He growled, shrugged, and we nearly went off the road into the loose sand.
“Dravec’s chauffeur. A kid named Carl Owen. How do I know? We had him in the cooler a year ago on a Mann Act rap. He run Dravec’s hotcha daughter off to Yuma. Dravec went after them and brought them back and had the guy heaved in the goldfish bowl. Then the girl gets to him, and next morning the old man steams downtown and begs the guy off. Says the kid meant to marry her, only she wouldn’t. Then, by heck, the kid goes back to work for him and been there ever since. What you think of that?”
“It sounds just like Dravec,” I said.
“Yeah–but the kid could have had a relapse.”
M’Gee had silvery hair and a knobby chin and a little pouting mouth made to kiss babies with. I looked at his face sideways, and suddenly I got his idea. I laughed.
“You think maybe Dravec killed him?” I asked. “Why not? The kid makes another pass at the girl and Dravec cracks down at him too hard. He’s a big guy and could break a neck easy. Then he’s scared. He runs the car down to Lido in the rain and lets it slide off the end of the pier. Thinks it won’t show. Maybe don’t think at all. Just rattled.”
“It’s a kick in the pants,” I said. “Then all he had to do was walk home thirty miles in the rain.”
“Go on. Kid me.”
“Dravec killed him, sure,” I said. “But they were playing leapfrog. Dravec fell on him.”
“Okay, pal. Some day you’ll want to play with my catnip mouse.”
“Listen, Violets,” I said seriously. “If the kid was murdered–and you’re not sure it’s murder at all–it’s not Dravec’s kind of crime. He might kill a man in a temper–but he’d let him lay. He wouldn’t go to all that fuss.”
We shuttled back and forth across the road while M’Gee thought about that.
“What a pal,” he complained. “I have me a swell theory and look what you done to it. I wish the hell I hadn’t brought you. Hell with you. I’m goin’ after Dravec just the same.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “You’d have to do that. But Dravec never killed that boy. He’s too soft inside to cover up on it.”
It was noon when we got back to town. I hadn’t had any dinner but whisky the night before and very little breakfast that morning. I got off on the Boulevard and let M’Gee go on alone to see Dravec.
I was interested in what had happened to Carl Owen; but I wasn’t interested in the thought that Dravec might have murdered him.
I ate lunch at a counter and looked casually at an early afternoon paper. I didn’t expect to see anything about Steiner in it, and I didn’t.
After lunch I walked along the Boulevard six blocks to have a look at Steiner’s store.
SIX
It was a half-store frontage, the other half being occupied by a credit jeweler. The jeweler was standing in his entrance, a big, white-haired, black-eyed Jew with about nine carats of diamond on his hand. A faint, knowing smile curved his lips as I went past him into Steiner’s.
A thick blue rug paved Steiner’s from wall to wall. There were blue leather easy chairs with smoke stands beside them. A few sets of tooled leather books were put out on narrow tables. The rest of the stock was behind glass. A paneled partition with a single door in it cut off a back part of the store, and in the corner by this a woman sat behind a small desk with a hooded lamp on it.
She got up and came towards me, swinging lean thighs in a tight dress of some black material that didn’t reflect any light. She was an ash-blonde, with greenish eyes under heavily mascaraed lashes. There were large jet buttons in the lobes of her ears; her hair waved back smoothly from behind them. Her fingernails were silvered.
She gave me what she thought was a smile of welcome, but what I thought was a grimace of strain.
“Was it something?”
I pulled my hat low over my eyes and fidgeted. I said: “Steiner?”
“He won’t be in today. May I show you–”
“I’m selling,” I said. “Something he’s wanted for a long time.”
The silvered fingernails touched the hair over one ear. “Oh, a salesman. . . . Well, you might come in tomorrow.”
“He sick? I could go up to the house,” I suggested hopefully. “He’d want to see what I have.”
That jarred her. She had to fight for her breath for a minute. But her voice was smooth enough when it came.
