I went past him into the room. It was a cheerful room, with good furniture and not too much of it. French windows in the end wall looked across a stone porch at the foothills, already getting purple in the dusk. Near the windows a door was shut. Another door in the same wall at the near end of the room had curtains drawn across it, on a brass rod below the lintel.
I sat down on a davenport against the wall in which there were no doors. Marty shut the door and walked sideways to a tall oak writing desk studded with square nails. A cedarwood cigar box with gilt hinges rested on the lowered leaf of the desk. Marty picked it up without taking his eyes off me, carried it to a low table beside an easy chair. He sat down in the easy chair.
I put my hat beside me and opened the top button of my coat and smiled at Marty.
“Well–I’m listening,” he said.
He snubbed his cigarette out, lifted the lid of the cigar box and took out a couple of fat cigars.
“Cigar?” he suggested casually, and tossed one at me.
I reached for it and that made me a sap. Marty dropped the other cigar back into the box and came up very swiftly with a gun.
I looked at the gun politely. It was a black police Colt, a .38. I had no argument against it at the moment.
“Stand up a minute,” Marty said. “Come forward just about two yards. You might grab a little air while you’re doing that.” His voice was elaborately casual.
I was mad inside, but I grinned at him. I said: “You’re the second guy I’ve met today that thinks a gun in the hand means the world by the tail. Put it away, and let’s talk.”
Marty’s eyebrows came together and he pushed his chin forward a little. His brown eyes were vaguely troubled.
We stared at each other. I didn’t look at the pointed black slipper that showed under the curtains across the doorway to my left.
Marty was wearing a dark blue suit, a blue shirt and a black tie. His brown face looked somber above the dark colors. He said softly, in a lingering voice: “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a tough guy–just careful. I don’t know hell’s first thing about you. You might be a life-taker for all I know.”
“You’re not careful enough,” I said. “The play with the books was lousy.”
He drew a long breath and let it out silently. Then he leaned back and crossed his long legs and rested the Colt on his knee.
“Don’t kid yourself I won’t use this, if I have to. What’s your story?”
“Tell your friend with the pointed shoes to come on in,” I said. “She gets tired holding her breath.”
Without turning his head Marty called out: “Come on in, Agnes.”
The curtains over the door swung aside and the green-eyed blonde from Steiner’s store joined us in the room. I wasn’t very much surprised to see her there. She looked at me bitterly.
“I knew damn well you were trouble,” she told me angrily. “I told Joe to watch his step.”
“Save it,” Marty snapped. “Joe’s watchin’ his step plenty. Put some light on so I can see to pop this guy, if it works out that way.”
The blonde lit a large floor lamp with a square red shade. She sat down under it, in a big velours chair and held a fixed painful smile on her face. She was scared to the point of exhaustion.
I remembered the cigar I was holding and put it in my mouth. Marty’s Colt was very steady on me while I got matches out and lit it.
I puffed smoke and said through the smoke: “The sucker list I spoke of is in code. So I can’t read the names yet, but there’s about five hundred of them. You got twelve boxes of books, say three hundred. There’ll be that many more out on loan. Say five hundred altogether, just to be conservative. If it’s a good active list and you could run it around all the books, that would be a quarter of a million rentals. Put the average rental low–say a dollar. That’s too low, but say a dollar. That’s a lot of money these days. Enough to spot a guy for.”
The blonde yelped sharply: “You’re crazy, if you–”
“Shut up!” Marty swore at her.
The blonde subsided and put her head back against the back of her chair. Her face was tortured with strain.
“It’s no racket for bums,” I went on telling them. “You’ve got to get confidence and keep it. Personally I think the blackmail angles are a mistake. I’m for shedding all that.”
Marty’s dark brown stare held coldly on my face. “You’re a funny guy,” he drawled smoothly. “Who’s got this lovely racket?”
“You have,” I said. “Almost.”
Marty didn’t say anything.
