1

IT WAS ONE OF THE MIXED BLOCKS over on Central Avenue, the blocks that are not yet all Negro. I had just come out of a three-chair barber shop where an agency thought a relief barber named Dimitrios Aleidis might be working. It was a small matter. His wife said she was willing to spend a little money to have him come home.

I never found him, but Mrs. Aleidis never paid me any money either.

It was a warm day, almost the end of March, and I stood outside the barber shop looking up at the jutting neon sign of a second floor dine and dice emporium called Florian’s. A man was looking up at the sign too. He was looking up at the dusty windows with a sort of ecstatic fixity of expression, like a hunky immigrant catching his first sight of the Statue of Liberty. He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck. He was about ten feet away from me. His arms hung loose at his aides and a forgotten cigar smoked behind his enormous fingers.

Slim quiet Negroes passed up and down the street and stared at him with darting side glances. He was worth looking at. He wore a shaggy borsalino hat, a rough gray sports coat with white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie, pleated gray flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white explosions on the toes. From his outer breast pocket cascaded a show handkerchief of the same brilliant yellow as his tie. There were a couple of colored feathers tucked into the band of his hat, but he didn’t really need them. Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

His skin was pale and he needed a shave. He would always need a shave. He had curly black hair and heavy eyebrows that almost met over his thick nose. His ears were small and neat for a man of that size and his eyes bad a shine close to tears that gray eyes often seem to have. He stood like a statue, and after a long time he smiled.

He moved slowly across the sidewalk to the double swinging doors which shut off the stairs to the second floor. He pushed them open, cast a cool expressionless glance up and down the street, and moved inside. If he had been a smaller man and more quietly dressed, I might have thought he was going to pull a stick-up. But not in those clothes, and not with that hat, and that frame.

The doors swung back outwards and almost settled to a stop. Before they had entirely stopped moving they opened again, violently, outwards. Something sailed across the sidewalk and landed in the gutter between two parked cars. It landed on its hands and knees and made a high keening noise like a cornered rat. It got up slowly, retrieved a hat and stepped back onto the sidewalk. It was a thin, narrow-shouldered brown youth in a lilac colored suit and a carnation. It had slick black hair. It kept its mouth open and whined for a moment. People stared at it vaguely. Then it settled its hat jauntily, sidled over to the wall and walked silently splay-footed off along the block.

Silence. Traffic resumed. I walked along to the double doors and stood in front of them. They were motionless now. It wasn’t any of my business. So I pushed them open and looked in.

A hand I could have sat in came out of the dimness and took hold of my shoulder and squashed it to a pulp. Then the hand moved me through the doors and casually lifted me up a step. The large face looked at me. A deep soft voice said to me, quietly:

“Smokes in here, huh? Tie that for me, pal.”

It was dark in there. It was quiet. From up above came vague sounds of humanity, but we were alone on the stairs. The big man stared at me solemnly and went on wrecking my shoulder with his hand.

“A dinge,” he said. “I just thrown him out. You seen me throw him out?”

He let go of my shoulder. The bone didn’t seem to be broken, but the arm was numb.

“It’s that kind of a place,” I said, rubbing my shoulder. “What did you expect?”

“Don’t say that, pal,” the big man purred softly, like four tigers after dinner. “Velma used to work here. Little Velma.”

He reached for my shoulder again. I tried to dodge him but he was as fast as a cat. He began to chew my muscles up some more with his iron fingers.

“Yeah,” he said. “Little Velma. I ain’t seen her in eight years. You say this here is a dinge joint?”

I croaked that it was.

He lifted me up two more steps. I wrenched myself loose and tried for a little elbow room. I wasn’t wearing a gun. Looking for Dimitrios Aleidis hadn’t seemed to require it. I doubted if it would do me any good. The big man would probably take it away from me and eat it.

“Go on up and see for yourself,” I said, trying to keep the agony out of my voice.

He let go of me again. He looked at me with a sort of sadness in his gray eyes. “I’m feelin’ good,” he said. “I wouldn’t want anybody to fuss with me. Let’s you and me go on up and maybe nibble a couple.”

“They won’t serve you. I told you it’s a colored joint.”

“I ain’t seen Velma in eight years,” he said in his deep sad voice. “Eight long years since I said goodby. She ain’t wrote to me in six. But she’ll have a reason. She used to work here. Cute she was. Let’s you and me go on up, huh?”

“All right,” I yelled. “I’ll go up with you. Just lay off carrying me. Let me walk. I’m fine. I’m all grown up. I go to the bathroom alone and everything. Just don’t carry me.”

“Little Velma used to work here,” he said gently. He wasn’t listening to me.

We went on up the stairs. He let me walk. My shoulder ached. The back of my neck was wet.

2

Two more swing doors closed off the head of the stairs from whatever was beyond. The big man pushed them open lightly with his thumbs and we went into the room. It was a long narrow room, not very clean, not very bright, not very cheerful. In the corner a group of Negroes chanted and chattered in the cone of light over a crap table. There was a bar against the right hand wall. The rest of the room was mostly small round tables. There were a few customers, men and women, all Negroes.

The chanting at the crap table stopped dead and the light over it jerked out. There was a sudden silence as heavy as a water-logged boat. Eyes looked at us, chestnut colored eyes, set in faces that ranged from gray to deep black. Heads turned slowly and the eyes in them glistened and stared in the dead alien silence of another race.

A large, thick-necked Negro was leaning against the end of the bar with pink garters on his shirt sleeves and pink and white suspenders crossing his broad back. He had bouncer written all over him. He put his lifted foot down slowly and turned slowly and stared at us, spreading his feet gently and moving a broad tongue along his lips. He had a battered face that looked as if it had been hit by everything but the bucket of a dragline. It was scarred, flattened, thickened, checkered, and welted. It was a face that had nothing to fear. Everything had been done to it that anybody could think of.

The short crinkled hair had a touch of gray. One ear had lost the lobe.

The Negro was heavy and wide. He had big heavy legs and they looked a little bowed, which is unusual in a Negro. He moved his tongue some more and smiled and moved his body. He came towards us in a loose fighter’s crouch. The big man waited for him silently.

The Negro with the pink garters on his arms put a massive brown hand against the big man’s chest. Large as it was, the hand looked like a stud. The big man didn’t move. The bouncer smiled gently.

“No white folks, brother. Jes’ fo’ the colored people. I’se sorry.”

The big man moved his small sad gray eyes and looked around the room. His cheeks flushed a little. “Shine box,” be said angrily, under his breath. He raised his voice. “Where’s Velma at?” he asked the bouncer.

The bouncer didn’t quite laugh. He studied the big man’s clothes, his brown shirt and yellow tie, his rough gray coat and the white golf balls on it. He moved his thick head around delicately and studied all this from various angles. He looked down at the alligator shoes. He chuckled lightly. He seemed amused. I felt a little sorry for him. He spoke softly again.

“Velma you says? No Velma heah, brother. No hooch, no gals, no nothing. Jes’ the scram, white boy, jes’ the scram.”

“Velma used to work here,” the big man said. He spoke almost dreamily, as if he was all by himself, out in the woods, picking johnny-jump-ups. I got my handkerchief out and wiped the back of my neck again.

The bouncer laughed suddenly. “Shuah,” he said, throwing a quick look back over his shoulder at his public. “Velma used to work heah. But Velma don’t work heah no mo’. She done reti’ed. Haw, Haw.”

“Kind of take your goddamned mitt off my shirt,” the big man said.

The bouncer frowned. He was not used to being talked to like that. He took his hand off the shirt and doubled it into a fist about the size and color of a large eggplant. He had his job, his reputation for toughness, his public esteem to consider. He considered them for a second and made a mistake. He swung the fist very hard and short with a sudden outward jerk of the elbow and hit the big man on the side of the jaw. A soft sigh went around the room.

It was a good punch. The shoulder dropped and the body swung behind it. There was a lot of weight in that punch and the man who landed it had had plenty of practice. The big man didn’t move his head more than an inch. He didn’t try to block the punch. He took it, shook himself lightly, made a quiet sound in his throat and took hold of the bouncer by the throat.

The bouncer tried to knee him in the groin. The big man turned him in the air and slid his gaudy shoes apart on the scaly linoleum that covered the floor. He bent the bouncer backwards and shifted his right hand to the bouncer’s belt. The belt broke like a piece of butcher’s string. The big man put his enormous hands flat against the bouncer’s spine and heaved; He threw him clear across the room, spinning and staggering and flailing with his arms. Three men jumped out of the way. The bouncer went over with a table and smacked into the baseboard with a crash that must have been heard in Denver. His legs twitched. Then he lay still.

“Some guys,” the big man said, “has got wrong ideas about when to get tough.” He turned to me. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s you and me nibble one.”

We went over to the bar. The customers, by ones and twos and threes, became quiet shadows that drifted soundless across the floor, soundless through the doors at the head of the stairs. Soundless as shadows on grass. They didn’t even let the doors swing.

We leaned against the bar. “Whiskey sour,” the big man said. “Call yours.”

“Whiskey sour,” I said.

We had whiskey sours.

