I walked to the desk. A tilted embossed sign on it read: John Wax, Chief of Police. I figured I might be able to remember the name. I looked at the man behind the desk. No straw was sticking to his hair.
He was a hammered-down heavyweight, with short pink hair and a pink scalp glistening through it. He had small, hungry, heavy-lidded eyes, as restless as fleas. He wore a suit of fawn-colored flannel, a coffee-colored shirt and tie, a diamond ring, a diamond-studded lodge pin in his lapel, and the required three stiff points of handkerchief coming up a little more than the required three inches from his outside breast pocket.
One of his plump hands was holding my card. He read it, turned it over and read the back, which was blank, read the front again, put it down on his desk and laid on it a paperweight in the shape of a bronze monkey, as if he was making sure he wouldn’t lose it.
He pushed a pink paw at me. When I gave it back to him, he motioned to a chair. “Sit down, Mr. Marlowe. I see you are in our business more or less. What can I do for you?”
“A little trouble, Chief. You can straighten it out for me in a minute, if you care to.”
“Trouble,” he said softly. “A little trouble.”
He turned in his chair and crossed his thick legs and gazed thoughtfully towards one of his pairs of windows. That let me see handspun lisle socks and English brogues that looked as if they had been pickled in port wine. Counting what I couldn’t see and not counting his wallet he had half a grand on him. I figured his wife had money.
“Trouble,” he said, still softly, “is something our little city don’t know much about, Mr. Marlowe. Our city is small but very, very clean. I look out of my western windows and I see the Pacific Ocean. Nothing cleaner than that, is there?” He didn’t mention the two gambling ships that were hull down on the brass waves just beyond the three-mile limit.
Neither did I. “That’s right, Chief,” I said.
He threw his chest a couple of inches farther. “I look out of my northern windows and I see the busy bustle of Arguello Boulevard and the lovely California foothills, and in the near foreground one of the nicest little business sections a man could want to know. I look out of my southern windows, which I am looking out of right now, and I see the finest little yacht harbor in the world, for a small yacht harbor. I don’t have no eastern windows, but if I did have, I would see a residential section that would make your mouth water. No, sir, trouble is a thing we don’t have a lot of on hand in our little town.”
“I guess I brought mine with me, Chief. Some of it at least. Do you have a man working for you named Galbraith, a plainclothes sergeant?”
“Why yes, I believe I do,” he said, bringing his eyes around. “What about him?”
“Do you have a man working for you that goes like this?” I described the other man, the one who said very little, was short, had a mustache and hit me with a blackjack. “He goes around with Galbraith, very likely. Somebody called him Mr. Blane, but that sounded like a phony.”
“Quite on the contrary,” the fat Chief said as stiffly as a fat man can say anything. “He is my Chief of Detectives. Captain Blane.”
“Could I see these two guys in your office?”
He picked my card up and read it again. He laid it down. He waved a soft glistening hand.
“Not without a better reason than you have given me so far,” he said suavely.
“I didn’t think I could, Chief. Do you happen to know of a man named Jules Amthor? He calls himself a psychic adviser. He lives at the top of a hill in Stillwood Heights.”
“No. And Stillwood Heights is not in my territory,” the Chief said. His eyes now were the eyes of a man who has other thoughts.
“That’s what makes it funny,” I said. “You see, I went to call on Mr. Amthor in connection with a client of mine. Mr. Amthor got the idea I was blackmailing him. Probably guys in his line of business get that idea rather easily. He had a tough Indian bodyguard I couldn’t handle. So the Indian held me and Amthor beat me up with my own gun. Then he sent for a couple of cops. They happened to be Galbraith and Mr. Blane. Could this interest you at all?”
Chief Wax flapped his hands on his desk top very gently. He folded his eyes almost shut, but not quite. The cool gleam of his eyes shone between the thick lids and it shone straight at me. He sat very still, as if listening. Then he opened his eyes and smiled.
“And what happened then?” he inquired, polite as a bouncer at the Stork Club.
