“Why’d he do that?”
“He wanted her inside with him. That’s part of the deal.”
“What deal’s that, Benny?” I asked, getting a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“He lets us sleep here at night. Sometimes he gives us coffee and bread or what’s left over from his supper. He lets us use the sink and toilet in the basement.”
“And what do you have to do for all this generosity?”
“We work around the building. We carry out the garbage cans and sweep the hallways. And sometimes, when Mr. Januaria tells her to, Minnie goes inside his apartment with him.”
He was staring at me as though waiting for a reaction, as though seeing disgust on my face would finally make it impossible for him to kid himself that nothing bad was going on inside Mr. Januaria’s apartment. I tried not to show anything, but I guess he read the anger rising up in my eyes and that was enough to squeeze his heart.
“She shouldn’t have to go into his apartment when he wants her to, should she?” he said in the smallest voice you can imagine.
“I could talk to him, if you wanted me to.”
“No, no. Oh, don’t do that.”
“But if he’s abusing her in some way. If he’s taking advantage, maybe a word from me would put him wise that he better cut it out.”
He was terrified again.
“Oh, no, it’d only make him mad and he could beat us again.”
“Benny, at least let me call the cops.”
“He was crying now, begging me not to do anything like that. “They’ll put us away in different places. I’d never see Minnie again.”
I calmed him down and went back to my empty flat and my two straight-backed kitchen chairs. I took off my shoes and went to lie down in the corner. Using them for a pillow and my jacket for a blanket I thought about what some human beings will suffer in the name of love. Somehow I could understand better what Benny was doing, sleeping in the areaway, than what I’d been doing, sleeping on satin in Linda’s king-sized bed.
It was just breaking dawn when a hammering on the front door woke me up. I was as stiff as a week-old corpse. I was a bundle of broken bones shuffling across the floor to see who was being so insistent so early in the morning.
Nobody had to tell me the two characters standing there were plainclothes cops. It was written all over their kissers. One smiled and the other didn’t. One was polite and the other wasn’t.
The one without the smile walked right past me and looked the place over without asking my permission. The smiling one said, “Mr. Marlowe?”
“Mr. Bochos give you the introduction?” I asked, patting my pockets, looking for a cigarette. All I found were the usual two or three wooden kitchen matches.
He took out a pack of Camels and offered them. “My name’s Menafee. That’s Schindler over there.”
I took a cigarette, noting the unfiltered brand. “I see you’re not afraid to die.”
He took out a lighter and spun the wheel. “I’m a fatalist, I guess. When you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it.”
I waved the lighter away and snapped a kitchen match alight. “A little taste of sulfur starts the first one of the day off right.”
“A little assault and battery start the day off pretty good, too?” Schindler asked, talking from behind me.
I turned around to face him.
“I answer questions better when I can see the person asking them.”
He reached out and grabbed my wrist, pulling my hand with the scraped knuckles up closer to his face. I jerked it away, glad that he let go as quick as he did, because big as he was, and worn out as I was, I would have lost a bout of arm wrestling.
“You’ve just moved into the neighborhood, isn’t that right Mr. Marlowe?” Menafee said.
“That’s right.”
“You got a private ticket, ain’t that right, Marlowe?” Schindler said.
“You’re pretty quick for so early in the morning.”
“The name rang a bell right away, Mr. Marlowe,” Menafee said, the smile never leaving his face. “You’ve got a reputation.”
“A reputation for being pretty violent, pretty tough. Are you pretty tough?” Schindler said, moving his lips in what I figured was supposed to be a sneer. “You get tough with a little man across the street?”
A little shock wave went through me.
“Something happen to Benny?”
“I don’t know if Benny’s Mr. Januaria’s first name,” Menafee said.
“Benny’s the dummy we found hiding in the cellar with his dum-dum girlfriend,” Schindler said.
“You’re a prince, you are,” I said.
Even Menafee didn’t seem to like the way his partner had called them dummies. “Ah, for God’s sake, Schindler.”
“It was the spic janitor got it,” Schindler went on, determined to play the bigot right to the wire.
“And you’re asking me who did the job?”
“Mr. Bochos tells us you had a little fight with Januaria just last evening,” Menafee said, working it smooth and easy again.
“We had a little discussion. He was leaning on Benny and Minnie, so I waved my hand in his face.”
Schindler started reaching for my wrist again so I pulled it back. “I missed and scraped my knuckles on the railings.”
“Just waved your hand in his face?” Menafee said, pleasantly.
“That’s all.”
“We hear it that Januaria hit you with a stick and you slapped him in the mouth,” Menafee said.
“And that was the end to that.”
“Except later on you took a little stroll across the street.”
“Bochos?”
“Yes, Mr. Bochos saw you.”
“Then he saw me stroll right back again.”
“Well, no, his wife called him into the kitchen at the back of the apartment. He didn’t see you come back.”
“We got no doubts you come back,” Schindler said. “I mean you’re here, ain’t you? But we’re wondering did you stay across the street long enough to take that stick he hit you with away from Januaria and poke him in the gut and kidneys with it enough times to kill him.”
