14
It was ten minutes to five when I parked near the lobby entrance of the apartment house on Randall Place. A few windows were lit and radios were bleating at the dusk. I rode the automatic elevator up to the fourth floor and went along a wide hail carpeted in green and paneled in ivory. A cool breeze blew down the hail from the open screened door to the fire escape.
There was a small ivory pushbutton beside the door marked “405.” I pushed it and waited what seemed a long time. Then the door opened noiselessly about a foot. There was a steady, furtive air in the way it opened. The man was long-legged, long-waisted, high-shouldered and he had dark brown eyes in a brown expressionless face that had learned to control its expressions long ago. Hair like steel wool grew far back on his head and gave him a great deal of domed brown forehead that might at a careless glance have seemed a dwelling place for brains. His somber eyes probed at me impersonally. His long thin brown fingers held the edge of the door. He said nothing.
I said: “Geiger?”
Nothing in the man’s face changed that I could see. He brought a cigarette from behind the door and tucked it between his lips and drew a little smoke from it. The smoke came towards me in a lazy, contemptuous puff and behind it words in a cool, unhurried voice that had no more inflection than the voice of a faro dealer.
“You said what?”
“Geiger. Arthur Gwynn Geiger. The guy that has the books.”
The man considered that without any haste. He glanced down at the tip of his cigarette. His other hand, the one that had been holding the door, dropped out of sight. His shoulder had a look as though his hidden hand might be making motions.
“Don’t know anybody by that name,” he said. “Does he live around here?”
I smiled. He didn’t like the smile. His eyes got nasty. I said: “You’re Joe Brody?”
The brown face hardened. “So what? Got a grift, brother—or just amusing yourself?”
“So you’re Joe Brody,” I said. “And you don’t know anybody named Geiger. That’s very funny.”
“Yeah? You got a funny sense of humor maybe. Take it away and play on it somewhere else.”
I leaned against the door and gave him a dreamy smile. “You got the books, Joe. I got the sucker list. We ought to talk things over.”
He didn’t shift his eyes from my face. There was a faint sound in the room behind him, as though a metal curtain ring clicked lightly on a metal rod. He glanced sideways into the room. He opened the door wider.
“Why not—if you think you’ve got something?” he said coolly. He stood aside from the door. 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 opened on a stone porch and looked across the dusk at the foothills. Near the windows a closed door in the west wall and near the entrance door another door in the same wall. This last had a plush curtain drawn across it on a thin brass rod below the lintel.
That left the east wail, in which there were no doors. There was a davenport backed against the middle of it, so I sat down on the davenport. Brody shut the door and walked crab-fashion to a tall oak desk studded with square nails. A cedarwood box with gilt hinges lay on the lowered leaf of the desk. He carried the box to an easy chair midway between the other two doors and sat down. I dropped my hat on the davenport and waited.
“Well, I’m listening,” Brody said. He opened the cigar box and dropped his cigarette stub into a dish at his side. He put a long thin cigar in his mouth. “Cigar?” He tossed one at me through the air.
I reached for it. Brody took a gun out of the cigar box and pointed it at my nose. I looked at the gun. It was a black Police .39. I had no argument against it at the moment.
“Neat, huh?” Brody said. “Just kind of stand up a minute. Come forward just about two yards. You might grab a little air while you’re doing that.” His voice was the elaborately casual voice of the tough guy in pictures. Pictures have made them all like that.
“Tsk, tsk,” I said, not moving at all. “Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains. You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail. Put it down and don’t be silly, Joe.”
His eyebrows came together and he pushed his chin at me. His eyes were mean.
“The other guy’s name is Eddie Mars,” I said. “Ever hear of him?”
“No.” Brody kept the gun pointed at me.
“If he ever gets wise to where you were last night in the rain, he’ll wipe you off the way a check raiser wipes a check.”
“What would I be to Eddie Mars?” Brody asked coldly. But he lowered the gun to his knee.
“Not even a memory,” I said.
We stared at each other. I didn’t look at the pointed black slipper that showed under the plush curtain on the doorway to my left.
Brody said quietly: “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a tough guy—just careful. I don’t know hell’s first whisper about you. You might be a lifetaker for all I know.”
“You’re not careful enough,” I said. “That play with Geiger’s books was terrible.”
