Rhonda Farr said: “Oh, yes, you do, darling. You’re crazy about me.”
She smiled and fitted a cigarette into a jade-green holder that matched her jade-green lounging pajamas. Then she reached out her beautifully shaped hand and pushed the button of a bell that was set into the top of a low nacre and teakwood table at her side. A silent, white-coated Japanese butler drifted into the room and mixed more highballs.
“You’re a pretty wise lad, aren’t you, darling?” Rhonda Farr said, when he had gone out again. “And you have some letters in your pocket you think are body and soul to me. Nothing like it, mister, nothing like it.” She took a sip of the fresh highball. “The letters you have are phony. They were written about a month ago. Landrey never had them. He gave his letters back a long time ago… What you have are just props.” She put a hand to her beautifully waved hair. The experience of the previous night seemed to have left no trace on her.
Mallory looked at her carefully. He said: “How do you prove that, baby?”
“The notepaper—if I have to prove it. There’s a little man down at Fourth and Spring who makes a study of that kind of thing.”
Mallory said: “The writing?”
Rhonda Farr smiled dimly. “Writing’s easy to fake, if you have plenty of time. Or so I’m told. That’s my story anyhow.”
Mallory nodded, sipped, at his own highball. He put his hand into his inside breast pocket and took out a flat manila envelope, legal size. He laid it on his knee.
“Four men got gunned out last night on account of these phony letters,” he said carelessly.
Rhonda Farr looked at him mildly. “Two crooks, a double-crossing policeman, make three of them. I should lose my sleep over that trash! Of course I’m sorry about Landrey.”
Mallory said politely: “It’s nice of you to be sorry about Landrey. Swell.”
She said peacefully: “Landrey, as I told you once, was a pretty nice boy a few years ago, when he was trying to get into pictures. But he chose another business, and in that business he was bound to stop a bullet sometime.”
Mallory rubbed his chin. He said: “It’s funny he didn’t remember he’d given you back your letters. Very funny.”
“He wouldn’t care, darling. He was that kind of actor, and he’d like the show. It gave him a chance for a swell pose. He’d like that terribly.”
Mallory let his face get hard and disgusted. He said: “The job looked on the level to me. I didn’t know much about Landrey, but he knew a good friend of mine in Chicago. He figured a way to the boys who were working on you, and I played his hunch. Things happened that made it easier—but a lot noisier.”
Rhonda Farr tapped little bright nails against her little bright teeth. She said: “What are you back where you live, darling? One of those hoods they call private dicks?”
Mallory laughed harshly, made a vague movement and ran his fingers through his crisp dark hair. “Let it go, baby,” he said softly. “Let it go.”
Rhonda Farr looked at him with a surprised glance, then laughed rather shrilly. “It gets mad, doesn’t it?” she cooed. She went on, in a dry voice: “Atkinson has been bleeding me for years, one way and another. I fixed the letters up and put them where he could get hold of them. They disappeared. A few days afterward a man with one of those tough voices called up and began to apply the pressure. I let it ride. I figured I’d hang a pinch on Atkinson somehow, and our two reputations put together would be good for a write-up that wouldn’t hurt me too much. But the thing seemed to be spreading out, and I got scared. I thought of asking Landrey to help me out. I was sure he would like it.”
Mallory said roughly: “Simple, straightforward kid, ain’t you? Like hell!”
“You don’t know much about this Hollywood racket, do you, darling?” Rhonda Farr said. She put her head on one side and hummed softly. The strains of a dance band floated idly through the quiet air. “That’s a gorgeous melody… It’s swiped from a Weber sonata… Publicity has to hurt a bit out here. Otherwise nobody believes it.”
Mallory stood up, lifting the manila envelope off his knee. He dropped it in her lap.
“Five grand these are costing you,” he said.
Rhonda Farr leaned back and crossed her jade-green legs. One little green slipper fell off her bare foot to the rug, and the manila envelope fell down beside it. She didn’t stir towards either one.
She said: “Why?”
“I’m a business man, baby. I get paid for my work. Landrey didn’t pay me. Five grand was the price. The price to him, and now the price to you.”
