The barman’s aimless rubbing ceased abruptly and he leaned against the inner edge of the bar, not moving at all. The natty little man smiled slowly, almost sleepily, shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. All I know is what I read in the papers, as the saying is.”
“According to those same papers, this is where he was last seen.”
He shrugged again. “Make your point, friend.”
“Not here,” I said. “Too public. And not to you, unless your name is Lew Gannon.”
“I’m Eddie Crum,” he said, still smiling. “Let’s go up to the office.”
He turned on his heel. I slid off the bar stool. The barman’s hand began to circle absently again, around and around on the shiny bar-top. Crum held open a door in the side wall and let me go past him. The door closed soundlessly, as if cushioned by air, and we went up thickly carpeted stairs and along a hushed hallway past wide, solid-looking oak doors with fancy bronze knobs, all closed at the moment, to one at the end marked “Private” in fine goldleaf lettering.
Crum knocked lightly, then stood there inspecting the small neat fingernails of his other hand. A mechanical lock buzzed and he reached the knob, opened the door and let me pass him again.
The office was tastefully furnished and looked more like a deacon’s study than a place of business. It had a small functional fireplace, books on shelves built into paneled walls, somber drapes pulled back from some north-light windows and a comfortably worn oriental rug on the floor, faded but expensive.
A bull-necked, dark-haired, gray-eyed man in a soft dark tweed suit sat in a high-backed leather chair behind a large walnut desk with nothing on it but three telephones and a bronze ashtray. He was scratching the side of his head, just above his right ear, with the point of a bronze letter opener. His face held no expression at all as he said: “Is this the bar call?”
“Yeah,” Eddie Crum said. “This is it.”
“What’s your trouble?” the man asked me.
“No trouble,” I said. “You’re Gannon?”
He nodded, tapping the letter opener against his strong white teeth. Crum dropped into an armchair, threw a leg over one of the arms, idly swung his foot. I sat down where I could watch them both and tossed my wallet on the desk and lit a cigarette while Gannon looked at my operative’s license.
“One of those,” he said dryly, passing back the wallet. “What’s the idea?”
“The idea is, Harvey Costain is my client,” I lied blandly. “Was, up to last night, that is. In a way, he still is.”
Nothing in his face changed. Crum put his head against the back of his chair and stared at the ceiling. Gannon drawled: “Anything to show to prove that?”
“I don’t have to prove that,” I snapped. “Not if I prove who murdered him.”
He smiled then, bleakly and not with his eyes.
“How are you doing, so far?” he asked, mildly.
“All right, so far,” I said stiffly. “I know about some trouble that he had last night, before he was bumped. Also about the trouble he had with you.”
The bleak smile faded. I grinned, nastily, and blew a long cloud of smoke at him. Without lifting his head off the chair back, Eddie Crum looked down the sides of his nose at me.
“Something else,” I said sharply. “It may come as a shock to you, but I had a spare gun all the time. I’m wearing it now. Nobody is going to get this one away from me, believe me.”
“Trouble is like booze,” Gannon said, almost softly. “A lot of people drink. Some can handle it. Others crack up.”
“Alcoholism runs in my family,” I sneered. “It killed my grandfather — at the age of a hundred and six.”
“This guy’s in a bad way, boss,” Eddie Crum purred at the ceiling. “Maybe he’s just thirsty. Maybe he needs a drink to straighten him out.”
“Maybe I just need to get my other gun back,” I rapped.
“O.K., you win,” Gannon sighed.
That jarred me. I should have guessed what was coming, but I stiffened and just sat there and gaped while his hand dipped into a drawer of the desk and came up with a gun. It was not my gun. He pointed it at me, smiled bleakly again and said: “On your feet, peeper.”
I stood up.
Crum got up and came over and frisked me smoothly and skidded my spare gun across the desk to his boss and went back and flopped in the big chair with his leg over the arm of it again. My cigarette was burning short and hot between my fingers. I had it by the very last shred of tobacco.
“Relax,” Gannon said, pushing the bronze ashtray at me. He put both guns in the desk drawer, closed the drawer. I dropped the stub into the ash tray and sat down. “So you lost another gun somewhere,” he mused.
I didn’t say anything.
“What was your job with Costain?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything.
“You never worked for him,” he said then. “You screwballed your way in here and now you are bluffing. I knew a thing or two about Costain’s business and who worked for him. I had him on a retainer basis myself. No matter what I thought about him personally, he was a smart attorney — and in my business, it pays to hire only the best.”
“Maybe he kept just one or two teenie weenie secrets to himself,” I drawled. “Like selling you out to Tony Zarsella.”
For a long moment he sat there with his hands flat on the desk top and stared at me and didn’t move a muscle. Eddie Crum rolled his eyes forward and looked down the sides of his nose again. Apart from that, he didn’t move either.
I had a sudden feeling that someone was behind me. I strained my ears for the sound of movement and silence thickened the air in the room until it was almost a chore to breathe. I jerked my head around. Nobody there. Crum snickered. Gannon glanced at him, briefly and without meaning. I clawed out another cigarette.
“You are still bluffing,” Gannon told me quietly.
“Like hell,” I said. “The johns think Costain was murdered where they found him, down below here in an empty lot on Santa Monica. That’s all crap.”
“Costain was bumped out in the valley and moved later,” he said. “He was knocked off in the rain in Tony Zarsella’s parking lot. Is that what you mean?”
I nodded, and wondered why my neck didn’t creak, the way it felt about then.
“I had the job done — just like that — to get rid of them both. Is that it?”
“That’s close enough,” I said stiffly. I groped out a matchbook, tore off a match. Gannon did a little tattoo on the desk top with the bronze letter opener. I lit the cigarette and said: “Rumor has it, Zarsella worked for you once.”
“Years ago,” he admitted.
“I gather he got fired. Maybe not. Either way, he’s competition for you, now that he’s got his own gambling setup out in the valley. He must attract a lot of the folks he knew when he worked here.”
Eddie Crum slid his leg off the chair arm and planted both feet on the carpet and looked at his boss. Gannon watched me.
“This town’s full of competition,” he said.
“There’s competition and there’s competition,” I said. “Zarsella gave you one kind and Costain gave you another kind.”
“How do you mean?” His voice seemed to tighten as he spoke.
“With a girl, is how I mean,” I grunted.
“You’re through, peeper,” he snapped. “I know all about you — and your missing gun. I got a phone call from the girl, just before you got here, so I was expecting you. She told me all about last night — and about you bothering her this morning.”
He stood the letter opener on its point on the shiny surface of the desk and leaned on it and almost drove it through the wood.