He grinned, very slowly, as if it hurt him. He struggled up in his chair and dragged a deeper drawer out from the side of his desk, put a nicely molded brown bottle up on the desk, and two striped glasses. He whispered: «Two-way split. You and me. I’m cutting Carol out. She’s too damn rough, Marlowe. I’ve seen hard women, but she’s the bluing on armor plate. And you’d never think it to look at her, would you?»
«Have I seen her?»
«I guess so. She says you did.»
«Oh, the girl in the Dodge.»
He nodded, and poured two good-sized drinks, put the bottle down and stood up. «Water? I like it in mine.»
«No,» I said, «but why cut me in? I don’t know any more than you mentioned. Or very little. Certainly not as much as you must know to go that far.»
He leered across the glasses. «I know where I can get fifty grand for the Leander pearls, twice what you could get. I can give you yours and still have mine. You’ve got the front I need to work in the open. How about the water?»
«No water,» I said.
He went across to the built-in wash place and ran the water and came back with his glass half full. He sat down again, grinned, lifted it.
We drank.
FIVE
So far I had only made four mistakes. The first was mixing in at all, even for Kathy Home’s sake. The second was staying mixed after I found Peeler Mardo dead. The third was letting Rush Madder see I knew what he was talking about. The fourth, the whiskey, was the worst.
It tasted funny even on the way down. Then there was that sudden moment of sharp lucidity when I knew, exactly as though I had seen it, that he had switched his drink for a harmless one cached in the closet.
I sat still for a moment, with the empty glass at my fingers’ ends, gathering my strength. Madder’s face began to get large and moony and vague. A fat smile jerked in and out under his Charlie Chan mustache as he watched me.
I reached back into my hip pocket and pulled out a loosely wadded handkerchief. The small sap inside it didn’t seem to show. At least Madder didn’t move, after his first grab under the coat.
I stood up and swayed forward drunkenly and smacked him square on the top of the head.
He gagged. He started to get up. I tapped him on the jaw. He became limp and his hand sweeping down from under his coat knocked his glass over on the desk top. I straightened it, stood silent, listening, struggling with a rising wave of nauseous stupor.
I went over to a communicating door and tried the knob. It was locked. I was staggering by now. I dragged an office chair to the entrance door and propped the back of it under the knob. I leaned against the door panting, gritting my teeth, cursing myself. I got handcuffs out and started back towards Madder.
A very pretty black-haired, gray-eyed girl stepped out of the clothes closet and poked a.32 at me.
She wore a blue suit cut with a lot of snap. An inverted saucer of a hat came down in a hard line across her forehead. Shiny black hair showed at the sides. Her eyes were slate-gray, cold, and yet lighthearted. Her face was fresh and young and delicate, and as hard as a chisel.
«All right, Marlowe. Lie down and sleep it off. You’re through.»
I stumbled towards her waving my sap. She shook her head. When her face moved it got large before my eyes. Its outlines changed and wobbled. The gun in her hand looked like anything from a tunnel to a toothpick.
«Don’t be a goof, Marlowe,» she said. «A few hours sleep for you, a few hours start for us. Don’t make me shoot. I would.»
«Damn you,» I mumbled. «I believe you would.»
«Right as rain, toots. I’m a lady that wants her own way. That’s fine. Sit down.»
The floor rose up and bumped me. I sat on it as on a raft in a rough sea. I braced myself on flat hands. I could hardly feel the floor. My hands were numb. My whole body was numb.
I tried to stare her down. «Ha-a! L-lady K-killer!» I giggled.
She threw a chilly laugh at me which I only just barely heard. Drums were beating in my head now, war drums from a far-off jungle. Waves of light were moving, and dark shadows and a rustle as of a wind in treetops. I didn’t want to lie down. I lay down.
The girl’s voice came from very far off, an elfin voice.
«Two-way split, eh? He doesn’t like my method, eh? Bless his big soft heart. We’ll see about him.»
Vaguely as I floated off I seemed to feel a dull jar that might have been a shot. I hoped she had shot Madder, but she hadn’t. She had merely helped me on my way out — with my own sap.
When I came around again it was night. Something clacked overhead with a heavy sound. Through the open window beyond the desk yellow light splashed on the high side walls of a building. The thing clacked again and the light went off. An advertising sign on the roof.
I got up off the floor like a man climbing out of thick mud. I waded over to the washbowl, sloshed water on my face, felt the top of my head and winced, waded back to the door and found the light switch.
Strewn papers lay around the desk, broken pencils, envelopes, an empty brown whiskey bottle, cigarette ends and ashes. The debris of hastily emptied drawers. I didn’t bother going through any of it. I left the office, rode down to the street in the shuddering elevator, slid into a bar and had a brandy, then got my car and drove on home.
I changed clothes, packed a bag, had some whiskey and answered the telephone. It was about nine-thirty.
Kathy Home’s voice said: «So you’re not gone yet. I hoped you wouldn’t be.»
«Alone?» I asked, still thick in the voice.
«Yes, but I haven’t been. The house has been full of coppers for hours. They were very nice, considering. Old grudge of some kind, they figured.»
«And the line is likely bugged now,» I growled. «Where was I supposed to be going?»
«Well — you know. Your girl told me.»
«Little dark girl? Very cool? Name of Carol Donovan?»
«She had your card. Why, wasn’t it —»
«I don’t have any girl,» I said grimly. «And I bet that just very casually, without thinking at all, a name slipped past your lips — the name of a town up north. Did it?»
«Ye-es,» Kathy Home admitted weakly.
I caught the night plane north.
It was a nice trip except that I had a sore head and a raging thirst for ice water.
SIX
The Snoqualmie Hotel in Olympia was on Capitol Way, fronting on the usual square city block of park. I left by the coffeeshop door and walked down a hill to where the last, loneliest reach of Puget Sound died and decomposed against a line of disused wharves. Corded firewood filled the foreground and old men pottered about in the middle of the stacks, or sat on boxes with pipes in their mouths and signs behind their heads reading: «Firewood and Split Kindling. Free Delivery.»
Behind them a low cliff rose and the vast pines of the north loomed against a gray-blue sky.
Two of the old men sat on boxes about twenty feet apart, ignoring each other. I drifted near one of them. He wore corduroy pants and what had been a red and black Mackinaw. His felt hat showed the sweat of twenty summers. One of his hands clutched a short black pipe, and with the grimed fingers of the other he slowly, carefully, ecstatically jerked at a long curling hair that grew out of his nose.
I set a box on end, sat down, filled my own pipe, lit it, puffed a cloud of smoke. I waved a hand at the water and said: «Youd never think that ever met the Pacific Ocean.»