The big man licked his whiskey sour impassively down the side of the thick squat glass. He stared solemnly at the barman, a thin, worried-looking Negro in a white coat who moved as if his feet hurt him.

“You know where Velma is?”

Velma you says?” the barman whined. “I ain’t seen her ‘round heah lately. Not right lately, nossuh.”

“How long you been here?”

“Let’s see,” the barman put his towel down and wrinkled his forehead and started to count on his fingers. “Bout ten months, I reckon. ‘Bout a yeah. ‘Bout — “

“Make your mind up,” the big man said.

The barman goggled and his Adam’s apple flopped around like a headless chicken.

“How long’s this coop been a dinge joint?” the big man demanded gruffly.

“Says which?”

The big man made a fist into which his whiskey sour glass melted almost out of sight.

“Five years anyway,” I said. “This fellow wouldn’t know anything about a white girl named Velma. Nobody here would.”

The big man looked at me as if I had just hatched out. His whiskey sour hadn’t seemed to improve his temper.

“Who the hell asked you to stick your face in?” he asked me.

I smiled. I made it a big warm friendly smile. “I’m the fellow that came in with you. Remember?”

He grinned back then, a flat white grin without meaning. “Whiskey sour,” he told the barman. “Shake them fleas outa your pants. Service.”

The barman scuttled around, rolling the whites of his eyes. I put my back against the bar and looked at the room. It was now empty, save for the barman, the big man and myself, and the bouncer crushed over against the wall. The bouncer was moving. He was moving slowly as if with great pain and effort. He was crawling softly along the baseboard like a fly with one wing. He was moving behind the tables, wearily, a man suddenly old, suddenly disillusioned. I watched him move. The barman put down two more whiskey sours. I turned to the bar. The big man glanced casually over at the crawling bouncer and then paid no further attention to him.

“There ain’t nothing left of the joint,” he complained. “They was a little stage and band and cute little rooms where a guy could have fun. Velma did some warbling. A redhead she was. Cute as lace pants. We was to of been married when they hung the frame on me.”

I took my second whiskey sour. I was beginning to have enough of the adventure. “What frame?” I asked.

“Where you figure I been them eight years I said about?”

“Catching butterflies.”

He prodded his chest with a forefinger like a banana. “In the caboose. Malloy is the name. They call me Moose Malloy, on account of I’m large. The Great Bend bank job. Forty grand. Solo job. Ain’t that something?”

“You going to spend it now?”

He gave me a sharp look. There was a noise behind us. The bouncer was on his feet again, weaving a little. He had his hand on the knob of a dark door over behind the crap table. He got the door open, half fell through. The door clattered shut. A lock clicked.

“Where’s that go?” Moose Malloy demanded.

The barman’s eyes floated in his head, focused with difficulty on the door through which the bouncer had stumbled.

“Tha — tha’s Mistah Montgomery’s office, suh. He’s the boss. He’s got his office back there.”

“He might know,” the big man said. He drank his drink at a gulp. “He better not crack wise neither. Two more of the same.”

He crossed the room slowly, lightfooted, without a care in the world. His enormous back hid the door. It was locked. He shook it and a piece of the panel flew off to one side. He went through and shut the door behind him.

There was silence. I looked at the barman. The barman looked at me. His eyes became thoughtful. He polished the counter and sighed and leaned down with his right ann.

I reached across the counter and took hold of the arm. It was thin, brittle. I held it and smiled at him.

“What you got down there, bo?”

He licked his lips. He leaned on my arm, and said nothing. Grayness invaded his shining face.

“This guy is tough,” I said. “And he’s liable to go mean. Drinks do that to him. He’s looking for a girl he used to know. This place used to be a white establishment. Get the idea?”

The barman licked his lips

“He’s been away a long time,” I said. “Eight years. He doesn’t seem to realize how long that is, although I’d expect him to think it a life time. He thinks the people here should know where his girl is. Get the idea?”

The barman said slowly: “I thought you was with him.”

“I couldn’t help myself. He asked me a question down below and then dragged me up. I never saw him before. But I didn’t feel like being thrown over any houses. What you got down there?”

“Got me a sawed-off,” the barman said.

“Tsk. That’s illegal,” I whispered. “Listen, you and I are together. Got anything else?”

“Got me a gat,” the barman said. “In a cigar box. Leggo my arm.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Now move along a bit. Easy now. Sideways. This isn’t the time to pull the artillery.”

“Says you,” the barman sneered, putting his tired weight against my arm. “Says — “

He stopped. His eyes rolled. His head jerked.

There was a dull flat sound at the back of the place, behind the closed door beyond the crap table. It might have been a slammed door. I didn’t think it was. The barman didn’t think so either.

The barman froze. His mouth drooled. I listened. No other sound. I started quickly for the end of the counter. I had listened too long.

The door at the back opened with a bang and Moose Malloy came through it with a smooth heavy lunge and stopped dead, his feet planted and a wide pale grin on his face.

A Colt Army .45 looked like a toy pistol in his hand.

“Don’t nobody try to fancy pants,” he said cozily. “Freeze the mitts on the bar.”

The barman and I put our hands on the bar.

Moose Malloy looked the room over with a raking glance. His grin was taut, nailed on. He shifted his feet and moved silently across the room. He looked like a man who could take a bank single-handed — even in those clothes.

He came to the bar. “Rise up, nigger,” he said softly. The barman put his hands high in the air. The big man stepped to my back and prowled me over carefully with his left hand. His breath was hot on my neck. It went away.

“Mister Montgomery didn’t know where Velma was neither,” he said. “He tried to tell me — with this.” His hard hand patted the gun. I turned slowly and looked at him. “Yeah,” he said. “You’ll know me. You ain’t forgetting me, pal. Just tell them johns not to get careless is all.” He waggled the gun. “Well so long, punks. I gotta catch a street car.”

He started towards the head of the stairs.

“You didn’t pay for the drinks,” I said.

He stopped and looked at me carefully.

“Maybe you got something there,” he said, “but I wouldn’t squeeze it too hard.”

He moved on, slipped through the double doors, and his steps sounded remotely going down the stairs.

The barman stooped. I jumped around behind the counter and jostled him out of the way. A sawed-off shotgun lay under a towel on a shelf under the bar. Beside it was a cigar box. In the cigar box was a .38 automatic. I took both of them. The barman pressed back against the tier of glasses behind the bar.

I went back around the end of the bar and across the room to the gaping door behind the crap table. There was a hallway behind it, L-shaped, almost lightless. The bouncer lay sprawled on its floor unconscious, with a knife in his hand. I leaned down and pulled the knife loose and threw it down a back stairway. The bouncer breathed stertorously and his hand was limp.

I stepped over him and opened a door marked “Office” in flaked black paint.

There was a small scarred desk close to a partly boarded-up window. The torso of a man was bolt upright in the chair. The chair had a high back which just reached to the nape of the man’s neck. His head was folded back over the high back of the chair so that his nose pointed at the boarded-up window. Just folded, like a handkerchief or a hinge.

A drawer of the desk was open at the man’s right. Inside was a newspaper with a smear of oil in the middle. The gun would have come from there. It had probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but the position of Mr. Montgomery’s head proved that the idea had been wrong.

There was a telephone on the desk. I laid the sawed-off shotgun down and went over to lock the door before I called the police. I felt safer that way and Mr. Montgomery didn’t seem to mind.

When the prowl car boys stamped up the stairs, the bouncer and the barman had disappeared and I had the place to myself.

3

A man named Nulty got the case, a lean-jawed sourpuss with long yellow hands which he kept folded over his kneecaps most of the time he talked to me. He was a detective-lieutenant attached to the 77th Street Division and we talked in a bare room with two small desks against opposite walls and room to move between them, if two people didn’t try it at once. Dirty brown linoleum covered the floor and the smell of old cigar butts hung in the air. Nulty’s shirt was frayed and his coat sleeves had been turned in at the cuffs. He looked poor enough to be honest, but he didn’t look like a man who could deal with Moose Malloy.

He lit half of a cigar and threw the match on the floor, where a lot of company was waiting for it. His voice said bitterly:

“Shines. Another shine killing. That’s what I rate after eighteen years in this man’s police department. No pix, no space, not even four lines in the want-ad section.”

I didn’t say anything. He picked my card up and read it again and threw it down.

“Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. One of those guys, huh? Jesus, you look tough enough. What was you doing all that time?”

“All what time?”

“All the time this Malloy was twisting the neck of this smoke.”

“Oh, that happened in another room,” I said. “Malloy hadn’t promised me he was going to break anybody’s neck.”

“Ride me,” Nulty said bitterly. “Okey, go ahead and ride me. Everybody else does. What’s another one matter? Poor old Nulty. Let’s go on up and throw a couple of nifties at him. Always good for a laugh, Nulty is.”

“I’m not trying to ride anybody,” I said. “That’s the way it happened — in another room.”

“Oh, sure,” Nulty said through a fan of rank cigar smoke. “I was down there and saw, didn’t I? Don’t you pack no rod?”

“Not on that kind of a job.”

“What kind of a job?”

“I was looking for a barber who had run away from his wife. She thought he could be persuaded to come home.”

