“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 as 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 going 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.
CHAPTER 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 unfolded 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. Yes-suh, this liquor has been keepin’ the right company.” He refilled his glass.
I told him what had happened at Florian’s and why. He stared 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. “Damn 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.
CHAPTER 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 else 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 superannuated streetwalkers.
The woman sat down in the rocker and flopped her slippers and looked at me. I looked at the radio and sat down on 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 came 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 she 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 yourself 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 on to your chair 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.
The Collected Raymond Chandler Page 23