RED HARVEST by Dashiell Hammett

I counted out ten twenty-dollar bills and a dime. She left the window to come for them.

“That’s for pulling Dan off, so you could cop Max,” she said when she had stowed the money away in her bag. “Now how about what I was to get for showing you where you could turn up the dope on his killing Tim Noonan?”

“You’ll have to wait till he’s indicted. How do I know the dope’s any good?”

She frowned and asked:

“What do you do with all the money you don’t spend?” Her face brightened. “You know where Max is now?”

“No.”

“What’s it worth to know?”

“Nothing.”

“I’ll tell you for a hundred bucks.”

“I wouldn’t want to take advantage of you that way.”

“I’ll tell you for fifty bucks.”

I shook my head.

“Twenty-five.”

“I don’t want him,” I said. “I don’t care where he is. Why don’t you peddle the news to Noonan?”

“Yes, and try to collect. Do you only perfume yourself with booze, or is there any for drinking purposes?”

“Here’s a bottle of so-called Dewar that I picked up at Cedar Hill this afternoon. There’s a bottle of King George in my bag. What’s your choice?”

She voted for King George. We had a drink apiece, straight, and I said:

“Sit down and play with it while I change clothes.”

When I came out of the bathroom twenty-five minutes later she was sitting at the secretary, smoking a cigarette and studying a memoranda book that had been in a side pocket of my gladstone bag.

“I guess these are the expenses you’ve charged up on other cases,” she said without looking up. “I’m damned if I can see why you can’t be more liberal with me. Look, here’s a six-hundred-dollar item marked Inf. That’s information you bought from somebody, isn’t it? And here’s a hundred and fifty below it–Top–whatever that is. And here’s another day when you spent nearly a thousand dollars.”

“They must be telephone numbers,” I said, taking the book from her. “Where were you raised? Fanning my baggage!”

“I was raised in a convent,” she told me. “I won the good behavior prize every year I was there. I thought little girls who put extra spoons of sugar in their chocolate went to hell for gluttony. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as profanity until I was eighteen. The first time I heard any I damned near fainted.” She spit on the rug in front of her, tilted her chair back, put her crossed feet on my bed, and asked: “What do you think of that?”

I pushed her feet off the bed and said:

“I was raised in a water-front saloon. Keep your saliva off my floor or I’ll toss you out on your neck.”

“Let’s have another drink first. Listen, what’ll you give me for the inside story of how the boys didn’t lose anything building the City Hall– the story that was in the papers I sold Donald Willsson?”

“That doesn’t click with me. Try another.”

“How about why the first Mrs. Lew Yard was sent to the insane asylum?”

“No.”

“King, our sheriff, eight thousand dollars in debt four years ago, now the owner of as nice a collection of downtown business blocks as you’d Want to see. I can’t give you all of it, but I can show you where to get it.”

“Keep trying,” I encouraged her.

“No. You don’t want to buy anything. You’re just hoping you’ll pick up something for nothing. This isn’t bad Scotch. Where’d you get it?”

“Brought it from San Francisco with me.”

“What’s the idea of not wanting any of this information I’m offering? Think you can get it cheaper?”

“Information of that kind’s not much good to me now. I’ve got to move quick. I need dynamite–something to blow them apart.”

She laughed and jumped up, her big eyes sparkling.

“I’ve got one of Lew Yard’s cards. Suppose we sent the bottle of Dewar you copped to Pete with the card. Wouldn’t he take it as a declaration of war? If Cedar Hill was a liquor cache, it was Pete’s. Wouldn’t the bottle and Lew’s card make him think Noonan had knocked the place over under orders?”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *