The Little Sister (17 page)

I looked at the watch again. I listened. The building seemed quiet this afternoon. After a while it would be silent and then the madonna of the dark-gray mop would come shuffling along the hall, trying doorknobs.

I put my coat back on and locked the communicating door and switched off the buzzer and let myself out into the hallway. And then the phone rang. I nearly took the door off its hinges getting back to it. It was her voice all right, but it had a tone I had never heard before. A cool balanced tone, not flat or empty or dead, or even childish. Just the voice of a girl I didn’t know and yet did know. What was in that voice I knew before she said more than three words.

“I called you up because you told me to,” she said. “But you don’t have to tell me anything. I went down there.”

I was holding the phone with both hands.

“You went down there,” I said. “Yes. I heard that. So?”

“I—borrowed a car,” she said. “I parked across the street. There were so many cars you would never have noticed me. There’s a funeral home there. I wasn’t following you. I tried to go after you when you came out but I don’t know the streets down there at all. I lost you. So I went back.”

“What did you go back for?”

“I don’t really know. I thought you looked kind of funny when you came out of the house. Or maybe I just had a feeling. He being my brother and all. So I went back and rang the bell. And nobody answered the door. I thought that was funny too. Maybe I’m psychic or something. All of a sudden I seemed to have to get into that house. And I didn’t know how to do it, but I had to.”

“That’s happened to me,” I said, and it was my voice, but somebody had been using my tongue for sandpaper.

“I called the police and told them I had heard shots,” she said. “They came and one of them got into the house through a window. And then he let the other one in. And after a while they let me in. And then they wouldn’t let me go. I had to tell them all about it, who he was, and that I had lied about the shots, but I was afraid something had happened to Orrin. And I had to tell them about you too.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I’d have told them myself as soon as I could get a chance to tell you.”

“It’s kind of awkward for you, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Will they arrest you or something?”

“They could.”

“You left him lying there on the floor. Dead. You had to, I guess.”

“I had my reasons,” I said. “They won’t sound too good, but I had them. It made no difference to him.”

“Oh you’d have your reasons all right,” she said. “You’re very smart. You’d always have reasons for things. Well, I guess you’ll have to tell the police your reasons too.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Oh yes, you will,” the voice said, and there was a ring of pleasure in it I couldn’t account for. “You certainly will. They’ll make you.”

“We won’t argue about that,” I said. “In my business a fellow does what he can to protect a client. Sometimes he goes a little too far. That’s what I did. I’ve put myself where they can hurt me. But not entirely for you.”

“You left him lying on the floor, dead,” she said. “And I don’t care what they do to you. If they put you in prison, I think I would like that. I bet you’ll be awfully brave about it.”

“Sure,” I said. “Always a gay smile. Do you see what he had in his hand?”

“He didn’t have anything in his hand.”

“Well, lying near his hand.”

“There wasn’t anything. There wasn’t anything at all. What sort of thing?”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I’m glad of that. Well, goodbye. I’m going down to headquarters now. They want to see me. Good luck, if I don’t see you again.”

“You’d better keep your good luck,” she said. “You might need it. And I wouldn’t want it.”

“I did my best for you,” I said. “Perhaps if you’d given me a little more information in the beginning—”

She hung up while I was saying it.

I put the phone down in its cradle as gently as if it was a baby. I got out a handkerchief and wiped the palms of my hands. I went over to the washbasin and washed my hands and face. I sloshed cold water on my face and dried off hard with the towel and looked at it in the mirror.

“You drove off a cliff all right,” I said to the face.

24

The center of the room was a long yellow oak table. Its edges were unevenly grooved with cigarette burns. Behind it was a window with wire over the stippled glass. Also behind it with a mess of papers spread out untidily in front of him was Detective-Lieutenant Fred Beifus. At the end of the table leaning back on two legs of an armchair was a big burly man whose face had for me the vague familiarity of a face previously seen in a halftone on newsprint. He had a jaw like a park bench. He had the butt end of a carpenter’s pencil between his teeth. He seemed to be awake and breathing, but apart from that he just sat.

There were two roll top desks at the other side of the table and there was another window. One of the roll top desks was backed to the window. A woman with orange-colored hair was typing out a report on a typewriter stand beside the desk. At the other desk, which was endways to the window, Christy French sat in a tilted-back swivel chair with his feet on the corner of the desk. He was looking out of the window, which was open and afforded a magnificent view of the police parking lot and the back of a billboard.

“Sit down there,” Beifus said, pointing.

I sat down across from him in a straight oak chair without arms. It was far from new and when new had not been beautiful.

“This is Lieutenant Moses Maglashan of the Bay City police,” Beifus said. “He don’t like you any better than we do.”

Lieutenant Moses Maglashan took the carpenter’s pencil out of his mouth and looked at the teeth marks in the fat octagonal pencil butt. Then he looked at me. His eyes went over me slowly exploring me, noting me, cataloging me. He said nothing. He put the pencil back in his mouth.

Beifus said: “Maybe I’m a queer, but for me you don’t have no more sex appeal than a turtle.” He half turned to the typing woman in the corner. “Millie.”

