“Go on—ask me,” the big man said. He stuck his hand out and lifted a cigar off the edge of a stained-wood table. The cigar was burning unevenly and it smelled as if somebody had set fire to the doormat. He pushed it into his mouth with a hard, thrusting motion, as if he expected his mouth wouldn’t want it to go in.
“I’m asking you,” Steve said.
“Ask me out in the kitchen,” the big man drawled.
He turned and held the door open. Steve went past him.
The big man kicked the door shut against the squeak of the rocking chair, opened up the icebox and got out two cans of beer. He opened them and handed one to Steve.
“Dick?”
Steve drank some of the beer, put the can down on the sink, got a brand-new card out of his wallet—a business card printed that morning. He handed it to the man.
The man read it, put it down on the sink, picked it up and read it again. “One of them guys,” he growled over his beer. “What’s she pulled this time?”
Steve shrugged and said: “I guess it’s the usual. The tornpajama act. Only there’s a kickback this time.”
“How come? You handling it, huh? Must be a nice cozy one.”
Steve nodded. The big man blew smoke from his mouth. “Go ahead and handle it,” he said.
“You don’t mind a pinch here?”
The big man laughed heartily. “Nuts to you, brother,” he said pleasantly enough. “You’re a private dick. So it’s a hush. O.K. Go out and hush it. And if it was a pinch—that bothers me like a quart of milk. Go into your act. Take all the room you want. Cops don’t bother Jake Stoyanoff.”
Steve stared at the man. He didn’t say anything. The big man talked it up some more, seemed to get more interested. “Besides,” he went on, making motions with the cigar, “I’m softhearted. I never turn up a dame. I never put a frill in the middle.” He finished his beer and threw the can in a basket under the sink, and pushed his hand out in front of him, revolving the large thumb slowly against the next two fingers. “Unless there’s some of that,” he added.
Steve said softly: “You’ve got big hands. You could have done it.”
“Huh?” His small brown leathery eyes got silent and stared. Steve said: “Yeah. You might be clean. But with those hands the cops’d go round and round with you just the same.”
The big man moved a little to his left, away from the sink. He let his right hand hang down at his side, loosely. His mouth got so tight that the cigar almost touched his nose.
“What’s the beef, huh?” he barked. “What you shovin’ at me, guy? What—”
“Cut it,” Steve drawled. “She’s been croaked. Strangled. Upstairs, on the floor under her bed. About midmorning, I’d say. Big hands did it—hands like yours.”
The big man did a nice job of getting the gun off his hip. It arrived so suddenly that it seemed to have grown in his hand and been there all the time.
Steve frowned at the gun and didn’t move. The big man looked him over. “You’re tough,” he said. “I been in the ring long enough to size up a guy’s meat. You’re plenty hard, boy. But you ain’t as hard as lead. Talk it up fast.”
“I knocked at her door. No answer. The lock was a pushover. I went in. I almost missed her because the bed was pulled down and she had been sitting on it, reading a magazine. There was no sign of struggle. I lifted the bed just before I left—and there she was. Very dead, Mr. Stoyanoff. Put the gat away. Cops don’t bother you, you said a minute ago.”
The big man whispered: “Yes and no. They don’t make me happy neither. I get a bump once’n a while. Mostly a Dutch. You said something about my hands, mister.”
Steve shook his head. “That was a gag,” he said. “Her neck has nail marks. You bite your nails down close. You’re clean.”
The big man didn’t look at his fingers. He was very pale. There was sweat on his lower lips, in the black stubble of his beard. He was still leaning forward, still motionless, when there was a knocking beyond the kitchen door, the door from the living room to the hallway. The creaking chair stopped and the woman’s sharp voice screamed: “Hi, Jake! Company!”
The big man cocked his head. “That old slut wouldn’t climb off’n her fanny if the house caught fire,” he said thickly.
He stepped to the door and slipped through it, locking it behind him.
Steve ranged the kitchen swiftly with his eyes. There was a small high window beyond the sink, a trap low down for a garbage pail and parcels, but no other door. He reached for his card Stoyanoff had left lying on the drainboard and slipped it back into his pocket. Then he took a short-barreled Detective Special out of his left breast pocket where he wore it nose down, as in a holster.
He had got that far when the shots roared beyond the wall—muffled a little, but still loud—four of them blended in a blast of sound.
Steve stepped back and hit the kitchen door with his leg out straight. It held and jarred him to the top of his head and in his hip joint. He swore, took the whole width of the kitchen and slammed into it with his left shoulder. It gave this time. He pitched into the living room. The mud-faced woman sat leaning forward in her rocker, her head to one side and a lock of mousy hair smeared down over her bony forehead.
“Backfire, huh?” she said stupidly. “Sounded kinda close. Musta been in the alley.”
Steve jumped across the room, yanked the outer door open and plunged out into the hall.
The big man was still on his feet, a dozen feet down the hallway, in the direction of a screen door that opened flush on an alley. He was clawing at the wall. His gun lay at his feet. His left knee buckled and he went down on it.
