared and had just yanked the bed over against the door and left it that way.

  Something glittered down on the floor. I picked it up. A small automatic, .25 caliber, a woman’s purse gun with a beautifully engraved butt inlaid with silver and ivory. I put the gun in my pocket. That seemed a funny thing to do, too.

  I didn’t touch him. He was as dead as John D. Arbogast and looked a whole lot deader. I left the door open and listened, walked quickly back across the room and into the living room and shut the bedroom door, smearing the knob as I did it.

  A lock was being tinkled at with a key. Hawkins was back again, to see what delayed me. He was letting himself in with his passkey.

  I was pouring a drink when he came in.

  He came well into the room, stopped with his feet planted and surveyed me coldly.

  “I seen Estel and his boy leave,” he said. “I didn’t see you leave. So I come up. I gotta—”

  “You gotta protect the guests,” I said.

  “Yeah. I gotta protect the guests. You can’t stay up here, pal. Not without the lady of the house home.”

  “But Marty Estel and his hard boy can.”

  He came a little closer to me. He had a mean look in his eye. He had always had it, probably, but I noticed it more now.

  “You don’t want to make nothing of that, do you?” he asked me.

  “No. Every man to his own chisel. Have a drink.”

  “That ain’t your liquor.”

  “Miss Huntress gave me a bottle. We’re pals. Marty Estel and I are pals. Everybody is pals. Don’t you want to be pals?”

  “You ain’t trying to kid me, are you?”

  “Have a drink and forget it.”

  I found a glass and poured him one. He took it.

  “It’s the job if anybody smells it on me,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  He drank slowly, rolling it around on his tongue. “Good Scotch.”

  “Won’t be the first time you tasted it, will it?”

  He started to get hard again, then relaxed. “Hell, I guess you’re just a kidder.” He finished the drink, put the glass down, patted his lips with a large and very crumpled handkerchief and sighed.

  “O.K.,” he said. “But we’ll have to leave now.”

  “All set. I guess she won’t be home for a while. You see them go out?”

  “Her and the boy friend. Yeah, long time ago.”

  I nodded. We went towards the door and Hawkins saw me out. He saw me downstairs and off the premises. But he didn’t see what was in Miss Huntress’ bedroom. I wondered if he would go back up. If he did, the Scotch bottle would probably stop
him.

  I got into my car and drove off home—to talk to Anna Halsey on the phone. There wasn’t any case any more—for us. I parked close to the curb this time. I wasn’t feeling gay any more. I rode up in the elevator and unlocked the door and clicked the light on.

  Waxnose sat in my best chair, an unlit hand-rolled brown cigarette between his fingers, his bony knees crossed, and his long Woodsman resting solidly on his leg. He was smiling. It wasn’t the nicest smile I ever saw.

  “Hi, pal,” he drawled. “You still ain’t had that door fixed. Kind of shut it, huh?” His voice, for all the drawl, was deadly.

  I shut the door, stood looking across the room at him.

  “So you killed my pal,” he said.

  He stood up slowly, came across the room slowly and leaned the .22 against my throat. His smiling thin-lipped mouth seemed as expressionless, for all its smile, as his wax-white nose. He reached quietly under my coat and took the Luger. I might as well leave it home from now on. Everybody in town seemed to be able to take it away from me.

  He stepped back across the room and sat down again in the chair.

  “Steady does it,” he said almost gently. “Park the body, friend. No false moves. No moves at all. You and me are at the jumping-off place. The clock’s tickin’ and we’re waiting to go.

  I sat down and stared at him. A curious bird. I moistened my dry lips. “You told me his gun had no firing pin,” I said.

  “Yeah. He fooled me on that, the little so-and-so. And I told you to lay off the Jeeter kid. That’s cold now. It’s Frisky I’m thinking about. Crazy, ain’t it? Me bothering about a dimwit like that, packin’ him around with me, and letting him get hisself bumped off.” He sighed and added simply, “He was my kid brother.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said.

  He smiled a little more. He had never stopped smiling. The corners of his mouth just tucked in a little deeper.

  “Yeah?”

  He slid the safety catch off the Luger, laid it carefully on the arm of the chair at his right, and reached into his pocket. What he brought out made me as cold as an ice bucket.

  It was a metal tube, dark and rough-looking, about four inches long and drilled with a lot of small holes. He held his Woodsman in his left hand and began to screw the tube casually on the end of it.