“You mean a dinge?”

“No, a Greek.”

“Okey,” Nulty said and spit into his wastebasket. “Okey. You met the big guy how?”

“I told you already. I just happened to be there. He threw a Negro out of the doors of Florian’s and I unwisely poked my head in to see what was happening. So he took me upstairs.”

“You mean he stuck you up?”

“No, he didn’t have the gun then. At least, he didn’t show one. He took the gun away from Montgomery, probably. He just picked me up. I’m kind of cute sometimes.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Nulty said. “You seem to pick up awful easy.”

“All right,” I said. “Why argue? I’ve seen the guy and you haven’t. He could wear you or me for a watch charm. I didn’t know he had killed anybody until after he left. I heard a shot, but I got the idea somebody had got scared and shot at Malloy and then Malloy took the gun away from whoever did it.”

“And why would you get an idea like that?” Nulty asked almost suavely. “He used a gun to take that bank, didn’t he?”

“Consider the kind of clothes he was wearing. He didn’t go there to kill anybody; not dressed like that. He went there to look for this girl named Velma that had been his girl before he was pinched for the bank job. She worked there at Florian’s or whatever place was there when it was still a white joint. He was pinched there. You’ll get him all right.”

“Sure,” Nulty said. “With that size and them clothes. Easy.”

“He might have another suit,” I said. “And a car and a hideout and money and friends. But you’ll get him.”

Nulty spit in the wastebasket again. “I’ll get him,” he said, “about the time I get my third set of teeth. How many guys is put on it? One. Listen, you know why? No space. One time there was five smokes carved Harlem sunsets on each other down on East Eighty-four. One of them was cold already. There was blood on the furniture, blood on the walls, blood even on the ceiling. I go down and outside the house a guy that works on the Chronicle, a newshawk, is coming off the porch and getting into his car. He makes a face at us and says, ‘Aw, hell, shines,’ and gets in his heap and goes away. Don’t even go in the house.”

“Maybe he’s a parole breaker,” I said. “You’d get some co-operation on that. But pick him up nice or he’ll knock off a brace of prowlies for you. Then you’ll get space.”

“And I wouldn’t have the case no more neither,” Nulty sneered.

The phone rang on his desk. He listened to it and smiled sorrowfully. He hung up and scribbled on a pad and there was a faint gleam in his eyes, a light far back in a dusty corridor.

“Hell, they got him. That was Records. Got his prints, mug and everything. Jesus, that’s a little something anyway.” He read from his pad. “Jesus, this is a man. Six five and one-half, two hundred sixty-four pounds, without his necktie. Jesus, that’s a boy. Well, the hell with him. They got him on the air now. Probably at the end of the hot car list. Ain’t nothing to do but just wait.” He threw his cigar into a spittoon.

“Try looking for the girl,” I said. “Velma. Malloy will be looking for her. That’s what started it all. Try Velma.”

“You try her,” Nulty said. “I ain’t been in a joy house in twenty years.”

I stood up. “Okey,” I said, and started for the door.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Nulty said. “I was only kidding. You ain’t awful busy, are you?”

I rolled a cigarette around in my fingers and looked at him and waited by the door.

“I mean you got time to sort of take a gander around for this dame. That’s a good idea you had there. You might pick something up. You can work under glass.”

“What’s in it for me?”

He spread his yellow hands sadly. His smile was cunning as a broken mousetrap. “You been in jams with us boys before. Don’t tell me no. I heard different. Next time it ain’t doing you any harm to have a pal.”

“What good is it gomg to do me?”

“Listen,” Nulty urged. “I’m just a quiet guy. But any guy in the department can do you a lot of good.”

“Is this for love — or are you paying anything in money?”

“No money,” Nulty said, and wrinkled his sad yellow nose. “But I’m needing a little credit bad. Since the last shake-up, things is really tough. I wouldn’t forget it, pal. Not ever.”

I looked at my watch. “Okey, if I think of anything, it’s yours. And when you get the mug, I’ll identify it for you. After lunch.” We shook hands and I went down the mud-colored hall and stairway to the front of the building and my car.

It was two hours since Moose Malloy had left Florian’s with the Army Colt in his hand. I ate lunch at a drugstore, bought a pint of bourbon, and drove eastward to Central Avenue and north on Central again. The hunch I had was as vague as the heat waves that danced above the sidewalk.

Nothing made it my business except curiosity. But strictly speaking, I hadn’t had any business in a month. Even a no-charge job was a change.

4

Florian’s was closed up, of course. An obvious plainclothesman sat in front of it in a car, reading a paper with one eye. I didn’t know why they bothered. Nobody there knew anything about Moose Malloy. The bouncer and the barman had not been found. Nobody on the block knew anything about them, for talking purposes.

I drove past slowly and parked around the corner and sat looking at a Negro hotel which was diagonally across the block from Florian’s and beyond the nearest intersection. It was called the Hotel Sans Souci. I got out and walked back across the intersection and went into it. Two rows of hard empty chairs stared at each other across a strip of tan fiber carpet. A desk was back in the dimness and behind the desk a baldheaded man had his eyes shut and his soft brown hands clasped peacefully on the desk in front of him. He dozed, or appeared to. He wore an Ascot tie that looked as if it had been tied about the year 1880. The green stone in his stickpin was not quite as large as an apple. His large loose chin was folded down gently on the tie, and his folded hands were peaceful and clean, with manicured nails, and gray halfmoons in the purple of the nails.

A metal embossed sign at his elbow said: “This Hotel is Under the Protection of The International Consolidated Agencies, Ltd. Inc.”

When the peaceful brown man opened one eye at me thoughtfully I pointed at the sign.

“H.P.D. man checking up. Any trouble here?”

H.P.D. means Hotel Protective Department, which is the department of a large agency that looks after check bouncers and people who move out by the back stairs leaving unpaid bills and second-hand suitcases full of bricks.

“Trouble, brother,” the clerk said in a high sonorous voice, “is something we is fresh out of.” He lowered his voice four or five notches and added “What was the name again?”

“Marlowe Philip Marlowe — “

“A nice name, brother. Clean and cheerful. You’re looking right well today.” He lowered his voice again. “But you ain’t no H.P.D. man. Ain’t seen one in years.” He unrolled his hands and pointed languidly at the sign. “I acquired that second-hand, brother, just for the effect.”

“Okey,” I said. I leaned on the counter and started to spin a half dollar on the bare, scarred wood of the counter.

“Heard what happened over at Florian’s this morning?”

“Brother, I forgit.” Both his eyes were open now and he was watching the blur of light made by the spinning coin.

“The boss got bumped off,” I said. “Man named Montgomery. Somebody broke his neck.”

“May the Lawd receive his soul, brother.” Down went the voice again. “Cop?”

“Private — on a confidential lay. And I know a man who can keep things confidential when I see one.”

He studied me, then closed his eyes and thought. He reopened them cautiously and stared at the spinning coin. He couldn’t resist looking at it.

“Who done it?” he asked softly. “Who fixed Sam?”

“A tough guy out of the jailhouse got sore because it wasn’t a white joint. It used to be, it seems. Maybe you remember?”

He said nothing. The coin fell over with a light ringing whirr and lay still.

“Call your play,” I said. “I’ll read you a chapter of the Bible or buy you a drink. Say which.”

“Brother, I kind of like to read my Bible in the seclusion of my family.” His eyes were bright, toadlike, steady.

“Maybe you’ve just had lunch,” I said.

“Lunch,” he said, “is something a man of my shape and disposition aims to do without.” Down went the voice. “Come ‘round this here side of the desk.”

I went around and drew the flat pint of bonded bourbon out of my pocket and put it on the shelf. I went back to the front of the desk. He bent over and examined it. He looked satisfied.

“Brother, this don’t buy you nothing at all,” he said. “But I is pleased to take a light snifter in your company.”

He opened the bottle, put two small glasses on the desk and quietly poured each full to the brim. He lifted one, sniffed it carefully, and poured it down his throat with his little finger lifted.

He tasted it, thought about it, nodded and said: “This come out of the correct bottle, brother. In what manner can I be of service to you? There ain’t a crack in the sidewalk ‘round here I don’t know by its first name. Yessuh, this liquor has been keepin’ the right company.” He refilled his glass.

I told him what had happened at Florian’s and why. He started at me solemnly and shook his bald head.

“A nice quiet place Sam run too,” he said. “Ain’t nobody been knifed there in a month.”

“When Florian’s was a white joint some six or eight years ago or less, what was the name of it?”

“Electric signs come kind of high, brother.”

I nodded. “I thought it might have had the same name. Malloy would probably have said something if the name had been changed. But who ran it?”

“I’m a mite surprised at you, brother. The name of that pore sinner was Florian. Mike Florian — “

“And what happened to Mike Florian?”

The Negro spread his gentle brown hands. His voice was sonorous and sad. “Daid, brother. Gathered to the Lawd. Nineteen hundred and thirty-four, maybe thirty-five. I ain’t precise on that. A wasted life, brother, and a case of pickled kidneys, I heard say. The ungodly man drops like a polled steer, brother, but mercy waits for him up yonder.” His voice went down to the business level. “Damm if I know why.”

