Mallory watched her out of sight, then he looked at Erno. He said: “Well, punk, what’s on your mind?”
He said it insultingly, with a cold smile. Erno stiffened. His gloved left hand jerked the cigarette that was in it so that some ash fell off.
“Kiddin’ yourself, baby?” he inquired swiftly.
“About what, punk?”
Red spots came into Erno’s pale cheeks. His eyes narrowed to black slits. He moved his ungloved right hand a little, curled the fingers so that the small pink nails glittered. He said thinly:
“About some letters, baby. Forget it! It’s out, baby, out!”
Mallory looked at him with elaborate, cynical interest, ran his fingers through his crisp black hair. He said slowly:
“Perhaps I don’t know what you mean, little one.”
Erno laughed. A metallic sound, a strained deadly sound. Mallory knew that kind of laugh; the prelude to gun-music in some places. He watched Erno’s quick little right hand. He spoke raspingly.
“On your way, red hot. I might take a notion to slap that fuzz off your lip.”
Erno’s face twisted. The red patches showed startlingly in his cheeks. He lifted the hand that held his cigarette, lifted it slowly, and snapped the burning cigarette straight at Mallory’s face. Mallory moved his head a little, and the white tube arced over his shoulder.
There was no expression on his lean, cold face. Distantly, dimly, as though another voice spoke, he said:
“Careful, punk. People get hurt for things like that.”
Erno laughed the same metallic, strained laugh. “Blackmailers don’t shoot, baby,” he snarled. “Do they?”
“Beat it, you dirty little wop!”
The words, the cold sneering tone, stung Erno to fury. His right-hand shot up like a striking snake. A gun whisked into it from a shoulder-holster. Then he stood motionless, glaring. Mallory bent forward a little, his hands on the edge of the table, his fingers curled below the edge. The corners of his mouth sketched a dim smile.
There was a dull screech, not loud, from the dark woman. The color drained from Erno’s cheeks, leaving them pallid, sunk in. In a voice that whistled with fury he said:
“Okey, baby. We’ll go outside. March, you—!”
One of the bored men three tables away made a sudden movement of no significance. Slight as it was it caught Erno’s eye. His glance flickered. Then the table rose into his stomach, knocked him sprawling.
It was a light table, and Mallory was not a lightweight. There was a complicated thudding sound. A few dishes clattered, some silver. Erno was spread on the floor with the table across his thighs. His gun settled a foot from his clawing hand. His face was convulsed.
For a poised instant of time it was as though the scene were imprisoned in glass, and would never change. Then the dark woman screeched again, louder. Everything became a swirl of movement. People on all sides came to their feet. Two waiters put their arms straight up in the air and began to spout violent Neapolitan. A moist, overdriven bus-boy charged up, more afraid of the headwaiter than of sudden death. A plump, reddish man with corn-colored hair hurried down steps, waving a bunch of menus.
Erno jerked his legs clear, weaved to his knees, snatched up his gun. He swiveled, spitting curses. Mallory, alone, indifferent in the center of the babble, leaned down and cracked a hard fist against Erno’s flimsy jaw.
Consciousness evaporated from Erno’s eyes. He collapsed like a half-filled sack of sand.
Mallory observed him carefully for a couple of seconds. Then he picked his cigarette case up off the floor. There were still two cigarettes in it. He put one of them between his lips, put the case away. He took some bills out of his trouser pocket, folded one lengthwise and poked it at a waiter.
He walked away without haste, toward the five crimson-carpeted steps and the entrance.
The man with the fat neck opened a cautious and fishy eye. The drunken woman staggered to her feet with a cackle of inspiration, picked up a bowl of ice cubes in her thin jeweled hands, and dumped it on Erno’s stomach, with fair accuracy.
II
MALLORY came out from under the canopy with his soft hat under his arm. The doorman looked at him inquiringly. He shook his head and walked a little way down the curving sidewalk that bordered the semicircular private driveway. He stood at the edge of the curbing, in the darkness, thinking hard. After a little while an Isotta-Fraschini went by him slowly.
