The Little Sister (24 page)

“Leila told me she told him,” I said. “If necessary Leila would tell the world she told him. Just as she would tell the world she killed Steelgrave—if that was the only way out. Leila is a sort of free-and-easy Hollywood babe that doesn’t have very good morals. But when it comes to bedrock guts—she has what it takes. She’s not the ice pick type. And she’s not the blood-money type.”

The color flowed away from her face and left her as pale as ice. Her mouth quivered, then tightened up hard into a little knot. She pushed her chair back and leaned forward to get up.

“Blood money,” I said quietly. “Your own brother. And you set him up so they could kill him. A thousand dollars blood money. I hope you’ll be happy with it.”

She stood away from the chair and took a couple of steps backward. Then suddenly she giggled.

“Who could prove it?” she half squealed. “Who’s alive to prove it? You? Who are you? A cheap shyster, a nobody.” She went off into a shrill peal of laughter. “Why even twenty dollars buys you.”

I was still holding the packet of photos. I struck a match and dropped the negative into the ashtray and watched it flare up.

She stopped dead, frozen in a kind of horror. I started to tear the pictures up into strips. I grinned at her.

“A cheap shyster,” I said. “Well, what would you expect. I don’t have any brothers or sisters to sell out. So I sell out my clients.”

She stood rigid and glaring. I finished my tearing-up job and lit the scraps of paper in the tray.

“One thing I regret,” I said. “Not seeing your meeting back in Manhattan, Kansas, with dear old Mom. Not seeing the fight over how to split that grand. I bet that would be something to watch.”

I poked at the paper with a pencil to keep it burning. She came slowly, step by step, to the desk and her eyes were fixed on the little smoldering heap of torn prints.

“I could tell the police,” she whispered. “I could tell them a lot of things. They’d believe me.”

“I could tell them who shot Steelgrave,” I said. “Because I know who didn’t. They might believe me.”

The small head jerked up. The light glinted on the glasses. There were no eyes behind them.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going to. It wouldn’t cost me enough. And it would cost somebody else too much.”

The telephone rang and she jumped a foot. I turned and reached for it and put my face against it and said, “Hello.”

“Amigo, are you all right?”

There was a sound in the background. I swung around and saw the door click shut. I was alone in the room.

“Are you all right, amigo?”

“I’m tired. I’ve been up all night. Apart from—”

“Has the little one called you up?”

“The little sister? She was just in here. She’s on her way back to Manhattan with the swag.”

“The swag?”

“The pocket money she got from Steelgrave for fingering her brother.”

There was a silence, then she said gravely, “You cannot know that, amigo.”

“Like I know I’m sitting leaning on this desk holding on to this telephone. Like I know I hear your voice. And not quite so certainly, but certainly enough like I know who shot Steelgrave.”

“You are somewhat foolish to say that to me, amigo. I am not above reproach. You should not trust me too much.”

“I make mistakes, but this won’t be one. I’ve burned all the photographs. I tried to sell them to Orfamay. She wouldn’t bid high enough.”

“Surely you are making fun, amigo.”

“Am I? Who of?”

She tinkled her laugh over the wire. “Would you like to take me to lunch?”

“I might. Are you home?”

“I’ll come over in a little while.”

“But I shall be delighted.” I hung up.

The play was over. I was sitting in the empty theater. The curtain was down and projected on it dimly I could see the action. But already some of the actors were getting vague and unreal. The little sister above all. In a couple of days I would forget what she looked like. Because in a way she was so unreal. I thought of her tripping back to Manhattan, Kansas, and dear old Mom, with that fat little new little thousand dollars in her purse. A few people had been killed so she could get it, but I didn’t think that would bother her for long. I thought of her getting down to the office in the morning—what was the man’s name? Oh yes. Dr. Zugsmith—and dusting off his desk before he arrived and arranging the magazines in the waiting room. She’d have her rimless cheaters on and a plain dress and her face would be without make-up and her manners to the patients would be most correct.

“Dr. Zugsmith will see you now, Mrs. Whoosis.”

She would hold the door open with a little smile and Mrs. Whoosis would go in past her and Dr. Zugsmith would be sitting behind his desk as professional as hell with a white coat on and his stethoscope hanging around his neck. A case file would be in front of him and his note pad and prescription pad would be neatly squared off. Nothing that Dr. Zugsmith didn’t know. You couldn’t fool him. He had it all at his fingertips. When he looked at a patient he knew the answers to all the questions he was going to ask just as a matter of form.

