The Little Sister pm-5 Page 9

  “Go ahead,” I said. “It would give me the greatest possible pleasure to see you try to pull a gun.”

  He frowned, then very slowly got out a flat pigskin wallet and drew out a crisp new one-hundred-dollar bill. He laid it on the edge of the glass top, drew out another just like it, then one by one three more. He laid them carefully in a row along the desk, end to end. Alfred let his chair settle to the floor and stared at the money with his mouth quivering.

  “Five C’s,” the big man said. He folded his wallet and put it away. I watched every movement he made. “For nothing at all but keeping the nose clean. Check?”

  I just looked at him.

  “You ain’t looking for nobody,” the big man said. “You couldn’t find nobody. You don’t have time to work for nobody. You didn’t hear a thing or see a thing. You’re clean. Five C’s clean. Okay?”

  There was no sound in the office but Alfred’s sniffling. The big man half turned his head. “Quiet, Alfred. I’ll give you a shot when we leave,” the big man told him. “Try to act nice.” He sucked again at the cut on the back of his hand.

  “With you for a model that ought to be easy,” I said.

  “Screw you,” Alfred said.

  “Limited vocabulary,” the big man told me. “Very limited. Get the idea, chum?” He indicated the money. I fingered the butt of the Luger. He leaned forward a little. “Relax, can’t you. It’s simple. This is a retainer. You don’t do a thing for it. Nothing is what you do. If you keep on doing nothing for a reasonable length of time you get the same amount later on. That’s simple, isn’t it?”

  “And who am I doing this nothing for?” I asked.

  “Me. Joseph P. Toad.”

  “What’s your racket?”

  “Business representative, you might call me.”

  “What else could I call you? Besides what I could think up myself?”

  “You could call me a guy that wants to help out a guy that don’t want to make trouble for a guy.”

  “And what could I call that lovable character?” I asked.

  Joseph P. Toad gathered the five hundred-dollar bills together, lined up the edges neatly and pushed the packet across the desk. “You can call him a guy that would rather spill money than blood,” he said. “But he don’t mind spilling blood if it looks like that’s what he’s got to do.”

  “How is he with an ice pick?” I asked. “I can see how lousy he is with a .45.”

  The big man chewed his lower lip, then pulled it out with a blunt forefinger and thumb and nibbled on the inside of it softly, like a milk cow chewing her cud. “We’re not talking about ice picks,” he said at length. “All we’re talking about is how you might get off on the wrong foot and do yourself a lot of harm. Whereas if you don’t get off on no foot at all, you’re sitting pretty and money coming in.”

  “Who is the blonde?” I asked.

  He thought about that and nodded. “Maybe you’re into this too far already,” he sighed. “Maybe it’s too late to do business.”

  After a moment he leaned forward and said gently: “Okay. I’ll check back with my principal and see how far out he wants to come. Maybe we can still do business. Everything stands as it is until you hear from me. Check?”

  I let him have that one. He put his hands on the desk and very slowly stood up, watching the gun I was pushing around on the blotter.

  “You can keep the dough,” he said. “Come on, Alfred.” He turned and walked solidly out of the office.

  Alfred’s eyes crawled sideways watching him, then jerked to the money on the desk. The big automatic appeared with the same magic in his thin right hand. Dartingly as an eel he moved over to the desk. He kept the gun on me and reached for the money with his left hand. It disappeared into his pocket. He gave me a smooth cool empty grin, nodded and moved away, apparently not realizing for a moment that I was holding a gun too.

  “Come on, Alfred,” the big man called sharply from outside the door. Alfred slipped through the door and was gone.

  The outer door opened and closed. Steps went along the hail. Then silence. I sat there thinking back over it, trying to make up my mind whether it was pure idiocy or just a new way to toss a scare.

  Five minutes later the telephone rang.

  A thick pleasant voice said: “Oh by the way, Mr. Marlowe, I guess you know Sherry Ballou, don’t you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Sheridan Ballou, Incorporated. The big agent? You ought to look him up sometime.”

  I held the phone silently for a moment. Then I said: “Is he her agent?”