“Who did he leave behind him? Pour another drink.”

He corked the bottle firmly and pushed it across the counter. “Two is all, brother — before sundown. I thank you. Your method of approach is soothin’ to a man’s dignity . . . Left a widow. Name of Jessie.”

“What happened to her?”

“The pursuit of knowledge, brother, is the askin’ of many questions. I ain’t heard. Try the phone book.”

There was a booth in the dark corner of the lobby. I went over and shut the door far enough to put the light on. I looked up the name in the chained and battered book. No Florian in it at all. I went back to the desk.

“No soap,” I said.

The Negro bent regretfully and heaved a city directory up on top of the desk and pushed it towards me. He closed his eyes. He was getting bored. There was a Jessie Florian, Widow, in the book. She lived at 1644 West 54th Place. I wondered what I had been using for brains all my life.

I wrote the address down on a piece of paper and pushed the directory back across the desk. The Negro put it back where he had found it, shook hands with me, then folded his hands on the desk exactly where they had been when I came in. His eyes drooped slowly and he appeared to fall asleep.

The incident for him was over. Halfway to the door I shot a glance back at him. His eyes were closed and he breathed softly and regularly, blowing a little with his lips at the end of each breath. His bald head shone.

I went out of the Hotel Sans Souci and crossed the street to my car. It looked too easy. It looked much too easy.

5

1644 West 54th Place was a dried-out brown house with a dried-out brown lawn in front of it. There was a large bare patch around a tough-looking palm tree. On the porch stood one lonely wooden rocker, and the afternoon breeze made the unpruned shoots of last year’s poinsettias tap-tap against the cracked stucco wall. A line of stiff yellowish half-washed clothes jittered on a rusty wire in the side yard.

I drove on a quarter block, parked my car across the street and walked back.

The bell didn’t work so I rapped on the wooden margin of the screen door. Slow steps shuffled and the door opened and I was looking into dimness at a blowsy woman who was blowing her nose as she opened the door. Her face was gray and puffy. She had weedy hair of that vague color which is neither brown nor blond, that hasn’t enough life in it to be ginger, and isn’t clean enough to be gray. Her body was thick in a shapeless outing flannel bathrobe many moons past color and design. It was just something around her body. Her toes were large and obvious in a pair of man’s slippers of scuffed brown leather.

I said: “Mrs. Florian? Mrs. Jessie Florian?”

“Uh-huh,” the voice dragged itself out of her throat like a sick man getting out of bed.

“You are the Mrs. Florian whose husband once ran a place of entertainment on Central Avenue? Mike Florian?”

She thumbed a wick of hair past her large ear. Her eyes glittered with surprise. Her heavy clogged voice said:

“Wha-what? My goodness sakes alive. Mike’s been gone these five years. Who did you say you was?”

The screen door was still shut and hooked.

“I’m a detective,” I said. “I’d like a little information.”

She stared at me a long dreary minute. Then with effort she unhooked the door and turned away from it.

“Come on in then. I ain’t had time to get cleaned up yet,” she whined. “Cops, huh?”

I stepped through the door and hooked the screen again. A large handsome cabinet radio droned to the left of the door in the corner of the room. It was the only decent piece of furniture the place had. It looked brand new. Everything was junk — dirty overstuffed pieces, a wooden rocker that matched the one on the porch, a square arch into a dining room with a stained table, finger marks all over the swing door to the kitchen beyond. A couple of frayed lamps with once gaudy shades that were now as gay as super-annuated streetwalkers.

The woman sat down in the rocker and flopped her slippers and looked at me. I looked at the radio and sat down at the end of a davenport. She saw me looking at it. A bogus heartiness, as weak as a Chinaman’s tea, moved into her face and voice. “All the comp’ny I got,” she said. Then she tittered. “Mike ain’t done nothing new, has he? I don’t get cops calling on me much.”

Her titter contained a loose alcoholic overtone. I leaned back against something hard, felt for it and brought up an empty quart gin bottle. The woman tittered again.

“A joke that was,” she said. “But I hope to Christ they’s enough cheap blondes where he is. He never got enough of them here.”

“I was thinking more about a redhead,” I said.

“I guess he could use a few of them too.” Her eyes, it seemed to me, were not so vague now. “I don’t call to mind. Any special redhead?”

“Yes. A girl named Velma. I don’t know what last name she used except that it wouldn’t be her real one. I’m trying to trace her for her folks. Your place on Central is a colored place now, although they haven’t changed the name, and of course the people there never heard of her. So I thought of you.”

“Her folks taken their time getting around to it — looking for her,” the woman said thoughtfully.

“There’s a little money involved. Not much. I guess they have to get her in order to touch it. Money sharpens the memory.”

“So does liquor,” the woman said. “Kind of hot today, ain’t it? You said you was a copper though.” Cunning eyes, steady attentive face. The feet in the man’s slippers didn’t move.

I held up the dead soldier and shook it. Then I threw it to one side and reached back on my hip for the pint of bond bourbon the Negro hotel clerk and I had barely tapped. I held it out on my knee. The woman’s eyes became fixed in an incredulous stare. Then suspicion climbed all over her face, like a kitten, but not so playfully.

“You ain’t no copper,” she said softly. “No copper ever bought a drink of that stuff. What’s the gag, mister?”

She blew her nose again, on one of the dirtiest handkerchiefs I ever saw. Her eyes stayed on the bottle. Suspicion fought with thirst, and thirst was winning. It always does.

“This Velma was an entertainer, a singer. You wouldn’t know her? I don’t suppose you went there much.”

Seaweed colored eyes stayed on the bottle. A coated tongue coiled on her lips.

“Man, that’s liquor,” she sighed. “I don’t give a damn who you are. Just hold it careful, mister. This ain’t no time to drop anything.”

She got up and waddled out of the room and come back with two thick smeared glasses.

“No fixin’s. Just what you brought is all,” she said.

I poured her a slug that would have made me float over a wall. She reached for it hungrily and put it down her throat like an aspirin tablet and looked at the bottle. I poured her another and a smaller one for me. She took it over to her rocker. Her eyes had turned two shades browner already.

“Man, this stuff dies painless with me,” she said and sat down. “It never knows what hit it. What was we talkin’ about?”

“A redhaired girl named Velma who used to work in your place on Central Avenue.”

“Yeah.” She used her second drink. I went over and stood the bottle on an end beside her. She reached for it. “Yeah. Who you say you was?”

I took out a card and gave it to her. She read it with her tongue and lips, dropped it on a table beside her and set her empty glass on it.

“Oh, a private guy. You ain’t said that, mister.” She waggled a finger at me with gay reproach. “But your liquor says you’re an all right guy at that. Here’s to crime.” She poured a third drink for herself and drank it down.

I sat down and rolled a cigarette around in my fingers and waited. She either knew something or she didn’t. If the knew something, she either would tell me or she wouldn’t. It was that simple.

“Cute little redhead,” she said slowly and thickly. “Yeah, I remember her. Song and dance. Nice legs and generous with ‘em. She went off somewheres. How would I know what them tramps do?”

“Well, I didn’t really think you would know,” I said. “But it was natural to come and ask you, Mrs. Florian. Help rourseif to the whiskey — I could run out for more when we need it.”

“You ain’t drinkin’,” she said suddenly.

I put my hand around my glass and swallowed what was in it slowly enough to make it seem more than it was.

“Where’s her folks at?” she asked suddenly.

“What does that matter?”

“Okey,” she sneered. “All cops is the same. Okey, handsome. A guy that buys me a drink is a pal.” She reached for the bottle and set up Number 4. “I shouldn’t ought to barber with you. But when I like a guy, the ceiling’s the limit.” She simpered. She was as cute as a washtub. “Hold onto your hair and don’t step on no snakes,” she said. “I got me an idea.”

She got up out of the rocker, sneezed, almost lost the bathrobe, slapped it back against her stomach and stared at me coldly.

“No peekin’,” she said, and went out of the room again, hitting the door frame with her shoulder.

I heard her fumbling steps going into the back part of the house.

The poinsettia shoots tap-tapped dully against the front wall. The clothes line creaked vaguely at the side of the house. The ice cream peddler went by ringing his bell. The big new handsome radio in the corner whispered of dancing and love with a deep soft throbbing note like the catch in a torch singer’s voice.

Then from the back of the house there were various types of crashing sounds. A chair seemed to fall over backwards, a bureau drawer was pulled out too far and crashed to the floor, there was fumbling and thudding and muttered thick language. Then the slow click of a lock and the squeak of a trunk top going up. More fumbling and banging. A tray landed on the floor. I got up from the davenport and sneaked into the dining room and from that into a short hail. I looked around the edge of an open door.

She was in there swaying in front of the trunk, making grabs at what was in it, and then throwing her hair back over her forehead with anger. She was drunker than she thought. She leaned down and steadied herself on the trunk and coughed and sighed. Then she went down on her thick knees and plunged both hands into the trunk and groped.

