“Uh-huh. Let’s have the rest. Make a little time too.”
“I took an apartment opposite Ikky. The killers were still at the hotel. At midnight I got Ikky out and drove with him as far as Pomona. He went on in his rented car and I came back by Greyhound. I moved into the apartment on Poynter Street, right across from his dump.”
“Why—if he was already gone?”
I opened the middle desk drawer and took out the nice sharp pencil. I wrote my name on a piece of paper and ran the pencil through it.
“Because someone sent me this. I didn’t think they’d kill me, but I thought they planned to give me enough of a beating to warn me off any more pranks.”
“They knew you were in on it?”
“Ikky was tailed here by a little squirt who later came around and stuck a gun in my stomach. I knocked him around a bit, but I had to let him go. I thought Poynter Street was safer after that. I live lonely.”
“I get around,” Bernie Ohls said. “I hear reports. So they gunned the wrong guy.”
“Same height, same build, same general appearance. I saw them gun him. I couldn’t tell if it was the two guys from the Beverly-Western. I’d never seen them. It was just two guys in dark suits with hats pulled down. They jumped into a blue Pontiac sedan, about two years old, and lammed off, with a big Caddy running crash for them.”
Bernie stood up and stared at me for a long moment. “I don’t think they’ll bother with you now,” he said. “They’ve hit the wrong guy. The mob will be very quiet for a while. You know something? This town is getting to be almost as lousy as New York, Brooklyn, and Chicago. We could end up real corrupt.”
“We’ve made a hell of a good start.”
“You haven’t told me anything that makes me take action, Phil. I’ll talk to the city homicide boys. I don’t guess you’re in any trouble. But you saw the shooting. They’ll want that.”
“I couldn’t identify anybody, Bernie. I didn’t know the man who was shot. How did you know it was the wrong man?”
“You told me, stupid.”
“I thought perhaps the city boys had a make on him.”
“They wouldn’t tell me, if they had. Besides, they ain’t hardly had time to go out for breakfast. He’s just a stiff in the morgue to them until the I.D. comes up with something. But they’ll want to talk to you, Phil. They just love their tape recorders.”
He went out and the door whooshed shut behind him. I sat there wondering if I had been a dope to talk to him. Or to take on Ikky’s troubles. Five thousand green men said no. But they can be wrong too.
Somebody banged on my door. It was a uniform holding a telegram. I receipted for it and tore it loose.
It said: ON MY WAY TO FLAGSTAFF, MIRADOR MOTOR COURT. THINK I’VE BEEN SPOTTED. COME FAST.
I tore the wire into small pieces and burned them in my big ashtray.
I called Anne Riordan.
“Funny thing happened,” I told her, and told her about the funny thing.
“I don’t like the pencil,” she said. “And I don’t like the wrong man being killed—probably some poor bookkeeper in a cheap business or he wouldn’t be living in that neighborhood. You should never have touched it, Phil.”
“Ikky had a life. Where he’s going he might make himself decent. He can change his name. He must be loaded or he wouldn’t have paid me so much.”
“I said I didn’t like the pencil. You’d better come down here for a while. You can have your mail readdressed—if you get any mail. You don’t have to work right away anyhow. And L.A. is oozing with private eyes.
“You don’t get the point. I’m not through with the job. The city dicks have to know where I am, and if they do, all the crime reporters will know too. The cops might even decide to make me a suspect. Nobody who saw the shooting is going to put out a description that means anything. The American people know better than to be witnesses to gang killings.”
“All right, but my offer stands.”
The buzzer sounded in the outside room. I told Anne I had to hang up. I opened the communicating door and a well-dressed—I might say elegantly dressed—middle-aged man stood six feet inside the outer door. He had a pleasantly dishonest smile on his face. He wore a white Stetson and one of those narrow ties that go through an ornamental buckle. His cream-colored flannel suit was beautifully tailored.
He lit a cigarette with a gold lighter and looked at me over the first puff of smoke.
“Mr. Philip Marlowe?”
I nodded.