  “He might be,” Joseph P. Toad said, and paused a moment. “I suppose you realize we’re just a couple of bit players, Mr. Marlowe. That’s all. Just a couple of bit players. Somebody wanted to find out a little something about you. It seemed the simplest way to do it. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  I didn’t answer. He hung up. Almost at once the phone rang again.

  A seductive voice said: “You do not like me so well, do you, amigo?”

  “Sure I do. Just don’t keep biting me.”

  “I am at home at the Chateau Bercy. I am lonely.”

  “Call an escort bureau.”

  “But please. That is no way to talk. This is business of a great importance.”

  “I bet. But not the business I’m in.”

  “That slut—What does she say about me?” she hissed.

  “Nothing. Oh, she might have called you a Tijuana hooker in riding pants. Would you mind?”

  That amused her. The silvery giggle went on for a little while. “Always the wisecrack with you. Is it not so? But you see I did not then know you were a detective. That makes a very big difference.”

  I could have told her how wrong she was. I just said: “Miss Gonzales, you said something about business. What kind of business, if you’re not kidding me?”

  “Would you like to make a great deal of money? A very great deal of money?”

  “You mean without getting shot?” I asked.

  Her in caught breath came over the wire. “Si,” she said thoughtfully. “There is also that to consider. But you are so brave, so big, so—”

  “I’ll be at my office at nine in the morning, Miss Gonzales. I’ll be a lot braver then. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  “You have a date? Is she beautiful? More beautiful than I am?”

  “For Christ’s sake,” I said. “Don’t you ever think of anything but one thing?”

  “The hell with you, darling,” she said and hung up in my face.

  I turned the lights out and left. Halfway down the hall I met a man looking at numbers. He had a special delivery in his hand. So I had to go back to the office and put it in the safe. And the phone rang again while I was doing this.

  I let it ring. I had had enough for one day. I just didn’t care. It could have been the Queen of Sheba with her cellophane pajamas on—or off—I was too tired to bother. My brain felt like a bucket of wet sand.

  It was still ringing as I reached the door. No use. I had to go back. Instinct was stronger than weariness. I lifted the receiver.

  Orfamay Quest’s twittery little voice said: “Oh Mr. Marlowe I’ve been trying to get you for just the longest time. I’m so upset. I’m—”

  “In the morning,” I said. “The office is closed.”

  “Please, Mr. Marlowe—just because I lost my temper for a moment—”

  “In the morning.”

  “But I tell you I have to see you.” The voice didn’t quite rise to a yell. “It’s terribly important.”

  “Unhuh.”

  She sniffled. “You—you kissed me.”

  “I’ve kissed better since,” I said. To hell with her. To hell with all women.

  “I’ve heard from Orrin,” she said.

  That stopped me for a moment, then I laughed. “You’re a nice little liar,” I said. “Goodbye.”

  “But really I have. He called me. On the telephone. Right here where I’m staying.”

 
“Fine,” I said. “Then you don’t need a detective at all. And if you did, you’ve got a better one than I am right in the family. I couldn’t even find out where you were staying.”

  There was a little pause. She still had me talking to her anyway. She’d kept me from hanging up. I had to give her that much.

  “I wrote to him where I’d be staying,” she said at last.

  “Unhuh. Only he didn’t get the letter because he had moved and he didn’t leave any forwarding address. Remember? Try again some time when I’m not so tired. Goodnight, Miss Quest. And you don’t have to tell me where you are staying now. I’m not working for you.”

  “Very well, Mr. Marlowe. I’m ready to call the police now. But I don’t think you’ll like it. I don’t think you’ll like it at all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s murder in it, Mr. Marlowe, and murder is a very nasty word—don’t you think?”

  “Come on up,” I said. “I’ll wait.”

  I hung up. I got the bottle of Old Forester out. There was nothing slow about the way I poured myself a drink and dropped it down my throat.

  15

  She came in briskly enough this time. Her motions were small and quick and determined. There was one of those thin little, bright little smiles on her face. She put her bag down firmly, settled herself in the customer’s chair and went on smiling.

