“At times. Yes,” I said. I looked at the dimple in his broad, fleshy chin. You could have lost a marble in it.
“I shan’t want you to carry that. Nothing of that sort at all. This is a purely business transaction.”
“I hardly ever shoot anybody,” I said. “A matter of blackmail?”
He frowned. “Certainly not. I’m not in the habit of giving people grounds for blackmail.”
“It happens to the nicest people. I might say particularly to the nicest people.”
He waved his cigarette. His aquamarine eyes had a faintly thoughtful expression, but his lips smiled. The kind of smile that goes with a silk noose.
He blew some more smoke and tilted his head back. This accentuated the soft firm lines of his throat. His eyes came down slowly and studied me.
“I’m meeting these men—most probably—in a rather lonely place. I don’t know where yet. I expect a call giving me the particulars. I have to be ready to leave at once. It won’t be very far away from here. That’s the understanding.“
“You’ve been making this deal some time?”
“Three or four days, as a matter of fact.”
“You left your bodyguard problem until pretty late.”
He thought that over. He snicked some dark ash from his cigarette. “That’s true. I had some difficulty making my mind up. It would be better for me to go alone, although nothing has been said definitely about my having someone with me. On the other hand I’m not much of a hero.”
“They know you by sight, of course?”
“I—I’m not sure. I shall be carrying a large amount of money and it is not my money. I’m acting for a friend. I shouldn’t feel justified in letting it out of my possession, of course.”
I snubbed out my cigarette and leaned back in the pink chair and twiddled my thumbs. “How much money—and what for?”
“Well, really—” it was a fairly nice smile now, but I still didn’t like it.
“I can’t go into that.”
“You just want me to go along and hold your hat?”
His hand jerked again and some ash fell off on his white cuff. He shook it off and stared down at the place where it had been.
“I’m afraid I don’t like your manner,” he said, using the edge of his voice.
“I’ve had complaints about it,” I said. “But nothing seems to do any good. Let’s look at this job a little. You want a bodyguard, but he can’t wear a gun. You want a helper, but he isn’t supposed to know what he’s supposed to do. You want me to risk my neck without knowing why or what for or what the risk is. What are you offering for all this?”
“I hadn’t really got around to thinking about it.” His cheekbones were dusky red.
“Do you suppose you could get around to thinking about it?”
He leaned forward gracefully and smiled between his teeth. “How would you like a swift punch on the nose?”
I grinned and stood up and put my hat on. I started across the carpet towards the front door, but not very fast.
His voice snapped at my back. “I’m offering you a hundred dollars for a few hours of your time. If that isn’t enough, say so. There’s no risk. Some jewels were taken from a friend of mine in a holdup—and I’m buying them back. Sit down and don’t be so touchy.”
I went back to the pink chair and sat down again.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s hear about it.”
We stared at each other for all of ten seconds. “Have you ever heard of Fei Tsui jade?” he asked slowly, and lit another of his dark cigarettes.
“No.”
“It’s the only really valuable kind. Other kinds are valuable to some extent for the material, but chiefly for the workmanship on them. Fei Tsui is valuable in itself. All known deposits were exhausted hundreds of years ago. A friend of mine owns a necklace of sixty beads of about six carats each, intricately carved. Worthy eighty or ninety thousand dollars. The Chinese government has a very slightly larger one valued at a hundred and twenty-five thousand. My friend’s necklace was taken in a holdup a few nights ago. I was present, but quite helpless. I had driven my friend to an evening party and later to the Trocadero and we were on our way back to her home from there. A car brushed the left front fender and stopped, as I thought, to apologize. Instead of that it was a very quick and very neat holdup. Either three or four men, I really saw only two, but I’m sure another stayed in the car behind the wheel, and I thought I saw a glimpse of still a fourth at the rear window. My friend was wearing the jade necklace. They took that and two rings and a bracelet. The one who seemed to be the leader looked the things over without any apparent hurry under a small flashlight. Then he handed one of the rings back and said that would give us an idea what kind of people we were dealing with and to wait for a phone call before reporting to the police or the insurance company. So we obeyed their instructions. There’s plenty of that sort of thing going on, of course. You keep the affair to yourself and pay ransom, or you never see your jewels again. If they’re fully insured, perhaps you don’t mind, but if they happen to be rare pieces, you would rather pay ransom.”
I nodded. “And this jade necklace is something that can’t be picked up every day.”
He slid a finger along the polished surface of the piano with a dreamy expression, as if touching smooth things pleased him.
“Very much so. It’s irreplaceable. She shouldn’t have worn it out—ever. But she’s a reckless sort of woman. The other things were good but ordinary.”
“Uh-huh. How much are you paying?”
“Eight thousand dollars. It’s dirt cheap. But if my friend couldn’t get another like it, these thugs couldn’t very easily dispose of it either. It’s probably known to every one in the trade, all over the country.”
“This friend of yours—does she have a name?”
“I’d prefer not to mention it at the moment.”
“What are the arrangements?”
