“If necessary,” I said, “I’ll testify under oath that that book came from Geiger’s store. The blonde, Agnes, will admit what kind of business the store did. It’s obvious to anybody with eyes that that store is just a front for something. But the Hollywood police allowed it to operate, for their own reasons. I dare say the Grand Jury would like to know what those reasons are.”
Wilde grinned. He said: “Grand Juries do ask those embarrassing questions sometimes—in a rather vain effort to find out just why cities are run as they are run.”
Cronjager stood up suddenly and put his hat on. “I’m one against three here,” he snapped. “I’m a homicide man. If this Geiger was running indecent literature, that’s no skin off my nose. But I’m ready to admit it won’t help my division any to have it washed over in the papers. What do you birds want?”
Wilde looked at Ohls. Ohls said calmly: “I want to turn a prisoner over to you. Let’s go.”
He stood up. Cronjager looked at him fiercely and stalked out of the room. Ohls went after him. The door closed again. Wilde tapped on his desk and stared at me with his clear blue eyes.
“You ought to understand how any copper would feel about a cover-up like this,” he said. “You’ll have to make statements of all of it—at least for the files. I think it may be possible to keep the two killings separate and to keep General Sternwood’s name out of both of them. Do you know why I’m not tearing your ear off?”
“No. I expected to get both ears torn off.”
“What are you getting for it all?”
“Twenty-five dollars a day and expenses.”
“That would make fifty dollars and a little gasoline so far.”
“About that.”
He put his head on one side and rubbed the back of his left little finger along the lower edge of his chin.
“And for that amount of money you’re willing to get yourself in Dutch with half the law enforcement of this county?”
“I don’t like it,” I said. “But what the hell am I to do? I’m on a case. I’m selling what I have to sell to make a living. What little guts and intelligence the Lord gave me and a willingness to get pushed around in order to protect a client. It’s against my principles to tell as much as I’ve told tonight, without consulting the General. As for the cover-up, I’ve been in police business myself, as you know. They come a dime a dozen in any big city. Cops get very large and emphatic when an outsider tries to hide anything, but they do the same things themselves every other day, to oblige their friends or anybody with a little pull. And I’m not through. I’m still on the case. I’d do the same thing again, if I had to.”
“Providing Cronjager doesn’t get your license,” Wilde grinned. “You said you held back a couple of personal matters. Of what import?”
“I’m still on the case,” I said, and stared straight into his eyes.
Wilde smiled at me. He had the frank daring smile of an Irishman. “Let me tell you something, son. My father was a close friend of old Sternwood. I’ve done all my office permits—and maybe a good deal more—to save the old man from grief. But in the long run it can’t be done. Those girls of his are bound certain to hook up with something that can’t be hushed, especially that little blonde brat. They ought not to be running around loose. I blame the old man for that. I guess he doesn’t realize what the world is today. And there’s another thing I might mention while we’re talking man to man and I don’t have to growl at you. I’ll bet a dollar to a Canadian dime that the General’s afraid his son-in-law, the ex-bootlegger, is mixed up in this somewhere, and what he really hoped you would find out is that he isn’t. What do you think of that?”
“Regan didn’t sound like a blackmailer, what I heard of him. He had a soft spot where he was and he walked out on it.”
Wilde snorted. “The softness of that spot neither you nor I could judge. If he was a certain sort of man, it would not have been so very soft. Did the General tell you he was looking for Regan?”
“He told me he wished he knew where he was and that he was all right. He liked Regan and was hurt the way he bounced off without telling the old man good-by.”
Wilde leaned back and frowned. “I see,” he said in a changed voice. His hand moved the stuff on his desk around, laid Geiger’s blue notebook to one side and pushed the other exhibits toward me. “You may as well take these,” he said. “I’ve no further use for them.”
19
It was close to eleven when I put my car away and walked around to the front of the Hobart Arms. The plate-glass door was put on the lock at ten, so I had to get my keys out. Inside, in the square barren lobby, a man put a green evening paper down beside a potted palm and flicked a cigarette butt into the tub the palm grew in. He stood up and waved his hat at me and said: “The boss wants to talk to you. You sure keep your friends waiting, pal.”
I stood still and looked at his flattened nose and club steak ear.
“What about?”
“What do you care? Just keep your nose clean and everything will be jake.” His hand hovered near the upper buttonhole of his open coat.