They came up holding something unsteadily. A thick package tied with faded pink tape. Slowly, clumsily, she undid the tape. She slipped an envelope out of the package and leaned down again to thrust the envelope out of sight into the right-hand side of the trunk. She retied the tape with fumbling fingers.

I sneaked back the way I had come and sat down on the davenport. Breathing stertorous noises, the woman came back into the living room and stood swaying in the doorway with the tape-tied package.

She grinned at me triumphantly, tossed the package and it fell somewhere near my feet. She waddled back to the rocker and sat down and reached for the whiskey.

I picked the package off the floor and untied the faded pink tape.

“Look ‘em over,” the woman grunted. “Photos. Newspaper stills. Not that them tramps ever got in no newspapers except by way of the police blotter. People from the joint they are. They’re all the bastard left me — them and his old clothes.”

I leafed through the bunch of shiny photographs of men and women in professional poses. The men had sharp foxy faces and racetrack clothes or eccentric clownlike makeup. Hoofers and comics from the filling station circuit. Not many of them would ever get west of Main Street. You would find them in tanktown vaudeville acts, cleaned up, or down in the cheap burlesque houses, as dirty as the law allowed and once in a while just enough dirtier for a raid and a noisy police court trial, and then back in their shows again, grinning, sadistically filthy and as rank as the smell of stale sweat. The women had good legs and displayed their inside curves more than Will Hays would have liked. But their faces were as threadbare as a bookkeeper’s office coat. Blondes, brunettes, large cowlike eyes with a peasant dullness in them. Small sharp eyes with urchin greed in them. One or two of the faces obviously vicious. One or two of them might have had red hair. You couldn’t tell from the photographs. I looked them over casually, without interest and tied the tape again.

“I wouldn’t know any of these,” I said. “Why am I looking at them?”

She leered over the bottle her right hand was grappling with unsteadily. “Ain’t you looking for Velma?”

“Is she one of these?”

Thick cunning played on her face, had no fun there and went somewhere else. “Ain’t you got a photo of her — from her folks?”

That troubled her. Every girl has a photo somewhere, if it’s only in short dresses with a bow in her hair. I should have had it.

“I ain’t beginnin’ to like you again,” the woman said almost quietly.

I stood up with my glass and went over and put it down beside hers on the end table.

“Pour me a drink before you kill the bottle.”

She reached for the glass and I turned and walked swiftly through the square arch into the dining room, into the hall, into the cluttered bedroom with the open trunk and the spilled tray. A voice shouted behind me. I plunged ahead down into the right side of the trunk, felt an envelope and brought it up swiftly.

She was out of her chair when I got back to the living room, but she had only taken two or three steps. Her eyes had a peculiar glassiness. A murderous glassiness.

“Sit down,” I snarled at her deliberately. “You’re not dealing with a simple-minded lug like Moose Malloy this time.”

It was a shot more or less in the dark, and it didn’t hit anything. She blinked twice and tried to lift her nose with her upper lip. Some dirty teeth showed in a rabbit leer.

“Moose? The Moose? What about him?” she gulped.

“He’s loose,” I said. “Out of jail. He’s wandering, with a forty-five gun in his hand. He killed a nigger over on Central this morning because he wouldn’t tell him where Velma was. Now he’s looking for the fink that turned him up eight years ago.”

A white look smeared the woman’s face. She pushed the bottle against her lips and gurgled at it. Some of the whiskey ran down her chin.

“And the cops are looking for him,” she said and laughed. “Cops. Yah!”

A lovely old woman. I liked being with her. I liked getting her drunk for my own sordid purposes. I was a swell guy. I enjoyed being me. You find almost anything under your hand in my business, but I was beginning to be a little sick at my stomach.

I opened the envelope my hand was clutching and drew out a glazed still. It was like the others but it was different, much nicer. The girl wore a Pierrot costume from the waist up. Under the white conical hat with a black pompon on the top, her fluffed out hair had a dark tinge that might have been red. The face was in proffle but the visible eye seemed to have gaiety in it. I wouldn’t say the face was lovely and unspoiled. I’m not that good at faces. But it was pretty. People had been nice to that face, or nice enough for their circle. Yet it was a very ordinary face and its prettiness was strictly assembly line. You would see a dozen faces like it on a city block in the noon hour.

Below the waist the photo was mostly legs and very nice legs at that. It was signed across the lower right hand corner: “Always yours — Velma Valento.”

I held it up in front of the Florian woman, out of her reach. She lunged but came short.

“Why hide it?” I asked.

She made no sound except thick breathing. I slipped the photo back into the envelope and the envelope into my pocket.

“Why hide it?” I asked again. “What makes it different from the others? Where is she?”

“She’s dead,” the woman said. “She was a good kid, but she’s dead, copper. Beat it.”

The tawny mangled brows worked up and down. Her hand opened and the whiskey bottle slid to the carpet and began to gurgle. I bent to pick it up. She tried to kick me in the face. I stepped away from her.

“And that still doesn’t say why you hid it,” I told her. “When did she die? How?”

“I am a poor sick old woman,” she grunted. “Get away from me, you son of a bitch.”

I stood there looking at her, not saying anything, not thinking of anything particular to say. I stepped over to her side after a moment and put the flat bottle, now almost empty, on the table at her side.

She was staring down at the carpet. The radio droned pleasantly in the corner. A car went by outside. A fly buzzed in a window. After a long time she moved one lip over the other and spoke to the floor, a meaningless jumble of words from which nothing emerged. Then she laughed and threw her head back and drooled. Then her right hand reached for the bottle and it rattled against her teeth as she drained it. When it was empty she held it up and shook it and threw it at me. It went off in the corner somewhere, skidding along the carpet and bringing up with a thud against the baseboard.

She leered at me once more, then her eyes closed and she began to snore.

It might have been an act, but I didn’t care. Suddenly I had enough of the scene, too much of it, far too much of it.

I picked my hat off the davenport and went over to the door and opened it and went out past the screen. The radio still droned in the corner and the woman still snored gently in her chair. I threw a quick look back at her before I closed the door, then shut it, opened it again silently and looked again.

Her eyes were still shut but something gleamed below the lids. I went down the steps, along the cracked walk to the street.

In the next house a window curtain was drawn aside and a narrow intent face was close to the glass, peering, an old woman’s face with white hair and a sharp nose.

Old Nosey checking up on the neighbors. There’s always at least one like her to the block. I waved a hand at her. The curtain fell.

I went back to my car and got into it and drove back to the 77th Street Division, and climbed upstairs to Nulty’s smelly little cubbyhole of an office on the second floor.

6

Nulty didn’t seem to have moved. He sat in his chair in the same attitude of sour patience. But there were two more cigar stubs in his ashtray and the floor was a little thicker in burnt matches.

I sat down at the vacant desk and Nulty turned over a photo that was lying face down on his desk and handed it to me. It was a police mug, front and profile, with a fingerprint classification underneath. It was Malloy all right, taken in a strong light, and looking as if he had no more eyebrows than a French roll.

“That’s the boy.” I passed it back.

“We got a wire from Oregon State pen on him,” Nulty said. “All time served except his copper. Things look beter. We got him cornered. A prowl car was talking to a conductor the end of the Seventh Street line. The conductor mentioned a guy that size, looking like that. He got off Third and Alexandria. What he’ll do is break into some big house where the folks are away. Lots of ‘em there, old-fashioned places too far downtown now and hard to rent. He’ll break in one and we got him bottled. What you been doing?”

“Was he wearing a fancy hat and white golf balls on his jacket?”

Nulty frowned and twisted his hands on his kneecaps. “No, a blue suit. Maybe brown.”

“Sure it wasn’t a sarong?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, funny. Remind me to laugh on my day off.”

I said: “That wasn’t the Moose. He wouldn’t ride a street car. He had money. Look at the clothes he was wearing. He couldn’t wear stock sizes. They must have been made to order.”

“Okey, ride me,” Nulty scowled. “What you been doing?”

“What you ought to have done. This place called Florian’s was under the same name when it was a white night trap. I talked to a Negro hotelman who knows the neighborhood. The sign was expensive so the shines just went on using it when they took over. The man’s name was Mike Florian. He’s dead some years, but his widow is still around. She lives at 1644 West 54th Place. Her name is Jessie Florian. She’s not in the phone book, but she is in the city directory.”

“Well, what do I do — date her up?” Nulty asked.

“I did it for you. I took in a pint of bourbon with me. She’s a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term, I’ll eat my spare tire, rim and all.”

“Skip the wisecracks,” Nulty said.

“I asked Mrs. Florian about Velma. You remember, Mr. Nulty, the redhead named Velma that Moose Malloy was looking for? I’m not tiring you, am I, Mr. Nulty?”

“What you sore about?”

“You wouldn’t understand. Mrs. Florian said she didn’t remember Velma. Her home is very shabby except for a new radio, worth seventy or eighty dollars.”

“You ain’t told me why that’s something I should start screaming about.”

“Mrs. Florian — Jessie to me — said her husband left her nothing but his old clothes and a bunch of stills of the gang who worked at his joint from time to time. I plied her with liquor and she is a girl who will take a drink if she has to knock you down to get the bottle. After the third or fourth she went into her modest bedroom and threw things around and dug the bunch of stills out of the bottom of an old trunk. But I was watching her without her knowing it and she slipped one out of the packet and hid it. So after a while I snuck in there and grabbed it.”

