“You’re sharp, Schmidt,” Rawne said, and bounded up the creaking stairs.
The odor of cabbage and ham hocks mingled with the mustiness of old walls and gave the house a lived-in smell. The white paint in the wall niche at the top of the first flight was mottled with cigarette burns. At the landing Rawne glanced down. Bottle tilted to his mouth, Schmidt was looking up at him. Two more flights, and Rawne stopped before a door marked 4A. Inside, a woman’s voice was raised in angry tones.
Rawne hammered on the door and the angry voice stopped. He puffed his cigar and looked at the clinging ash. Rawne’s face, as brown as iodine, was flat and square. The bulging frontal bone above deep-set brown eyes, the nose with the Irish dip, the blunt jaw with its curved, heavy line, made him almost as handsome as an English bulldog. He hitched his left shoulder. The brown sports coat flapped, showing the shoulder holster under the left arm. He knocked again.
“Want the door busted in, Jimmy boy?” he said loudly.
The apartment floor creaked. A man of perhaps fifty, though with a full head of black hair, opened the door. He’d been handsome, but his face, sensitive and even, looked tired and drained. The lines around red-rimmed pop eyes were deep, and under a weak chin hung a wattle of useless flesh. The bristly black mustache was neat.
A moth-eaten robe of faded blue, minus a sash, took away none of his distinguished air. He gave Rawne a muscular smile, but there was no love behind the thick-lensed glasses.
“Nice to see you, Kevin,” Greer said to Rawne. “How’s the private detective racket?”
“You should know,” Rawne said. “You’ve been living off it. I’ve loaned you twenty-three hundred dollars, if your memory needs jogging. Let’s go to the fifty-dollar window and pay off.”
Greer attempted to build up the smile, but the corner of his mouth twitched and the upper lip took on a mean little curl. He stepped aside for Rawne to enter. The hallway was cluttered with yellowed magazines and dusty cardboard boxes of old theater programs.
Rawne went into the living room, his cigar at a belligerent angle. Two large studio couches with threadbare green covers took half the space. A tall girl with deep-red hair falling softly to her shoulders was facing the peeling green wall, looking at autographed photos of famous people. She swung around and Rawne’s cigar sagged.
The nose was lovely, the mouth full and red. The short upper lip had a tantalizing lift. The anger in the big green eyes took nothing from her.
“Have you met Lulie Nolan, Kevin?” Greer’s voice was weak in his throat. “Wonderful Lulie Nolan? What an actress! What an answer to an old playwright’s dream. I’m writing the play for her.”
Rawne gazed at the angry green eyes and tensed face. “Relax,” he told her. “I’m not a talent scout.”
“You know Lee Searle,” Greer said dispiritedly.
Rawne turned to a lean kid in his twenties, who was glaring at Rawne and looking as though he wanted to hit somebody. Lee Searle had a high forehead and hollow temples. He was almost milk-white with a jutting nose and lopsided mouth with fuzz on the upper lip. He wore a checkered shirt with a button off and his black trousers had frayed cuffs.
“Sure I know Lee Searle,” Rawne said amiably. “Searle’s one of the bums you feed and give flop space to, Jim — so your guilt complex can wear a halo.”
Greer acted as though the barb had gone in deep, and he looked very sad, though the twitch at the corner of his mouth wasn’t sad. The girl Lulie studied Rawne with sudden interest. Searle’s lopsided mouth twisted straight. An unhealthy flush tinged the milk-white skin. Searle was narrow-shouldered but strong, and his clenched fists were large.
“You’d better take a walk, Lee,” Greer told Searle.
Searle gave Rawne a malevolent look. He reluctantly swung a faded green gabardine jacket under his arm. “I’ll walk. But when I come back and you got marks on you, Jim, I go looking for this keyhole peeper.”
Searle went out and slammed the door. Greer was standing by a crowded bookcase over which hung a policeman’s nightstick. He was moistening his lips. Rawne grinned at Lulie Nolan. The damp air accentuated her perfume. He inhaled deeply and blinked his eyes.
“Delightful, but it weakens me. Now, honey chile, if you’ll just step outside. I wouldn’t want to offend your delicate sensibilities.”
“Don’t be coy, goon boy!” Lulie Nolan retorted. “I don’t brush. Not when I’m owed money. Grandpappy here talked me loose from nineteen hundred dollars.”
She stepped to a maple dropleaf table piled with books and unwashed dishes. Rawne watched the loose-hipped movement of her stage walk with no apparent distaste.
The girl slapped open a bulging scrapbook of time-scorched clippings. “Reviews of Tarnished Lady,” she said. “A smash-hit on two continents. Six future stars in the cast. So I listened to grandpappy say that he did it once and he can do it again.”
She walked toward Rawne. She wore a gray skirt and she was slender and small around the waist. Her arms were smooth and the black blouse was a startling contrast to the green eyes and red hair. Rawne took the cigar out of his mouth. Lulie stopped a step or two away from him.
“Grandpappy is writing a play for me. Oh, yes.” Lulie Nolan’s voice had a husky quality, a low-pitched vibrancy. “Grandpappy is going to make me the greatest star ever seen on Broadway.”
“It’s a great play, Lulie darling,” Greer protested weakly.
“Sure,” the girl jeered. “Act One, Scene One. That’s as far as you’ve got. You haven’t even written in an ashtray.”
Rawne took her arm. “You and I, Lulie darling,” he said, “are not the only suckers who’ve been supplying Jim with cabbage which he fed to racetrack parimutuel machines. But I’m putting in the prior claim. You can go to work when I get my twenty-three hundred.”
She turned on Rawne, her green eyes hot with anger, but his grip was not light. He guided her firmly into the hallway and closed the door on her. She hammered on the panel.
“Oh,” she shouted in a trembling voice, “what a slow, slow death I’d like to arrange for you!”
Rawne returned to the living room. Greer was standing by a lounge chair that had a torn gray slip cover. He was wiping his glasses. Tears rolled slowly down his aging cheeks.
“Kevin boy,” he pleaded with Rawne, “you talk like I have money. Good Lord, Kevin, don’t upset me now! I’m too finely tuned. I’m keyed to concert pitch. I’m so filled with this new play I should be in an ivory tower. I should be in a monastery. It’s all written, Kevin. Every beautiful line of the play. In my head. You’ll make me lose it.”
Rawne rolled his cigar across his mouth. “Cut it, Jim. You’ve been washed for fifteen years. You haven’t written anything except bad checks for years. You’ve been living off this racket, kidding chumps like me that with a little financial help you could repeat Tarnished Lady. When I stopped dreaming of fast cars and a hunting lodge in Maine, you were in my bankroll so deep I kept supplying the spinach, hoping you’d pick a horse that wouldn’t graze in the backstretch. Today you had him — Blown Smoke in the seventh, and you walked away from a cashier’s window with ten thousand dollars.”
Greer put on his thick glasses. He ran a nervous hand through his black hair. “You’ve been drinking, Kevin.”
“I’ve been talking to a detective,” Rawne said. “He phoned me from Belmont Park after the eighth. I’ve been slipping him beer money to keep tabs on you.”
“Oh.” Greer nodded grimly, wisely. “I see.” His tone was bitter. “No trust. No faith. Little wonder the world’s upside down. Okay, Kevin — if that’s the way you want it. I’ll pay you. Tomorrow.”