She swung around from the typewriter to a shorthand notebook. “Name’s Philip Marlowe,” Beifus said. “With an ‘e’ on the end, if you’re fussy. License number?”

He looked back at me. I told him. The orange queen wrote without looking up. To say she had a face that would have stopped a clock would have been to insult her. It would have stopped a runaway horse.

“Now if you’re in the mood,” Beifus told me, “you could start in at the beginning and give us all the stuff you left out yesterday. Don’t try to sort it out. Just let it flow natural. We got enough stuff to check you as you go along.”

“You want me to make a statement?”

“A very full statement,” Beifus said. “Fun, huh?”

“This statement is to be voluntary and without coercion?”

“Yeah. They all are.” Beifus grinned.

Maglashan looked at me steadily for a moment. The orange queen turned back to her typing. Nothing for her yet. Thirty years of it had perfected her timing.

Maglashan took a heavy worn pigskin glove out of his pocket and put it on his right hand and flexed his fingers.

“What’s that for?” Beifus asked him.

“I bite my nails times,” Maglashan said. “Funny. Only bite ‘em on my right hand.” He raised his slow eyes to stare at me. “Some guys are more voluntary than others,” he said idly. “Something to do with the kidneys, they tell me. I’ve known guys of the not so voluntary type that had to go to the can every fifteen minutes for weeks after they got voluntary. Couldn’t seem to hold water.”

“Just think of that,” Beifus said wonderingly.

“Then there’s the guys can’t talk above a husky whisper,” Maglashan went on. “Like punch-drunk fighters that have stopped too many with their necks.”

Maglashan looked at me. It seemed to be my turn.

“Then there’s the type that won’t go to the can at all,” I said. “They try too hard. Sit in a chair like this for thirty hours straight. Then they fall down and rupture a spleen or burst a bladder. They over co-operate. And after sunrise court, when the tank is empty, you find them dead in a dark corner. Maybe they ought to have seen a doctor, but you can’t figure everything, can you, Lieutenant?”

“We figure pretty close down in Bay City,” he said. “When we got anything to figure with.”

There were hard lumps of muscle at the corners of his jaws. His eyes had a reddish glare behind them.

“I could do lovely business with you,” he said staring at me. “Just lovely.”

“I’m sure you could, Lieutenant. I’ve always had a swell time in Bay City—while I stayed conscious.”

“I’d keep you conscious a long long time, baby. I’d make a point of it. I’d give it my personal attention.”

Christy French turned his head slowly and yawned. “What makes you Bay City cops so tough?” he asked. “You pickle your nuts in salt water or something?”

Beifus put his tongue out so that the tip showed and ran it along his lips.

“We’ve always been tough,” Maglashan said, not looking at him. “We like to be tough. Jokers like this character here keep us tuned up.” He turned back to me. “So you’re the sweetheart that phoned in about Clausen. You’re right handy with a pay phone, ain’t you, sweetheart?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m talking to you, sweetheart,” Maglashan said. “I asked you a question, sweetheart. When I ask a question I get answered. Get that, sweetheart?”

“Keep on talking and you’ll answer yourself,” Christy French said. “And maybe you won’t like the answer, and maybe you’ll be so damn tough you’ll have to knock yourself out with that glove. Just to prove it.”

Maglashan straightened up. Red spots the size of half-dollars glowed dully on his cheeks.

“I come up here to get co-operation,” he told French slowly. “The big razzoo I can get to home. From my wife. Here I don’t expect the wise numbers to work out on me.”

“You’ll get co-operation,” French said. “Just don’t try to steal the picture with that nineteen-thirty dialogue.” He swung his chair around and looked at me. “Let’s take out a clean sheet of paper and play like we’re just starting this investigation. I know all your arguments. I’m no judge of them. The point is do you want to talk or get booked as a material witness?”

“Ask the questions,” I said. “If you don’t like the answers, you can book me. If you book me, I get to make a phone call.”

“Correct,” French said, “if we book you. But we don’t have to. We can ride the circuit with you. It might take days.”

“And canned cornbeef hash to eat,” Beifus put in cheerfully.

“Strictly speaking, it wouldn’t be legal,” French said. “But we do it all the time. Like you do a few things which you hadn’t ought to do maybe. Would you say you were legal in this picture?”

“No.”

Maglashan let out a deep throated, “Ha!”

I looked across at the orange queen who was back to her notebook, silent and indifferent.

“You got a client to protect,” French said.

“Maybe.”

“You mean you did have a client. She ratted on you.”

I said nothing.

“Name’s Orfamay Quest,” French said, watching me.

“Ask your questions,” I said.

“What happened down there on Idaho Street?”

“I went there looking for her brother. He’d moved away, she said, and she’d come out here to see him. She was worried. The manager, Clausen, was too drunk to talk sense. I looked at the register and saw another man had moved into Quest’s room. I talked to this man. He told me nothing that helped.”

French reached around and picked a pencil off the desk and tapped it against his teeth. “Ever see this man again?”

“Yes. I told him who I was. When I went back downstairs Clausen was dead. And somebody had torn a page out of the register. The page with Quest’s name on it. I called the police.”