  “It’s nice of you to wait for me,” she said. “I bet you haven’t had your dinner yet, either.”

  “Wrong,” I said. “I have had my dinner. I am now drinking whiskey. You don’t approve of whiskey-drinking do you?”

  “I certainly do not.”

  “That’s just dandy,” I said. “I hoped you hadn’t changed your mind.” I put the bottle up on the desk and poured myself another slug. I drank a little of it and gave her a leer above the glass.

  “If you keep on with that you won’t be in any condition to listen to what I have to say,” she snapped.

  “About this murder,” I said. “Anybody I know? I can see you’re not murdered—yet.”

  “Please don’t be unnecessarily horrid. It’s not my fault. You doubted me over the telephone so I had to convince you. Orrin did call me up. But he wouldn’t tell me where he was or what he was doing. I don’t know why.”

  “He wanted you to find out for yourself,” I said. “He’s building your character.”

  “That’s not funny. It’s not even smart.”

  “But you’ve got to admit it’s nasty,” I said. “Who was murdered? Or is that a secret too?”

  She fiddled a little with her bag, not enough to overcome her embarrassment, because she wasn’t embarrassed. But enough to needle me into taking another drink.

  “That horrid man in the rooming house was murdered. Mr.—Mr.—I forget his name.”

  “Let’s both forget it,” I said. “Let’s do something together for once.” I dropped the whiskey bottle into the desk drawer and stood up. “Look, Orfamay, I’m not asking you how you know all this. Or rather how Orrin knows it all. Or if he does know it. You’ve found him. That’s what you wanted me to do. Or he’s found you, which comes to the same thing.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” she cried. “I haven’t really found him. He wouldn’t tell me where he was living.”

  “Well if it is anything like the last place, I don’t blame him.”

  She set her lips in a firm line of distaste. “He wouldn’t tell me anything really.”

  “Just about murders,” I said. “Trifles like that.”

  She laughed bubblingly. “I just said that to scare you. I don’t really mean anybody was murdered, Mr. Marlowe. You sounded so cold and distant. I thought you wouldn’t help me any more. And—well, I just made it up.”

  I took a couple of deep breaths and looked down at my hands. I straightened out the fingers slowly. Then I stood up. I didn’t say anything.

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked timidly, making a little circle on the desk with the point of a finger.

  “I ought to slap your face off,” I said. “And quit acting innocent. Or it mightn’t be your face I’d slap.”

  Her breath caught with a jerk. “Why, how dare you!”

  “You used that line,” I said. “You used it too often. Shut up and get the hell out of here. Do you think I enjoy being scared to death? Oh—there’s this.” I yanked a drawer open, got out her twenty dollars and threw them down in front of her. “Take this money away. Endow a hospital or a research laboratory with it. It makes me nervous having it around.”

  Her hand reached automatically for the money. Her eyes behind the cheaters were round and wondering. “Goodness,” she said, assembling her handbag with a nice dignity. “I’m sure I didn’t know you scared that easy. I thought you were tough.”

  “That’s just an act,” I growled, moving around the desk. She leaned back in her chair away from me. “I’m only tough with little girls like you that don’t let their fingernails grow too long. I’m all mush inside.” I took hold of her arm and yanked her to her feet. Her head went back. Her lips parted. I was hell with the women that day.

  “But you will find Orrin for me, won’t you?” she whispered. “It was all a lie. Everything I’ve told you was a lie. He didn’t call me up. I—I don’t know anything.”

  “Perfume,” I said sniffing. “Why, you little darling. You put perfume behind your ears—and all for me!”

  She nodded her little chin half an inch. Her eyes were melting. “Take my glasses off,” she whispered, “Philip. I don’t mind if you take a little whiskey once in a while. Really I don’t.”

  Our faces were about six inches apart. I was afraid to take her glasses off. I might have socked her on the nose.

  “Yes,” I said in a voice that sounded like Orson Welles with his mouth full of crackers. “I’ll find him for you, honey, if he’s still alive. And for free. Not a dime of expense involved. I only ask one thing.”