A door was flung open and a hard-looking woman peered out, and instantly slammed her door shut again. A radio suddenly gained in volume beyond her door.
The big man got up off his left knee and the leg shook violently inside his trousers. He went down on both knees and got the gun into his hand and began to crawl towards the screen door. Then, suddenly he went down flat on his face and tried to crawl that way, grinding his face into the narrow hail runner.
Then he stopped crawling and stopped moving altogether. His body went limp and the hand holding the gun opened and the gun rolled out of it.
Steve hit the screen door and was out in the alley. A gray sedan was speeding towards the far end of it. He stopped, steadied himself and brought his gun up level, and the sedan whisked out of sight around the corner.
A man boiled out of another apartment house across the alley. Steve ran on, gesticulating back at him and pointing ahead. As he ran he slipped the gun back into his pocket. When he reached the end of the alley, the gray sedan was out of sight. Steve skidded around the wall onto the sidewalk, slowed to a walk and then stopped.
Half a block down a man finished parking a car, got out and went across the sidewalk to a lunchroom. Steve watched him go in, then straightened his hat and walked along the wall to the lunchroom.
He went in, sat at the counter and ordered coffee. In a little while there were sirens.
Steve drank his coffee, asked for another cup and drank that. He lit a cigarette and walked down the long hill to Fifth, across to Hill, back to the foot of the Angel’s Flight, and got his convertible out of a parking lot.
He drove out west, beyond Vermont, to the small hotel where he had taken a room that morning.
FOUR
Bill Dockery, floor manager of the Club Shalotte, teetered on his heels and yawned in the unlighted entrance to the dining room. It was a dead hour for business, late cocktail time, too early for dinner, and much too early for the real business of the club, which was high-class gambling.
Dockery was a handsome mug in a midnight-blue dinner jacket and a maroon carnation. He had a two-inch forehead under black lacquer hair, good features a little on the heavy side, alert brown eyes and very long curly eyelashes which he liked to let down over his eyes, to fool troublesome drunks into taking a swing at him.
The entrance door of the foyer was opened by the uniformed dooman and Steve Grayce came in.
Dockery said, “Ho, hum,” tapped his teeth and leaned his weight forward. He walked across the lobby slowly to meet the guest. Steve stood just inside the doors and ranged his eyes over the high foyer walled with milky glass, lighted softly from behind. Molded in the glass were etchings of sailing ships, beasts of the jungle, Siamese pagodas, temples of Yucatan. The doors were square frames of chromium, like photo frames. The Club Shalotte had all the class there was, and the mutter of voices from the bar lounge on the left was not noisy. The faint Spanish music behind the voices was delicate as a carved fan.
Dockery came up and leaned his sleek head forward an inch. “May I help you?”
“King Leopardi around?”
Dockery leaned back again. He looked less interested. “The bandleader? He opens tomorrow night.”
“I thought he might be around—rehearsing or something.”
“Friend of his?”
“I know him. I’m not job-hunting, and I’m not a song plugger if that’s what you mean.”
Dockery teetered on his heels. He was tone-deaf and Leopardi meant no more to him than a bag of peanuts. He half smiled. “He was in the bar lounge a while ago.” He pointed with his square rock-like chin. Steve Grayce went into the bar lounge.
It was about a third full, warm and comfortable and not too dark nor too light. The little Spanish orchestra was in an archway, playing with muted strings small seductive melodies that were more like memories than sounds. There was no dance floor. There was a long bar with comfortable seats, and there were small round composition-top tables, not too close together. A wall seat ran around three sides of the room. Waiters flitted among the tables like moths.
Steve Grayce saw Leopardi in the far corner, with a girl. There was an empty table on each side of him. The girl was a knockout.
She looked tall and her hair was the color of a brush fire seen through a dust cloud. On it, at the ultimate rakish angle, she wore a black velvet double-pointed beret with two artificial butterflies made of polka-dotted feathers and fastened on with tall silver pins. Her dress was burgundy-red wool and the blue fox draped over one shoulder was at least two feet wide. Her eyes were large, smoke-blue, and looked bored. She slowly turned a small glass on the table top with a gloved left hand.
Leopardi faced her, leaning forward, talking. His shoulders looked very big in a shaggy, cream-colored sports coat. Above the neck of it his hair made a point on his brown neck. He laughed across the table as Steve came up and his laugh had a confident, sneering sound.
Steve stopped, then moved behind the next table. The movement caught Leopardi’s eye. His head turned, he looked annoyed, and then his eyes got very wide and brilliant and his whole body turned slowly, like a mechanical toy.
Leopardi put both his rather small well-shaped hands down on the table, on either side of a highball glass. He smiled. Then he pushed his chair back and stood up. He put one finger up and touched his hairline mustache, with theatrical delicacy. Then he said drawlingly, but distinctly: “You son of a bitch!”
A man at a nearby table turned his head and scowled. A waiter who had started to come over stopped in his tracks, then faded back among the tables. The girl looked at Steve Grayce and then leaned back against the cushions of the wall seat and moistened the end of one bare finger on her right hand and smoothed a chestnut eyebrow.
