Trouble Is My Business Read online

  “Couldn’t it have been suicide?” I sneered.

  He turned his head enough to look at me. I could see that the idea interested him. He half nodded.

  “No,” I said. “It couldn’t have been suicide.”

  He didn’t like that so well. His face congested with blood and the veins on his nose thickened. The girl touched the gun lying on her knee, then put her hand loosely around the butt. I saw her thumb slide very gently towards the safety catch. She didn’t know much about guns, but she knew that much.

  “It couldn’t be suicide,” I said again, very slowly. “As an isolated event—maybe. But not with all the other stuff that’s been happening. Arbogast, the stick-up down on Calvello Drive outside this house, the thugs planted in my apartment, the job with the twenty-two.”

  I reached into my pocket again and pulled out Waxnose’s Woodsman. I held it carelessly on the flat of my left hand. “And curiously enough, I don’t think it was this twenty-two—although this happens to be the gunman’s twenty-two. Yeah, I have the gunman, too. He’s tied up in my apartment. He came back to knock me off, but I talked him out of it. I’m a swell talker.”

  “Except that you overdo it,” the girl said coolly, and lifted the gun a little.

  “It’s obvious who killed him, Miss Huntress,” I said. “It’s simply a matter of motive and opportunity. Marty Estel didn’t, and didn’t have it done. That would spoil his chances to get his fifty grand. Frisky Lavon’s pal didn’t, regardless of who he was working for, and I don’t think he was working for Marty Estel. He couldn’t have got into the El Milano to do the job, and certainly not into Miss Huntress’ apartment. Whoever did it had something to gain by it and an opportunity to get to the place where it was done. Well, who had something to gain? Gerald had five million coming to him in two years out of a trust fund. He couldn’t will it until he got it. So if he died, his natural heir got it. Who’s his natural heir? You’d be surprised. Did you know that in the state of California and some others, but not in all, a man can by his own act become a natural heir? Just by adopting somebody who has money and no heirs!”

  George moved then. His movement was once more as smooth as a ripple of water. The Smith & Wesson gleamed dully in his hand, but he didn’t fire it. The small automatic in the girl’s hand cracked. Blood spurted from George’s brown hard hand. The Smith & Wesson dropped to the floor. He cursed. She didn’t know much about guns—not very much.

  “Of course!” she said grimly. “George could get into the apartment without any trouble, if Gerald was there. He would go in through the garage, a chauffeur in uniform, ride up in the elevator and knock at the door. And when Gerald opened it, George would back him in with that Smith & Wesson. But how did he know Gerald was there?”

  I said: “He must have followed your taxi. We don’t know where he has been all evening since he left me. He had a car with him. The cops will find out. How much was in it for you, George?”

  George held his right wrist with his left hand, held it tightly, and his face was twisted, savage. He said nothing.

  “George would back him in with the Smith & Wesson,” the girl said wearily. “Then he would see my gun on the mantel-piece. That would be better. He would use that. He would back Gerald into the bedroom, away from the corridor, into the closet, and there, quietly, calmly, he would kill him and drop the gun on the floor.”

  “George killed Arbogast, too. He killed him with a twenty-two because he knew that Frisky Lavon’s brother had a twenty-two, and he knew that because he had hired Frisky and his brother to put over a big scare on Gerald—so that when he was murdered it would look as if Marty Estel had had it done. That was why I was brought out here tonight in the Jeeter car—so that the two thugs who had been warned and planted could pull their act and maybe knock me off, if I got too tough. Only George likes to kill people. He made a neat shot at Frisky. He hit him in the face. It was so good a shot I think he meant it to be a miss. How about it, George?”

  Silence.

  I looked at old Jeeter at last. I had been expecting him to pull a gun himself, but he hadn’t. He just stood there, open-mouthed, appalled, leaning against the black marble table, shaking.

  “My God!” he whispered. “My God!”

  “You don’t have one—except money.”

  A door squeaked behind me. I whirled, but I needn’t have bothered. A hard voice, about as English as Amos and Andy, said: “Put ’em up, bud.”