“You shot Steiner to get it,” I said. “Last night in the rain. It was good shooting weather. The trouble is, he wasn’t alone when it happened. Either you didn’t see that, or you got scared. You ran out. But you had nerve enough to come back and hide the body somewhere–so you could tidy up on the books before the case broke.”
The blonde made one strangled sound and then turned her face and stared at the wall. Her silvered fingernails dug into her palms. Her teeth bit her lip tightly.
Marty didn’t bat an eye. He didn’t move and the Colt didn’t move in his hand. His brown face was as hard as a piece of carved wood.
“Boy, you take chances,” he said softly, at last. “It’s lucky as all hell for you I didn’t kill Steiner.”
I grinned at him, without much cheer. “You might step off for it just the same,” I said.
Marty’s voice was a dry rustle of sound. “Think you’ve got me framed for it?”
“Positive.”
“How come?”
“There’s somebody who’ll tell it that way.” Marty swore then. “That–damned little–! She would– just that–damn her!”
I didn’t say anything. I let him chew on it. His face cleared slowly, and he put the Colt down on the table, kept his hand near it.
“You don’t sound like chisel as I know chisel,” he said slowly, his eyes a tight shine between dark narrowed lids. “And I don’t see any coppers here. What’s your angle?”
I drew on my cigar and watched his gun hand. “The plate that was in Steiner’s camera. All the prints that have been made. Right here and right now. You’ve got it–because that’s the only way you could have known who was there last night.”
Marty turned his head slightly to look at Agnes. Her face was still to the wall and her fingernails were still spearing her palms. Marty looked back at me.
“You’re cold as a night watchman’s feet on that one, guy,” he told me.
I shook my head. “No. You’re a sap to stall, Marty. You can be pegged for the kill easy. It’s a natural. If the girl has to tell her story, the pictures won’t matter. But she don’t want to tell it.”
“You a shamus?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“How’d you get to me?”
“I was working on Steiner. He’s been working on Dravec. Dravec leaks money. You had some of it. I tailed the books here from Steiner’s store. The rest was easy when I had the girl’s story.”
“She say I gunned Steiner?”
I nodded. “But she could be mistaken.”
Marty sighed. “She hates my guts,” he said. “I gave her the gate. I got paid to do it, but I’d have done it anyway. She’s too screwy for me.”
I said: “Get the pictures, Marty.”
He stood up slowly, looked down at the Colt, put it in his side pocket. His hand moved slowly up to his breast pocket.
Somebody rang the door buzzer and kept on ringing it.
ELEVEN
Marty didn’t like that. His lower lip went in under his teeth and his eyebrows drew down at the corners. His whole face got mean.
The buzzer kept on buzzing.
The blonde stood up quickly. Nerve tension made her face old and ugly.
Watching me, Marty jerked a small drawer open in the tall desk and got a small, white-handled automatic out of it. He held it out to the blonde. She went to him and took it gingerly, not liking it.
“Sit down next to the shamus,” he rasped. “Hold the gun on him. If he gets funny, feed him a few.”
The blonde sat down on the davenport about three feet from me, on the side away from the door. She lined the gun on my leg. I didn’t like the jerky look in her green eyes.
The door buzzer stopped and somebody started a quick, light, impatient rapping on the panel. Marty went across and opened the door. He slid his right hand into his coat pocket and opened the door with his left hand, threw it open quickly.
Carmen Dravec pushed him back into the room with the muzzle of a small revolver against his brown face.
Marty backed away from her smoothly, lightly. His mouth was open and an expression of panic was on his face. He knew Carmen pretty well.
Carmen shut the door, then bored ahead with her little gun. She didn’t look at anyone but Marty, didn’t seem to see anything but Marty. Her face had a dopey look.
The blonde shivered the full length of her body and swung the white-handled automatic up and towards Carmen. I shot my hand out and grabbed her hand, closed my fingers down over it quickly, thumbed the safety to the on position, and held it there. There was a short tussle, which neither Marty nor Carmen paid any attention to. Then I had the gun.