“They went through me, took me away in their car, dumped me out on the side of a mountain and socked me with a sap as I got out.”
He nodded, as if what I had said was the most natural thing in the world. “And this was in Stillwood Heights,” he said softly.
“Yeah.”
“You know what I think you are?” He leaned a little over the desk, but not far, on account of his stomach being in the way.
“A liar,” I said.
“The door is there,” he said, pointing to it with the little finger of his left hand.
I didn’t move. I kept on looking at him. When he started to get mad enough to push his buzzer I said: “Let’s not both make the same mistake. You think I’m a small time private dick trying to push ten times his own weight, trying to make a charge against a police officer that, even if it was true, the officer would take damn good care couldn’t be proved. Not at all. I’m not making any complaints. I think the mistake was natural. I want to square myself with Amthor and I want your man Galbraith to help me do it. Mister Blane needn’t bother. Galbraith will be enough. And I’m not here without backing. I have important people behind me.”
“How far behind?” the Chief asked and chuckled wittily.
“How far is 862 Aster Drive, where Mr. Merwin Lockridge Grayle lives?”
His face changed so completely that it was as if another man sat in his chair. “Mrs. Grayle happens to be my client,” I said.
“Lock the doors,” he said. “You’re a younger man than I am. Turn the bolt knobs. We’ll make a friendly start on this thing. You have an honest face, Marlowe.”
I got up and locked the doors. When I got back to the desk along the blue carpet, the Chief had a nice looking bottle out and two glasses. He tossed a handful of cardamom seeds on his blotter and filled both glasses.
We drank. He cracked a few cardamom seeds and we chewed them silently, looking into each other’s eyes.
“That tasted right,” he said. He refilled the glasses. It was my turn to crack the cardamom seeds. He swept the shells off his blotter to the floor and smiled and leaned back.
“Now let’s have it,” he said. “Has this job you are doing for Mrs. Grayle anything to do with Amthor?”
“There’s a connection. Better check that I’m telling you the truth, though.”
“There’s that,” he said and reached for his phone. Then he took a small book out of his vest and looked up a number. “Campaign contributors,” he said and winked. “The Mayor is very insistent that all courtesies be extended. Yes, here it is.” He put the book away and dialed.
He had the same trouble with the butler that I had. It made his ears get red. Finally he got her. His ears stayed red. She must have been pretty sharp with him. “She wants to talk to you,” he said and pushed the phone across his broad desk.
“This is Phil,” I said, winking naughtily at the Chief.
There was a cool provocative laugh. “What are you doing with that fat slob?”
“There’s a little drinking being done.”
“Do you have to do it with him?”
“At the moment, yes. Business. I said, is there anything new? I guess you know what I mean.”
“No. Are you aware, my good fellow, that you stood me up for an hour the other night? Did I strike you as the kind of girl that lets that sorts of thing happen to her?”
“I ran into trouble. How about tonight?”
“Let me see—tonight is—what day of the week is it for heaven’s sake?”
“I’
d better call you,” I said. “I may not be able to make it. This is Friday.”
“Liar.” The soft husky laugh came again. “It’s Monday. Same time, same place—and no fooling this time?”
“I’d better call you.”
“You’d better be there.”
“I can’t be sure. Let me call you.”
“Hard to get? I see. Perhaps I’m a fool to bother.”
“As a matter of fact you are.”
“Why?”
“I’m a poor man, but I pay my own way. And it’s not quite as soft a way as you would like.”
“Damn you, if you’re not there—”
“I said I’d call you.”
She sighed. “All men are the same.”
“So are all women—after the first nine.”
She damned me and hung up. The Chiefs eyes popped so far out of his head they looked as if they were on stilts.
He filled both glasses with a shaking hand and pushed one at me.
“So it’s like that,” he said very thoughtfully.
“Her husband doesn’t care,” I said, “so don’t make a note of it.”
He looked hurt as he drank his drink. He cracked the cardamom seeds very slowly, very thoughtfully. We drank to each other’s baby blue eyes. Regretfully the Chief put the bottle and glasses out of sight and snapped a switch on his call box.
