Finger Man, and Other Stories
FINGER MAN
ONE
I got away from the Grand Jury a little after four, and then sneaked up the back stairs to Fenweather’s office. Fenweather, the D.A., was a man with severe, chiseled features and the gray temples women love. He played with a pen on his desk and said: «I think they believed you. They might even indict Manny Tinnen for the Shannon kill this afternoon. If they do, then is the time you begin to watch your step.»
I rolled a cigarette around in my fingers and finally put it in my mouth. «Don’t put any men on me, Mr. Fenweather. I know the alleys in this town pretty well, and your men couldn’t stay close enough to do me any good.»
He looked towards one of the windows. «How well do you know Frank Dorr?» he asked, with his eyes away from me.
«I know he’s a big politico, a fixer you have to see if you want to open a gambling hell or a bawdy house — or if you want to sell honest merchandise to the city.»
«Right.» Fenweather spoke sharply, and brought his head around towards me. Then he lowered his voice. «Having the goods on Tinnen was a surprise to a lot of people. If Frank Dorr had an interest in getting rid of Shannon who was the head of the Board where Dorr’s supposed to get his contracts, it’s close enough to make him take chances. And I’m told he and Manny Tinnen had dealings. I’d sort of keep an eye on him, if I were you.»
I grinned. «I’m just one guy,» I said. «Frank Dorr covers a lot of territory. But I’ll do what I can.»
Fenweather stood up and held his hand across the desk. He said: «I’ll be out of town for a couple of days, I’m leaving tonight, if this indictment comes through. Be careful — and if anything should happen to go wrong, see Bernie Ohls, my chief investigator.»
I said: «Sure.»
We shook hands and I went out past a tired-looking girl who gave me a tired smile and wound one of her lax curls up on the back of her neck as she looked at me. I got back to my office soon after four-thirty. I stopped outside the door of the little reception room for a moment, looking at it. Then I opened it and went in, and of course there wasn’t anybody there.
There was nothing there but an old red davenport, two odd chairs, a bit of carpet, and a library table with a few old magazines on it. The reception room was left open for visitors to come in and sit down and wait — if I had any visitors and they felt like waiting.
I went across and unlocked the door into my private office, lettered «‘Philip Marlowe… Investigations’.»
Lou Harger was sitting on a wooden chair on the side of the desk away from the window. He had bright yellow gloves clamped on the crook of a cane, a green snap-brim hat set too far back on his head. Very smooth black hair showed under the hat and grew too low on the nape of his neck.
«Hello. I’ve been waiting,» he said, and smiled languidly.
«’Lo, Lou. How did you get in here?»
«The door must have been unlocked. Or maybe I had a key that fitted. Do you mind?»
I went around the desk and sat down in the swivel chair. I put my hat down on the desk, picked up a bulldog pipe out of an ash tray and began to fill it up.
«It’s all right as long as it’s you,» I said. «I just thought I had a better lock.»
He smiled with his full red lips. He was a very good-looking boy. He said: «Are you still doing business, or will you spend the next month in a hotel room drinking liquor with a couple of Headquarters boys?»
«I’m still doing business — if there’s any business for me to do.»
I lit a pipe, leaned back and stared at his clear olive skin, straight, dark eyebrows.
He put his cane on top of the desk and clasped his yellow gloves on the glass. He moved his lips in and out.
«I have a little something for you. Not a hell of a lot. But there’s carfare in it.»
I waited.
«I’m making a little play at Las Olindas tonight,» he said. «At Canales’ place.»
«The white smoke?»
«Uh-huh. I think I’m going to be lucky — and I’d like to have a guy with a rod.»
I took a fresh pack of cigarettes out of a top drawer and slid them across the desk. Lou picked them up and began to break the pack open.
I said: «What kind of a play?»
He got a cigarette halfway out and stared down at it. There was a little something in his manner I didn’t like.
«I’ve been closed up for a month now. I wasn’t makin’ the kind of money it takes to stay open in this town. The Headquarters boys have been putting the pressure on since repeal. They have bad dreams when they see themselves trying to live on their pay.»
I said: «It doesn’t cost any more to operate here than anywhere else. And here you pay it all to one organization. That’s something.»
Lou Harger jabbed the cigarette in his mouth. «Yeah — Frank Dorr,» he snarled. «That fat, bloodsuckin’ sonofabitch!»
I didn’t say anything. I was way past the age when it’s fun to swear at people you can’t hurt. I watched Lou light his cigarette with my desk lighter. He went on, through a puff of smoke: «It’s a laugh, in a way. Canales bought a new wheel — from some grafters in the sheriffs office. I know Pina, Canales’ head croupier, pretty well. The wheel is one they took away from me. It’s got bugs — and I know the bugs.»
«And Canales don’t… That sounds just like Canales,» I said.
Lou didn’t look at me. «He gets a nice crowd down there,» he said. «He has a small dance floor and a five-piece Mexican band to help the customers relax. They dance a bit and then go back for another trimming, instead of going away disgusted.»
I said: «What do you do?»
«I guess you might call it a system,» he said softly, and looked at me under his long lashes.
I looked away from him, looked around the room. It had a rust-red carpet, five green filing cases in a row under an advertising calendar, an old costumer in the corner, a few walnut chairs, net curtains over the windows. The fringe of the curtains was dirty from blowing about in the draft. There was a bar of late sunlight across my desk and it showed up the dust.
«I get it like this,» I said. «You think you have that roulette wheel tamed and you expect to win enough money so that Canales will be mad at you. You’d like to have some protection along — me. I think it’s screwy.»
«It’s not screwy at all,» Lou said. «Any roulette wheel has a tendency to work in a certain rhythm. If you know the wheel very well indeed —»
I smiled and shrugged. «Okey, I wouldn’t know about that. I don’t know enough roulette. It sounds to me like you’re being a sucker for your own racket, but I could be wrong. And that’s not the point anyway.»
«What is?» Lou asked thinly.
«I’m not much stuck on bodyguarding — but maybe that’s not the point either. I take it I’m supposed to think this play is on the level. Suppose I don’t, and walk out on you, and you get in a box? Or suppose I think everything is aces, but Canales don’t agree with me and gets nasty.»
«That’s why I need a guy with a rod,» Lou said, without moving a muscle except to speak.
I said evenly: «If I’m tough enough for the job — and I didn’t know I was — that still isn’t what worries me.»
«Forget it,» Lou said. «It breaks me up enough to know you’re worried.»
I smiled a little more and watched his yellow gloves moving around on top of the desk, moving too much. I said slowly: «You’re the last guy in the world to be getting expense money that way just now. I’m the last guy to be standing behind you while you do it. That’s all.»
Lou said: «Yeah.» He knocked some ash off his cigarette down on the glass top, bent his head to blow it off. He went on, as if it was a new subject: «Miss Glenn is going with me. She’s a tall redhead, a swell looker. She used to model. She’s nice people in any kind of a spot and she’ll keep Canales from breathing on my neck. So we’ll make out. I just thought I’d tell you.»