The Big Drop

by Peter Corris

  ‘How’s the take?’

  ‘Lousy.’

  We went back to the register, stepping over the boxes and weaving between the untidy tables.

  ‘Your troubles are over,’ I said. ‘Or maybe they’re just starting.’ I laid out the documents on the counter. Swan got two beers from his loft and took a long swig before reading. I remembered my flask and had a shot and a chaser. He started to smile on the third page and it had spread, broad and winning across his narrow, dark features by the time he’d finished.

  ‘Shit,’ he said and drained his can, ‘I’d forgotten those preservation requests.’

  ‘Very enlightening. Why the grin?’

  He picked up one of the photocopy sheets and rustled it. ‘It’s the wrong building.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘This one, the Baltimore. A magazine writer nominated it as the Fat Man’s hotel and I went along with him when I was just starting out. I put in a request on it, but I know better now. It doesn’t fit I haven’t taken the tour past there in a year. Didn’t you notice, Hardy? Couldn’t have been paying attention. I can lift that request tomorrow.’

  ‘What about the building?’

  ‘An eyesore. Wong can call Milt off. Say, he must be the one stole my bird. Hardy . . . can you . . .?’

  I had another shot and put the whisky away. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘might as well. Where’s the phone book? Here’s what we do.’

  Milt lived in South San Francisco and my third cab of the day made a sizable hole in Swan’s tour money. If everything worked out, I planned to hit him for the expenses. I could give him the burglar’s tools for a keepsake. It was a bland, anonymous street and a bland anonymous apartment block, the kind of place you go to once and forget forever. I unshipped the .38 and stuck it up the Chinese’s wide, flaring nose when he opened the door.

  ‘Back up,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to where the phone is. It’s going to ring soon.’

  He looked at me carefully and seemed to decide it would be worthwhile letting me live a few minutes longer. I followed him down a hallway to a small living room where Milt was sitting at a table with a pack of tarot cards laid out in front of him. He looked up at me with his struggling thought processes showing on his gnomish face.

  ‘In the shop,’ I said. ‘Canticle for Liebowitz, and in Kwong-Ping’s on Washington, and in the elevator to Mr Wong’s office.’

  Bewilderment followed puzzlement and I felt sorry for him. The Chinese loomed against a book-shelf filled with Sci-Fi paperbacks and if I hadn’t known he was inscrutable I’d have thought he was impatient. The phone rang.

  ‘Answer it,’ I said to the Chinese. ‘It’s for you.’

  He picked up the receiver and listened to the fast, sing-song words. He spoke once, put the phone down, picked up a coat and hat from a chair and walked out.

  Milton-Smith looked down at the tarot cards, then turned his watery pale-blue eyes on me.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  I put the gun away and turned over one of the cards. ‘It’s pretty simple, Milt. Dan Swan talked to Mr Wong tonight and they’ve settled their differences. That means I’m not interested in George Pagemill anymore, or in you. That means Mr Wong calls off Odd Job there. You’ve still got your gambling debts and your loan and I’d think you were out a job. But that’s your problem.’

  He sighed and moved a card with a bitten-to-the-quick fingernail.

  ‘Where’s the bird?’ I said.

  He pointed down to a cupboard under a bookcase. I reached down and opened it. The figure was wrapped in a grey rag that had once been an undervest. It was about a foot high, shiny black, and weighed about the same as a full bottle of beer.

  ‘Why’d you keep it?’

  He shrugged, then something like hope flickered across his face. ‘Dan’ll be glad to get it back, won’t he? You think he might let me keep my job?’

  ‘He just might,’ I said. ‘He seems like a pretty nice guy.’

  ‘The Big Drop’ (as ‘Blue Money’), ‘P.I. Blues’ (as ‘Angel of Death’), ‘What Would You Do?’ (as ‘The Big Knot’), ‘The Big Pinch’ and ‘Maltese Falcon’ have previously appeared in Penthouse; ‘The Arms of the Law’ was originally published in People; ‘The Mongol Scroll’ was originally published in Playboy; and ‘The Mae West Scam’ was originally published in Follow Me.