She looked at him almost casually, out of placid, cornflower-blue eyes, and said: “No deal… blackmailer. Just like I told you at the Bolivar. You have all my thanks, but I’m spending my money myself.”
Mallory said curtly: “This might be a damn’ good way to spend some of it.”
He leaned over and picked up her highball, drank a little of it. When he put the glass down he tapped the nails of two fingers against the side for a moment. A small tight smile wrinkled the corners of his mouth. He lit a cigarette and tossed the match into a bowl of hyacinths.
He said slowly: “Landrey’s driver talked of course. Landrey’s friends want to see me. They want to know how come Landrey got rubbed out in Westwood. The cops will get around to me after a while. Someone is sure to tip them off. I was right beside four killings last night, and naturally I’m not going to run out on them. I’ll probably have to spill the whole story. The cops will give you plenty of publicity, baby. Landrey’s friends—I don’t know what they’ll do. Something that will hurt a lot, I should say.”
Rhonda Farr jerked to her feet, fumbling with her toe for the green slipper. Her eyes had gone wide and startled.
“You’d… sell me out?” she breathed.
Mallory laughed. His eyes were bright and hard. He stared along the floor at a splash of light from one of the standing lamps. He said in a bored voice:
“Why the hell should I protect you? I don’t owe you anything. And you’re too damn’ tight with your dough to hire me. I haven’t a record, but you know how the law boys love my sort. And Landrey’s friends will just see a dirty plant that got a good lad killed. — sake, why should I front for a chiseler like you, baby?”
He snorted angrily and flung his cigarette at the bowl of hyacinths. Red spots showed in his tanned cheeks.
Rhonda Farr stood quite still and shook her head slowly from side to side. She said: “No deal, blackmailer… no deal.” Her voice was small and tired, but her chin stuck out hard and brave.
Mallory reached out and picked up his hat. “You’re a hell of a guy, baby,” he said, grinning. “ — ! but you Hollywood frails must be hard to get on with!”
He leaned forward suddenly, put his left hand behind her head and kissed her on the mouth hard. Then he flipped the tips of his fingers across her cheek.
“You’re a nice kid—in some ways,” he said. “And a fair liar. Just fair. You didn’t fake any letters, baby. Atkinson wouldn’t fall for a trick like that.” Rhonda Farr stooped over, snatched the manila envelope off the rug, and tumbled out what was in it—a number of closely written gray pages, deckle-edged, with thin gold monograms. She stared down at them with quivering nostrils.
She said slowly: “I’ll send you the money.”
Mallory put his hand against her chin, and pushed her head back.
He said rather gently:
“I was kidding you, baby. I have that bad habit. But there are two funny things about these letters. They haven’t any envelopes, and there’s nothing to show who they were written to—nothing at all. The second thing is, Landrey had them in his pocket when he was killed.”
He nodded once, turned away. Rhonda Farr said sharply: “Wait!” Her voice was suddenly terrified. She flopped down into the chair, sat limp.
Mallory said: “It gets you when it’s over, baby. Take a drink.”
He went a little way down the room, turned his head. He said: “I have to go. Got a
date with a big black spot… Send me some flowers, baby. Wild, blue flowers, like your eyes.”
He went out under an arch. A door opened and shut heavily. Rhonda Farr sat without moving for a long time.
VIII
CIGARETTE smoke laced the air. A group of people in evening clothes stood sipping cocktails at one side of a curtained opening that led to the gambling rooms. Beyond the curtains light blazed down on one end of a roulette table. Mallory put his elbows on the bar, and the bartender left two young girls in party gowns and slid a white towel along the polished wood towards him. He said:
“What’ll it be, chief?”
Mallory said: “A small beer.”
The bartender gave it to him, smiled, went back to the two girls. Mallory sipped the beer, made a face, and looked into the long mirror that ran all the way behind the bar and slanted forward a little, so that it showed the floor all the way over to the far wall. A door opened in the wall and a man in dinner clothes came through. He had a wrinkled brown face and hair the color of steel wool. He met Mallory’s glance in the mirror and came across the room nodding.