“That how it happened?”
“The examiner’s finishing up his prelim even as we speak, but that’s the way it looks,” Schindler said.
“Would you like to walk over with us and see if he’s found out anything new?” Menafee asked, as polite as a Poodle Springs gentleman asking a lady to a dance.
They waited for me while I put on my shoes, washed my face, and shook out my jacket.
Across the street Januaria’s body was sprawled on the concrete steps leading down into the basement well. The medical examiner was squatting awkwardly alongside him, one foot higher than the other. He’d opened up the janitor’s shirt. The bruises across his chest and belly were the color of watery schoolhouse ink.
The three of us stepped around and over Januaria and gathered at the bottom in the well.
“Anything extra?” Menafee asked.
The examiner struggled to his feet with some difficulty, looking at me as though knowing that we shared some of the same aches and pains of approaching age.
“One of the blows ruptured his spleen. That would’ve done the jump in short order. But the immediate cause of death was a broken neck. He fell and landed on the steps like you see. It was enough.”
“The blows with the stick had to be delivered by a strong man?” Menafee asked.
The examiner wouldn’t be led. He smiled and said, “A woman or a healthy child could kill with a stick used the right way. It’s a matter of engineering and physics. Pounds per square inch delivered through the tip of a small, blunt surface. Could kill anybody if they got in the first couple of lucky shots or the victim wasn’t defending himself.”
I looked over at Benny, who was in the corner, standing with Minnie on their makeshift bed, his arms around her and her arms around him, looking wide-eyed, looking scare
d. But looking triumphant, too, somehow.
The examiner told the ambulance crew to bag the body and put it in the wagon. When they had Januaria safely stowed away, the examiner said, “One other thing.”
We waited like a nightclub audience waiting for the comic to deliver the punch line.
“He was killed during or just after an act of sex.”
“If I were you,” I said, looking at Menafee and then at Schindler, “I’d start looking around for a violent husband or boyfriend.”
“You could be right,” Menafee said.
Nobody even glanced at Benny and Minnie standing there, holding on to one another. Not many people think about people like Benny and Minnie even knowing anything about sex.
“I got a bad feeling about this one,” Schindler said. “This is going to be one of them unsolved homicides.”
“Nobody saw anything? Nobody heard anything?” I asked.
“Nobody who can tell us about it,” Schindler said, his eyes flicking toward Benny and Minnie. “This is going to be a bad one.”
“You could be right,” Menafee said again. “You going to be around in case we want to talk to you again, Mr. Marlowe?”
“I’m going right out this morning to buy a bed and a coffeepot.”
“‘That’s okay,” he said, as he followed Schindler up the flight of steps.
I started to follow them, but first I reached down and picked up a comic book that had been under Januaria’s body. I handed it to Benny.
“Here you go, Benny,” I said. “Why don’t you toss this in the garbage can?”
I did go out to buy a bed, a coffeepot, a cup, a saucer, and some utensils. I even bought a pretty good used couch, an easy chair, and a floor lamp. Some towels and a washcloth.
That night I made myself some hamburger and beans in my new frying pan. Then I went into the living room and sat in the easy chair, under the floor lamp beside the window, and read the late edition.
Once I glanced down across the street and could see Benny’s flashlight shining in the dark.
Benny, Minnie, and me were at home.
* * *
* * *
I never did like the idea that Marlowe settled down to marriage, rich wife or otherwise. It just ain’t natural. The classic private eye is essentially a loner. How else would he develop the angst to make him go out trying to clean up the garbage dumps and abattoirs when he knows the job is impossible? How else could he afford to work for spit? How else could he present every woman he meets with a challenge and every villain he meets with the threat that they are fighting a man who has absolutely nothing to lose?
If Chandler instructed mystery writers in anything, it was in that. He was one of those pioneering few who took the lonely cowboy, the archetypical American hero, off his horse and put him behind the wheel of a Ford or more commonly still out walking the mean streets.
Robert Campbell
THE PENCIL
* * *
* * *
RAYMOND CHANDLER
HE WAS A slightly fat man with a dishonest smile that pulled the corners of his mouth out half an inch leaving the thick lips tight and his eyes bleak. For a fattish man he had a slow walk. Most fat men are brisk and light on their feet. He wore a gray herringbone suit and a handpainted tie with part of a diving girl visible on it. His shirt was clean, which comforted me, and his brown loafers, as wrong as the tie for his suit, shone from a recent polishing.
He sidled past me as I held the door between the waiting room and my thinking parlor. Once inside, he took a quick look around. I’d have placed him as a mobster, second grade, if I had been asked. For once I was right. If he carried a gun, it was inside his pants. His coat was too tight to hide the bulge of an underarm holster.
He sat down carefully and I sat opposite and we looked at each other. His face had a sort of foxy eagerness. He was sweating a little. The expression on my face was meant to be interested but not clubby. I reached for a pipe and the leather humidor in which I kept my Pearce’s tobacco. I pushed the cigarettes at him.