  The butler, the very English butler, stood there in the doorway, a gun in his hand, tight-lipped. The girl turned her wrist and shot him just kind of casually, in the shoulder or something. He squealed like a stuck pig.

  “Go away, you’re intruding,” she said coldly.

  He ran. We heard his steps running.

  “He’s going to fall,” she said.

  I was wearing my Luger in my right hand now, a little late in the season, as usual. I came around with it. Old man Jeeter was holding on to the table, his face gray as a paving block. His knees were giving. George stood cynically, holding a handkerchief around his bleeding wrist, watching him.

  “Let him fall,” I said. “Down is where he belongs.”

  He fell. His head twisted. His mouth went slack. He hit the carpet on his side and rolled a little and his knees came up. His mouth drooled a little. His skin turned violet.

  “Go call the law, angel,” I said. “I’ll watch them now.”

  “All right,” she said standing up. “But you certainly need a lot of help in your private-detecting business, Mr. Marlowe.”

  EIGHT

  I had been in there for a solid hour, alone. There was the scarred desk in the middle, another against the wall, a brass spittoon on a mat, a police loudspeaker box on the wall, three squashed flies, a smell of cold cigars and old clothes. There were two hard armchairs with felt pads and two hard straight chairs without pads. The electric-light fixture had been dusted about Coolidge’s first term.

  The door opened with a jerk and Finlayson and Sebold came in. Sebold looked as spruce and nasty as ever, but Finlayson looked older, more worn, mousier. He held a sheaf of papers in his hand. He sat down across the desk from me and gave me a hard bleak stare.

  “Guys like you get in a lot of trouble,” Finlayson said sourly. Sebold sat down against the wall and tilted his hat over his eyes and yawned and looked at his new stainless-steel wrist watch.

  “Trouble is my business,” I said. “How else would I make a nickel?”

  “We oughta throw you in the can for all this cover-up stuff. How much you making on this one?”

  “I was working for Anna Halsey who was working for old man Jeeter. I guess I made a bad debt.”

  Sebold smiled his blackjack smile at me. Finlayson lit a cigar and licked at a tear on the side of it and pasted it down, but it leaked smoke just the same when he drew on it. He pushed papers across the desk at me.

  “Sign three copies.”

  I signed three copies.

  He took them back, yawned and rumpled his old gray head. “The old man’s had a stroke,” he said. “No dice there. Probably won’t know what time it is when he comes out. This George Hasterman, this chauffeur guy, he just laughs at us. Too bad he got pinked. I’d like to wrastle him a bit.”

  “He’s tough,” I said.

  “Yeah. O.K., you can beat it for now.”

  I got up and nodded to them and went to the door. “Well, good night, boys.”

  Neither of them spoke to me.

  I went out, along the corridor and down in the night elevator to the City Hall lobby. I went out the Spring Street side and down the long flight of empty steps and the wind blew cold. I lit a cigarette at the bottom. My car was still out at the Jeeter place. I lifted a foot to start walking to a taxi half a block down across the street. A voice spoke sharply from a parked car.

  “Come here a minute.”

  It was a man’s voice, tight, hard. It was Marty Estel’s voice. It came from a big sedan with two men in the front seat.
I went over there. The rear window was down and Marty Estel leaned a gloved hand on it.

  “Get in.” He pushed the door open. I got in. I was too tired to argue. “Take it away, Skin.”

  The car drove west through dark, almost quiet streets, almost clean streets. The night air was not pure but it was cool. We went up over a hill and began to pick up speed.

  “What they get?” Estel asked coolly.

  “They didn’t tell me. They didn’t break the chauffeur yet.”

  “You can’t convict a couple million bucks of murder in this man’s town.” The driver called Skin laughed without turning his head. “Maybe I don’t even touch my fifty grand now. . . she likes you.”

  “Uh-huh. So what?”

  “Lay off her.”

  “What will it get me?”

  “It’s what it’ll get you if you don’t.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Go to hell, will you please. I’m tired.” I shut my eyes and leaned in the corner of the car and just like that went to sleep. I can do that sometimes, after a strain.