“Have Galbraith come up, if he’s in the building. If not, try and get in touch with him for me.”
I got up and unlocked the doors and sat down again. We didn’t wait long. The side door was tapped on, the Chief called out, and Hemingway stepped into the room.
He walked solidly over to the desk and stopped at the end of it and looked at Chief Wax with the proper expression of tough humility.
“Meet Mr. Philip Marlowe,” the Chief said genially. “A private dick from L.A.”
Hemingway turned enough to look at me. If he had ever seen me before, nothing in his face showed it. He put a hand out and I put a hand out and he looked at the Chief again.
“Mr. Marlowe has a rather curious story,” the Chief said, cunning, like Richelieu behind the arras. “About a man named Amthor who has a place in Stillwood Heights. He’s some sort of crystal-gazer. It seems Marlowe went to see him and you and Blane happened in about the same time and there was an argument of some kind. I forget the details.” He looked out of his windows with the expression of a man forgetting details.
“Some mistake,” Hemingway said. “I never saw this man before.”
“There was a mistake, as a matter of fact,” the Chief said dreamily. “Rather trifling, but still a mistake. Mr. Marlowe thinks it of slight importance.”
Hemingway looked at me again. His face still looked like a stone face.
“In fact he’s not even interested in the mistake,” the Chief dreamed on. “But he is interested in going to call on this man Amthor who lives in Stillwood Heights. He would like someone with him. I thought of you. He would like someone who would see that he got a square deal. It seems that Mr. Amthor has a very tough Indian bodyguard and Mr. Marlowe is a little inclined to doubt his ability to handle the situation without help. Do you think you could find out where this Amthor lives?”
“Yeah,” Hemingway said. “But Stillwood Heights is over the line, Chief. This just a personal favor to a friend of yours?”
“You might put it that way,” the Chief said, looking at his left thumb. “We wouldn’t want to do anything not strictly legal, of course.”
“Yeah,” Hemingway said. “No.” He coughed. “When do we go?”
The Chief looked at me benevolently. “Now would be okey,” I said. “If it suits Mr. Galbraith.”
“I do what I’m told,” Hemingway said.
The Chief looked him over, feature by feature. He combed him and brushed him with his eyes. “How is Captain Blane today?” he inquired, munching on a cardamom seed.
“Bad shape. Bust appendix,” Hemingway said. “Pretty critical.”
The Chief shook his head sadly. Then he got hold of the arms of his chair and dragged himself to his feet. He pushed a pink paw across his desk.
“Galbraith will take good care of you, Marlowe. You can rely on that.”
“Well, you’ve certainly been obliging, Chief,” I said. “I certainly don’t know how to thank you.”
“Pshaw! No thanks necessary. Always glad to oblige a friend of a friend, so to speak.” He winked at me. Hemingway studied the wink but he didn’t say what he added it up to.
We went out, with the Chiefs polite murmurs almost carrying us down the office. The door closed. Hemingway looked up and down the hall and then he looked at me.
“You played that one smart, baby,” he said. “You must got something we wasn’t told about.”
THIRTY-THREE
The car drifted quietly along a quiet street of homes. Arching pepper trees almost met above it to form a green tunnel. The sun twinkled through their upper branches and their narrow light leaves. A sign at the corner said it was Eighteenth Street.
Hemingway was driving and I sat beside him. He drove very slowly, his face heavy with thought.
“How much you tell him?” he asked, making up his mind.
“I told him you and Blane went over there and took me away and tossed me out of the car and socked me on the back of the head. I didn’t tell him the rest.”
“Not about Twenty-third and Descanso, huh?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I thought maybe I could get more co-operation from you if I didn’t.”
“That’s a thought. You really want to go over to Stillwood Heights, or was that just a stall?”
“Just a stall. What I really want is for you to tell me why you put me in that funnyhouse and why I was kept there?”
Hemingway thought. He thought so hard his cheek muscles made little knots under his grayish skin.