When he looked at his receptionist, Miss Orfamay Quest, he saw a nice quiet young lady, properly dressed for a doctor’s office, no red nails, no loud make-up, nothing to offend the old-fashioned type of customer. An ideal receptionist, Miss Quest.

Dr. Zugsmith, when he thought about her at all thought of her with self-satisfaction. He had made her what she was. She was just what the doctor ordered.

Most probably he hadn’t made a pass at her yet. Maybe they don’t in those small towns. Ha, ha! I grew up in one.

I changed position and looked at my watch and got that bottle of Old Forester up out of the drawer after all. I sniffed it. It smelled good. I poured myself a good stiff jolt and held it up against the light.

“Well, Dr. Zugsmith,” I said out loud, just as if he was sitting there on the other side of the desk with a drink in his hand, “I don’t know you very well and you don’t know me at all. Ordinarily I don’t believe in giving advice to strangers, but I’ve had a short intensive course of Miss Orfamay Quest and I’m breaking my rule. If ever that little girl wants anything from you, give it to her quick. Don’t stall around or gobble about your income tax and your overhead. Just wrap yourself in a smile and shell out. Don’t get involved in any discussions about what belongs to who. Keep the little girl happy, that’s the main thing. Good luck to you, Doctor, and don’t leave any harpoons lying around the office.”

I drank off half of my drink and waited for it to warm me up. When it did that I drank the rest and put the bottle away.

I knocked the cold ashes out of my pipe and refilled it from the leather humidor an admirer had given me for Christmas, the admirer by an odd coincidence having the same name as mine.

When I had the pipe filled I lit it carefully, without haste, and went on out and down the hall, as breezy as a Britisher coming in from a tiger hunt.

34

The Chateau Bercy was old but made over. It had the sort of lobby that asks for plush and india-rubber plants, but gets glass brick, cornice lighting, three-cornered glass tables, and a general air of having been redecorated by a parolee from a nut hatch. Its color scheme was bile green, linseed-poultice brown, sidewalk gray and monkey-bottom blue. It was as restful as a split lip.

The small desk was empty but the mirror behind it could be diaphanous, so I didn’t try to sneak up the stairs. I rang a bell and a large soft man oozed out from behind a wall and smiled at me with moist soft lips and bluish-white teeth and unnaturally bright eyes.

“Miss Gonzales,” I said. “Name’s Marlowe. She’s expecting me.”

“Why, yes of course,” he said, fluttering his hands. “Yes, of course. I’ll telephone up at once.” He had a voice that fluttered too. He picked up the telephone and gurgled into it and put it down.

“Yes, Mr. Marlowe. Miss Gonzales says to come right up. Apartment 412.” He giggled. “But I suppose you know.”

“I know now,” I said. “By the way were you here last February?”

“Last February? Last February? Oh yes, I was here last February.” He pronounced it exactly as spelled.

“Remember the night Stein got chilled out front?”

The smile went away from the fat face in a hurry. “Are you a police officer?” His voice was now thin and reedy.

“No. But your pants are unzipped, if you care.”

He looked down with horror and zipped them up with hands that almost trembled.

“Why thank you,” he said. “Thank you.” He leaned across the low desk. “It was not exactly out front,” he said. “That is not exactly. It was almost to the next corner.

“Living here, wasn’t he?”

“I’d really rather not talk about it. Really I’d rather not talk about it.” He paused and ran his pinkie along his lower lip. “Why do you ask?”

“Just to keep you talking. You want to be more careful, bud. I can smell it on your breath.”

The pink flowed all over him right down to his neck. “If you suggest I have been drinking—”

“Only tea,” I said. “And not from a cup.”

I turned away. He was silent. As I reached the elevator I looked back. He stood with his hands flat on the desk and his head strained around to watch me. Even from a distance he seemed to be trembling.

The elevator was self-service. The fourth floor was cool gray, the carpet thick. There was a small bell push beside Apartment 412. It chimed softly inside. The door was swung open instantly. The beautiful deep dark eyes looked at me and the red red mouth smiled at me. Black slacks and the flame-colored shirt, just like last night.

“Amigo,” she said softly. She put her arms out. I took hold of her wrists and brought them together and made her palms touch. I played pat-a-cake with her for a moment. The expression in her eyes was languorous and fiery at the same time.