It was an open phaeton, huge even for the calculated swank of Hollywood. It glittered like a Ziegfield chorus as it passed the entrance lights, then it was all dull gray and silver. A liveried chauffeur sat behind the wheel as stiff as a poker, with a peaked cap cocked rakishly over one eye. Rhonda Farr sat in the back seat, under the half-deck, with the rigid stillness of a wax figure.
The car slid soundlessly down the driveway, passed between a couple of squat stone pillars and was lost among the lights of the boulevard. Mallory put on his hat absently.
Something stirred in the darkness behind him, between tall Italian cypresses. He swung around, looked at faint light on a gun barrel.
The man who held the gun was very big and broad. He had a shapeless felt hat on the back of his head, and an indistinct overcoat hung away from his stomach. Dim light from a high-up, narrow window outlined bushy eyebrows, a hooked nose. There was another man behind him.
He said: “This is a gun, buddy. It goes boom-boom, and guys fall down. Want to try it?”
Mallory looked at him emptily, and said: “Grow up, flattie! What’s the act?”
The big man laughed. His laughter had a dull sound, like the sea breaking on rocks in a fog. He said with heavy sarcasm:
“Bright boy has us spotted, Jim. One of us must look like a cop.” He eyed Mallory, and added: “Saw you pull a rod on a little guy inside. Was that nice?”
Mallory tossed his cigarette away, watched it arc through the darkness. He said carefully:
“Would twenty bucks make you see it some other way?”
“Not tonight, mister. Most any other night, but not tonight.”
“A C note?”
“Not even that, mister.”
“That,” Mallory said gravely, “must be damn’ tough.”
The big man laughed again, came a little closer. The man behind him lurched out of the shadows and planted a soft fattish hand on Mallory’s shoulder. Mallory slid sidewise, without moving his feet. The hand fell off. He said:
“Keep your paws off me, gumshoe!”
The other man made a snarling sound. Something swished through the air. Something hit Mallory very hard behind his left ear. He went to his knees. He kneeled swaying for a moment, shaking his head violently. His eyes cleared. He could see the lozenge design in the sidewalk. He got to his feet again rather slowly.
He looked at the man who had blackjacked him and cursed him in a thick dull voice, with a concentration of ferocity that set the man back on his heels with his slack mouth working like melting rubber.
The big man said: “Damn your soul, Jim! What in hell’d you do that for?”
The man called Jim put his soft fat hand to his mouth and gnawed at it. He shuffled the blackjack into the side pocket of his coat.
“Forget it!” he said. “Let’s take the — and get on with it. I need a drink.”
He plunged down the walk. Mallory turned slowly, followed him with his eyes, rubbing the side of his head. The big man moved his gun in a business-like way and said:
“Walk, buddy. We’re takin’ a little ride in the moonlight.”
Mallory walked. The big man fell in beside him. The man called Jim fell in on the other side. He hit himself hard in the pit of the stomach, said:
“I need a drink, Mac. I’ve got the jumps.”
The big man said peacefully: “Who don’t, you poor egg?”
They came to a touring car that was double-parked near the squat pillars at the edge of the boulevard. The man who had hit Mallory got in behind the wheel. The big man prod
ded Mallory into the back seat and got in beside him. He held his gun across his big thigh, tilted his hat a little further back, and got out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He lit one carefully, with his left hand.
The car went out into the sea of lights, rolled east a short way, then turned south down the long slope. The lights of the city were an endless glittering sheet. Neon signs glowed and flashed. The languid ray of a searchlight prodded about among high faint clouds.
“It’s like this,” the big man said, blowing smoke from his wide nostrils. “We got you spotted. You were tryin’ to peddle some phony letters to the Farr twist.”
Mallory laughed shortly, mirthlessly. He said: “You flatties give me an ache.”
The big man appeared to think it over, staring in front of him. Passing electroliers threw quick waves of light across his broad face. After a while he said:
“You’re the guy all right. We got to know these things in our business.”
Mallory’s eyes narrowed in the darkness. His lips smiled. He said: “What business, copper?”