“That Blane,” he said. “That sawed-off hunk of shin meat. I didn’t mean for him to sap you. I didn’t mean for you to walk home neither, not really. It was just an act, on account of we are friends with this swami guy and we kind of keep people from bothering him. You’d be surprised what a lot of people would try to bother him.”
“Amazed,” I said.
He turned his head. His gray eyes were lumps of ice. Then he looked again through the dusty windshield and did some more thinking.
“Them old cops get sap-hungry once in a while,” he said. “They just got to crack a head. Jesus, was I scared. You dropped like a sack of cement. I told Blane plenty. Then we run you over to Sonderborg’s place on account of it was a little closer and he was a nice guy and would take care of you.”
“Does Amthor know you took me there?”
“Hell, no. It was our idea.”
“On account of Sonderborg is such a nice guy and he would take care of me. And no kickback. No chance for a doctor to back up a complaint if I made one. Not that a complaint would have much chance in this sweet little town, if I did make it.”
“You going to get tough?” Hemingway asked thoughtfully.
“Not me,” I said. “And for once in your life neither are you. Because your job is hanging by a thread. You looked in the Chief’s eyes and you saw that. I didn’t go in there without credentials, not this trip.”
“Okey,” Hemingway said and spat out of the window. “I didn’t have any idea of getting tough in the first place except just the routine big mouth. What next?”
“Is Blane really sick?”
Hemingway nodded, but somehow failed to look sad. “Sure is. Pain in the gut day before yesterday and it bust on him before they could get his appendix out. He’s got a chance—but not too good.”
“We’d certainly hate to lose him,” I said. “A fellow like that is an asset to any police force.”
Hemingway chewed that one over and spat it out of the car window.
“Okey, next question,” he sighed.
“You told me why you took me to
Sonderborg’s place. You didn’t tell me why he kept me there over forty-eight hours, locked up and shot full of dope.”
Hemingway braked the car softly over beside the curb. He put his large hands on the lower part of the wheel side by side and gently rubbed the thumbs together.
“I wouldn’t have an idea,” he said in a far-off voice.
“I had papers on me showing I had a private license,” I said. “Keys, some money, a couple of photographs. If he didn’t know you boys pretty well, he might think the crack on the head was just a gag to get into his place and look around. But I figure he knows you boys too well for that. So I’m puzzled.”
“Stay puzzled, pally. It’s a lot safer.”
“So it is,” I said. “But there’s no satisfaction in it.”
“You got the L.A. law behind you on this?”
“On this what?”
“On this thinking about Sonderborg.”
“Not exactly.”
“That don’t mean yes or no.”
“I’m not that important,” I said. “The L.A. law can come in here any time they feel like it—two thirds of them anyway. The Sheriffs boys and the D.A.’s boys. I have a friend in the D.A.’s office. I worked there once. His name is Bernie Ohls. He’s Chief Investigator.”
“You give it to him?”
“No. I haven’t spoken to him in a month.”
“Thinking about giving it to him?”
“Not if it interferes with a job I’m doing.”
“Private job?”
“Yes.”
“Okey, what is it you want?”
“What’s Sonderborg’s real racket?”
Hemingway took his hands off the wheel and spat out of the window. “We’re on a nice street here, ain’t we? Nice homes, nice gardens, nice climate. You hear a lot about crooked cops, or do you?”
“Once in a while,” I said.
“Okey, how many cops do you find living on a street even as good as this, with nice lawns and flowers? I’d know four or five, all vice squad boys. They get all the gravy. Cops like me live in itty-bitty frame houses on the wrong side of town. Want to see where I live?”
“What would it prove?”
“Listen, pally,” the big man said seriously. “You got me on a string, but it could break. Cops don’t go crooked for money. Not always, not even often. They get caught in the system. They get you where they have you do what is told them or else. And the guy that sits back there in the nice big corner office, with the nice suit and the nice liquor breath he thinks chewing on them seeds makes smell like violets, only it don’t—he ain’t giving the orders either. You get me?”
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