“That–that wouldn’t be any use. He’s out of town today.” I nodded, looked properly disappointed, touched my hat and started to turn away when the pimply-faced kid of the night before stuck his head through the door in the paneling. He went back as soon as he saw me, but not before I saw some loosely packed cases of books behind him on the floor of the back room.
The cases were small and open and packed any old way. A man in very new overalls was fussing with them. Some of Steiner’s stock was being moved out.
I left the store and walked down to the corner, then back to the alley. Behind Steiner’s stood a small black truck with wire sides. It didn’t have any lettering on it. Boxes showed through the wire sides and, as I watched, the man in overalls came out with another one and heaved it up.
I went back to the Boulevard. Half a block on, a fresh-faced kid was reading a magazine in a parked Green Top. I showed him money and said: “Tail job?”
He looked me over, swung his door open, and stuck his magazine behind the rear-vision mirror.
“My meat, boss,” he said brightly.
We went around to the end of the alley and waited beside a fireplug.
There were about a dozen boxes on the truck when the man in the very new overalls got up in front and gunned his motor. He went down the alley fast and turned left on the street at the end. My driver did the same. The truck went north to Garfield, then east. It went very fast and there was a lot of traffic on Garfield. My driver tailed from too far back.
I was telling him about that when the truck turned north off Garfield again. The street at which it turned was called Brittany. When we got to Brittany there wasn’t any truck.
The fresh-faced kid who was driving me made comforting sounds through the glass panel of the cab and we went up Brittany at four miles an hour looking for the truck behind bushes. I refused to be comforted.
Brittany bore a little to the east two blocks up and met the next street, Randall Place, in a tongue of land on which there was a white apartment house with its front on Randall Place and its basement garage entrance on Brittany, a story lower. We were going past that and my driver was telling me the truck couldn’t be very far away when I saw it in the garage.
We went around to the front of the apartment house and I got out and went into the lobby.
There was no switchboard. A desk was pushed back against the wall, as if it wasn’t used any more. Above it names were on a panel of gilt mailboxes.
The name that went with Apartment 405 was Joseph Marty. Joe Marty was the name of the man who played with Carmen Dravec until her papa gave him five thousand dollars to go away and play with some other girl. It could be the same Joe Marty.
I went down steps and pushed through a door with a wired glass panel into the dimness of the garage. The man in the very new overalls was stacking boxes in the automatic elevator.
I stood near him and lit a cigarette and watched him. He didn’t like it very well, but he didn’t say anything. After a while I said: “Watch the weight, buddy. She’s only tested for half a ton. Where’s it goin’?”
“Marty, four-o-five,” he said, and then looked as if he was sorry he had said it.
“Fine,” I told him. “It looks like a nice lot of reading.”
I went back up the steps and out of the building, got into my Green Top again.
We drove back downtown to the building where I have an office. I gave the driver too much money and he gave me a dirty card which I dropped into the brass spittoon beside the elevators.
Dravec was holding up the wall outside the door of my office.
SEVEN
After the rain, it was warm and bright but he still had the belted suede raincoat on. It was open down the front, as were his coat, and vest underneath. His tie was under one ear. His face looked like a mask of gray putty with a black stubble on the lower part of it.
He looked awful.
I unlocked the door and patted his shoulder and pushed him in and got him into a chair. He breathed hard but didn’t say anything. I got a bottle of rye out of the desk and poured a couple of ponies. He drank both of them without a word. Then he slumped in the chair and blinked his eyes and groaned and took a square white envelope out of an inner pocket. He put it down on the desk top and held his big hairy hand over it.
“Tough about Carl,” I said. “I was with M’Gee this morning.”
He looked at me emptily. After a little while he said:
“Yeah. Carl was a good kid. I ain’t told you about him much.”
I waited, looking at the envelope under his hand. He looked down at it himself.