  A hand shaking my shoulder woke me. The car had stopped. I looked out at the front of my apartment house.

  “Horne,” Marty Estel said. “And remember. Lay off her.”

  “Why the ride home? Just to tell me that?”

  “She asked me to look out for you. That’s why you’re loose. She likes you. I like her. See? You don’t want any more trouble.”

  “Trouble—” I started to say, and stopped. I was tired of that gag for that night. “Thanks for the ride, and apart from that, nuts to you.” I turned away and went into the apartment house and up.

  The door lock was still loose but nobody waited for me this time. They had taken Waxnose away long since. I left the door open and threw the windows up and I was still sniffing at policemen’s cigar butts when the phone rang. It was her voice, cool, a little hard, not touched by anything, almost amused. Well, she’d been through enough to make her that way, probably.

  “Hello, brown-eyes. Make it home all right?”

  “Your pal Marty brought me home. He told me to lay off you. Thanks with all my heart, if I have any, but don’t call me up any more.”

  “A little scared, Mr. Marlowe?”

  “No. Wait for me to call you,” I said. “Good night, angel.”

  “Good night, brown-eyes.”

  The phone clicked. I put it away and shut the door and pulled the bed down. I undressed and lay on it for a while in the cold air.

  Then I got up and had a drink and a shower and went to sleep.

  They broke George at last, but not enough. He said there had been a fight over the girl and young Jeeter had grabbed the gun off the mantel and George had fought with him and it had gone off. All of which, of course, looked possible—in the papers. They never pinned the Arbogast killing on him or on anybody. They never found the gun that did it, but it was not Waxnose’s gun. Waxnose disappeared—I never heard where. They didn’t touch old man Jeeter, because he never came out of his stroke, except to lie on his back and have nurses and tell people how he hadn’t lost a nickel in the depression.

  Marty Estel called me up four times to tell me to lay off Harriet Huntress. I felt kind of sorry for the poor guy. He had it bad. I went out with her twice and sat with her twice more at home, drinking her Scotch. It was nice, but I didn’t have the money, the clothes, the time or the manners. Then she stopped being at the El Milano and I heard she had gone to New York.

  I was glad when she left—even though she didn’t bother to tell me goodbye.

  * * *

  FINGER

  MAN

  * * *

  ONE

  I got away from the Grand Jury a little after four, and then sneaked up the back stairs to Fenweather’s office. Fenweather, the D.A., was a man with severe, chiseled features and the gray temples women love. He played with a pen on his desk and said: “I think they believed you. They might even indict Manny Tinnen for the Shannon kill this afternoon. If they do, then is the time you begin to watch your step.”

  I rolled a cigarette around in my fingers and finally put it in my mouth. “Don’t put any men on me, Mr. Fenweather. I know the alleys in this town pretty well, and your men couldn’t stay close enough to do me any good.”

  He looked towards one of the windows. “How well do you know Frank Dorr?” he asked, with his eyes away from me.

  “I know he’s a big politico, a fixer you have to see if you want to open a gambling hell or a bawdy house—or if you want to sell honest merchandise to the city.”

  “Right.” Fenweather spoke sharply, and brought his head around towards me. Then he lowered his voice. “Having the goods on Tinnen was a surprise to a lot of people. If Frank Dorr had an interest in getting rid of Shannon who was the head of the Board where Dorr’s supposed to get his contracts, it’s close enough to make him take chances. And I’m told he and Manny Tinnen had dealings. I’d sort of keep an eye on him, if I were you.”

  I grinned. “I’m just one guy,” I said. “Frank Dorr covers a lot of territory. But I’ll do what I can.”

  Fenweather stood up and held his hand across the desk. He said: “I’ll be out of town for a couple of days, I’m leaving tonight, if this indictment comes through. Be careful—and if anything should happen to go wrong, see Bernie Ohls, my chief investigator.”

  I said: “Sure.”

