She put her thumb up. Then she nodded and slipped past me into the hail. She touched my cheek with her fingers as she went by. “You’ll take care of Carmen, won’t you?” she cooed.
“Check.”
“You’re cute.”
“What you see is nothing,” I said. “I’ve got a Bali dancing girl tattooed on my right thigh.”
Her eyes rounded. She said: “Naughty,” and wagged a finger at me. Then she whispered: “Can I have my gun?”
“Not now. Later. I’ll bring it to you.”
She grabbed me suddenly around the neck and kissed me on the mouth. “I like you,” she said. “Carmen likes you a lot.” She ran off down the hall as gay as a thrush, waved at me from the stairs and ran down the stairs out of my sight.
I went back into Brody’s apartment.
16
I went over to the folded-back French window and looked at the small broken pane in the upper part of it. The bullet from Carmen’s gun had smashed the glass like a blow. It had not made a hole. There was a small hole in the plaster which a keen eye would find quickly enough. I pulled the drapes over the broken pane and took Carmen’s gun out of my pocket. It was a Banker’s Special, .22 caliber, hollow point cartridges. It had a pearl grip, and a small round silver plate set into the butt was engraved: “Carmen from Owen.” She made saps of all of them.
I put the gun back in my pocket and sat down close to Brody and stared into his bleak brown eyes. A minute passed. The blonde adjusted her face by the aid of a pocket mirror. Brody fumbled around with a cigarette and jerked: “Satisfied?”
“So far. Why did you put the bite on Mrs. Regan instead of the old man?”
“Tapped the old man once. About six, seven months ago. I figure maybe he gets sore enough to call in some law.”
“What made you think Mrs. Regan wouldn’t tell him about it?”
He considered that with some care, smoking his cigarette and keeping his eyes on my face. Finally he said: “How well you know her?”
“I’ve met her twice. You must know her a lot better to take a chance on that squeeze with the photo.”
“She skates around plenty. I figure maybe she has a couple of soft spots she don’t want the old man to know about. I figure she can raise five grand easy.”
“A little weak,” I said. “But pass it. You’re broke, eh?”
“I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.”
“What you do for a living?”
“Insurance. I got desk room in Puss Walgreen’s office, Fulwider Building, Western and Santa Monica.”
“When you open up, you open up. The books here in your apartment?”
He snapped his teeth and waved a brown hand. Confidence was oozing back into his manner. “Hell, no. In storage.”
“You had a man bring them here and then you had a storage outfit come and take them away again right afterwards?”
“Sure. I don’t want them moved direct from Geiger’s place, do I?”
“You’re smart,” I said admiringly. “Anything incriminating in the joint right now?”
He looked worried again. He shook his head sharply.
“That’s fine,” I told him. I looked across at Agnes. She had finished fixing her face and was staring at the wall, blank-eyed, hardly listening. Her face had the drowsiness which strain and shock induce, after their first incidence.
Brody flicked his eyes warily. “Well?”
“How’d you come by the photo?”
He scowled. “Listen, you got what you came after, got it plenty cheap. You done a nice neat job. Now go peddle it to your top man. I’m clean. I don’t know nothing about any photo, do I, Agnes?”
The blonde opened her eyes and looked at him with vague but uncomplimentary speculation. “A half smart guy,” she said with a tired sniff. “That’s all I ever draw. Never once a guy that’s smart all the way around the course. Never once.”
I grinned at her. “Did I hurt your head much?”
“You and every other man I ever met.”
I looked back at Brody. He was pinching his cigarette between his fingers, with a sort of twitch. His hand seemed to be shaking a little. His brown poker face was still smooth.
“We’ve got to agree on a story,” I said. “For instance, Carmen wasn’t here. That’s very important. She wasn’t here. That was a vision you saw.”
“Huh!” Brody sneered. “If you say so, pal, and if—” he put his hand out palm up and cupped the fingers and rolled the thumb gently against the index and middle fingers.
I nodded. “We’ll see. There might be a small contribution. You won’t count it in grands, though. Now where did you get the picture?”
“A guy slipped it to me.”
“Uh-huh. A guy you just passed in the street. You wouldn’t know him again. You never saw him before.”
Brody yawned. “It dropped out of his pocket,” he leered.
“Uh-huh. Got an alibi for last night, poker pan?”
“Sure. I was right here. Agnes was with me. Okey, Agnes?”
“I’m beginning to feel sorry for you again,” I said.
His eyes flicked wide and his mouth hung loose, the cigarette balanced on his lower lip.
“You think you’re smart and you’re so goddamned dumb,” I told him. “Even if you don’t dance off up in Quentin, you have such a bleak long lonely time ahead of you.”
His cigarette jerked and dropped ash on his vest.
“Thinking about how smart you are,” I said.
“Take the air,” he growled suddenly. “Dust. I got enough chinning with you. Beat it.”
“Okey.” I stood up and went over to the tall oak desk and took his two guns out of my pockets, laid them side by side on the blotter so that the barrels were exactly parallel. I reached my hat off the floor beside the davenport and started for the door.
Brody yelped: “Hey!”
I turned and waited. His cigarette was jiggling like a doll on a coiled spring. “Everything’s smooth, ain’t it?” he asked.
“Why, sure. This is a free country. You don’t have to stay out of jail, if you don’t want to. That is, if you’re a citizen. Are you a citizen?”
He just stared at me, jiggling the cigarette. The blonde Agnes turned her head slowly and stared at me along the same level. Their glances contained almost the exact same blend of foxiness, doubt and frustrated anger. Agnes reached her silvery nails up abruptly and yanked a hair out of her head and broke it between her fingers, with a bitter jerk.
Brody said tightly: “You’re not going to any cops, brother. Not if it’s the Sternwoods you’re working for. I’ve got too much stuff on that family. You got your pictures and you got your hush. Go and peddle your papers.”
“Make your mind up,” I said. “You told me to dust, I was on my way out, you hollered at me and I stopped, and now I’m on my way out again. Is that what you want?”
“You ain’t got anything on me,” Brody said.
“Just a couple of murders. Small change in your circle.”