There was a dull screech, not loud, from the dark woman. The color drained from Erno’s cheeks, leaving them pallid, sunk in. In a voice that whistled with fury he said:
«Okey, baby. We’ll go outside. March, you—!»
One of the bored men three tables away made a sudden movement of no significance. Slight as it was it caught Erno’s eye. His glance flickered. Then the table rose into his stomach, knocked him sprawling.
It was a light table, and Mallory was not a lightweight. There was a complicated thudding sound. A few dishes clattered, some silver. Erno was spread on the floor with the table across his thighs. His gun settled a foot from his clawing hand. His face was convulsed.
For a poised instant of time it was as though the scene were imprisoned in glass, and would never change. Then the dark woman screeched again, louder. Everything became a swirl of movement. People on all sides came to their feet. Two waiters put their arms straight up in the air and began to spout violent Neapolitan. A moist, overdriven bus-boy charged up, more afraid of the headwaiter than of sudden death. A plump, reddish man with corn-colored hair hurried down steps, waving a bunch of menus.
Erno jerked his legs clear, weaved to his knees, snatched up his gun. He swiveled, spitting curses. Mallory, alone, indifferent in the center of the babble, leaned down and cracked a hard fist against Erno’s flimsy jaw.
Consciousness evaporated from Erno’s eyes. He collapsed like a half-filled sack of sand.
Mallory observed him carefully for a couple of seconds. Then he picked his cigarette case up off the floor. There were still two cigarettes in it. He put one of them between his lips, put the case away. He took some bills out of his trouser pocket, folded one lengthwise and poked it at a waiter.
He walked away without haste, toward the five crimson-carpeted steps and the entrance.
The man with the fat neck opened a cautious and fishy eye. The drunken woman staggered to her feet with a cackle of inspiration, picked up a bowl of ice cubes in her thin jeweled hands, and dumped it on Erno’s stomach, with fair accuracy.
TWO
MALLORY came out from under the canopy with his soft hat under his arm. The doorman looked at him inquiringly. He shook his head and walked a little way down the curving sidewalk that bordered the semicircular private driveway. He stood at the edge of the curbing, in the darkness, thinking hard. After a little while an Isotta-Fraschini went by him slowly.
It was an open phaeton, huge even for the calculated swank of Hollywood. It glittered like a Ziegfield chorus as it passed the entrance lights, then it was all dull gray and silver. A liveried chauffeur sat behind the wheel as stiff as a poker, with a peaked cap cocked rakishly over one eye. Rhonda Farr sat in the back seat, under the half-deck, with the rigid stillness of a wax figure.
The car slid soundlessly down the driveway, passed between a couple of squat stone pillars and was lost among the lights of the boulevard. Mallory put on his hat absently.
Something stirred in the darkness behind him, between tall Italian cypresses. He swung around, looked at faint light on a gun barrel.
The man who held the gun was very big and broad. He had a shapeless felt hat on the back of his head, and an indistinct overcoat hung away from his stomach. Dim light from a high-up, narrow window outlined bushy eyebrows, a hooked nose. There was another man behind him.
He said: «This is a gun, buddy. It goes boom-boom, and guys fall down. Want to try it?»
Mallory looked at him emptily, and said: «Grow up, flattie! What’s the act?»
The big man laughed. His laughter had a dull sound, like the sea breaking on rocks in a fog. He said with heavy sarcasm:
«Bright boy has us spotted, Jim. One of us must look like a cop.» He eyed Mallory, and added: «Saw you pull a rod on a little guy inside. Was that nice?»
Mallory tossed his cigarette away, watched it arc through the darkness. He said carefully:
«Would twenty bucks make you see it some other way?»
«Not tonight, mister. Most any other night, but not tonight.»
«A C note?»
«Not even that, mister.»
«That,» Mallory said gravely, «must be damn’ tough.»
The big man laughed again, came a little closer. The man behind him lurched out of the shadows and planted a soft fattish hand on Mallory’s shoulder. Mallory slid sidewise, without moving his feet. The hand fell off. He said:
«Keep your paws off me, gumshoe!»
The other man made a snarling sound. Something swished through the air. Something hit Mallory very hard behind his left ear. He went to his knees. He kneeled swaying for a moment, shaking his head violently. His eyes cleared. He could see the lozenge design in the sidewalk. He got to his feet again rather slowly.
He looked at the man who had blackjacked him and cursed him in a thick dull voice, with a concentration of ferocity that set the man back on his heels with his slack mouth working like melting rubber.
The big man said: «Damn your soul, Jim! What in hell’d you do that for?»
The man called Jim put his soft fat hand to his mouth and gnawed at it. He shuffled the blackjack into the side pocket of his coat.
«Forget it!» he said. «Let’s take the — and get on with it. I need a drink.»
He plunged down the walk. Mallory turned slowly, followed him with his eyes, rubbing the side of his head. The big man moved his gun in a business-like way and said:
«Walk, buddy. We’re takin’ a little ride in the moonlight.»
Mallory walked. The big man fell in beside him. The man called Jim fell in on the other side. He hit himself hard in the pit of the stomach, said:
«I need a drink, Mac. I’ve got the jumps.»
The big man said peacefully: «Who don’t, you poor egg?»
They came to a touring car that was double-parked near the squat pillars at the edge of the boulevard. The man who had hit Mallory got in behind the wheel. The big man prodded Mallory into the back seat and got in beside him. He held his gun across his big thigh, tilted his hat a little further back, and got out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He lit one carefully, with his left hand.
The car went out into the sea of lights, rolled east a short way, then turned south down the long slope. The lights of the city were an endless glittering sheet. Neon signs glowed and flashed. The languid ray of a searchlight prodded about among high faint clouds.
«It’s like this,» the big man said, blowing smoke from his wide nostrils. «We got you spotted. You were tryin’ to peddle some phony letters to the Farr twist.»
Mallory laughed shortly, mirthlessly. He said: «You flatties give me an ache.»
The big man appeared to think it over, staring in front of him. Passing electroliers threw quick waves of light across his broad face. After a while he said:
«You’re the guy all right. We got to know these things in our business.»
Mallory’s eyes narrowed in the darkness. His lips smiled. He said: «What business, copper?»
The big man opened his mouth wide, shut it with a click. He said:
«Maybe you better talk, bright boy. Now would be a hell of a good time. Jim and me ain’t tough to get on with, but we got friends who ain’t so dainty.»
Mallory said: «What would I talk about, Lieutenant?»
The big man shook with silent laughter, made no answer. The car went past the oil well that stands in the middle of La Cienega Boulevard, then turned off on to a quiet street fringed with palm trees. It stopped half way down the block, in front of an empty lot. Jim cut the motor and the lights. Then he got a flat bottle out of the door-pocket and held it to his mouth, sighed deeply, passed the bottle over his shoulder.