The blonde breathed deeply and stared at Carmen Dravec. Carmen looked at Marty with doped eyes and said: “I want my pictures.”
Marty swallowed and tried to smile at her. He said: “Sure, kid, sure,” in a small, flat voice that wasn’t like the voice he had used in talking to me.
Carmen looked almost as crazy as she had looked in Steiner’s chair. But she had control of her voice and muscles this time. She said: “You shot Hal Steiner.”
“Wait a minute, Carmen!” I yelped.
Carmen didn’t turn her head. The blonde came to life with a rush, ducked her head at me as if she was going to butt me, and sank her teeth in my right hand, the one that had her gun in it.
I yelped some more. Nobody minded that either.
Marty said: “Listen, kid, I didn’t–”
The blonde took her teeth out of my hand and spat my own blood at me. Then she threw herself at my leg and tried to bite that. I cracked her lightly on the head with the barrel of the gun and tried to stand up. She rolled down my legs and wrapped her arms around my ankles. I fell back on the davenport again. The blonde was strong with the madness of fear.
Marty grabbed for Carmen’s gun with his left hand, missed. The little revolver made a dull, heavy sound that was not loud. A bullet missed Marty and broke glass in one of the foldedback french windows.
Marty stood perfectly still again. He looked as if all his muscles had gone back on him.
“Duck and knock her off her feet, you damn’ fool!” I yelled at him.
Then I hit the blonde on the side of the head again, much harder, and she rolled off my feet. I got loose and slid away from her.
Marty and Carmen were still facing each other like a couple of images.
Something very large and heavy hit the outside of the door and the panel split diagonally from top to bottom.
That brought Marty to life. He jerked the Colt out of his pocket andjumped back. I snapped a shot at his right shoulder and missed, not wanting to hurt him much. The heavy thing hit the door again with a crash that seemed to shake the whole building.
I dropped the little automatic and got my own gun loose as Dravec came in with the smashed door.
He was wild-eyed, raging drunk, berserk. His big arms were flailing. His eyes were glaring and bloodshot and there was froth on his lips.
He hit me very hard on the side of the head without even looking at me. I fell against the wall, between the end of the davenport and the broken door.
I was shaking my head and trying to get level again when Marty began to shoot.
Something lifted Dravec’s coat away from his body behind, as if a slug had gone clean through him. He stumbled, straightened immediately, charged like a bull.
I lined my gun and shot Marty through the body. It shook him, but the Colt in his hand continued to leap and roar. Then Dravec was between us and Carmen was knocked out of the way like a dead leaf and there was nothing more that anybody could do about it.
Marty’s bullets couldn’t stop Dravec. Nothing could. If he had been dead, he would still have got Marty.
He got him by the throat as Marty threw his empty gun in the big man’s face. It bounced off like a rubber ball. Marty yelled shrilly, and Dravec took him by the throat and lifted him clean off his feet.
For an instant Marty’s brown hands fought for a hold on the big man’s wrists. Something cracked sharply, and Marty’s hands fell away limply. There was another, duller crack. Just before Dravec let go of Marty’s neck I saw that Marty’s face was a purple-black color. I remembered, almost casually, that men whose necks are broken sometimes swallow their tongues before they die.
Then Marty fell down in the corner and Dravec started to back away from him. He backed like a man losing his balance, not able to keep his feet under his center of gravity. He took four clumsy backward steps like that. Then his big body tipped over backwards and he fell on his back on the floor with his arms flung out wide.
Blood came out of his mouth. His eyes strained upwards as if to see through a fog.
Carmen Dravec went down beside him and began to wail like a frightened animal.
There was noise outside in the hall, but nobody showed at the open door. Too much casual lead had been flipped around.
I went quickly over to Marty and leaned over him and got my hand into his breast pocket. I got out a thick, square envelope that had something stiff and hard in it I straightened up with it and turned.
Far off the wall of a siren sounded faintly on the evening air, seemed to be getting louder. A white-faced man peeped cautiously in through the doorway. I knelt down beside Dravec.