He said. “I’m Mardonne. Nice of you to come.” He had a soft, husky voice, the voice of a fat man, but he was not fat.
Mallory said: “It’s not a social call.”
Mardonne said: “Let’s go up to my office.”
Mallory drank a little more of the beer, made another face, and pushed the glass away from him across the bar top. They went through the door, up a carpeted staircase that met another staircase halfway up. An open door shone light on the landing. They went in where the light was.
The room had been a bedroom, and no particular trouble had been taken to make it over into an office. It had gray walls, two or three prints in narrow frames. There was a big filing cabinet, a good safe, chairs. A parchment-shaded lamp stood on a walnut desk. A very blond young man sat on a corner of the desk swinging one leg over the other. He was wearing a soft hat with a gay band.
Mardonne said: “All right, Henry. I’ll be busy.”
The blond young man got off the desk, yawned, put his hand to his mouth with an affected flirt of the wrist. There was a large diamond on one of his fingers. He looked at Mallory, smiled, went slowly out of the room, closing the door.
Mardonne sat down in a blue leather swivel-chair. He lit a thin cigar and pushed a humidor across the grained top of the desk. Mallory took a chair at the end of the desk, between the door and a pair of open windows. There was another door, but the safe stood in front of it. He lit a cigarette, said:
“Landrey owed me some money. Five grand. Anybody here interested in paying it?”
Mardonne put his brown hands on the arms of his chair and rocked back and forth. “We haven’t come to that,” he said.
Mallory said: “Right. What have we come to?”
Mardonne narrowed his dull eyes. His voice was flat and without tone. “To how Landrey got killed.”
Mallory put his cigarette in his mouth and clasped his hands together behind his head. He puffed smoke and talked through it at the wall above Mardonne’s head.
“He crossed everybody up and then he crossed himself. He played too many parts and got his lines mixed. He was gun-drunk. When he got a rod in his hand he had to shoot somebody. Somebody shot back.”
Mardonne went on rocking, said: “Maybe you could make it a little more definite.”
“Sure… I could tell you a story… about a girl who wrote some letters once. She thought she was in love. They were reckless letters, the sort a girl would write who had more guts than was good for her. Time passed, and somehow the letters got on the blackmail market. Some workers started to shake the girl down. Not a high stake, nothing that would have bothered her, but it seems she liked to do things the hard way. Landrey thought he would help her out. He had a plan, and the plan needed a man who could wear a tux, keep a spoon out of a coffee-cup, and wasn’t known in this town. He got me. I run a small agency in Chicago.”
Mardonne swiveled towards the open windows and stared out at the tops of some trees. “Private dick, huh?” he grunted impassively. “From Chicago.”
Mallory nodded, looked at him briefly, looked back at the same spot on the wall. “And supposed to be on the level, Mardonne. You wouldn’t think it from some of the company I’ve been keeping lately.”
Mardonne made a quick impatient gesture, said nothing.
Mallory went on: “Well, I gave the job a tumble, which was my first and worst mistake. I was making a little headway when the shakedown turned into a kidnaping. Not so good. I got in touch with Landrey and he decided to show with me. We found the girl without a lot of trouble. We took her home. We still had to get the letters. While I was trying to pry them loose from the guy I thought had them one of the bad boys got in the back way and wanted to play with his gun. Landrey made a swell entrance, struck a pose and shot it out with the hood, toe to toe. He stopped some lead. It was pretty, if you like that sort of thing, but it left me in a spot. So perhaps I’m prejudiced. I had to lam out and collect my ideas.”
Mardonne’s dull brown eyes showed a passing flicker of emotion. “The girl’s story might be interesting, too,” he said coolly.
Mallory blew a pale cloud of smoke. “She was doped and doesn’t know anything. She wouldn’t talk, if she did. And I don’t know her name.”
“I do,” Mardonne said. “Landrey’s driver also talked to me. So I won’t have to bother you about that.”