I reached into my pocket and laid the Pierrot girl on his desk. He lifted it and stared at it and his lips quirked at the corners.

“Cute,” he said. “Cute enough, I could have used a piece of that once. Haw, haw. Velma Valento, huh? What happened to this doll?”

“Mrs. Florian says she died — but that hardly explains why she hid the photo.”

“It don’t do at that. Why did she hide it?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. In the end, after I told her about the Moose being out, she seemed to take a dislike to me. That seems impossible, doesn’t it?”

“Go on,” Nulty said.

“That’s all. I’ve told you the facts and given you the exhibit. If you can’t get somewhere on this set-up, nothing I could say would help.”

“Where would I get? It’s still a shine killing. Wait’ll we get the Moose. Hell, it’s eight years since he saw the girl unless she visited him in the pen.”

“All right,” I said. “But don’t forget he’s looking for her and he’s a man who would bear down. By the way, he was in for a bank job. That means a reward. Who got it?”

“I don’t know,” Nulty said. “Maybe I could find out. Why?”

“Somebody turned him up. Maybe he knows who. That would be another job he would give time to.” I stood up. “Well, goodby and good luck.”

“You walking out on me?”

I went over to the door. “I have to go home and take a bath and gargle my throat and get my nails manicured.”

“You ain’t sick, are you?”

“Just dirty,” I said. “Very, very dirty.”

“Well, what’s your hurry? Sit down a minute.” He leaned back and hooked his thumbs in his vest, which made him look a little more like a cop, but didn’t make him look any more magnetic.

“No hurry,” I said. “No hurry at all. There’s nothing more I can do. Apparently this Velma is dead, if Mrs. Florian is telling the truth — and I don’t at the moment know of any reason why she should lie about it. That was all I was interested in.”

“Yeah,” Nulty said suspiciously — from force of habit.

“And you have Moose Malloy all sewed up anyway, and that’s that. So I’ll just run on home now and go about the business of trying to earn a living.”

“We might miss out on the Moose,” Nulty said. “Guys get away once in a while. Even big guys.” His eyes were suspicious also, insofar as they contained any expression at all. “How much she slip you?”

“What?”

“How much this old lady slip you to lay off?”

“Lay off what?”

“Whatever it is you’re layin’ off from now on.” He moved his thumbs from his armholes and placed them together in front of his vest and pushed them against each other. He smiled.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said, and went out of the office, leaving his mouth open.

When I was about a yard from the door, I went back and opened it again quietly and looked in. He was sitting in the same position pushing his thumbs at each other. But he wasn’t smiling any more. He looked worried. His mouth was still open.

He didn’t move or look up. I didn’t know whether he heard me or not. I shut the door again and went away.

7

They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plate. It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o’-shanter which wasn’t any too clean either. His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment. His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor. But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew.

I was looking at him across my office desk at about four-thirty when the phone rang and I heard a cool, supercilious voice that sounded as if it thought it was pretty good. It said drawlingly, after I had answered:

“You are Philip Marlowe, a private detective?”

“Check.”

“Oh — you mean, yes. You have been recommended to me as a man who can be trusted to keep his mouth shut. I should like you to come to my house at seven o’clock this evening. We can discuss a matter. My name is Lindsay Marriott and I live at 4212 Cabrillo Street, Montemar Vista. Do you know where that is?”

“I know where Montemar Vista is, Mr. Marriott.”

“Yes. Well, Cabrillo Street is rather hard to find. The streets down here are all laid out in a pattern of interesting but intricate curves. I should suggest that you walk up the steps from the sidewalk cafe. If you do that, Cabrillo is the third street you come to and my house is the only one on the block. At seven then?”

“What is the nature of the employment, Mr. Marriott?”

“I should prefer not to discuss that over the phone.”

“Can’t you give me some idea? Montemar Vista is quite a distance.”

“I shall be glad to pay your expenses, if we don’t agree. Are you particular about the nature of the employment?”

“Not as long as it’s legitimate.”

The voice grew icicles. “I should not have called you, if it were not.”

A Harvard boy. Nice use of the subjunctive mood. The end of my foot itched, but my bank account was still trying to crawl under a duck. I put honey into my voice and said: “Many thanks for calling me, Mr. Marriott. I’ll be there.”

He hung up and that was that. I thought Mr. Rembrandt had a faint sneer on his face. I got the office bottle out of the deep drawer of the desk and took a short drink. That took the sneer out of Mr. Rembrandt in a hurry.

A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet. Traffic lights bong-bonged outside on the boulevard, interurban cars pounded by, a typewriter clacked monotonously in the lawyer’s office beyond the party wall. I had filled and lit a pipe when the telephone rang again.

It was Nulty this time. His voice sounded full of baked potato. “Well, I guess I ain’t quite bright at that,” he said, when he knew who he was talking to. “I miss one. Malloy went to see that Florian dame.”

I held the phone tight enough to crack it. My upper lip suddenly felt a little cold. “Go on. I thought you had him cornered.”

“Was some other guy. Malloy ain’t around there at all. We get a call from some old window-peeker on West Fifty-four. Two guys was to see the Florian dame. Number one parked the other side of the street and acted kind of cagey. Looked the dump over good before he went in. Was in about an hour. Six feet, dark hair, medium heavy built. Come out quiet.”

“He had liquor on his breath too,” I said.

“Oh, sure. That was you, wasn’t it? Well, Number Two was the Moose. Guy in loud clothes as big as a house. He come in a car too but the old lady don’t get the license, can’t read the number that far off. This was about a hour after you was there, she says. He goes in fast and is in about five minutes only. Just before he gets back in his car he takes a big gat out and spins the chamber. I guess that’s what the old lady saw he done. That’s why she calls up. She don’t hear no shots though, inside the house.”

“That must have been a big disappointment,” I said.

“Yeah. A nifty. Remind me to laugh on my day off. The old lady misses one too. The prowl boys go down there and don’t get no answer on the door, so they walk in, the front door not being locked. Nobody’s dead on the floor. Nobody’s home. The Florian dame has skipped out. So they stop by next door and tell the old lady and she’s sore as a boil on account of she didn’t see the Florian dame go out. So they report back and go on about the job. So about an hour, maybe hour and a half after that, the old lady phones in again and says Mrs. Florian is home again. So they give the call to me and I ask her what makes that important and she hangs up in my face.”

Nulty paused to collect a little breath and wait for my comments. I didn’t have any. After a moment he went on grumbling.

“What you make of it?”

“Nothing much. The Moose would be likely to go by there, of course. He must have known Mrs. Florian pretty well. Naturally he wouldn’t stick around very long. He would be afraid the law might be wise to Mrs. Florian.”

“What I figure,” Nulty said calmly, “Maybe I should go over and see her — kind of find out where she went to.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “If you can get somebody to lift you out of your chair.”

“Huh? Oh, another nifty. It don’t make a lot of difference any more now though. I guess I won’t bother.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s have it whatever it is.”

He chuckled. “We got Malloy all lined up. We really got him this time. We make him at Girard, headed north in a rented hack. He gased up there and the service station kid recognized him from the description we broadcast a while back. He said everything jibed except Malloy had changed to a dark suit. We got county and state law on it. If he goes on north we get him at the Ventura line, and if he slides over to the Ridge Route, he has to stop at Castaic for his check ticket. If he don’t stop, they phone ahead and block the road. We don’t want no cops shot up, if we can help it. That sound good?”

“It sounds all right,” I said. “If it really is Malloy, and if he does exactly what you expect him to do.”

Nulty cleared his throat carefully. “Yeah. What you doing on it — just in case?”

“Nothing. Why should I be doing anything on it?”

“You got along pretty good with that Florian dame. Maybe she would have some more ideas.”

“All you need to find out is a full bottle,” I said.

“You handled her real nice. Maybe you ought to kind of spend a little more time on her.”

“I thought this was a police job.”

“Oh sure. Was your idea about the girl though.”

“That seems to be out — unless the Florian woman is lying about it.”

“Dames lie about anything — just for practice,” Nulty said grimly. “You ain’t real busy, huh?”

“I’ve got a job to do. It came in since I saw you. A job where I get paid. I’m sorry.”

“Walking out, huh?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. I just have to work to earn a living.”

“Okey, pal. If that’s the way you feel about it, okey.”

“I don’t feel any way about it,” I almost yelled. “I just don’t have time to stooge for you or any other cop.”

“Okey, get sore,” Nulty said, and hung up.

I held the dead phone and snarled into it: “Seventeen hundred and fifty cops in this town and they want me to do their leg work for them.”

I dropped the phone into its cradle and took another drink from the office bottle.

After a while I went down to the lobby of the building to buy an evening paper. Nulty was right in one thing at least. The Montgomery killing hadn’t even made the want-ad section so far.

I left the office again in time for an early dinner.