“But you didn’t stick around?”

“I had no information about Clausen’s death.”

“But you didn’t stick around,” French repeated. Maglashan made a savage noise in his throat and threw the carpenter’s pencil clear across the room. I watched it bounce against the wall and floor and come to a stop.

“That’s correct,” I said.

“In Bay City,” Maglashan said, “we could murder you for that.”

“In Bay City you could murder me for wearing a blue tie,” I said.

He started to get up. Beifus looked sideways at him and said: “Leave Christy handle it. There’s always a second show.”

“We could break you for that,” French said to me without inflexion.

“Consider me broke,” I said. “I never liked the business anyway.”

“So you came back to your office. What then?”

“I reported to the client. Then a guy called me up and asked me over to the Van Nuys Hotel. He was the same guy I had talked to down on Idaho Street, but with a different name.”

“You could have told us that, couldn’t you?”

“If I had, I’d have had to tell you everything. That would have violated the conditions of my employment.”

French nodded and tapped his pencil. He said slowly: “A murder wipes out agreements like that. Two murders ought to do it double. And two murders by the same method, treble. You don’t look good, Marlowe. You don’t look good at all.”

“I don’t even look good to the client,” I said, “after today.”

“What happened today?”

“She told me her brother had called her up from this doctor’s house. Dr. Lagardie. The brother was in danger. I was to hurry on down and take care of him. I hurried on down. Dr. Lagardie and his nurse had the office closed. They acted scared. The police had been there.” I looked at Maglashan.

“Another of his phone calls,” Maglashan snarled.

“Not me this time,” I said.

“All right. Go on,” French said, after a pause.

“Lagardie denied knowing anything about Orrin Quest. He sent his nurse home. Then he slipped me a doped cigarette and I went away from there for a while. When I came to I was alone in the house. Then I wasn’t. Orrin Quest, or what was left of him, was scratching at the door. He fell through it and died as I opened it. With his last ounce of strength he tried to stick me with an ice pick.” I moved my shoulders. The place between them was a little stiff and sore, nothing more.

French looked hard at Maglashan. Maglashan shook his head, but French kept on looking at him. Beifus began to whistle under his breath. I couldn’t make out the tune at first, and then I could. It was “Old Man Mose is Dead.”

French turned his head and said slowly: “No ice pick was found by the body.”

“I left it where it fell,” I said.

Maglashan said: “Looks like I ought to be putting on my glove again.” He stretched it between his fingers. Somebody’s a goddamn liar and it ain’t me.”

“All right,” French said. “All right. Let’s not be theatrical. Suppose the kid did have an ice pick in his hand, that doesn’t prove he was born holding one.”

“Filed down,” I said. “Short. Three inches from the handle to the tip of the point. That’s not the way they come from the hardware store.”

“Why would he want to stick you?” Beifus asked with a derisive grin. “You were his pal. You were down there to keep him safe for his sister.”

“I was just something between him and the light,” I said. “Something that moved and could have been a man and could have been the man that hurt him. He was dying on his feet. I’d never seen him before. If he ever saw me, I didn’t know it.”

“It could have been a beautiful friendship,” Beifus said with a sigh. “Except for the ice pick, of course.”

“And the fact that he had it in his hand and tried to stick me with it could mean something.”

“For instance what?”

“A man in his condition acts from instinct. He doesn’t invent new techniques. He got me between the shoulder blades, a sting, the feeble last effort of a dying man. Maybe it would have been a different place and a much deeper penetration if he had had his health.”

Maglashan said: “How much longer we have to barber round with this monkey? You talk to him like he was human. Leave me talk to him my way.”

“The captain doesn’t like it,” French said casually.

“Hell with the captain.”

“The captain doesn’t like small-town cops saying the hell with him,” French said.

Maglashan clamped his teeth tight and the line of his jaw showed white. His eyes narrowed and glistened. He took a deep breath through his nose.

“Thanks for the co-operation,” he said and stood up. “I’ll be on my way.” He rounded the corner of the table and stopped beside me. He put his left hand out and tilted my chin up again.

“See you again, sweetheart. In my town.”

He lashed me across the face twice with the wrist end of the glove. The buttons stung sharply. I put my hand up and rubbed my lower lip.

French said: “For Chrissake, Maglashan, sit down and let the guy speak his piece. And keep your hands off him.”

Maglashan looked back at him and said: “Think you can make me?”

French just shrugged. After a moment Maglashan rubbed his big hand across his mouth and strolled back to his chair. French said:

“Let’s have your ideas about all this, Marlowe.”

“Among other things Clausen was probably pushing reefers,” I said. “I sniffed marijuana smoke in his apartment. A tough little guy was counting money in the kitchen when I got there. He had a gun and a sharpened rat-tail file, both of which he tried to use on me. I took them away from him and he left. He would be the runner. But Clausen was liquored to a point where you wouldn’t want to trust him any more. They don’t go for that in the organizations. The runner thought I was a dick. Those people wouldn’t want Clausen picked up. He would be too easy to milk. The minute they smelled dick around the house Clausen would be missing.”