Mallory talked on, placidly. “That’s the tale from the outside, without notes. The notes make it funnier—and a hell of a lot dirtier. The girl didn’t ask Landrey for help, but he knew about the shakedown. He’d once had the letters, because they were written to him. His scheme to get on their trail was for me to make a wrong pass at the girl myself, make her think I had the letters, talk her into a meeting at a night-club where we could be watched by the people who were working on her. She’d come, because she had that kind of guts. She’d be watched, because there would be an inside—maid, chauffeur or something. The boys would want to know about me. They’d pick me up, and if I didn’t get conked out of hand, I might learn who was who in the racket. Sweet set-up, don’t you think so?”
Mardonne said coldly: “A bit loose in places… Go on talking.”
“When the decoy worked I knew it was fixed. I stayed with it, because for the time being I had to. After a while there was another sour play, unrehearsed this time. A big flattie who was taking graft money from the gang got cold feet and threw the boys for a loss. He didn’t mind a little extortion, but a snatch was going off the deep end on a dark night. The break made things easier for me, and it didn’t hurt Landrey any, because the flattie wasn’t in on the clever stuff. The hood who got Landrey wasn’t either, I guess. That one was just sore, thought he was being chiseled out of his cut.”
Mardonne flipped his brown hands up and down on the chair arms, like a purchasing agent getting restless under a sales talk. “Were you supposed to figure things out this way?” he asked with a sneer.
“I used my head, Mardonne. Not soon enough, but I used it. Maybe I wasn’t hired to think, but that wasn’t explained to me, either. If I got wise, it was Landrey’s hard luck. He’d have to figure an out to that one. If I didn’t, I was the nearest thing to an honest stranger he could afford to have around.”
Mardonne said smoothly: “Landrey had plenty of dough. He had some brains. Not a lot, but some. He wouldn’t go for a cheap shake like that.”
Mallory laughed harshly: “It wasn’t so cheap to him, Mardonne. He wanted the girl. She’d got away from him, out of his class. He couldn’t pull himself up, but he could pull her down. The letters were not enough to bring her into line. Add a kidnaping and a fake rescue by an old flame turned racketeer, and you have a story no rag could be made to soft-pedal. If it was spilled, it would blast her right out of her job. You guess the price for not spilling it, Mardonne.”
Mardonne said: “Uh-huh,” and kept on looking out of
the window.
Mallory said: “But all that’s on the cuff, now. I was hired to get some letters, and I got them—out of Landrey’s pocket when he was bumped. I’d like to get paid for my time.”
Mardonne turned in his chair and put his hands flat on the top of the desk. “Pass them over,” he said. “I’ll see what they’re worth to me.”
Mallory let out another harsh laugh. His eyes got sharp and bitter. He said: “The trouble with you heels is that you can’t figure anybody to be on the up and up… The letters are withdrawn from circulation, Mardonne. They passed around too much and they wore out.”
“It’s a sweet thought,” Mardonne sneered. “For somebody else. Landrey was my partner, and I thought a lot of him… So you give the letters away, and I pay you dough for letting Landrey get gunned. I ought to write that one in my diary. My hunch is you’ve been paid plenty already—by Miss Rhonda Farr.”
Mallory said, sarcastically: “I figured it would look like that to you. Maybe you’d like the story better this way… The girl got tired of having Landrey trail her around. She faked some letters and put them where her smart lawyer could lift them, pass them along to a man who was running a strongarm squad the lawyer used in his business sometimes. The girl wrote to Landrey for help and he got me. The girl got to me with a better bid. She hired me to put Landrey on the spot. I played along with him until I got him under the gun of a wiper that was pretending to make a pass at me. The wiper let him have it, and I shot the wiper with Landrey’s gun, to make it look good. Then I had a drink and went home to get some sleep.”
Mardonne leaned over and pressed a buzzer on the side of his desk. He said: “I like that one a lot better. I’m wondering if I could make it stick.”
“You could try,” Mallory said lazily. “I don’t guess it would be the first lead quarter you’ve tried to pass.”
IX
THE room door came open and the blond boy strolled in. His lips were spread in a pleased grin and his tongue came out between them. He had an automatic in his hand.
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