“I gotta let you see it,” he mumbled. He pushed it slowly across the desk and lifted his hand off it as if with the movement he was giving up most everything that made life worth living. Two tears welled up in his eyes and slid down his unshaven cheeks.
I lifted the square envelope and looked at it. It was addressed to him at his house, in neat pen-and-ink printing, and bore a Special Delivery stamp. I opened it and looked at the shiny photograph that was inside.
Carmen Dravec sat in Steiner’s teakwood chair, wearing her jade earrings. Her eyes looked crazier, if anything, than as I had seen them. I looked at the back of the photo, saw that it was blank, and put the thing face down on my desk.
“Tell me about it,” I said carefully.
Dravec wiped the tears off his face with his sleeve, put his hands flat on the desk and stared down at the dirty nails. His fingers trembled on the desk.
“A guy called me,” he said in a dead voice. “Ten grand for the plate and the prints. The deal’s got to be closed tonight, or they give the stuff to some scandal sheet.”
“That’s a lot of hooey,” I said. “A scandal sheet couldn’t use it, except to back up a story. What’s the story?”
He lifted his eyes slowly, as if they were very heavy. “That ain’t all. The guy say there’s a jam to it. I better come through fast, or I’d find my girl in the cooler.”
“What’s the story?” I asked again, filling my pipe. “What does Carmen say?”
He shook his big shaggy head. “I ain’t asked her. I ain’t got the heart. Poor little girl. No clothes on her. . . . No, I ain’t got the heart. . . . You ain’t done nothin’ on Steiner yet, I guess.”
“I didn’t have to,” I told him. “Somebody beat me to it.” He stared at me open-mouthed, uncomprehending. It was obvious he knew nothing about the night before.
“Did Carmen go out at all last night?” I asked carelessly.
He was still staring with his mouth open, groping in his mind.
“No. She’s sick. She’s sick in bed when I get home. She don’t go out at all. . . . What you mean–about Steiner?”
I reached for the bottle of rye and poured us each a drink. Then I lit my pipe.
“Steiner’s dead,” I said. “Somebody got tired of his tricks and shot him full of holes. Last night, in the rain.”
“Jeeze,” he said wonderingly. “You was there?”
I shook my head. “Not me. Carmen was there. That’s the jam your man spoke of. She didn’t do the shooting, of course.”
Dravec’s face got red and angry. He balled his fists. His breath made a harsh sound and a pulse beat visibly in the side of his neck.
“That ain’t true! She’s sick. She don’t go out at all. She’s sick in bed when I get home!”
“You told me that,” I said. “That’s not true. I brought Carmen home myself. The maid knows, only she’s trying to be decent about it. Carmen was at Steiner’s house and I was watching outside. A gun went off and someone ran away. I didn’t see him. Carmen was too drunk to see him. That’s why she’s sick.”
His eyes tried to focus on my face, but they were vague and empty, as if the light behind them had died. He took hold of the arms of the chair. His big knuckles strained and got white.
“She don’t tell me,” he whispered. “She don’t tell me. Me, that would do anything for her.” There was no emotion in his voice; just the dead exhaustion of despair.
He pushed his chair back a little. “I go get the dough,” he said. “The ten grand. Maybe the guy don’t talk.”
Then he broke. His big rough head came down on the desk and sobs shook his whole body. I stood up and went around the desk and patted his shoulder, kept on patting it, not saying anything. After a while he lifted his face smeared with tears and grabbed for my hand.
“Jeeze, you’re a good guy,” he sobbed.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
I pulled my hand away from him and got a drink into his paw, helped him lift it and down it. Then I took the empty glass out of his hand and put it back on the desk. I sat down again.
“You’ve got to brace up,” I told him grimly. “The law doesn’t know about Steiner yet. I brought Carmen home and kept my mouth shut. I wanted to give you and Carmen a break. That puts me in a jam. You’ve got to do your part.”
He nodded slowly, heavily. “Yeah, I do what you say– anything you say.”