“I smell of policemen,” I said. “I’m too tired to talk, too tired to eat, too tired to think. But if you think I’m not too tired to take orders from Eddie Mars—try getting your gat out before I shoot your good ear off.”
“Nuts. You ain’t got no gun.” He stared at me levelly. His dark wiry brows closed in together and his mouth made a downward curve.
“That was then,” I told him. “I’m not always naked.”
He waved his left hand. “Okey. You win. I wasn’t told to blast anybody. You’ll hear from him.”
“Too late will be too soon,” I said, and turned slowly as he passed me on his way to the door. He opened it and went out without looking back. I grinned at my own foolishness, went along to the elevator and upstairs to the apartment. I took Carmen’s little gun out of my pocket and laughed at it. Then I cleaned it thoroughly, oiled it, wrapped it in a piece of canton flannel and locked it up. I made myself a drink and was drinking it when the phone rang. I sat down beside the table on which it stood.
“So you’re tough tonight,” Eddie Mars’ voice said.
“Big, fast, tough and full of prickles. What can I do for you?”
“Cops over there—you know where. You keep me out of it?”
“Why should I?”
“I’m nice to be nice to, soldier. I’m not nice not to be nice to.”
“Listen hard and you’ll hear my teeth chattering.”
He laughed dryly. “Did you—or did you?”
“I did. I’m damned if I know why. I guess it was just complicated enough without you.”
“Thanks, soldier. Who gunned him?”
“Read it in the paper tomorrow—maybe.”
“I want to know now.”
“Do you get everything you want?”
“No. Is that an answer, soldier?”
“Somebody you never heard of gunned him. Let it go at that.”
“If that’s on the level, someday I may be able to do you a favor.”
“Hang up and let me go to bed.”
He laughed again. “You’re looking for Rusty Regan, aren’t you?”
“A lot of people seem to think I am, but I’m not.”
“If you were, I could give you an idea. Drop in and see me down at the beach. Any time. Glad to see you.”
“Maybe.”
“Be seeing you then.” The phone clicked and I sat holding it with a savage patience. Then I dialed the Sternwoods’ number and heard it ring four or five times and then the butler’s suave voice saying: “General Sternwood’s residence.”
“This is Marlowe. Remember me? I met you about a hundred years ago—or was it yesterday?”
“Yes, Mr. Marlowe. I remember, of course.”
“Is Mrs. Regan home?”
“Yes, I believe so. Would you—”
I cut in on him with a sudden change of mind. “No. You give her the message. Tell her I have the pictures, all of them, and that everything is all right.”
“Yes. . . yes. . .” The voice seemed to shake a little. “You have the pictures—all of them—and everything is all right. . . Yes, sir. I may say—thank you very much, sir.”
The phone rang back in five minutes. I had finished my drink and it made me feel as if I could eat the dinner I had forgotten all about; I went out leaving the telephone ringing. It was ringing when I came back; It rang at intervals until half-past twelve. At that time I put my lights out and opened the windows up and muffled the phone bell with a piece of paper and went to bed. I had a bellyful of the Sternwood family.
I read all three of the morning papers over my eggs and bacon the next morning. Their accounts of the affair came as close to the truth as newspaper stories usually come—as close as Mars is to Saturn. None of the three connected Owen Taylor, driver of the Lido Pier Suicide Car, with the Laurel Canyon Exotic Bungalow Slaying. None of them mentioned the Sternwoods, Bernie Ohls or me. Owen Taylor was “chauffeur to a wealthy family.” Captain Cronjager of the Hollywood Division got all the credit for solving the two slayings in his district, which were supposed to arise out of a dispute over the proceeds from a wire service maintained by one Geiger in the back of the bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard. Brody had shot Geiger and Carol Lundgren had shot Brody in revenge. Police were holding Carol Lundgren in custody. He had confessed. He had a bad record—probably in high school. Police were also holding one Agnes Lozelle, Geiger’s secretary, as a material witness.
It was a nice write-up. It gave the impression that Geiger had been killed the night before, that Brody had been killed about an hour later, and that Captain Cronjager had solved both murders while lighting a cigarette. The suicide of Taylor made Page One of Section II. There was a photo of the sedan on the deck of the power lighter, with the license plate blacked out, and something covered with a cloth lying on the deck beside the running board. Owen Taylor had been despondent and in poor health. His family lived in Dubuque, and his body would be shipped there. There would be no inquest.