The Little Sister pm-5 Read online

  “What a stiff means to those birds is what a plate of warmed-up cabbage means to me,” Christy French said sourly to the closed door. His partner, a cop named Fred Beifus, was down on one knee by the telephone box. He had dusted it for fingerprints and blown off the loose powder. He was looking at the smudge through a small magnifying glass. He shook his head, then picked some thing off the screw with which the box had been fastened shut.

  “Gray cotton undertaker’s gloves,” he said disgustedly. “Cost about four cents a pair wholesale. Fat lot of good printing this joint. They were looking for something in the telephone box, huh?”

  “Evidently something that could be there,” French said. “I didn’t expect prints. These ice-pick jobs are a specialty. We’ll get the experts after a while. This is just a quickover.”

  He was stripping the dead man’s pockets and laying what had been in them out on the bed beside the quiet and already waxy corpse. Flack was sitting in a chair by the window, looking out morosely. The assistant manager had been up, said nothing with a worried expression, and gone away. I was leaning against the bathroom wall and sorting out my fingers.

  Flack said suddenly: “I figure an ice-pick job’s a dame’s work. You can buy them anywhere. Ten cents. If you want one fast, you can slip it down inside a garter and let it hang there.”

  Christy French gave him a brief glance which had a kind of wonder in it. Beifus said: “What kind of dames you been running around with, honey? The way stockings cost nowadays a dame would as soon stick a saw down her sock.”

  “I never thought of that,” Flack said.

  Beifus said: “Leave us do the thinking sweetheart. It takes equipment.”

  “No need to get tough,” Flack said.

  Beifus took his hat off and bowed. “You mustn’t deny us our little pleasures, Mr. Flack.”

  Christy French said: “Besides, a woman would keep on jabbing. She wouldn’t even know how much was enough. Lots of the punks don’t. Whoever did this one was a performer. He got the spinal cord the first try. And another thing—you have to have the guy quiet to do it. That means more than one guy, unless he was doped, or the killer was a friend of his.”

  I said: “I don’t see how he could have been doped, if he’s the party that called me on the phone.”

  French and Beifus both looked at me with the same expression of patient boredom. “If,” French said, “and since you didn’t know the guy—according to you—there’s always the faint possibility that you wouldn’t know his voice. Or am I being too subtle?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t read your fan mail.”

  French grinned.

  “Don’t waste it on him,” Beifus told French. “Save it for when you talk to the Friday Morning Club. Some of them old ladies in the shiny-nose league go big for the nicer angles of murder.”

  French rolled himself a cigarette and lit it with a kitchen match he struck on the back of a chair. He sighed.

  “They worked the technique out in Brooklyn,” he explained. “Sunny Moe Stein’s boys specialized in it, but they run it into the ground. It got so you couldn’t walk across a vacant lot without finding some of their work. Then they came out here, what was left of them. I wonder why did they do that.”

  “Maybe we just got more vacant lots,” Bell us said.

  “Funny thing, though,” French said, almost dreamily. “When Weepy Moyer had the chill put on Sunny Moe Stein over on Franklin Avenue last February, the killer used a gun. Moe wouldn’t have liked that at all.”

  “I betcha that was why his face had that disappointed look, after they washed the blood off,” Beifus remarked.

  “Who’s Weepy Moyer?” Flack asked.

  “He was next to Moe in the organization,” French told him. “This could easily be his work. Not that he’d have done it personal.”

  “Why not?” Flack asked sourly.

  “Don’t you guys ever read a paper? Moyer’s a gentleman now. He knows the nicest people. Even has another name. And as for the Sunny Moe Stein job, it just happened we had him in jail on a gambling rap. We didn’t get anywhere. But we did make him a very sweet alibi. Anyhow he’s a gentleman like I said, and gentlemen don’t go around sticking ice picks into people. They hire it done.”

  “Did you ever have anything on Moyer?” I asked.

  French looked at me sharply. “Why?”

  “I just had an idea. But it’s very fragile,” I said.

