He went to the door, turned his tired smile to me. “Want to look at them with me?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t got time — I’ll look at ’em in the morning.”
Dreier nodded and went out and closed the door.
Bachmann was leaning back in his chair glaring at me with elaborate disgust. “A fine smoother-over you’re turning out to be!” he said.
“That smoother-over business is your idea,” I reminded him, “not mine. Me — I like a good fight — I’m the kind of a guy that starts revolutions.”
I gave him a trick grin and bowed out. The creamy angel was still sitting in the outer office. She smiled at me again and I took it and smiled back and almost smashed my knee-cap against the door because I wasn’t looking where I was going.
I was still thinking about her when I got into my car, and figuring that maybe the deal with the man and the dog wasn’t so important after all.
Traffic was heavy on Melrose; I cut up Gower and got out of the worst of it but it took me nearly twenty minutes to get to the hotel.
I was getting into the bathtub when the phone rang. The switchboard-girl said: “Theah’s a Mistah Hammah callin’, Mistah Nolan...” She kind of crooned it, like: “Theah’s a cotton field a callin’, honey chile.” You could slice that Deep South accent with a dull cleaver.
“On the phone, or is he downstairs?”
“On the wiah, Mistah Nolan. He’s in the hotel but he wants to talk to you on the wiah...”
Hammer played occasional bits in pictures and was a sort of all-around handy-man for Joe Ciretti. Ciretti was the Big Bad Wolf of the Coast underworld. He was also Maya Sarin’s current suitor.
I told the girl to put him on and sat down and waited for the click, said “Hello” as disagreeably as I could.
His nasal, high-pitched voice quavered over the wire: “H’are ya, Old Timer? What’s the good word? How’s everything?”
“Everything’s been swell — up to now. I’m in a hurry — what’s on your mind?”
Hammer said: “Me and a friend of mine want to have a little talk with you.”
I said: “Not a chance — I’ve got to be out of here in ten minutes and I’m just getting into the tub. Give me a ring later.”
“Later won’t do. We want to talk to you now!” The tone of his voice had changed; all the amusement had gone out of it and it was almost plaintively serious.
Another voice rasped over the wire suddenly. It was sharp, stacatto, with a slight Latin accent:
“Listen, you! Look out the window — the one on your right. Look at the window across the court!”
I twisted around in the chair and looked through my wide open window at the one the voice was shouting about. It was about twenty-five or thirty feet away, open, dark.
I started to say, “So what,” or something equally bright and then I stopped because there was a thin blue rifle-barrel sticking out a few inches over the lower sill and it was pointing, as nearly as I could measure the angle at that distance, at my right eye. I could see a man’s head and shoulders vaguely outlined against the darkness of the room.
The voice went on: “Now put the phone down on the table and put your hands up — high; then get up and unlock the door and go back and sit down. And don’t forget — you’re covered all the way to the door.”
I did exactly that. I wanted to see what the play was about. I unlocked the door and opened it a couple of inches and went back and sat down. I kept my hands up and watched the rifle-barrel and waited.
In a couple of minutes Hammer and a thick-set, swarthy guy with bright beady eyes and blue-black hair came in and closed the door.
I looked back at the window and the rifle-barrel was gone. I said: “Do you gentlemen mind if I put on my pants?”
Hammer was a thin, medium-sized Swede with a thick butter-yellow mustache. He grinned a little, piped: “Never mind your pants — we like you this way.” He waved his hand at blue-black hair. “This’s Joe Ciretti — he wants to talk to you.”
I got up and grabbed a bathrobe off the bed, slid into it. “First,” I said, “you’d better let me in on what all this strong-arm stuff is about. I don’t like it, and when I don’t like something I get in a bad mood, and when I’m in a bad mood I’m a bad talker — or listener.”
Ciretti’s eyes widened innocently on Hammer; he lifted his hands in front of him as if he was holding a watermelon, said: “Strong-arm stuff! I don’t know what Mister Nolan is talking about — do you, Gus?” His was the sharp, staccato voice of the telephone.
I went over to the door and opened it, said: “You boys have seen too many moving-pictures. It’s a pleasure, Ciretti — sometime I’ll play Indian and cowboy with you but right now I’m in a hurry. Give me a call at the studio—”
Ciretti waltzed over and very suddenly, magically, a big blue heater appeared in his hand; he jabbed it into my belly, rasped: “You go back and sit down — quick!”
Something in his tone made me realize that he might be on the level. I felt like a sap who’d been caught trying to make a four-card straight stand up, sat down.
Ciretti went on: “I’ve called you five, six times at the studio today.”
“That’s dandy,” I said. “I didn’t go near my office all day.”
Ciretti sat down near me, leaned forward and let the big automatic dangle loosely between his legs. “Just one thing I want understood,” he ground out. “Then you can go about your business and we’ll go about ours.”
“That’ll be swell.”
“You, nor this guy Dreier,” he went on, “nor Bachmann, nor anybody else is going to freeze Maya out of this picture.”
I opened my mouth like a black-bass and gave him a stunned gasp.
“Who,” I asked gently, “ever gave you the screwy idea that anyone was trying to freeze her out of anything?”
“She told me.” His voice was like a couple of billiard balls rubbed together. “She says you’re all trying to railroad her out of pictures.”
I said: “You know her better than I do. You know she’s been stiff for weeks, and yet you fall for an insane angle like that. It doesn’t make sense.”
“She says she has to drink to keep going — with everybody against her.” Ciretti straightened up and eased the automatic back into its holster, slowly. He looked worried, as if he actually believed what he was saying and didn’t know what to say next. The poor chump was evidently in love with little Maya.
Hammer was staring at the ceiling, whistling soundlessly, making a very bad job of trying to look unconcerned.
“If that’s all you wanted to see me about,” I said — “and why you picked on me instead of Dreier or Bachmann or someone who really cuts ice at B. L. D. I can’t imagine — you can tell Maya that if she’ll pull herself together and lay off the jug everything’ll be simply elegant.”
I turned to Hammer. “I still don’t savvy all this brandishing of guns and—”
Ciretti interrupted, said swiftly: “I thought you were trying to duck me — and I wanted you to know how I felt about it. You’ve got to give her a break.”
My watch was on the table. I looked at it and it was sixteen minutes after six. I started to stand up and the phone rang; I sat down again and picked up the receiver.
The girl said: “Mistah Bachmann callin’, Mistah Nolan.”
I told her to put Bachmann on and said: “Hello, Jack,” and listened. After about a minute I stuttered something like “Okey, I’ll be right over,” and hung up and looked at Ciretti.
I said: “Maya’s out of the picture.”
He stood up slowly. “What do you mean? They can’t—”
I took a deep breath, went on: “She’s been murdered. They just found her in her dressing-room. Dreier’s been arrested.”