  We shook hands and I went out past a tired-looking girl who gave me a tired smile and wound one of her lax curls up on the back of her neck as she looked at me. I got back to my office soon after four-thirty. I stopped outside the door of the little reception room for a moment, looking at it. Then I opened it and went in, and of course there wasn’t anybody there.

  There was nothing there but an old red davenport, two odd chairs, a bit of carpet, and a library table with a few old magazines on it. The reception room was left open for visitors to come in and sit down and wait—if I had any visitors and they felt like waiting.

  I went across and unlocked the door into my private office, lettered “Philip Marlowe . . . Investigations.”

  Lou Harger was sitting on a wooden chair on the side of the desk away from the window. He had bright yellow gloves clamped on the crook of a cane, a green snap-brim hat set too far back on his head. Very smooth black hair showed under the hat and grew too low on the nape of his neck.

  “Hello. I’ve been waiting,” he said, and smiled languidly.

  “ ’Lo, Lou. How did you get in here?”

  “The door must have been unlocked. Or maybe I had a key that fitted. Do you mind?”

  I went around the desk and sat down in the swivel chair. I put my hat down on the desk, picked up a bulldog pipe out of an ash tray and began to fill it up.

  “It’s all right as long as it’s you,” I said. “I just thought I had a better lock.”

  He smiled with his full red lips. He was a very good-looking boy. He said: “Are you still doing business, or will you spend the next month in a hotel room drinking liquor with a couple of Headquarters boys?”

  “I’m still doing business—if there’s any business for me to do.”

  I lit a pipe, leaned back and stared at his clear olive skin, straight, dark eyebrows.

  He put his cane on top of the desk and clasped his yellow gloves on the glass. He moved his lips in and out.

  “I have a little something for you. Not a hell of a lot. But there’s carfare in it.”

  I waited.

  “I’m making a little play at Las Olindas tonight,” he said. “At Canales’ place.”

  “The white smoke?”

  “Uh-huh. I think I’m going to be lucky—and I’d like to have a guy with a rod.”

  I took a fresh pack of cigarettes out of a top drawer and slid them across the desk. Lou picked them up and began to break the pack open.

  I said: “What kind of a play?”

  He got a cigarette halfway out and stared down at it. There was a little something in his manner I didn
’t like.

  “I’ve been closed up for a month now. I wasn’t makin’ the kind of money it takes to stay open in this town. The Headquarters boys have been putting the pressure on since repeal. They have bad dreams when they see themselves trying to live on their pay.”

  I said: “It doesn’t cost any more to operate here than anywhere else. And here you pay it all to one organization. That’s something.”

  Lou Harger jabbed the cigarette in his mouth. “Yeah—Frank Dorr,” he snarled. “That fat, bloodsuckin’ sonofabitch!”

  I didn’t say anything. I was way past the age when it’s fun to swear at people you can’t hurt. I watched Lou light his cigarette with my desk lighter. He went on, through a puff of smoke: “It’s a laugh, in a way. Canales bought a new wheel—from some grafters in the sheriff’s office. I know Pina, Canales’ head croupier, pretty well. The wheel is one they took away from me. It’s got bugs—and I know the bugs.”

  “And Canales don’t . . . That sounds just like Canales,” I said.

  Lou didn’t look at me. “He gets a nice crowd down there,” he said. “He has a small dance floor and a five-piece Mexican band to help the customers relax. They dance a bit and then go back for another trimming, instead of going away disgusted.”

  I said: “What do you do?”

  “I guess you might call it a system,” he said softly, and looked at me under his long lashes.

  I looked away from him, looked around the room. It had a rust-red carpet, five green filing cases in a row under an advertising calendar, an old costumer in the corner, a few walnut chairs, net curtains over the windows. The fringe of the curtains was dirty from blowing about in the draft. There was a bar of late sunlight across my desk and it showed up the dust.

  “I get it like this,” I said. “You think you have that roulette wheel tamed and you expect to win enough money so that Canales will be mad at you. You’d like to have some protection along—me. I think it’s screwy.”

  “It’s not screwy at all,” Lou said. “Any roulette wheel has a tendency to work in a certain rhythm. If you know the wheel very well indeed—”