The big man opened his mouth wide, shut it with a click. He said:
“Maybe you better talk, bright boy. Now would be a hell of a good time. Jim and me ain’t tough to get on with, but we got friends who ain’t so dainty.”
Mallory said: “What would I talk about, Lieutenant?”
The big man shook with silent laughter, made no answer. The car went past the oil well that stands in the middle of La Cienega Boulevard, then turned off on to a quiet street fringed with palm trees. It stopped half way down the block, in front of an empty lot. Jim cut the motor and the lights. Then he got a flat bottle out of the door-pocket and held it to his mouth, sighed deeply, passed the bottle over his shoulder.
The big man took a drink, waved the bottle, said:
“We got to wait here for a friend. Let’s talk. My name’s Macdonald—detective bureau. You was tryin’ to shake the Fair girl down. Then her protection stepped in front of her. You bopped him. That was nice routine and we liked it. But we didn’t like the other part.”
Jim reached back for the whiskey bottle, took another drink, sniffed at the neck, said: “This liquor is lousy.”
Macdonald went on: “We was stashed out for you. But we don’t figure your play out in the open like that. It don’t listen.”
Mallory leaned an arm on the side of the car, and looked out and up at the calm, blue, star-spattered sky. He said:
“You know too much, copper. And you didn’t get your dope from Miss Farr. No screen star would go to the police on a matter of blackmail.”
Macdonald jerked his big head around. His eyes gleamed faintly in the dark interior of the car.
“We didn’t say how we got our dope, bright boy. So you was tryin’ to shake her down, huh?”
Mallory said gravely: “Miss Farr is an old friend of mine. Somebody is trying to blackmail her, but not me. I just have a hunch.”
Macdonald said swiftly: “What the wop pull a gun on you for?”
“He didn’t like me,” Mallory said in a bored voice. “I was mean to him.”
Macdonald said: “Horse-feathers!” He rumbled angrily. The man in the front seat said: “Smack him in the kisser, Mac. Make the — like it!”
Mallory stretched his arms downward, twisting his shoulders like a man cramped from sitting. He felt the bulge of his Luger under his left arm. He said slowly, wearily:
“You said I was trying to peddle some phony letters. What makes you think the letters would be phony?”
Macdonald said softly: “Maybe we know where the right ones are.”
Mallory drawled: “That’s what I thought, copper,” and laughed.
Macdonald moved suddenly, jerked his balled fist up, hit him in the face, but not very hard. Mallory laughed again, then he touched the bruised place behind his ear with careful fingers.
“That went home, didn’t it?” he said.
Macdonald swore dully. “Maybe you’re just a bit too damn’ smart, bright boy. I guess we’ll find out after a while.”
He fell silent. The man in the front seat took off his hat and scratched at a mat of gray hair. Staccato horn blasts came from the boulevard a half block away. Headlights streamed past the end of the street. After a time a pair of them swung around in a wide curve, speared white beams along below the palm trees. A dark bulk drifted down the half block, slid to the curb in front of the touring car. The lights went off.
A man got out and walked back. Macdonald said: “Hi, Slippy. How’d it go?”
The man was a tall thin figure with a shadowy face under a pulled-down cap. He lisped a little when he spoke. He said:
“Nothin’ to it. Nobody got mad.”
“Okey,” Macdonald grunted. “Ditch the hot one and drive this heap.”
Jim got into the back of the touring car and sat on Mallory’s left, digging a hard elbow into him. The lanky man slid under the wheel, started the motor, and drove back to La Cienega, then south to Wilshire, then west again. He drove fast and roughly.
They went casually through a red light, passed a big movie palace with most of its lights out and its glass cashier’s cage empty; then through Beverly Hills, over interurban tracks. The exhaust got louder on a long hill with high, banks paralleling the road. Macdonald spoke suddenly:
“Hell, Jim, I forgot to frisk this baby. Hold the gun a minute.”
He leaned in front of Mallory, close to him, blowing whiskey breath in his face. A big hand went over his pockets, down inside his coat around the hips, up under his left arm. It stopped there a moment, against the Luger in the shoulder-holster. It went on to the other side, went away altogether.