“I don’t smoke.” He had a rusty voice. I didn’t like it any more than I liked his clothes, or his face. While I filled the pipe he reached inside his coat, prowled in a pocket, came out with a bill, glanced at it, and dropped it across the desk in front of me. It was a nice bill and clean and new. One thousand dollars.
“Ever save a guy’s life?”
“Once in a while, maybe.”
“Save mine.”
“What goes?”
“I heard you leveled with the customers, Marlowe.”
“That’s why I stay poor.”
“I still got two friends. You make it three and you’ll be out of the red. You got five grand coming if you pry me loose.”
“From what?”
“You’re talkative as hell this morning. Don’t you pipe who I am?”
“Nope.”
“Never been east, huh?”
“Sure—but I wasn’t in your set.”
“What set would that be?”
I was getting tired of it. “Stop being so damn cagey or pick up your grand and be missing.”
“I’m Ikky Rossen. I’ll be missing but good unless you can figure something out. Guess.”
“I’ve already guessed. You tell me and tell me quick. I don’t have all day to watch you feeding me with an eye-dropper.”
“I ran out on the Outfit. The high boys don’t go for that. To them it means you got info you figure you can peddle, or you got independent ideas, or you lost your moxie. Me, I lost my moxie. I had it up to here.” He touched his Adam’s apple with the forefinger of a stretched hand. “I done bad things. I scared and hurt guys. I never killed nobody. That’s nothing to the Outfit. I’m out of line. So they pick up the pencil and they draw a line. I got the word. The operators are on the way. I made a bad mistake. I tried to hole up in Vegas. I figured they’d never expect me to lie up in their own joint. They outfigured me. What I did’s been done before, but I didn’t know it. When I took the plane to L.A. there must have been somebody on it. They know where I live.”
“Move.”
“No good now. I’m covered.”
I knew he was right.
“Why haven’t they taken care of you already?”
“They don’t do it that way. Always specialists. Don’t you know how it works?”
“More or less. A guy with a nice hardware store in Buffalo. A guy with a small dairy in K.C. Always a good front. They report back to New York or somewhere. When they mount the plane west or wherever they’re going, they have guns in their briefcases. They’re quiet and well dressed and they don’t sit together. They could be a couple of lawyers or income-tax sharpies—anything at all that’s well mannered and inconspicuous. All sorts of people carry briefcases. Including women.”
“Correct as hell. And when they land they’ll be steered to me, but not from the airfield. They got ways. If I go to the cops, somebody will know about me. They could have a couple Mafia boys right on the city council for all I know. The cops will give me twenty-four hours to leave town. No use. Mexico? Worse than here. Canada? Better but still no good. Connections there too.”
“Australia?”
“Can’t get a passport. I been here twenty-five years—illegal. They can’t deport me unless they can prove a crime on me. The Outfit would see they didn’t. Suppose I got tossed into the freezer. I’m out on a writ in twenty-four hours. And my nice friends got a car waiting to take me home—only not home.”
I had my pipe lit and going well. I frowned down at the one-grand note. I could use it very nicely. My checking account could kiss the sidewalk without stooping.
“Let’s stop horsing,” I said. “Suppose—just suppose—I could figure an out for you. What’s your next move?”
“I know a place—if I could get there without bein’ tailed. I’d leave my car here and take a rent car. I’d turn it in just short of the county line and buy a secondhand job. Halfway to where I’m goi
ng I trade it on a new last-year’s model, a leftover—this is just the right time of year. Good discount, new models out soon. Not to save money—less show off. Where I’d go is a good-sized place but still pretty clean.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Wichita, last I heard. But it might have changed.”
He scowled at me. “Get smart, Marlowe, but not too damn smart.”
“I’ll get as smart as I want to. Don’t try to make rules for me. If I take this on, there aren’t any rules. I take it for this grand and the rest if I bring it off. Don’t cross me. I might leak information. If I get knocked off, put just one red rose on my grave. I don’t like cut flowers. I like to see them growing. But I could take one because you’re such a sweet character. When’s the plane in?”
“Sometime today. It’s nine hours from New York. Probably come in around five-thirty p.m.”
“Might come by San Diego and switch or by San Francisco and switch. A lot of planes from both places. I need a helper.”
“Damn you, Marlowe—”
“Hold it. I know a girl. Daughter of a chief of police who got broken for honesty. She wouldn’t leak under torture.”
“You got no right to risk her,” Ikky said angrily.
I was so astonished my jaw hung halfway to my waist. I closed it slowly and swallowed.
“Good God, the man’s got a heart.”
“Women ain’t built for the rough stuff,” he said grudgingly.
I picked up the thousand-dollar note and snapped it. “Sorry. No receipt,” I said. “I can’t have my name in your pocket. And there won’t be any rough stuff if I’m lucky. They’d have me outclassed. There’s only one way to work it. Now give me your address and all the dope you can think of—names, descriptions of any operators you have ever seen in the flesh.”
He did. He was a pretty good observer. Trouble was, the Outfit would know what he had seen. The operators would be strangers to him.
He got up silently and put his hand out. I had to shake it, but what he had said about women made it easier. His hand was moist. Mine would have been in his spot. He nodded and went out silently.
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe Page 40