“I’m Foster Grimes from Las Vegas. I run the Rancho Esperanza on South Fifth. I hear you got a little involved with a man named Ikky Rossen.”
“Won’t you come in?”
He strolled past me into my office. His appearance told me nothing—a prosperous man who liked or felt it good business to look a bit western. You see them by the dozen in the Palm Springs winter season. His accent told me he was an easterner, but not New England. New York or Baltimore, likely. Long Island, the Berkshires—no, too far from the city.
I showed him the customer’s chair with a flick of the wrist and sat down in my antique swivelsqueaker. I waited.
“Where is Ikky now, if you know?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Grimes.”
“How come you messed with him?”
“Money.”
“A damned good reason,” he smiled. “How far did it go?”
“I helped him leave town. I’m telling you this, although I don’t know who the hell you are, because I’ve already told an old friend-enemy of mine, a top man in the sheriff’s office.”
“What’s a friend-enemy?”
“Lawmen don’t go around kissing me, but I’ve known him for years, and we are as much friends as a private star can be with a lawman.”
“I told you who I was. We have a unique setup in Vegas. We own the place except for one lousy newspaper editor who keeps climbing our backs and the backs of our friends. We let him live because letting him live makes us look better than knocking him off. Killings are not good business any more.”
“Like Ikky Rossen.”
“That’s not a killing. It’s an execution. Ikky got out of line.”
“So your gun boys had to rub the wrong guy. They could have hung around a little to make sure.”
“They would have, if you’d kept your nose where it belonged. They hurried. We don’t appreciate that. We want cool efficiency.”
“Who’s this great big fat ‘we’ you keep talking about?”
“Don’t go juvenile on me, Marlowe.”
“Okay. Let’s say I know.”
“Here’s what we want. He reached into his pocket and drew out a loose bill. He put it on the desk on his side. “Find Ikky and tell him to get back in line and everything is okay. With an innocent bystander gunned, we don’t want any trouble or any extra publicity. It’s that simple. You get this now,” he nodded at the bill. It was a grand. Probably the smallest bill they had. “And another when you find Ikky and give him the message. If he holds out—curtains.”
“Suppose I say take your grand and blow your nose with it?”
“That would be unwise.” He flipped out a Colt Woodsman with a short silencer on it. A Colt Woodsman will take one without jamming. He was fast too, fast and smooth. The genial expression on his face didn’t change.
“I never left Vegas,” he said calmly. “I can prove it. You’re dead in your office chair and nobody knows anything. Just another private eye that tried the wrong pitch. Put your hands on the desk and think a little. Incidentally, I’m a crack shot even with this damned silencer.”
I flipped the nicely sharpened pencil across to him. He grabbed for it after a swift change of the gun to his left hand—very swift. He held the pencil up so that he could look at it without taking his eyes off me.
I said, “It came to me by Special Delivery mail. No message, no return address. Just the pencil. Think I’ve never heard about the pencil, Mr. Grimes?”
He frowned and
tossed the pencil down. Before he could shift his long lithe gun back to his right hand I dropped mine under the desk and grabbed the butt of the .45 and put my finger hard on the trigger.
“Look under the desk, Mr. Grimes. You’ll see a .45 in an opened holster. It’s fixed there and it’s pointing at your belly. Even if you could shoot me through the heart, the .45 would still go off from a convulsive movement of my hand. And your belly would be hanging by a shred and you would be knocked out of that chair. A .45 slug can throw you back six feet. Even the movies learned that at last.”
“Looks like a Mexican standoff,” he said quietly. He holstered his gun. He grinned. “Nice work, Marlowe. We could use a man like you. I suggest that you find Ikky and don’t be a drip. He’ll listen to reason. He doesn’t really want to be on the run for the rest of his life.”
“Tell me something, Mr. Grimes. Why pick on me? Apart from Ikky, what did I ever do to make you dislike me?”
Not moving, he thought a moment, or pretended to. “The Larsen case. You helped send one of our boys to the gas chamber. That we don’t forget. We had you in mind as a fall guy for Ikky. You’ll aways be a fall guy, unless you play it our way. Something will hit you when you least expect it.”
