“The cop noticed all that?”
Bailey nodded. “He also noticed muddy footprints at the edge of the carpet. Rayfield finally admitted someone had been in the house, but swore it was only a tramp. He told the cop to go home and forget it. Since it was Rayfield talking, we haven’t pushed our noses in much. But it might be profitable for you, Frazee.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll mosey out that way. If I smell out a fee, we’ll cut you in.”
“Sure, Ham. Drop out to the house soon. I’ve been hoarding some choice Scotch.” He left the office like a good-natured elephant that’s greedy and overpowering in its selfish strength, yet that’s big enough to admit unblushingly that the flaws are there.
I eyed Millie Morge’s blonde loneliness. I’d been thinking about dinner, soft music, but now I sighed heavily, clamped my Panama on my head. “You can scoot along home now, if you like,” I said. At the doorway I paused. “In case this business should pan out to be nothing, where can I phone you?”
With a laugh containing just the right amount of coquettishness, she gave me her address and phone number. I left the office.
The sun had slipped in the glittering waters of the Gulf when I alighted from a cab in front of John Rayfield’s house. It was the sort of house you’d expect a man like him to own. Crisp, bright stucco, a broad lawn, well-kept palms nodding languidly.
A lean butler answered my sing, took my name, and disappeared in the house. He returned short moments later, nodded to me. “Mr. Rayfield will see you.”
The interior of the house was rambling, expansive, the furniture bright and square and modern. The butler pulled a door open and I entered John Rayfield’s study.
He rose, shook hands with me. He was tall, even taller than I, well-groomed, with a deceptive quiet, lazy air about him that was belied by his thin, shrewd face and piercing dark brown eyes. He nodded his proud head, which was beginning to gray faintly, toward a cream-colored, leather-upholstered chair.
“I’m glad to see you, Frazee. I guess you’ve got some tall tales of war to tell.”
“A few,” I waited until he sat down behind his massive maple desk. A soft breeze, rising with night, gently rustled the pastel drapes behind me. I said, “Has Howard Conklin been around this way, Rayfield?”
His pearl-like teeth gleamed in a thin smile. “Conk made a nuisance of himself, asking about the so-called prowler in my house last night.”
I leaned my elbows on my knees. “I’ve known you fairly well for three or four years, Rayfield. I’ve done you a turn or two...”
“You were well paid,” he reminded.
I nodded. “You know,” I continued, “that I can keep my mouth shut. Was there a prowler?”
I didn’t like the way his face changed, darkening, becoming more saturnine. “Conk was after the same dope.” His gaze bored into me. “What are you two after, Frazee?”
I mulled over a half a dozen possible answers, decided on the truth. “I don’t know what Conk is up to. I’ll be frank with you, John. I...”
“...Want to work for me,” he finished. He shook his head. “I don’t need your help, Frazee. But I’ll tell you what I will do.” His long, nervous fingers flicked the edge of the desk blotter. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars to stay away from me, believe nothing you hear about me. To leave me strictly alone and mind your own damn business!” Voice hardening, he rose to his feet as he finished the sentence.
My pulse had gained tempo. I said, “I’m afraid I can’t...”
He was around the desk in a flash. “The hell you can’t. Look, Frazee, you and Conk stick your noses where they shouldn’t be too damn much.”
“We’re trying to smell out work, Rayfield.” I added quietly: “Is that a threat?”
His face was white about the nostrils. I had the sudden feeling that John Rayfield was scared, plenty. After a moment, he said, “No, it isn’t a threat. But it is an offer. I... I’ll make it two hundred. Here,” his hand flicked to his pocket, “take a hundred on account. When you see Conk, tell him to keep away from me and anything that breaks near me.” He forced the hundred dollar bill in my side coat pocket. “I’ll give Conk the other hundred, Frazee.”
He ushered me to the door. He and the butter were a smoothly working team. Before I knew it. I was politely but firmly shown the way out and the front door closed behind me.
I stood on the walk a moment, telling myself I had slipped. I’d been away too long, lost the touch. Before my induction. Rayfield wouldn’t have got rid of me so easily. Then I shrugged, decided to head back to the office. A little bug stirring unpleasantly in my mind kept telling me something was up, something screwy that caused Rayfield to want to hire Conk and me to stay off the case, if case it was. Perhaps I could find something in Conk’s files in the office which would enlighten me.
The elevators had stopped for the night. I walked up, went down the corridor, keyed the door of our office open. Then I stopped dead and clutched the door jamb.
I’d been looking forward a long time to a reunion with Conk. But not like this. He was lying in the middle of the floor. He was still bleeding a little where the bullet had hit him high in the cheek and angled upward into his brain.
2
I closed the office door, and raging anger took the place of the hard lump of grief in my throat. Trembling, I shuffled closer to the man who had been my best friend. Crazy things registered in my seething mind; the way his eyes seemed to be staring straight into eternity; the ticking of the watch on my wrist. I looked at the watch. Seven thirty three, and the second hand kept crawling around. Time kept moving; the blurred sounds of traffic down on the street drifted up to the office. I was aware of it all — but Conk wasn’t.
I brushed my hand across my eyes, looked about the office. Conk was lying in the midst of the wreckage of our files. Papers rustled over the floor. It had been a thorough search — too thorough perhaps to have been successful. Every place we kept papers had been exhausted in a quick but efficient search. Even the pockets of Conk’s short-stout gray suit had been turned wrong side out.
I picked up Howard Conklin’s battered straw hat, which had rolled a few feet from his body. Before his wife had died a couple years ago. Conk used to bide a five spot under the band of his hat every now and then, beer money. It had been a silent joke between Conk’s wife and myself, for she knew of his hiding place. Yet she never revealed it, letting him have the pleasure of thinking right to the end that he was snitching a fin for drinks like a small boy swiping a piece of pie. She’d been that kind of woman.
Sweat-stained, sharply creased, a paper folded several times was nestled under the hat band. Blurred in spots and interspersed with (rude doodles, a few short items of memoranda had been jotted sloppily:
“Find Burt Morgan first.” Then doodles, while Conk had been thinking. “After Burt Morgan, logical to contact John Rayfield.” A string of dollar marks. Then: “What was the real cause of the fight between Burt Morgan and York Rayfield — John Rayfield’s son — in a bar five years ago? May have bearing on case. No one seems to know why they were scrapping.”
The hat slipped from my fingers. I folded the paper, put it in my inside coat pocket. I looked at Conk’s slightly parted lips and a chill rippled over me. With Rayfield, his son York, and Burt Morgan all mentioned on that paper, I knew my hunch had been right. This was big; too big for Conk. Too big and too crazy for me. Conk had memoed: “Find Burt Morgan first.”