8

I got down to Montemar Vista as the light began to fade, but there was still a fine sparkle on the water and the surf was breaking far out in long smooth curves. A group of pelicans was flying bomber formation just under the creaming lip of the waves. A lonely yacht was taking in toward the yacht harbor at Bay City. Beyond it the huge emptiness of the Pacific was purple-gray.

Montemar Vista was a few dozen houses of various sizes and shapes hanging by their teeth and eyebrows to a spur of mountain and looking as if a good sneeze would drop them down among the box lunches on the beach.

Above the beach the highway ran under a wide concrete arch which was in fact a pedestrian bridge. From the inner end of this a flight of concrete steps with a thick galvanized handrail on one side ran straight as a ruler up the side of the mountain. Beyond the arch the sidewalk cafe my client had spoken of, was bright and cheerful inside, but the iron-legged tile-topped tables outside under the striped awning were empty save for a single dark woman in slacks who smoked and stared moodily out to sea, with a bottle of beer in front of her. A fox tether was using one of the iron chairs for a lamppost. She chided the dog absently as I drove past and gave the sidewalk cafe my business to the extent of using its parking space.

I walked back through the arch and started up the steps. It was a nice walk if you liked grunting. There were two hundred and eighty steps up to Cabrillo Street. They were drifted over with windblown sand and the handrail was as cold and wet as a toad’s belly.

When I reached the top the sparkle had gone from the water and a seagull with a broken trailing leg was twisting against the offsea breeze. I sat down on the damp cold top step and shook the sand out of my shoes and waited for my pulse to come down into the low hundreds. When I was breathing more or less normally again I shook my shirt loose from my back and went along to the lighted house which was the only one within yelling distance of the steps.

It was a nice little house with a salt-tarnished spiral of staircase going up to the front door and an imitation coachlamp for a porchlight. The garage was underneath and to one side. Its door was lifted up and rolled back and the light of the porchlamp shone obliquely on a huge black battleship of a car with chromium trimmings, a coyote tail tied to the Winged Victory on the radiator cap and engraved initials where the emblem should be. The car had a right-hand drive and looked as if had cost more than the house.

I went up the spiral steps, looked for a bell, and used a knocker in the shape of a tiger’s head. Its clatter was swallowed in the early evening fog. I heard no steps in the house. My damp shirt felt like an icepack on my back. The door opened silently, and I was looking at a tall blond man in a white flannel suit with a violet satin scarf around his neck.

There was a cornflower in the lapel of his white coat and his pale blue eyes looked faded out by comparison. The violet scarf was loose enough to show that he wore no tie and that he had a thick, soft brown neck, like the neck of a strong woman. His features were a little on the heavy side, but handsome, he had an inch more of height than I had, which made him six feet one. His blond hair was arranged, by art or nature, in three precise blond ledges which reminded me of steps, so that I didn’t like them. I wouldn’t have liked them anyway. Apart from all this he had the general appearance of a lad who would wear a white flannel suit with a violet scarf around his neck and a cornflower in his lapel.

He cleared his throat lightly and looked past my shoulder at the darkening sea. His cool supercilious voice said: “Yes?”

“Seven o’clock,” I said. “On the dot.”

“Oh yes. Let me see, your name is — “ he paused, and frowned in the effort of memory. The effect was as phony as the pedigree of a used car. I let him work at it for a minute, then I said:

“Philip Marlowe. The same as it was this afternoon.”

He gave me a quick darting frown, as if perhaps something ought to be done about it. Then he stepped back and said coldly:

“Ah yes. Quite so. Come in, Marlowe. My house boy is away this evening.”

He opened the door wide with a fingertip, as though opening the door himself dirtied him a little.

I went in past him and smelled perfume. He closed the door. The entrance put us on a low balcony with a metal railing that ran around three sides of a big studio living room. The fourth side contained a big fireplace and two doors. A fire was crackling in the fireplace. The balcony was lined with bookshelves and there were pieces of glazed metallic looking bits of sculpture on pedestals.

We went down three steps to the main part of the living room. The carpet almost tickled my ankles. There was a concert grand piano, closed down. On one corner of it stood a tall silver vase on a strip of peach-colored velvet, and a single yellow rose in the vase. There was plenty of nice soft furniture, a great many floor cushions, some with golden tassels and some just naked. It was a nice room, if you didn’t get rough. There was a wide damask covered divan in a shadowy corner, like a casting couch. It was the kind of room where people sit with their feet in their laps and sip absinthe through lumps of sugar and talk with high affected voices and sometimes just squeak. It was a room where anything could happen except work.

Mr. Lindsay Marriott arranged himself in the curve of the grand piano, leaned over to sniff at the yellow rose, then opened a French enamel cigarette case and lit a long brown cigarette with a gold tip. I sat down on a pink chair and hoped I wouldn’t leave a mark on it. I lit a Camel, blew smoke through my nose and looked at a piece of shiny metal on a stand. It showed a full, smooth curve with a shallow fold in it and two protuberances on the curve. I stared at it, Marriott saw me staring at it.

“An interesting bit,” he said negligently. “I picked it up just the other day. Asta Dial’s Spirit of Dawn.”

“I thought it was Klopstein’s Two Warts on a Fanny,” I said.

Mr. Lindsay Marriott’s face looked as if he had swallowed a bee. He smoothed it out with an effort.

“You have a somewhat peculiar sense of humor,” he said.

“Not peculiar,” I said. “Just uninhibited.”

“Yes,” he said very coldly. “Yes — of course. I’ve no doubt. . .Well, what I wished to see you about is, as a matter of fact, a very slight matter indeed. Hardly worth bringing you down here for. I am meeting a couple of men tonight and paying them some money. I thought I might as well have someone with me. You carry a gun?”

“At times. Yes,” I said. I looked at the dimple in his broad, fleshy chin. You could have lost a marble in it.

“I shan’t want you to carry that. Nothing of that sort at all. This is a purely business transaction.”

“I hardly ever shoot anybody,” I said. “A matter of blackmail?”

He frowned. “Certainly not. I’m not in the habit of giving people grounds for blackmail.”

“It happens to the nicest people. I might say particularly to the nicest people.”

He waved his cigarette. His aquamarine eyes had a faintly thoughtful expression, but his lips smiled. The kind of smile that goes with a silk noose.

He blew some more smoke and tilted his head back. This accentuated the soft firm lines of his throat. His eyes came down slowly and studied me.

“I’m meeting these men — most probably — in a rather lonely place. I don’t know where yet. I expect a call giving me the particulars. I have to be ready to leave at once. It won’t be very far away from here. That’s the understanding.”

“You’ve been making this deal some time?”

“Three or four days, as a matter of fact.”

“You left your bodyguard problem until pretty late.”

He thought that over. He snicked some dark ash from his cigarette. “That’s true. I had some difficulty making my mind up. It would be better for me to go alone, although nothing has been said definitely about my having someone with me. On the other hand I’m not much of a hero.”

“They know you by sight, of course?”

“I — I’m not sure. I shall be carrying a large amount of money and it is not my money. I’m acting for a friend. I shouldn’t feel justified in letting it out of my possession, of course.”

I snubbed out my cigarette and leaned back in the pink chair and twiddled my thumbs. “How much money — and what for?”

“Well, really — “ it was a fairly nice smile now, but I still didn’t like it. “I can’t go into that.”

“You just want me to go along and hold your hat?”

His hand jerked again and some ash fell off on his white cuff. He shook it off and stared down at the place where it had been.

“I’m afraid I don’t like your manner,” he said, using the edge of his voice.

“I’ve had complaints about it,” I said. “But nothing seems to do any good. Let’s look at this job a little. You want a bodyguard, but he can’t wear a gun. You want a helper, but he isn’t supposed to know what he’s supposed to do. You want me to risk my neck without knowing why or what for or what the risk is. What are you offering for all this?”

“I hadn’t really got around to thinking about it.” His cheekbones were dusky red.

“Do you suppose you could get around to thinking about it?”

He leaned forward gracefully and smiled between his teeth. “How would you like a swift punch on the nose?”

I grinned and stood up and put my hat on. I started across the carpet towards the front door, but not very fast.

His voice snapped at my back. “I’m offering you a hundred dollars for a few hours of your time. If that isn’t enough, say so. There’s no risk. Some jewels were taken from a friend of mine in a holdup — and I’m buying them back. Sit down and don’t be so touchy.”

I went back to the pink chair and sat down again.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s hear about it.”

We stared at each other for all of ten seconds. “Have you ever heard of Fei Tsui jade?” he asked slowly, and lit another of his dark cigarettes.

“No.”

“It’s the only really valuable kind. Other kinds are valuable to some extent for the material, but chiefly for the workmanship on them. Fei Tsui is valuable in itself. All known deposits were exhausted hundreds of years ago. A friend of mine owns a necklace of sixty beads of about six carats each, intricately carved. Worth eighty or ninety thousand dollars. The Chinese government has a very slightly larger one valued at a hundred and twenty-five thousand. My friend’s necklace was taken in a holdup a few nights ago. I was present, but quite helpless. I had driven my friend to an evening party and later to the Trocadero and we were on our way back to her home from there. A car brushed the left front fender and stopped, as I thought, to apologize. Instead of that it was a very quick and very neat holdup. Either three or four men, I really saw only two, but I’m sure another stayed in the car behind the wheel, and I thought I saw a glimpse of still a fourth at the rear window. My friend was wearing the jade necklace. They took that and two rings and a bracelet. The one who seemed to be the leader looked the things over without any apparent hurry under a small flashlight. Then he handed one of the rings back and said that would give us an idea what kind of people we were dealing with and to wait for a phone call before reporting to the police or the insurance company. So we obeyed their instructions. There’s plenty of that sort of thing going on, of course. You keep the affair to yourself and pay ransom, or you never see your jewels again. If they’re fully insured, perhaps you don’t mind, but if they happen to be rare pieces, you would rather pay ransom.”