He drew a long slow breath and let it out silently. Then he leaned back and crossed his long legs and held the Colt on his knee.
“Don’t kid yourself I won’t use this heat, if I have to,” he said. “What’s your story?”
“Have your friend with the pointed slippers come on in. She gets tired holding her breath.”
Brody called out without moving his eyes off my stomach. “Come on in, Agnes.”
The curtain swung aside and the green-eyed, thigh-swinging ash blonde from Geiger’s store joined us in the room. She looked at me with a kind of mangled hatred. Her nostrils were pinched and her eyes had darkened a couple of shades. She looked very unhappy.
“I knew damn well you were trouble,” she snapped at me. “I told Joe to watch his step.”
“It’s not his step, it’s the back of his lap he ought to watch,” I said.
“I suppose that’s funny,” the blonde squealed.
“It has been,” I said. “But it probably isn’t any more.”
“Save the gags,” Brody advised me. “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 snicked on a light in a big square standing lamp. She sank down into a chair beside the lamp and sat stiffly, as if her girdle was too tight. I put my cigar in my mouth and bit the end off. Brody’s Colt took a close interest in me while I got matches out and lit the cigar. I tasted the smoke and said:
“The sucker list I spoke of is in code. I haven’t cracked it yet, but there are about five hundred names. You got twelve boxes of books that I know of. You should have at least five hundred books. There’ll be a bunch more out on loan, but say five hundred is the full crop, just to be cautious. If it’s a good active list and you could run it even fifty per cent down the line, that would be one hundred and twenty-five thousand rentals. Your girl friend knows an about that. I’m only guessing. Put the average rental as low as you like, but it won’t be less than a dollar. That merchandise costs money. At a dollar a rental you take one hundred and twenty-five grand and you still have your capital. I mean, you still have Geiger’s capital. That’s enough to spot a guy for.”
The blonde yelped: “You’re crazy, you goddam eggheaded–!”
Brody put his teeth sideways at her and snarled: “Pipe down, for Chrissake. Pipe down!”
She subsided into an outraged mixture of slow anguish and bottled fury. Her silvery nails scraped on her knees.
“It’s no racket for bums,” I told Brody almost affectionately. “It takes a smooth worker like you, Joe. You’ve got to get confidence and keep it. People who spend their money for second-hand sex jags are as nervous as dowagers who can’t find the rest room. Personally I think the blackmail angles are a big mistake. I’m for shedding all that and sticking to legitimate sales and rentals.”
Brody’s dark brown stare moved up and down my face. His Colt went on hungering for my vital organs. “You’re a funny guy,” he said tonelessly. “Who has this lovely racket?”
“You have,” I said. “Almost.”
The blonde choked and clawed her ear. Brody didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.
“What?” the blonde yelped. “You sit there and try to tell us Mr. Geiger ran the kind of business right down on the main drag? You’re nuts!”
I leered at her politely. “Sure I do. Everybody knows the racket exists. Hollywood’s made to order for it. If a thing like that has to exist, then right out on the street is where all practical coppers want it to exist. For the same reason they favor red light districts. They know where to flush the game when they want to.”
“My God,” the blonde wailed. “You let this cheesehead sit there and insult me, Joe? You with a gun in your hand and him holding nothing but a cigar and his thumb?”
“I like it,” Brody said. “The guy’s got good ideas. Shut your trap and keep it shut, or I’ll slap it shut for you with this.” He flicked the gun around in an increasingly negligent manner.
The blonde gasped and turned her face to the wall. Brody looked at me and said cunningly: “How have I got that lovely racket?”
“You shot Geiger to get it. Last night in the rain. It was dandy shooting weather. The trouble is he wasn’t alone when you whiffed him. Either you didn’t notice that, which seems unlikely, or you got the wind up and lammed. But you had nerve enough to take the plate out of his camera and you had nerve enough to come back later on and hide his corpse, so you could tidy up on the books before the law knew it had a murder to investigate.”
“Yah,” Brody said contemptuously. The Colt wobbled on his knee. His brown face was as hard as a piece of carved wood. “You take chances, mister. It’s kind of goddamned lucky for you I didn’t bop Geiger.”
“You can step off for it just the same,” I told him cheerfully. “You’re made to order for the rap.”
Brody’s voice rustled. “Think you got me framed for it?”
“Positive.”
“How come?”