  French eyed me slowly. “Just between us girls in the powder room,” he said, “we never even proved the guy we had was Moyer. But don’t broadcast it. Nobody’s supposed to know but him and his lawyer and the D.A. and the police beat and the city hall and maybe two or three hundred other people.”

  He slapped the dead man’s empty wallet against his thigh and sat down on the bed. He leaned casually against the corpse’s leg, lit a cigarette and pointed with it.

  “That’s enough time on the vaudeville circuit. Here’s what we got, Fred. First off, the customer here was not too bright. He was going by the name of Dr. G. W. Hambleton and had the cards printed with an El Centro address and a phone number. It took just two minutes to find out there ain’t any such address or any such phone number. A bright boy doesn’t lay open that easy. Next, the guy is definitely not in the chips. He has fourteen smackeroos folding in here and about two bucks loose change. On his key ring he don’t have any car key or any safe-deposit key or any house key. All he’s got is a suitcase key and seven filed Yale master keys. Filed fairly recently at that. I figure he was planning to sneak the hotel a little. Do you think these keys would work in your dump, Flack?”

  Flack went over and stared at the keys. “Two of them are the right size,” be said. “I couldn’t tell if they’d work by just looking. If I want a master key I have to get it from the office. All I carry is a passkey. I can only use that if the guest is out.” He took a key out of his pocket, a key on a long chain, and compared it. He shook his head. “They’re no good without more work,” he said. “Far too much metal on them.”

  French flicked ash into the palm of his hand and blew it off as dust. Flack went back to his chair by the window.

  “Next point,” Christy French announced. “He don’t have a driver’s license or any identification. None of his outside clothes were bought in El Centro. He had some kind of a grift, but he don’t have the looks or personality to bounce checks.”

  “You didn’t really see him at his best,” Beifus put in.

  “And this hotel is the wrong dump for that anyway,” French went on. “It’s got a crummy reputation.”

  “Now wait a minute!” Flack began.

  French cut him short with a gesture. “I know every hotel in the metropolitan district, Flack. It’s my business to know. For fifty bucks I could organize a double-strip act with French trimmings inside of an hour in any room in this hotel. Don’t kid me. You earn your living and I’ll earn mine. Just don’t kid me. All right. The customer had something he was afraid to keep around. That means he knew somebody was after him and getting close. So he offers Marlowe a hundred bucks to keep it for him. But he doesn’t have that much money on him. So what he must have been planning on was getting Marlowe to gamble with him. It couldn’t have been hot jewelry then. It had to be something semi-legitimate. That right, Marlowe?”

  “You could leave out the semi,” I said.

  French grinned faintly. “So what he had was something that could be kept flat or rolled up—in a phone box, a hatband, a Bible, a can of talcum. We don’t know whether it was found or not. But we do know there was very little time. Not much more than half an hour.”

  “If Dr. Hambleton did the phoning,” I said. “You opened that can of beans yourself.”

  “It’s kind of pointless any other way. The killers wouldn’t be in a hurry to have him found. Why should they ask anybody to come over to his room?” He turned to Flack. “Any chance to check his visitors?”

  Flack shook his head gloomily. “You do
n’t even have to pass the desk to get to the elevators.”

  Beifus said: “Maybe that was one reason be came here. That, and the homey atmosphere.”

  “All right,” French said. “Whoever knocked him off could come and go without any questions asked. All he had to know was his room number. And that’s about all we know. Okay, Fred?”

  Beifus nodded.

  I said: “Not quite all. It’s a nice toupee, but it’s still a toupee.”

  French and Beifus both swung around quickly. French reached, carefully removed the dead man’s hair, and whistled. “I wondered what that damn intern was grinning at,” he said. “The bastard didn’t even mention it. See what I see, Fred?”

  “All I see is a guy without no hair,” Beifus answered.

  “Maybe you never knew him at that. Mileaway Marston. Used to be a runner for Ace Devore.”

  “Why sure enough,” Beifus chuckled. He leaned over and patted the dead bald head gently. “How you been all this time, Mileaway? I didn’t see you in so long I forgot. But you know me, pal. Once a softy always a softy.”