Steve stood quite still. There was a sudden high flush on his cheekbones. He said softly: “You left something at the hotel last night. I think you ought to do something about it. Here.”
He reached a folded paper out of his pocket and held it out. Leopardi took it, still smiling, opened it and read it. It was a sheet of yellow paper with torn pieces of white paper pasted on it. Leopardi crumpled the sheet and let it drop at his feet.
He took a smooth step towards Steve and repeated more loudly: “You son of a bitch!”
The man who had first looked around stood up sharply and turned. He said clearly: “I don’t like that sort of language in front of my wife.”
Without even looking at the man Leopardi said: “To hell with you and your wife.”
The man’s face got a dusky red. The woman with him stood up and grabbed a bag and a coat and walked away. After a moment’s indecision the man followed her. Everybody in the place was staring now. The waiter who had faded back among the tables went through the doorway into the entrance foyer, walking very quickly.
Leopardi took another, longer step and slammed Steve Grayce on the jaw. Steve rolled with the punch and stepped back and put his hand down on another table and upset a glass. He turned to apologize to the couple at the table. Leopardi jumped forward very fast and hit him behind the ear.
Dockery came through the doorway, split two waiters like a banana skin and started down the room showing all his teeth.
Steve gagged a little and ducked away. He turned and said thickly: “Wait a minute, you fool—.that isn’t all of it— there’s—”
Leopardi closed in fast and smashed him full on the mouth. Blood oozed from Steve’s lip and crawled down the line at the corner of his mouth and glistened on his chin. The girl with the red hair reached for her bag, whitefaced with anger, and started to get up from behind her table.
Leopardi turned abruptly on his heel and walked away. Dockery put out a hand to stop him. Leopardi brushed it aside and went on, went out of the lounge.
The tall red-haired girl put her bag down on the table again and dropped her handkerchief on the floor. She looked at Steve quietly, spoke quietly. “Wipe the blood off your chin before it drips on your shirt.” She had a soft, husky voice with a trill in it.
Dockery came up harsh-faced, took Steve by the arm and put weight on the arm. “All right, you! Let’s go!”
Steve stood quite still, his feet planted, staring at the girl. He dabbed at his mouth with a handkerchief. He half smiled. Dockery couldn’t move him an inch. Dockery dropped his hand, signaled two waiters and they jumped behind Steve, but didn’t touch him.
Steve felt his lip carefully and looked at the blood on his handkerchief. He turned to the people at the table behind him and said: “I’m terribly sorry. I lost my balance.”
The girl whose drink he had spilled was mopping her dress with a small fringed napkin. She smiled up at him and said: “It wasn’t your fault.”
The two waiters suddenly grabbed Steve’s arms from behind. Dockery shook his head and they let go again. Dockery said tightly: “You hit him?”
“No.”
“You say anything to make him hit you?”
“No.”
The girl at the corner table bent down to get her fallen handkerchief. It took her quite a time. She finally got it and slid into the corner behind the table again. She spoke coldly.
“Quite right, Bill. It was just some more of the King’s sweet way with his public.”
Dockery said “Huh?” and swiveled his head on his thick hard neck. Then he grinned and looked back at Steve.
Steve said grimly: “He gave me three good punches, one from behind, without a return. You look pretty hard. See can you do it.”
Dockery measured him with his eyes. He said evenly: “You win. I couldn’t … Beat it!” he added sharply to the waiters. They went away. Dockery sniffed his carnation, and said quietly: “We don’t go for brawls in here.” He smiled at the girl again and went away, saying a word here and there at the tables. He went out through the foyer doors.
Steve tapped his lip, put his handkerchief in his pocket and stood searching the floor with his eyes.
The red-haired girl said calmly: “I think I have what you want—in my handkerchief. Won’t you sit down?”
Her voice had a remembered quality, as if he had heard it before.
He sat down opposite her, in the chair where Leopardi had been sitting.
The red-haired girl said: “The drink’s on me. I was with him.”
Steve said, “Coke with a dash of bitters,” to the waiter.
The waiter said: “Madame?”
“Brandy and soda. Light on the brandy, please.” The waiter bowed and drifted away. The girl said amusedly: “Coke with a dash of bitters. That’s what I love about Hollywood. You meet so many neurotics.”
Steve stared into her eyes and said softly: “I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
“I don’t believe a word of it. Have you known the King long?”
“I met him last night. I didn’t get along with him.”
“I sort of noticed that.” She laughed. She had a rich low laugh, too.
“Give me that paper, lady.”
“Oh, one of these impatient men. Plenty of time.” The handkerchief with the crumpled yellow sheet inside it was clasped tightly in her gloved hand. Her middle right finger played with an eyebrow. “You’re not in pictures, are you?”
“Hell, no.”
“Same here, Me, I’m too tall. The beautiful men have to wear stilts in order to clasp me to their bosoms.”
The waiter set the drinks down in front of them, made a grace note in the air with his napkin and went away.