I nodded. “And this jade necklace is something that can’t be picked up every day.”

He slid a finger along the polished surface of the piano with a dreamy expression, as if touching smooth things pleased him.

“Very much so. It’s irreplaceable. She shouldn’t have worn it out — ever. But she’s a reckless sort of woman. The other things were good but ordinary.”

“Uh-huh. How much are you paying?”

“Eight thousand dollars. It’s dirt cheap. But if my friend couldn’t get another like it, these thugs couldn’t very easily dispose of it either. It’s probably known to every one in the trade, all over the country.”

“This friend of yours — does she have a name?”

“I’d prefer not to mention it at the moment.”

“What are the arrangements?”

He looked at me along his pale eyes. I thought he seemed a bit scared, but I didn’t know him very well. Maybe it was a hangover. The hand that held the dark cigarette couldn’t keep still.

“We have been negotiating by telephone for several days — through me. Everything is settled except the time and place of meeting. It is to be sometime tonight. I shall presently be getting a call to tell me of that. It will not be very far away, they say, and I must be prepared to leave at once. I suppose that is so that no plant could be arranged. With the police, I mean.”

“Uh-huh. Is the money marked? I suppose it is money?”

“Currency, of course. Twenty dollar bills. No, why should it be marked?”

“It can be done so that it takes black light to detect it. No reason — except that the cops like to break up these gangs — if they can get any co-operation. Some of the money might turn up on some lad with a record.”

He wrinkled his brow thoughtfully. “I’m afraid I don’t know what black light is.”

“Ultra-violet It makes certain metallic inks glisten in the dark. I could get it done for you.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t time for that now,” he said shortly.

“That’s one of the things that worries me.”

“Why?”

“Why you only called me this afternoon. Why you picked on me. Who told you about me?”

He laughed. His laugh was rather boyish, but not a very young boy. “Well, as a matter of fact I’ll have to confess I merely picked your name at random out of the phone book. You see I hadn’t intended to have anyone go with me. Then this afternoon I got to thinking why not.”

I lit another of my squashed cigarettes and watched his throat muscles. “What’s the plan?”

He spread his hands. “Simply to go where I am told, hand over the package of money, and receive back the jade necklace.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You seem fond of that expression.”

“What expression?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where will I be — in the back of the car?”

“I suppose so. It’s a big car. You could easily hide in the back of it.”

“Listen,” I said slowly. “You plan to go out with me hidden in your car to a destination you are to get over the phone some time tonight. You will have eight grand in currency on you and with that you are supposed to buy back a jade necklace worth ten or twelve times that much. What you will probably get will be a package you won’t be allowed to open — providing you get anything at all. It’s just as likely they will simply take your money, count it over in some other place, and mail you the necklace, if they feel bighearted. There’s nothing to prevent them double-crossing you.. Certainly nothing I could do would stop them. These are heist guys. They’re tough. They might even knock you on the head — not hard — just enough to delay you while they go on their way.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m a little afraid of something like that,” he said quietly, and his eyes twitched. “I suppose that’s really why I wanted somebody with me.”

“Did they put a flash on you when they pulled the stick up?”

He shook is head, no.

“No matter. They’ve had a dozen chances to look you over since. They probably knew all about you before that anyway. These jobs are cased. They’re cased the way a dentist cases your tooth for a gold inlay. You go out with this dame much?”

“Well — not infrequently,” he said stiffly.

“Married?”

“Look here,” he snapped. “Suppose we leave the lady out of this entirely.”

“Okey,” I said. “But the more I know the fewer cups I break. I ought to walk away from this job, Marriott. I really ought. If the boys want to play ball, you don’t need me. If they don’t want to play ball, I can’t do anything about it.”

“All I want is your company,” he said quickly.

I shrugged and spread my hands. “Okey — but I drive the car and carry the money — and you do the hiding in the back. We’re about the same height. If there’s any question, we’ll just tell them the truth. Nothing to lose by it.”

“No.” He bit his lip.

“I’m getting a hundred dollars for doing nothing. If anybody gets conked, it ought to be me.”

He frowned and shook his head, but after quite a long time his face cleared slowly and he smiled.

“Very well,” he said slowly. “I don’t suppose it matters much. We’ll be together. Would you care for a spot of brandy?”

“Uh-huh. And you might bring me my hundred bucks. I like to feel money.”

He moved away like a dancer, his body almost motionless from the waist up.

The phone rang as he was on his way out. It was in a little alcove off the living room proper, cut into the balcony.

It wasn’t the call we were thinking about though. He sounded too affectionate.

He danced back after a while with a bottle of Five-Star Martell and five nice crisp twenty-dollar bills. That made it a nice evening — so far.

9

The house was very still. Far off there was a sound which might have been beating surf or cars zooming along a highway, or wind in pine trees. It was the sea, of course, breaking far down below. I sat there and listened to it and thought long, careful thoughts.

The phone rang four times within the next hour and a half. The big one came at eight minutes past ten. Marriott talked briefly, in a very low voice, cradled the instrument without a sound and stood up with a sort of hushed movement. His face looked drawn. He had changed to dark clothes now. He walked silently back into the room and poured himself a stiff drink in a brandy glass. He held it against the light a moment with a queer unhappy smile, swirled it once quickly and tilted his head back to pour it down his throat.

“Well — we’re all set, Marlowe. Ready?”

“That’s all I’ve been all evening. Where do we go?”

“A place called Purissima Canyon.”

“I never heard of it.”

“I’ll get a map.” He got one and spread it out quickly and the light blinked in his brassy hair as he bent over it. Then he pointed with his finger. The place was one of the many canyons off the foothill boulevard that turns into town from the coast highway north of Bay City. I had a vague idea where it was, but no more. It seemed to be at the end of a street called Camino de la Costa.

“It will be not more than twelve minutes from here,” Marriott said quickly. “We’d better get moving. We only have twenty minutes to play with.”

He handed me a light colored overcoat which made me a fine target. It fitted pretty well. I wore my own hat. I had a gun under my arm, but I hadn’t told him about that.

While I put the coat on, he went on talking in a light nervous voice and dancing on his hands the thick manila envelope with the eight grand in it.

“Purissima Canyon has a sort of level shelf at the inner end of it, they say. This is walled off from the road by a white fence of four-by-fours, but you can just squeeze by. A dirt road winds down into a little hollow and we are to wait there without lights. There are no houses around.”

“We?”

“Well, I mean ‘I’ — theoretically.”

He handed me the manila envelope and I opened it up and looked at what was inside. It was money all right, a huge wad of currency. I didn’t count it. I snapped the rubber around again and stuffed the packet down inside my overcoat. It almost caved in a rib.

We went to the door and Marriott switched off all the lights. He opened the front door cautiously and peered out at the foggy air. We went out and down the salt-tarnished spiral stairway to the street level and the garage.

It was a little foggy, the way it always is down there at night. I had to start up the windshield wiper for a while.

The big foreign car drove itself, but I held the wheel for the sake of appearances.

For two minutes we figure-eighted back and forth across the face of the mountain and then popped out right beside the sidewalk cafe. I could understand now why Marriott had told me to walk up the steps. I could have driven about in those curving, twisting streets for hours without making any more yardage than an angleworm in a bait can.

On the highway the lights of the streaming cars made an almost solid beam in both directions. The big cornpoppers were rolling north growling as they went and festooned all over with green and yellow overhang lights. Three minutes of that and we turned inland, by a big service station, and wound along the flank of the foothills. It got quiet. There was loneliness and the smell of kelp and the smell of wild sage from the hills. A yellow window hung here and there, all by itself, like the last orange. Cars passed, spraying the pavement with cold white light, then growled off into the darkness again. Wisps of fog chased the stars down the sky.

Marriott leaned forward from the dark rear seat and said:

“Those lights off to the right are the Belvedere Beach Club. The next canyon is Las Pulgas and the next afterthat Purissima. We turn right at the top of the second rise.” His voice was hushed and taut.

I grunted and kept on driving. “Keep your head down,” I said over my shoulder. “We may be watched all the way. This car sticks out like spats at an Iowa picnic. Could be the boys don’t like your being twins.”

We went down into a hollow at the inward end of a canyon and then up on the high ground and after a little while down again and up again. Then Marriott’s tight voice said in my ear:

“Next street on the right. The house with the square turret. Turn beside that.”

“You didn’t help them pick this place out, did you?”

“Hardly,” he said, and laughed grimly. “I just happen to know these canyons pretty well.”