  The man on the bed looked old and hard and shrunken without his toupee. The yellow mask of death was beginning to set his face into rigid lines.

  French said calmly: “Well, that takes a load off my mind. This punk ain’t going to be no twenty-four-hour-a-day job. The hell with him.” He replaced the toupee over one eye and stood up off the bed. “That’s all for you two,” he said to Flack and me.

  Flack stood up.

  “Thanks for the murder, honey,” Beifus told him. “You get any more in your nice hotel, don’t forget our service. Even when it ain’t good, it’s quick.”

  Flack went down the short hall and yanked the door open. I followed him out. On the way to the elevator we didn’t speak. Nor on the way down. I walked with him along to his little office, followed him in and shut the door. He seemed surprised.

  He sat down at his desk and reached for his telephone. “I got to make a report to the Assistant Manager,” he said. “Something you want?”

  I rolled a cigarette around on my fingers, put a match to it and blew smoke softly across the desk. “One hundred and fifty dollars,” I said.

  Flack’s small, intent eyes became round holes in a face washed clean of expression. “Don’t get funny in the wrong place,” he said.

  “After those two comedians upstairs, you could hardly blame me if I did. But I’m not being funny.” I beat a tattoo on the edge of the desk and waited.

  Tiny beads of sweat showed on Flack’s lip above his little mustache. “I got business to attend to,” he said, more throatily this time. “Beat it and keep going.”

  “Such a tough little man,” I said. “Dr. Hambleton had $164 currency in his wallet when I searched him. He promised me a hundred as retainer, remember? Now, in the same wallet, he has fourteen dollars. And I did leave the door of his room unlocked. And somebody else locked it. You locked it, Flack.”

  Flack took hold of the arms of his chair and squeezed. His voice came from the bottom of a well saying: “You can’t prove a damn thing.”

  “Do I have to try?”

  He took the gun out of his waistband and laid it on the desk in front of him. He stared down at it. It didn’t have any message for him. He looked up at me again. “Fifty-fifty, huh?” he said brokenly.

  There was a moment of silence between us. He got his old shabby wallet out and rooted in it. He came up with a handful of currency and spread bills out on the desk, sorted them into two piles and pushed one pile my way.

  I said: “I want the whole hundred and fifty.”

  He hunched down in his chair and stared at a corner of the desk. After a long time, he sighed. He put the two piles together and pushed them over—to my side of the desk.

  “It wasn’t doing him any good,” Flack said. “Take the dough and breeze. I’ll remember you, buddy. All you guys make me sick to my stomach. How do I know you didn’t take half a grand off him.”

  “I’d take it all. So would the killer. Why leave fourteen dollars?”

  “So why did I leave fourteen dollars?” Flack asked, in a tired voice, making vague movements along the desk edge with his fingers. I picked up the money, counted it and threw it back at him.

  “Because you’re in the business and could size him up. You knew he’d at least have room rent, and a few dollars for loose change. The cops would expect the same thing. Here, I don’t want the money. I want something else.”

  He stared at me with his mouth open.

  “Put that dough out of sight,” I said.

  He reached for it and crammed it back in his wallet. “What something else?” His eyes were small and thoughtful. His tongue pushed out his lower lip “It don’t seem to me you’re in a very hot trading position either.”

  “You could be a little wrong about that. If I have to go back up there and tell Christy French and Beifus I was up there before and searched the body, I’d get a tongue-lashing all right. But he’d understand that I haven’t been holding out just to be smart. He’d know that somewhere in the background I had a client I was trying to protect. I’d get tough talk and bluster. But that’s not what you’d get.” I stopped and watched the faint glisten of moisture forming on his forehead now. He swallowed hard. His eyes were sick.

  “Cut out the wise talk and lay your deal on the deck,” he said. He grinned suddenly, rather wolfishly. “Got here a little late to protect her, didn’t you?” The fat sneer he lived with was coming home again, but slowly, but gladly.