He tried to say something, but I couldn’t hear the words. Then the strained look went out of his eyes and they were aloof and indifferent like the eyes of a man looking at something a long way off, across a wide plain.
Carmen said stonily: “He was drunk. He made me tell him where I was going. I didn’t know he followed me.”
“You wouldn’t,” I said emptily.
I stood up again and broke the envelope open. There were a few prints in it and a glass negative. I dropped the plate on the floor and ground it to pieces with my heel. I began to tear up the prints and let the pieces flutter down out of my hands.
“They’ll print plenty of photos of you now, girlie,” I said. “But they won’t print this one.”
“I didn’t know he was following me,” she said again, and began to chew on her thumb.
The siren was loud outside the building now. It died to a penetrating drone and then stopped altogether, just about the time I finished tearing up the prints.
I stood still in the middle of the room and wondered why I had taken the trouble. It didn’t matter any more now.
TWELVE
Leaning his elbow on the end of the big walnut table in Inspector Isham’s office, and holding a burning cigarette idly between his fingers, Guy Slade said, without looking at me:
“Thanks for putting me on the pan, shamus. I like to see the boys at Headquarters once in a while.” He crinkled the corners of his eyes in an unpleasant smile.
I was sitting at the long side of the table across from Isham. Isham was lanky and gray and wore nose glasses. He didn’t look, act or talk copper. Violets M’Gee and a merry-eyed Irish dick named Grinnell were in a couple of round-backed chairs against a glass-topped partition wall that cut part of the office off into a reception room.
I said to Slade: “I figured you found that blood a little too soon. I guess I was wrong. My apologies, Mr. Slade.”
“Yeah. That makes it just like it never happened.” He stood up, picked a malacca cane and one glove off the table. “That all for me, Inspector?”
“That’s all tonight, Slade.” Isham’s voice was dry, cool, sardonic.
Slade caught the crook of his cane over his wrist to open the door. He smiled around before he strolled out. The last thing his eyes rested on was probably the back of my neck, but I wasn’t looking at him.
Isham said: “I don’t have to tell you how a police department looks at that kind of a cover-up on a murder.”
I sighed. “Gunfire,” I said. “A dead man on the floor. A naked, doped girl in a chair not knowing what had happened. A killer I couldn’t have caught and you couldn’t have caught–then. Behind all this a poor old roughneck that was breaking his heart trying to do the right thing in a miserable spot. Go ahead–stick it into me. I’m not sorry.”
Isham waved all that aside. “Who did kill Steiner?”
“The blonde girl will tell you.”
“I want you to tell me.”
I shrugged. “If you want me to guess–Dravec’s driver, Carl Owen.”
Isham didn’t look too surprised. Violets M’Gee grunted loudly.
“What makes you think so?” Isham asked.
“I thought for a while it could be Marty, partly because the girl said so. But that doesn’t mean anything. She didn’t know, and jumped at the chance to stick a knife into Marty. And she’s a type that doesn’t let loose of an idea very easily. But Marty didn’t act like a killer. And a man as cool as Marty wouldn’t have run out that way. I hadn’t even banged on the door when the killer started to scram.
“Of course I thought of Slade, too. But Slade’s not quite the type either. He packs two gunmen around with him, and they’d have made some kind of a fight of it. And Slade seemed genuinely surprised when he found the blood on the floor this afternoon. Slade was in with Steiner and keeping tabs on him, but he didn’t kill him, didn’t have any reason to kill him, and wouldn’t have killed him that way, in front of a witness, if he had a reason.
“But Carl Owen would. He was in love with the girl once, probably never got over it. He had chances to spy on her, find out where she went and what she did. He lay for Steiner, got in the back way, saw the nude photo stunt and blew his top. He let Steiner have it. Then the panic got him and he just ran.”
“Ran all the way to Lido pier, and then off the end of that,” Isham said dryly. “Aren’t you forgetting that the Owen boy had a sap wound on the side of his head?”