“Okey, Jim. No gun on bright boy.”
A sharp light of wonder winked into being deep in Mallory’s brain. His eyebrows drew together. His mouth felt dry.
“Mind if I light up a cigarette?” he asked, after a pause.
Macdonald said with mock politeness: “Now why would we mind a little thing like that, sweetheart?”
III
THE apartment house stood on a hill above Westward Village, and was new and rather cheap-looking. Macdonald and Mallory and Jim got out in front of it, and the touring car went on around the corner, disappeared.
The three men went through a quiet lobby past a switchboard where no one sat at the moment, up to the seventh floor in the automatic elevator. They went along a corridor, stopped before a door. Macdonald took a loose key out of his pocket, unlocked the door. They went in.
It was a very new room, very bright, very foul with cigarette smoke. The furniture was upholstered in loud colors, the carpet was a mess of fat green and yellow lozenges. There was a mantel with bottles on it.
Two men sat at an octagonal table with tall glasses at their elbows. One had red hair, very dark eyebrows, and a dead white face with deep-set dark eyes. The other one had a ludicrous big bulbous nose, no eyebrows at all, hair the color of the inside of a sardine can. This one put some cards down slowly and came across the room with a wide smile. He had a loose, good-natured mouth, an amiable expression.
“Have any trouble, Mac?” he said.
Macdonald rubbed his chin, shook his head sourly. He looked at the man with the nose as if he hated him. The man with the nose went on smiling. He said:
“Frisk him?”
Macdonald twisted his mouth to a thick sneer and stalked across the room to the mantel and the bottles. He said in a nasty tone:
“Bright boy don’t pack a gun. He works with his head. He’s smart.”
He re-crossed the room suddenly and smacked the back of his rough hand across Mallory’s mouth. Mallory smiled thinly, did not stir. He stood in front of a big bile-colored davenport spotted with angry-looking red squares. His hands hung down at his sides, and cigarette smoke drifted up from between his fingers to join the haze that already blanketed the rough, arched ceiling.
“Keep your pants on, Mac,” the man with the nose said. “You’ve done your act. You and Jim c
heck out now. Oil the wheels and check out.”
Macdonald snarled: “Who you givin’ orders to big shot? I’m stickin’ around till this chiseler gets what’s coming to him, Costello.”
The man called Costello shrugged his shoulders briefly. The red-haired man at the table turned a little in his chair and looked at Mallory with the impersonal air of a collector studying an impaled beetle. Then he took a cigarette out of a neat black case and lit it carefully with a gold lighter.
Macdonald went back to the mantel, poured some whiskey out of a square bottle into a glass, and drank it raw. He leaned, scowling, with his back to the mantel.
Costello stood in front of Mallory, cracking the joints of long, bony fingers.
He said: “Where do you come from?”
Mallory looked at him dreamily and put his cigarette in his mouth. “McNeil’s Island,” he said with vague amusement.
“How long since?”
“Ten days.”
“What were you in for?”
“Forgery.” Mallory gave the information in a soft, pleased voice.
“Been here before?”
Mallory said: “I was born here. Didn’t you know?”
Costello’s voice was gentle, almost soothing. “No-o, I didn’t know that,” he said. “What did you come for—ten days ago?”
Macdonald heaved across the room again, swinging his thick arms. He slapped Mallory across the mouth a second time, leaning past Costello’s shoulder to do it. A red mark showed on Mallory’s face. He shook his head back and forth. Dull fire was in his eyes.
“Jeeze, Costello, this crumb ain’t from McNeil. He’s ribbin’ you.” His voice blared. “Bright boy’s just a cheap chiseler from Brooklyn or K. C.—one of those hot towns where the cops are all cripples.”
Costello put a hand up and pushed gently at Macdonald’s shoulder. He said: “You’re not needed in this, Mac,” in a flat, toneless voice.
Macdonald balled his fist angrily. Then he laughed, lunged forward and ground his heel on Mallory’s foot. Mallory said: “ — damn!” and sat down hard on the davenport.
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