  “What, Philip?” she asked softly and opened her lips a little wider.

  “Who was the black sheep in your family?”

  She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me. She stared at me stony-faced.

  “You said Orrin wasn’t the black sheep in your family. Remember? With a very peculiar emphasis. And when you mentioned your sister Leila, you sort of passed on quickly as if the subject was distasteful.”

  “I—I don’t remember saying anything like that,” she said very slowly.

  “So I was wondering,” I said. “What name does your sister Leila use in pictures?”

  “Pictures?” she sounded vague. “Oh you mean motion pictures? Why I never said she was in pictures. I never said anything about her like that.”

  I gave her my big homely lopsided grin. She suddenly flew into a rage.

  “Mind your own business about my sister Leila,” she spit at me. “You leave my sister Leila out of your dirty remarks.”

  “What dirty remarks?” I asked. “Or should I try to guess?”

  “All you think about is liquor and women,” she screamed. “I hate you!” She rushed to the door and yanked it open and went out. She practically ran down the hall.

  I went back around my desk and slumped into the chair. A very strange little girl. Very strange indeed. After a while the phone started ringing again, as it would. On the fourth ring I leaned my head on my hand and groped for it, fumbled it to my face.

  “Utter McKinley Funeral Parlors,” I said.

  A female voice said: “Wha-a-t?” and went off into a shriek of laughter. That one was a riot at the police smoker in 1921. What a wit. Like a hummingbird’s beak. I put the lights out and went home.

  16

  Eight-forty-five the next morning found me parked a couple of doors from the Bay City Camera Shop, breakfasted and peaceful and reading the local paper through a pair of sunglasses. I had already chewed my way through the Los Angeles paper, which contained no item about ice picks in the Van N
uys or any other hotel. Not even MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN DOWNTOWN HOTEL, with no names or weapons specified. The Bay City News wasn’t too busy to write up a murder. They put it on the first page, right next to the price of meat.

  LOCAL MAN FOUND STABBED

  IN IDAHO STREET ROOMING HOUSE

  An anonymous telephone call late yesterday sent police speeding to an address on Idaho Street opposite the Seamans and Lansing Company’s lumber yard. Entering the unlocked door of his apartment, officers found Lester B. Clausen, 45, manager of the rooming house, dead on the couch. Clausen had been stabbed in the neck with an ice pick which was still in his body. After a preliminary examination, Coroner Frank L. Crowdy announced that Clausen had been drinking heavily and may have been unconscious at the time of his death. No signs of struggle were observed by the police.

  Detective Lieutenant Moses Maglashan immediately took charge and questioned tenants of the rooming house on their return from work, but no light has so far been thrown on the circumstances of the crime. Interviewed by this reporter, Coroner Crowdy stated that Clausen’s death might have been suicide but that the position of the wound made this unlikely. Examination of the rooming house register disclosed that a page had recently been torn out. Lieutenant Maglashan, after questioning the tenants at length, stated that a thick-set middle-aged man with brown hair and heavy features had been noticed in the hallway of the rooming house on several occasions, but that none of the tenants knew his name or occupation. After carefully checking all rooms, Maglashan further gave it as his opinion that one of the roomers had left recently and in some haste. The mutilation of the register, however, the character of the neighborhood, the lack of an accurate description of the missing man, made the job of tracing him extremely difficult.

  “I have no idea at present why Clausen was murdered,” Maglashan announced at a late hour last night. “But I have had my eye on this man for some time. Many of his associates are known to me. It’s a tough case, but we’ll crack it.”

  It was a nice piece and only mentioned Maglashan’s name twelve times in the text and twice more in picture captions. There was a photo of him on page three holding an ice pick and looking at it with profound thought wrinkling his brows. There was a photo of 449 Idaho Street which did it more than justice, and a photo of something with a sheet over it on a couch and Lieutenant Maglashan pointing at it sternly. There was also a close-up of the mayor looking as executive as hell behind his official desk and an interview with him on the subject of post-war crime. He said just what you would expect a mayor to say—a watered-down shot of J. Edgar Hoover with some extra bad grammar thrown in.