I let go of her wrists, closed the door with my elbow and slid past her. It was like the first time.

“You ought to carry insurance on those,” I said touching one. It was real enough. The nipple was as hard as a ruby.

She went into her joyous laugh. I went on in and looked the place over. It was French gray and dusty blue. Not her colors, but very nice. There was a false fireplace with gas logs, and enough chairs and tables and lamps, but not too many. There was a neat little cellarette in the corner.

“You like my little apartment, amigo?”

“Don’t say little apartment. That sounds like a whore too.”

I didn’t look at her. I didn’t want to look at her. I sat down on a davenport and rubbed a hand across my forehead.

“Four hours sleep and a couple of drinks,” I said. “And I’d be able to talk nonsense to you again. Right now I’ve barely strength to talk sense. But I’ve got to.”

She came to sit close to me. I shook my head. “Over there. I really do have to talk sense.”

She sat down opposite and looked at me with grave dark eyes. “But yes, amigo, whatever you wish. I am your girl—at least I would gladly be your girl.”

“Where did you live in Cleveland?”

“In Cleveland?” Her voice was very soft, almost cooing. “Did I say I had lived in Cleveland?”

“You said you knew him there.”

She thought back and then nodded. “I was married then, amigo. What is the matter?”

“You did live in Cleveland then?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“You got to know Steelgrave how?”

“It was just that in those days it was fun to know a gangster. A form of inverted snobbery, I suppose. One went to the places where they were said to go and if one was lucky, perhaps some evening—”

“You let him pick you up.”

She nodded brightly. “Let us say
I
picked
him
up. He was a very nice little man. Really, he was.”

“What about the husband?
Your
husband. Or don’t you remember?”

She smiled. “The streets of the world are paved with discarded husbands,” she said.

“Isn’t it the truth? You find them everywhere. Even in Bay City.”

That bought me nothing. She shrugged politely. “I would not doubt it.”

“Might even be a graduate of the Sorbonne. Might even be mooning away in a measly small-town practice. Waiting and hoping. That’s one coincidence I’d like to eat. It has a touch of poetry.”

The polite smile stayed in place on her lovely face.

“We’ve slipped far apart,” I said. “Ever so far. And we got to be pretty clubby there for a while.”

I looked down at my fingers. My head ached. I wasn’t even forty per cent of what I ought to be. She reached me a crystal cigarette box and I took one. She fitted one for herself into the golden tweezers. She took it from a different box.

“I’d like to try one of yours,” I said.

“But Mexican tobacco is so harsh to most people.”

“As long as it’s tobacco,” I said, watching her. I made up my mind. “No, you’re right. I wouldn’t like it.”

“What,” she asked carefully, “is the meaning of this by-play?”

“Desk clerk’s a muggle-smoker.”

She nodded slowly. “I have warned him,” she said. “Several times.”

“Amigo,” I said.

“What?”

“You don’t use much Spanish do you? Perhaps you don’t know much Spanish. Amigo gets worn to shreds.”

“We are not going to be like yesterday afternoon, I hope,” she said slowly.

“We’re not. The only thing Mexican about you is a few words and a careful way of talking that’s supposed to give the impression of a person speaking a language they had to learn. Like saying ‘do not’ instead of ‘don’t.’ That sort of thing.”

She didn’t answer. She puffed gently on her cigarette and smiled.

“I’m in bad trouble downtown,” I went on. “Apparently Miss Weld had the good sense to tell it to her boss—Julius Oppenheimer—and he came through. Got Lee Farrell for her. I don’t think they think she shot Steelgrave. But they think I know who did, and they don’t love me any more.”

“And do you know, amigo?”

“Told you over the phone I did.”

She looked at me steadily for a longish moment. “I was there.” Her voice had a dry serious sound for once.

“It was very curious, really. The little girl wanted to see the gambling house. She had never seen anything like that and there had been in the papers—”

“She was staying here—with you?”

“Not in my apartment, amigo. In a room I got for her here.”

“No wonder she wouldn’t tell me,” I said. “But I guess you didn’t have time to teach her the business.”

She frowned very slightly and made a motion in the air with the brown cigarette. I watched its smoke write something unreadable in the still air.