I said: “No. And I’m not forgetting that somehow or other Marty knew what was on that camera plate–or nearly enough to make him go in and get it and then hide a body in Steiner’s garage to give him room.”
lsham said: “Get Agnes Laurel in here, Grinnell.”
Grinnell heaved up out of his chair and strolled the length of the office, disappeared through a door.
Violets M’Gee said: “Baby, are you a pal!”
I didn’t look at him. Isham pulled the loose skin in front of his Adam’s apple and looked down at the fingernails of his other hand.
Grinnell came back with the blonde. Her hair was untidy above the collar of her coat. She had taken the jet buttons out of her ears. She looked tired but she didn’t look scared any more. She let herself down slowly into the chair at the end of the table where Slade had sat, folded her hands with the silvered nails in front of her.
Isham said quietly: “All right, Miss Laurel. We’d like to hear from you now.”
The girl looked down at her folded hands and talked without hesitation, in a quiet, even voice.
“I’ve known Joe Marty about three months. He made friends with me because I was working for Steiner, I guess. I thought it was because he liked me. I told him all I knew about Steiner. He already knew a little. He had been spending money he had got from Carmen Dravec’s father, but it was gone and he was down to nickels and dimes, ready for something else. He decided Steiner needed a partner and he was watching him to see if he had any tough friends in the background.
“Last night he was in his car down on the street back of Steiner’s house. He heard the shots, saw the kid tear down the steps, jump into a big sedan and take it on the lam. Joe chased him. Halfway to the beach, he caught him and ran him off the road. The kid came up with a gun, but his nerve was bad and Joe sapped him down. While he was out Joe went through him and found out who he was. When he came around Joe played copper and the kid broke and gave him the story. While Joe was wondering what to do about it the kid came to life and knocked him off the car and scrammed again. He drove like a crazy guy and Joe let him go. He went back to Steiner’s house. I guess you know the rest. When Joe had the plate developed and saw what he had he went for a quick touch so we could get out of town before the law found Steiner. We were going to take some of Steiner’s books and set up shop in another city.”
Agnes Laurel stopped talking. Isham tapped with his fingers, said: “Marty told you everything, didn’t he?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sure he didn’t murder this Carl Owen?”
“I wasn’t there. Joe didn’t act like he’d killed anybody.”
Isham nodded. “That’s all for now, Miss Laurel. We’ll want all that in writing. We’ll have to hold you, of course.”
The girl stood up. Grinnell took her out. She went out without looking at anyone.
Isham said: “Marty couldn’t have known Carl Owen was dead. But he was sure he’d try to hide out. By the time we got to him Marty would have collected from Dravec and moved on. I think the girl’s story sounds reasonable.”
Nobody said anything. After a moment Isham said to me: “You made one bad mistake. You shouldn’t have mentioned Marty to the girl until you were sure he was your man. That got two people killed quite unnecessarily.”
I said: “Uh-huh. Maybe I better go back and do it over again.”
“Don’t get tough.”
“I’m not tough. I was working for Dravec and trying to save him from a little heartbreak. I didn’t know the girl was as screwy as all that, or that Dravec would have a brainstorm. I wanted the pictures. I didn’t care a lot about trash like Steiner or Joe Marty and his girl friend, and still don’t.”
“Okay. Okay,” Isham said impatiently. “I don’t need you any more tonight. You’ll probably be panned plenty at the inquest.”
He stood up and I stood up. He held out his hand.
“But that will do you a hell of a lot more good than harm,” he added dryly.
I shook hands with him and went out. M’Gee came out after me. We rode down in the elevator together without speaking to each other. When we got outside the building M’Gee went around to the right side of my Chrysler and got into it.
“Got any liquor at your dump?”
“Plenty,” I said.
“Let’s go get some of it.”
I started the car and drove west along First Street, through a long echoing tunnel. When we were out of that, M’Gee said: “Next time I send you a client I won’t expect you to snitch on him, boy.”
We went on through the quiet evening to the Berglund. I felt tired and old and not much use to anybody.