“A man in my business is always a fall guy, Mr. Grimes. Pick up your grand and drift out quietly. I might decide to do it your way, but I have to think about it. As for the Larsen case, the cops did all the work. I just happened to know where he was. I don’t guess you miss him terribly.”
“We don’t like interference.” He stood up. He put the grand note casually back in his pocket. While he was doing it I let go of the .45 and jerked out my Smith and Wesson five-inch .38.
He looked at it contemptuously. “I’ll be in Vegas, Marlowe—in fact, I never left Vegas. You can catch me at the Esperanza. No, we don’t give a damn about Larsen personally. Just another gun handler. They come in gross lots. We do give a damn that some punk private eye fingered him.”
He nodded and went out by my office door.
I did some pondering. I knew Ikky wouldn’t go back to the Outfit. He wouldn’t trust them enough even if he got the chance. But there was another reason now. I called Anne Riordan again.
“I’m going to look for Ikky. I have to. If I don’t call you in three days, get hold of Bernie Ohls. I’m going to Flagstaff, Arizona. Ikky says he will be there.”
“You’re a fool,” she wailed. “It’s some sort of trap.”
“A Mr. Grimes of Vegas visited me with a silenced gun. I beat him to the punch, but I won’t always be that lucky. If I find Ikky and report to Grimes, the mob will let me alone.”
“You’d condemn a man to death?” Her voice was sharp and incredulous.
“No. He won’t be there when I report. He’ll have to hop a plane to Montreal, buy forged papers, and plane to Europe. He may be fairly safe there. But the Outfit has long arms and Ikky won’t have a dull life staying alive. He hasn’t any choice. For him it’s either hide or get the pencil.”
“So clever of you, darling. What about your own pencil?”
“If they meant it, they wouldn’t have sent it. Just a bit of scare technique.”
“And you don’t scare, you wonderful handsome brute.”
“I scare. But it doesn’t paralyze me. So long. Don’t take any lovers until I get back.”
“Damn you, Marlowe!”
She hung up on me. I hung up on myself.
Saying the wrong thing is one of my specialties.
I beat it out of town before the homicide boys could hear about me. It would take them quite a while to get a lead. And Bernie Ohls wouldn’t give a city dick a used paper bag. The sheriff’s men and the city police cooperate about as much as two tomcats on a fence.
I made Phoenix by evening and parked myself in a motor court on the outskirts. Phoenix was damned hot. The motor court had a dining room, so I had dinner. I collected some quarters and dimes from the cashier and shut myself in a phone booth and started to call the Mirador in Flagstaff.
How silly could I get? Ikky might be registered under any name from Cohen to Cordileone, from Watson to Woichehovski. I called anyway and got nothing but as much of a smile as you can get on the phone.
So I asked for a room the following night. Not a chance unless someone checked out, but they would put me down for a cancellation or something. Flagstaff is too near the Grand Canyon. Ikky must have arranged in advance. That was something to ponder too.
I bought a paperback and read it. I set my alarm watch for 6:30. The paperback scared me so badly that I put two guns under my pillow. It was about a guy who bucked the hoodlum boss of Milwaukee and got beaten up every fifteen minutes. I figured that his head and face would be nothing but a piece of bone with a strip of skin hanging from it. But in the next chapter he was as gay as a meadowlark.
Then I asked myself why I was reading this drivel when I could have been memorizing The Brothers Karamazov. Not knowing any good answers, I turned the light out and went to sleep.
At 6:30 I shaved, showered, had breakfast, and took off for Flagstaff. I got there by lunchtime, and there was Ikky in the restaurant eating mountain trout. I sat down across from him. He looked surprised to see me.
I ordered mountain trout and ate it from the outside in, which is the proper way. Boning spoils it a little.
“What gives?” he asked me with his mouth full. A delicate eater.
“You read the papers?”
“Just the sports section.”
“Let’s go to your room and talk about it.”