“Get the money,” I said. “Have it ready for the call. I’ve got ideas and you may not have to use it. But it’s no time to get foxy. . . . Get the money and sit tight and keep your mouth shut. Leave the rest to me. Can you do that?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Jeeze, you’re a good guy.”
“Don’t talk to Carmen,” I said. “The less she remembers out of her drunk, the better. This picture–” I touched the back of the photo on the desk–“shows somebody was working with Steiner. We’ve got to get him and get him quick–even if it costs ten grand to do it.”
He stood up slowly. “That’s nothin’. That’s just dough. I go get it now. Then I go home. You do it like you want to. Me, I do just like you say.”
He grabbed for my hand again, shook it, and went slowly out of the office. I heard his heavy steps drag down the hall.
I drank a couple of drinks fast and mopped my face.
EIGHT
I drove my Chrysler slowly up La Verne Terrace towards Steiner’s house.
In the daylight, I could see the steep drop of the hill and the flight of wooden steps down which the killer had made his escape. The street below was almost as narrow as an alley. Two small houses fronted on it, not very near Steiner’s place. With the noise the rain had been making it was doubtful if anyone in them had paid much attention to the shots.
Steiner’s looked peaceful under the afternoon sun. The unpainted shingles of the roof were still damp from the rain. The trees on the other side of the street had new leaves on them. There were no cars on the street.
Something moved behind the square growth of box hedge that screened Steiner’s front door.
Carmen Dravec, in a green and white checkered coat and no hat, came out through the opening, stopped suddenly, looked at me wild-eyed, as if she hadn’t heard the car. She went back quickly behind the hedge. I drove on and parked in front of the empty house.
I got out and walked back. In the sunlight it felt like an exposed and dangerous thing to do.
I went in through the hedge and the girl stood there very straight and silent against the half-open house door. One hand went slowly to her mouth, and her teeth bit at a funny-looking thumb that was like an extra finger. There were deep purpleblack smudges under her frightened eyes.
I pushed her back into the house without saying anything, shut the door. We stood looking at each other inside. She dropped her hand slowly and tried to smile. Then all expression went out of her white face and it looked as intelligent as the bottom of a shoe box.
I got gentleness into my voice and said: “Take it easy. I’m pals. Sit down in that chair by the desk. I’m a friend of your father’s. Don’t get panicky.”
She went and sat down in the yellow cushion in the black chair at Steiner’s desk.
The place looked decadent and off-color by daylight. It still stank of the ether.
Carmen licked the corners of her mouth with the tip of a whitish tongue. Her dark eyes were stupid and stunned rather than scared now. I rolled a cigarette around in my fingers and pushed some books out of the way to sit on the edge of the desk. I lit my cigarette, puffed it slowly for a moment, then asked: “What are you doing here?”
She picked at the material of her coat, didn’t answer. I tried again.
“How much do you remember about last night?”
She answered that. “Remember what? I was sick last night–at home.” Her voice was a cautious, throaty sound that only just reached my ears.
“Before that,” I said. “Before I brought you home. Here.”
A slow flush crept up her throat and her eyes widened. “You–you were the one?” she breathed, and began to chew on her funny thumb again.
“Yeah, I was the one. How much of it all stays with you?”
She said: “Are you the police?”
“No. I told you I was a friend of your father’s.”
“You’re not the police?”
“No.”
It finally registered. She let out a long sigh. “What–what do you want?”
“Who killed him?”
Her shoulders jerked in the checkered coat, but nothing changed much in her face. Her eyes slowly got furtive.
“Who–who else knows?”
“About Steiner? I don’t know. Not the police, or someone would be here. Maybe Marty.”
It was just a stab in the dark, but it got a sudden, sharp cry out of her.
“Marty!”
We were both silent for a minute. I puffed on my cigarette and she chewed on her thumb.
“Don’t get clever,” I said. “Did Marty kill him?”
Her chin came down an inch. “Yes.”
“Why did he do it?”