He looked at me along his pale eyes. I thought he seemed a bit scared, but I didn’t know him very well. Maybe it was a hangover. The hand that held the dark cigarette couldn’t keep still.
“We have been negotiating by telephone for several days—through me. Everything is settled except the time and place of meeting. It is to be sometime tonight. I shall presently be getting a call to tell me of that. It will not be very far away, they say, and I must be prepared to leave at once. I suppose that is so that no plant could be arranged. With the police, I mean.”
“Uh-huh. Is the money marked? I suppose it is money?”
“Currency, of course. Twenty-dollar bills. No, why should it be marked?”
“It can be done so that it takes black light to detect it. No reason—except that the cops like to break up these gangs—if they can get any co-operation. Some of the money might turn up on some lad with a record.”
He wrinkled his brow thoughtfully. “I’m afraid I don’t know what black light is.”
“Ultra-violet. It makes certain metallic inks glisten in the dark. I could get it done for you.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t time for that now,” he said shortly.
“That’s one of the things that worries me.”
“Why?”
“Why you only called me this afternoon. Why you picked on me. Who told you about me?”
He laughed. His laugh was rather boyish, but not a very young boy. “Well, as a matter of fact I’ll have to confess I merely picked your name at random out of the phone book. You see I hadn’t intended to have anyone go with me. Then this afternoon I got to thinking why not.”
I lit another of my squashed cigarettes and watched his throat muscles. “What’s the plan?”
He spread his hands. “Simply to go where I am told, hand over the package of money, and receive back the jade necklace.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You seem fond of that expression.”
“What expression?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where wi
ll I be—in the back of the car?”
“I suppose so. It’s a big car. You could easily hide in the back of it.”
“Listen,” I said slowly. “You plan to go out with me hidden in your car to a destination you are to get over the phone some time tonight. You will have eight grand in currency on you and with that you are supposed to buy back a jade necklace worth ten or twelve times that much. What you will probably get will be a package you won’t be allowed to open—providing you get anything at all. It’s just as likely they will simply take your money, count it over in some other place, and mail you the necklace, if they feel bighearted. There’s nothing to prevent them double-crossing you. Certainly nothing I could do would stop them. These are heist guys. They’re tough. They might even knock you on the head—not hard—just enough to delay you while they go on their way.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m a little afraid of something like that,” he said quietly, and his eyes twitched. “I suppose that’s really why I wanted somebody with me.”
“Did they put a flash on you when they pulled the stickup?”
He shook his head, no.
“No matter. They’ve had a dozen chances to look you over since. They probably knew all about you before that anyway. These jobs are cased. They’re cased the way a dentist cases your tooth for a gold inlay. You go out with this dame much?”
“Well—not infrequently,” he said stiffly.
“Married?”
“Look here,” he snapped. “Suppose we leave the lady out of this entirely.”
“Okey,” I said. “But the more I know the fewer cups I break. I ought to walk away from this job, Marriott. I really ought. If the boys want to play ball, you don’t need me. If they don’t want to play ball, I can’t do anything about it.”
“All I want is your company,” he said quickly.
I shrugged and spread my hands. “Okey—but I drive the car and carry the money—and you do the hiding in the back. We’re about the same height. If there’s any question, we’ll just tell them the truth. Nothing to lose by it.”
“No.” He bit his lip.
“I’m getting a hundred dollars for doing nothing. If anybody gets conked, it ought to be me.”
He frowned and shook his head, but after quite a long time his face cleared slowly and he smiled.
“Very well,” he said slowly. “I don’t suppose it matters much. We’ll be together. Would you care for a spot of brandy?”
“Uh-huh. And you might bring me my hundred bucks. I like to feel money.”
He moved away like a dancer, his body almost motionless from the waist up.
The phone rang as he was on his way out. It was in a little alcove off the living room proper, cut into the balcony. It wasn’t the call we were thinking about though. He sounded too affectionate.
He danced back after a while with a bottle of Five-Star Martell and five nice crisp twenty-dollar bills. That made it a nice evening—so far.
NINE
The house was very still. Far off there was a sound which might have been beating surf or cars zooming along a highway, or wind in pine trees. It was the sea, of course, breaking far down below. I sat there and listened to it and thought long, careful thoughts.
The phone rang four times within the next hour and a half. The big one came at eight minutes past ten. Marriott talked briefly, in a very low voice, cradled the instrument without a sound and stood up with a sort of hushed movement. His face looked drawn. He had changed to dark clothes now. He walked silently back into the room and poured himself a stiff drink in a brandy glass. He held it against the light a moment with a queer unhappy smile, swirled it once quickly and tilted his head back to pour it down his throat.
“Well—we’re all set, Marlowe. Ready?”
“That’s all I’ve been all evening. Where do we go?”
“A place called Purissima Canyon.”
“I never heard of it.”
“I’ll get a map.” He got one and spread it out quickly and the light blinked in his brassy hair as he bent over it. Then he pointed with his finger. The place was one of the many canyons off the foothill boulevard that turns into town from the coast highway north of Bay City. I had a vague idea where it was, but no more. It seemed to be at the end of a street called Camino de la Costa.
