“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” said Lorre, leading me to another set where he turned on an overhead light. It was a hotel room. “For background, can you tell me what it’s like to be a real private investigator.”
I sat on the sofa, and he sat next to me.
“By the way, this is a set for the movie,” he said. “The detective, Spade, will sit where you are sitting. There’s a very nice scene between him and-do you remember the Guttman character?”
“Yes,” I said, “the fat man, but he wasn’t fat in the Cortez movie.”
“He will be in this one,” said Lorre, “a very amiable gentleman from the theater named Green-street.”
“Who’s going to play Spade?”
“George Raft, I think,” said Lorre, rubbing his eyes. “Please forgive me. I’ve been working rather hard, and I have to get back to another set. But can you tell me something about being a private detective?”
I rubbed my back and straightened up in the sofa. Lorre was looking at me intently, but I didn’t have anything profound to say.
“It’s a job for a lazy man with muscles and not too many brains,” I said. “The pay stinks, most people think you’re a few levels below a pimp, and the people you usually meet are welchers, petty thieves, angry runaway wives and husbands who try to belt you, alcoholics and other not-very-pleasant social types. The cops hate you; the clients don’t trust you; and the people you look for or find would be happy to see you dead. I own an old car that’s falling apart. My clothes are falling apart. I’m falling apart. I get hit a lot and I eat badly.”
Lorre’s eyes were wide.
“Fascinating,” he sighed, “then why do you continue to do it?”
“Every once in a while, like now, it makes me feel really alive,” I said. “It’s something cops feel a lot, good cops, and private investigators feel once in a while.”
I took his hand.
“Be careful, Mr. Peters,” said the thin man holding on to my hand.
“I’ll be careful.”
The stage had been soundproof, and I didn’t know if it was still raining. My watch said 7:30. I stepped outside, and it was still raining, but not as heavily. The sky was still a mass of darkness threatening to go wild again, and thunder rumbled far away.
I had half an hour to get to my brother’s office. I decided to stop back to my apartment first. I should just about make it. I didn’t want to carry a toy gun and the two photographs into a police station.
As I drove through Griffith Park my back continued to ache, and the green Dodge kept tailing me. There’s wasn’t much I could do about either problem.
At my apartment building, I parked in an illegal zone in front of the door and dashed into the lobby. The green Dodge pulled past looking for a parking space.
It would have been nice to take a hot bath, but I knew I didn’t have the time. I didn’t want to keep Phil waiting. He wouldn’t understand. In addition, I didn’t want to be in the apartment long enough for my friend in the green Dodge to find me. I had no gun. He may have had my 38. I had some pictures. He may have wanted them.
I turned the key in my lock, and the door flew open. I was pulled into darkness. The small light next to my bed went on, and I was thrown on my unmade bed. The sudden pull and the hard board under my mattress had done my back no good, and I had a feeling things weren’t going to improve.
Three men stood over me around the bed. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt when I call them men. One was short, shorter than me, but built like a dark mailbox. He was bald and had no neck. He looked quite stupid in spite of his suit and tie. The second man I saw was grinning, but there was nothing funny. He was tall and slightly on the thin side. He wore a jacket, no tie and the meanest odor I’d ever met. The third man was familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I wanted to remember their descriptions in case I survived. The third man was very big and broad, with grey hair and the smashed nose of a former fighter. It even beat my nose as a disaster area.
“No trouble, Peters,” said the former fighter holding out his hand. “You give us the photograph of the girl and you stay alive.”
His voice was deep and rasping, as if years of shouting had turned his vocal cords to gravel. It was very effective.
I managed to pull the Woolworth gun from my pocket.
“Sorry boys,” I said trying to sound tough and confident, “but you are going to move across the room and sit very quietly while I call the police. And while we’re waiting for them to pick you up on a breaking and entering, maybe you can tell me who asked you to pay me this visit.”
They didn’t move.
I aimed the gun at the mailbox, who neither moved back nor grinned. The tall grinner giggled.
Mailbox reached over and pulled the gun from my hand.
“The photograph, Peters, quick,” said the croaker with the grey hair.
I sat up, started to go for my pocket and put everything I had behind a punch to the mouth of the mailbox. He took a step back, his mouth bleeding, while I made a move toward the door. My bad back slowed me up. The croaker grabbed me. I threw an elbow at his stomach. He turned and took it in the side, but held on. The tall grinner belted me in the lower back, over the kidney. He was either wearing brass knuckles or a roll of nickels in his fist. The pain in my back was electric. I moaned and slumped down. The mailbox moved toward me, wiping a touch of blood from the corner of his mouth with an ugly fist. I was going to be dead or very sick.
He pulled his tree-stump hand back to mash my face when the door burst open.
Bruce Cabot and Guinn Williams were standing in it. Cabot was grim, his arms out at his side. Williams was squinting at the mailbox.
The croaker dropped my arms, and I leveled a left to his groin. He went back against the wall.
Williams, his curls bobbing, went for the mailbox, who showed his teeth. Williams’ closed fist thudded off the bald man’s skull, and the stricken man went down, his head bouncing on my wooden floor. Williams shook his first and went for the down man.
Meanwhile, the tall giggler had stopped giggling and had pulled out a tall knife. He held it low as if he knew how to use it and had come up against other bellies before. He was behind Williams. Cabot reached out, grabbed the giggler’s hand, pulled him around and grimaced as he threw a right into the man’s stomach. On the way down, the tall man took a swing with the knife at Cabot, who backed away.
The grey-haired croaker was behind me pulling at my jacket and hitting me in the neck with his fist. I was trying to get back on my feet. Williams and Cabot pulled him off. The giggler and mailbox headed for the door.
“Let them go,” I gasped.
The croaker was in good shape. He pulled away from the two actors and came up with a gun in his hand. It wasn’t mine, but it wasn’t a toy. The first shot missed my head, but I don’t know by how much. It hit a lamp behind me. Cabot and Williams dropped to the floor, and Williams started up to go after the croaker who was leveling the gun at me again.
My hand touched something on the floor, the broken lamp. The shade was demolished. Still on my knees I threw the lamp at the croaker. At ten feet, he wasn’t likely to miss a second time.
The lamp caught him in the neck and head. The gun went off, the bullet smashing into my bathtub in the next room and making an eerie sound as it ricocheted.
The croaker fell backward with the smashed lamp and went out of the closed window. Glass flew across the room, and I felt a splinter hit my hand.
Williams and Cabot went to the window. It was three floors down and he might survive, but I doubted it.
“He’s not moving,” said Cabot.
“I didn’t think he would be,” I groaned.
Williams came back to help me up.
“What were you two doing here?” I said.
“How about, ‘thanks,’” said Cabot, taking my arm and helping me to the nearest chair.