We paid for our lunches and went along to a nice double. The motor courts are getting so good that they make a lot of hotels look cheap. We sat down and lit cigarettes.
“The two hoods got up too early and went over to Poynter Street. They parked outside your apartment house. They hadn’t been briefed carefully enough. They shot a guy who looked a little like you.”
“That’s a hot one,” he grinned. “But the cops will find out, and the Outfit will find out. So the tag for me stays on.”
“You must think I’m dumb,” I said. “I am.”
“I thought you did a first-class job, Marlowe. What’s dumb about that?”
“What job did I do?”
“You got me out of there pretty slick.”
“Anything about it you couldn’t have done yourself?”
“With luck—no. But it’s nice to have a helper.”
“You mean sucker.”
His face tightened. And his rusty voice growled. “I don’t catch. And give me back some of that five grand, will you? I’m shorter than I thought.”
“I’ll give it back to you when you find a hummingbird in a salt shaker.”
“Don’t be like that.” He almost sighed, and flicked a gun into his hand. I didn’t have to flick. I was holding one in my side pocket.
“I oughtn’t to have boobed off,” I said. “Put the heater away. It doesn’t pay any more than a Vegas slot machine.”
“Wrong. Them machines pay the jackpot every so often. Otherwise—no customers.”
“Every so seldom, you mean. Listen, and listen good.”
He grinned. His dentist was tired waiting for him.
“The setup intrigued me,” I went on, debonair as Philo Vance in an S. S. Van Dine story and a lot brighter in the head. “First off, could it be done? Second, if it could be done, where would I be? But gradually I saw the little touches that flawed the picture. Why would you come to me at all? The Outfit isn’t naive. Why would they send a little punk like this Charles Hickon or whatever name he uses on Thursdays? Why would an old hand like you let anybody trail you to a dangerous connection?”
“You slay me, Marlowe. You’re so bright I could find you in the dark. You’re so dumb you couldn’t see a red, white, and blue giraffe. I bet you were back there in your unbrain emporium playing with that five grand like a cat with a bag of catnip. I bet you were kissing the notes.”
“Not after you handled them. Then
why the pencil that was sent to me? Big dangerous threat. It reinforced the rest. But like I told your choirboy from Vegas, they don’t send them when they mean them. By the way, he had a gun too. A Woodsman .22 with a silencer. I had to make him put it away. He was nice about that. He started waving grands at me to find out where you were and tell him. A well-dressed, nice-looking front man for a pack of dirty rats. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Association and some bootlicking politicians gave them the money to be big, and they learned how to use it and make it grow. Now they’re pretty well unstoppable. But they’re still a pack of dirty rats. And they’re always where they can’t make a mistake. That’s inhuman. Any man has a right to a few mistakes. Not the rats. They have to be perfect all the time. Or else they get stuck with you.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I just know it’s too long.”
“Well, allow me to put it in English. Some poor jerk from the East Side gets involved with the lower echelons of a mob. You know what an echelon is, Ikky?”
“I been in the Army,” he sneered.
“He grows up in the mob, but he’s not all rotten. He’s not rotten enough. So he tries to break loose. He comes out here and gets himself a cheap job of some sort and changes his name or names and lives quietly in a cheap apartment house. But the mob by now has agents in many places. Somebody spots him and recognizes him. It might be a pusher, a front man for a bookie joint, a night girl. So the mob, or call them the Outfit, say through their cigar smoke: ‘Ikky can’t do this to us. It’s a small operation because he’s small. But it annoys us. Bad for discipline. Call a couple of boys and have them pencil him.’ But what boys do they call? A couple they’re tired of. Been around too long. Might make a mistake or get chilly toes. Perhaps they like killing. That’s bad too. That makes for recklessness. The best boys are the ones that don’t care either way. So although they don’t know it, the boys they call are on their way out. But it would be kind of cute to frame a guy they already don’t like, for fingering a hood named Larsen. One of these puny little jokes the Outfit takes big. ‘Look, guys, we even got time to play footsie with a private eye.’ So they send a ringer.”
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe Page 43