“Please. As I was saying she wanted to go to that house. So I called him up and he said to come along. When we got there he was drunk. I have never seen him drunk before. He laughed and put his arm around little Orfamay and told her she had earned her money well. He said he had something for her, then he took from his pocket a billfold wrapped in a cloth of some kind and gave it to her. When she unwrapped it there was a hole in the middle of it and the hole was stained with blood.”

“That wasn’t nice,” I said. “I wouldn’t even call it characteristic.”

“You did not know him very well.”

“True. Go on.”

“Little Orfamay took the billfold and stared at it and then stared at him and her white little face was very still. Then she thanked him and opened her bag to put the billfold in it, as I thought—it was all very curious—”

“A scream,” I said. “It would have had me gasping on the floor.”

“—but instead she took a gun out of her bag. It was a gun he had given Mavis, I think. It was like the one—”

“I know exactly what it was like,” I said. “I played with it some.”

“She turned around and shot him dead with one shot. It was very dramatic.”

She put the brown cigarette back in her mouth and smiled at me. A curious, rather distant smile, as if she was thinking of something far away.

“You made her confess to Mavis Weld,” I said. She nodded.

“Mavis wouldn’t have believed
you
, I guess.”

“I did not care to risk it.”

“It wasn’t you gave Orfamay the thousand bucks, was it, darling? To make her tell? She’s a little girl who would go a long way for a thousand bucks.”

“I do not care to answer that,” she said with dignity.

“No. So last night when you rushed me out there, you already knew he was dead and there wasn’t anything to be afraid of and all that act with the gun was just an act.”

“I do not like to play God,” she said softly. “There was a situation and I knew that somehow or other you would get Mavis out of it. There was no one else who would. Mavis was determined to take the blame.”

“I better have a drink,” I said. “I’m sunk.”

She jumped up and went to the little cellarette. She came back with a couple of huge glasses of Scotch and water. She handed me one and watched me over her glass as I tried it out. It was wonderful. I drank some more. She sank down into her chair again, and reached for the golden tweezers.

“I chased her out,” I said, finally. “Mavis, I’m talking about. She told me she had shot him. She had the gun. The twin of the one you gave me. You didn’t probably notice that yours had been fired.”

“I know very little about guns,” she said softly.

“Sure. I counted the shells in it, and assuming it had been full to start with, two had been fired. Quest was killed with two shots from a .32 automatic. Same caliber. I picked up the empty shells in the den down there.”

“Down where, amigo?”

It was beginning to grate. Too much amigo, far too much.

“Of course I couldn’t know it was the same gun, but it seemed worth trying out. Only confuse things up a little anyhow, and give Mavis that much break. So I switched guns on him, and put his behind the bar. His was a black .38. More like what he would carry, if he carried one at all. Even with a checked grip you can leave prints, but with an ivory grip you’re apt to leave a fair set of finger marks on the left side. Steelgrave wouldn’t carry that kind of gun.”

Her eyes were round and empty and puzzled. “I am afraid I am not following you too well.”

“And if he killed a man he would kill him dead, and be sure of it. This guy got up and walked a bit.”

A flash of something showed in her eyes and was gone.

“I’d like to say he talked a bit,” I went on. “But he didn’t. His lungs were full of blood. He died at my feet. Down there.”

“But down where? You have not told me where it was that this—”

“Do I have to?”

She sipped from her glass. She smiled. She put the glass down. I said: “You were present when little Orfamay told him where to go.”

“Oh yes, of course.” Nice recovery. Fast and clean. But her smile looked a little more tired.

“Only he didn’t go,” I said.

Her cigarette stopped in midair. That was all. Nothing else. It went on slowly to her lips. She puffed elegantly.

“That’s what’s been the matter all along,” I said. “I just wouldn’t buy what was staring me in the face. Steelgrave is Weepy Moyer. That’s solid, isn’t it?”

“Most certainly. And it can be proved.”

“Steelgrave is a reformed character and doing fine. Then this Stein comes out bothering him, wanting to cut in. I’m guessing, but that’s about how it would happen. Okay, Stein has to go. Steelgrave doesn’t want to kill anybody—and he has never been accused of killing anybody. The Cleveland cops wouldn’t come out and get him. No charges pending. No mystery—except that he had been connected with a mob in some capacity. But he has to get rid of Stein. So he gets himself pinched. And then he gets out of jail by bribing the jail doctor, and he kills Stein and goes back into jail at once. When the killing shows up whoever let him out of jail is going to run like hell and destroy any records there might be of his going out. Because the cops will come over and ask questions.”