“It will be not more than twelve minutes from here,” Marriott said quickly. “We’d better get moving. We only have twenty minutes to play with.”
He handed me a light colored overcoat which made me a fine target. It fitted pretty well. I wore my own hat. I had a gun under my arm, but I hadn’t told him about that.
While I put the coat on, he went on talking in a light nervous voice and dancing on his hands the thick manila envelope with the eight grand in it.
“Purissima Canyon has a sort of level shelf at the inner end of it, they say. This is walled off from the road by a white fence of four-by-fours, but you can just squeeze by. A dirt road winds down into a little hollow and we are to wait there without lights. There are no houses around. ”
“We ?”
“Well, I mean ‘I’—theoretically.”
“Oh.”
He handed me the manila envelope and I opened it up and looked at what was inside. It was money all right, a huge wad of currency. I didn’t count it. I snapped the rubber around again and stuffed the packet down inside my overcoat. It almost caved in a rib.
We went to the door and Marriott switched off all the lights. He opened the front door cautiously and peered out at the foggy air. We went out and down the salt-tarnished spiral stairway to the street level and the garage.
It was a little foggy, the way it always is down there at night. I had to start up the windshield wiper for a while.
The big foreign car drove itself, but I held the wheel for the sake of appearances.
For two minutes we figure-eighted back and forth across the face of the mountain and then popped out right beside the sidewalk cafe. I could understand now why Mariott had told me to walk up the steps. I could have driven about in those curving, twisting streets for hours without making any more yardage than an angleworm in a bait can.
On the highway the lights of the streaming cars made an almost solid beam in both directions. The big corn-poppers were rolling north growling as they went and festooned all over with green and yellow overhang lights. Three minutes of that and we turned inland, by a big service station, and wound along the flank of the foothills. It got quiet. There was loneliness and the smell of kelp and the smell of wild sage from the hills. A yellow window hung here and there, all by itself, like the last orange. Cars passed, spraying the pavement with cold white light, then growled off into the darkness again. Wisps of fog chased the stars down the sky.
Marriott leaned forward from the dark rear seat and said:
“Those lights off to the right are the Belvedere Beach Club. The next canyon is Las Pulgas and the next after that Purissima. We turn right at the top of the second rise.” His voice was hushed and taut.
I grunted and kept on driving. “Keep your head down,” I said over my shoulder. “We may be watched all the way. This car sticks out like spats at an Iowa picnic. Could be the boys don’t like your being twins.”
We went down into a hollow at the inward end of a canyon and then up on the high ground and after a little while down again and up again. Then Marriott’s tight voice said in my ear:
“Next street on the right. The house with the square turret. Turn beside that.”
“You didn’t help them pick this place out, did you?”
“Hardly,” he said, and laughed grimly. “I just happen to know these canyons pretty well.”
I swung the car to the right past a big corner house with a square white turret topped with round tiles. The headlights sprayed for an instant on a street sign that read: Camino de la Costa. We slid down a broad avenue lined with unfinished electroliers and weed-grown sidewalks. Some realtor’s dream had turned into a hangover there. Cricke
ts chirped and bullfrogs whooped in the darkness behind the overgrown sidewalks. Marriott’s car was that silent.
There was a house to a block, then a house to two blocks, then no houses at all. A vague window or two was still lighted, but the people around there seemed to go to bed with the chickens. Then the paved avenue ended abruptly in a dirt road packed as hard as concrete in dry weather. The dirt road narrowed and dropped slowly downhill between walls of brush. The lights of the Belvedere Beach Club hung in the air to the right and far ahead there was a gleam of moving water. The acrid smell of the sage filled the night. Then a white-painted barrier loomed across the dirt road and Marriott spoke at my shoulder again.
“I don’t think you can get past it,” he said. “The space doesn’t look wide enough.”
I cut the noiseless motor, dimmed the lights and sat there, listening. Nothing. I switched the lights off altogether and got out of the car. The crickets stopped chirping. For a little while the silence was so complete that I could hear the sound of tires on the highway at the bottom of the cliffs, a mile away. Then one by one the crickets started up again until the night was full of them.
“Sit tight. I’m going down there and have a look-see,” I whispered into the back of the car.
I touched the gun butt inside my coat and walked forward. There was more room between the brush and the end of the white barrier than there had seemed to be from the car. Someone had hacked the brush away and there were car marks in the dirt. Probably kids going down there to neck on warm nights. I went on past the barrier. The road dropped and curved. Below was darkness and a vague far-off sea-sound. And the lights of cars on the highway. I went on. The road ended in a shallow bowl entirely surrounded by brush. It was empty. There seemed to be no way into it but the way I had come. I stood there in the silence and listened.
Minute passed slowly after minute, but I kept on waiting for some new sound. None came. I seemed to have that hollow entirely to myself.
I looked across to the lighted beach club. From its upper windows a man with a good night glass could probably cover this spot fairly well. He could see a car come and go, see who got out of it, whether there was a group of men or just one. Sitting in a dark room with a good night glass you can see a lot more detail than you would think possible.
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