  I killed my cigarette and got another one out and went through all the slow futile face-saving motions of lighting it, getting rid of the match, blowing smoke off to one side, inhaling deeply as though that scrubby little office was a hilltop overlooking the bouncing ocean—all the tired clichéd mannerisms of my trade.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll admit it was a woman. I’ll admit she must have been up there while he was dead, if that makes you happy. I guess it was just shock that made her run away.”

  “Oh sure,” Flack said nastily. The fat sneer was all the way home now. “Or maybe she hadn’t ice-picked a guy in a month. Kind of lost touch.”

  “But why would she take his key?” I said, talking to myself. “And why leave it at the desk? Why not just walk away and leave the whole thing? What if she did think she had to lock the door? Why not drop the key in a sand jar and cover it up? Or take it away with her and lose it? Why do anything with that key that would connect her with that room?” I brought my eyes down and gave Flack a thick leaden stare. “Unless of course she was seen to leave the room—with the key in her hand—and followed out of the hotel.”

  “What for would anybody do that?” Flack asked.

  “Because whoever saw her could have got into that room at once. He had a passkey.”

  Flack’s eyes flicked up at me and dropped all in one motion.

  “So he must have followed her,” I said. “He must have seen her dump the key at the desk and stroll out of the hotel and he must have followed her a little further than that.”

  Flack said derisively: “What makes you so wonderful?”

  I leaned down and pulled the telephone towards me. “I’d better call Christy and get this over with,” I said. “The more I think about it the scareder I get. Maybe she did kill him. I can’t cover up for a murderer.”

  I took the receiver off the hook. Flack slammed his moist paw down hard on top of my hand. The phone jumped on the desk. “Lay off.” His voice was almost a sob. “I followed her to a car parked down the street. Got the number. Christ sake, pal, give me some kind of a break.” He was fumbling wildly in his pockets. “Know what I make on this job? Cigarette and cigar money and hardly a dime more. Wait a minute now. I think—” He looked down and played solitaire with some dirty envelopes, finally selected one and tossed it over to me. “License number,” he said wearily, “and if it’s any satisfaction to you, I can’t even remember what it was.”

  I looked down
at the envelope. There was a scrawled license number on it all right. Ill-written and faint and oblique, the way it would be written hastily on a paper held in a man’s hand on the street. 6N 333. California 1947.

  “Satisfied?” This was Flack’s voice. Or it came out of his mouth. I tore the number off and tossed the envelope back to him.

  “4P 327,” I said, watching his eyes. Nothing flicked in them. No trace of derision or concealment. “But how do I know this isn’t just some license number you had already?”

  “You just got to take my word for it.”

  “Describe the car,” I said.

  “Caddy convertible, not new, top up. About 1942 model. Sort of dusty blue color.”

  “Describe the woman.”

  “Want a lot for your dough, don’t you, peeper?”

  “Dr. Hambleton’s dough.”

  He winced. “All right. Blonde. White coat with some colored stitching on it. Wide blue straw hat. Dark glasses. Height about five two. Built like a Conover model.”

  “Would you know her again—without the glasses?” I asked carefully.

  He pretended to think. Then shook his head, no.

  “What was that license number again, Flackie?” I caught him off guard.

  “Which one?” he said.

  I leaned across the desk and dropped some cigarette ash on his gun. I did some more staring into his eyes. But I knew he was licked now. He seemed to know too. He reached for his gun, blew off the ash and put it back in the drawer of his desk.

  “Go on. Beat it,” he said between his teeth. “Tell the cops I frisked the stiff. So what? Maybe I lose a job. Maybe I get tossed in the fishbowl. So what? When I come out I’m solid. Little Flackie don’t have to worry about coffee and crullers. Don’t think for a minute those dark cheaters fool little Flackie. I’ve seen too many movies to miss that lovely puss. And if you ask me that babe’ll be around for a long time. She’s a comer—and who knows—” he leered at me triumphantly—”she’d need a bodyguard one of these days. A guy to have around, watch things, keep her out of jams. Somebody that knows the ropes and ain’t unreasonable about dough. . . What’s the matter?”