«I brought my trouble with me,» I said. «That is, some of it. The rest went on ahead. A girl named Isobel Snare ran off from home in the big city and her dog was seen here. I found the dog, but the people who had the dog went to a lot of trouble to sew me up.»
«Is that so?» the chief asked absently. His eyebrows crawled around on his forehead. I wasn’t sure whether I was kidding him or he was kidding me.
«Just turn the key in the door, will you?» he said. «You’re a younger man than I am.»
I got up and turned the key and sat down again and got a cigarette out. By that time the chief had a right-looking bottle and two pony glasses on the desk, and a handful of cardamom seeds.
We had a drink and he cracked three or four of the cardamom seeds and we chewed them and looked at one another.
«Just tell me about it,» he said then. «I can take it now.»
«Did you ever hear of a guy called Farmer Saint?»
«Did I?» He banged his desk and the cardamom seeds jumped. «Why there’s a thousand berries on that bimbo. A bank stickup, ain’t he?»
I nodded, trying to look behind his eyes without seeming to. «He and his sister work together. Diana is her name. They dress up like country folks and smack down small-town banks, state banks. That’s why he’s called Farmer Saint. There’s a grand on the sister too.»
«I would certainly like to put the sleeves on that pair,» the chief said firmly.
«Then why the hell didn’t you?» I asked him.
He didn’t quite hit the ceiling, but he opened his mouth so wide I was afraid his lower jaw was going to fall in his lap. His eyes stuck out like peeled eggs. A thin trickle of saliva showed in the fat crease at the corner. He shut his mouth with all the deliberation of a steam shovel.
It was a great act, if it was an act.
«Say that again,» he whispered.
I opened a folded newspaper I had with me and pointed to a column.
«Look at this Sharp killing. Your local paper didn’t do so good on it. It says some unknown rang the department and the boys ran out and found a dead man in an empty house. That’s a lot of noodles. I was there. Farmer Saint and his sister were there. Your cops were there when we were there.»
«Treachery!» he shouted suddenly. «Traitors in the department.» His face was now as gray as arsenic flypaper. He poured two more drinks, with a shaking hand.
It was my turn to crack the cardamom seeds.
He put his drink down in one piece and lunged for a mahogany call box on his desk. I caught the name Galbraith. I went over and unlocked the door.
We didn’t wait very long, but long enough for the chief to have two more drinks. His face got a better color.
Then the door opened and the big red-faced dick who had sapped me loafed through it, with a bulldog pipe clamped in his teeth and his hands in his pockets. He shouldered the door shut, leaned against it casually.
I said: «Hello, Sarge.»
He looked at me as if he would like to kick me in the face and not have to hurry about it.
«Badge!» the fat chief yelled. «Badge! Put it on the desk. You’re fired!»
Gaibraith went over to the desk slowly and put an elbow down on it, put his face about a foot from the chief’s nose,
«What was that crack?» he asked thickly.
«You had Farmer Saint under your hand and let him go,» the chief yelled. «You and that saphead Duncan. You let him stick a shotgun in your belly and get away. You’re through. Fired. You ain’t got no more job than a canned oyster. Gimme your badge!»
«Who the hell is Farmer Saint?» Galbraith asked, unimpressed, and blew pipe smoke in the chief’s face.
«He don’t know,» the chief whined at me. «He don’t know. That’s the kind of material I got to work with.»
«What do you mean, work?» Galbraith inquired loosely.
The fat chief jumped as though a bee had stung the end of his nose. Then he doubled a meaty fist and hit Galbraith’s jaw with what looked like a lot of power. Galbraith’s head moved about half an inch.
«Don’t do that,» he said. «You’ll bust a gut and then where would the department be?» He shot a look at me, looked back at Fulwider. «Should I tell him?»
Fulwider looked at me, to see how the show was going over. I had my mouth open and a blank expression on my face, like a farm boy at a Latin lesson.
«Yeah, tell him,» he growled, shaking his knuckles back and forth.
Gaibraith stuck a thick leg over a corner of the desk and knocked his pipe out, reached for the whisky and poured himself a drink in the chief’s glass. He wiped his lips, grinned. When he grinned he opened his mouth wide, and he had a mouth a dentist could have got both hands in, up to the elbows.
He said calmly: «When me and Dunc crash the joint you was cold on the floor and the lanky guy was over you with a sap. The broad was on a window seat, with a lot of newspapers around her. okay. The lanky guy starts to tell us some yarn when a dog begins to howl out back and we look that way and the broad slips a sawed-off 12-gauge out of the newspapers and shows it to us. Well, what could we do except be nice? She couldn’t have missed and we could. So the guy gets more guns out of his pants and they tie knots around us and stick us in a closet that has enough chloroform in it to make us quiet, without the ropes. After a while we hear ’em leave, in two cars. When we get loose the stiff has the place to hisself. So we fudge it a bit for the papers. We don’t get no new line yet. How’s it tie to yours?»
«Not bad,» I told him. «As I remember the woman phoned for some law herself. But I could be mistaken. The rest of it ties in with me being sapped on the floor and not knowing anything about it.»
Galbraith gave me a nasty look. The chief looked at his thumb.
«When I came to,» I said, «I was in a private dope and hooch cure out on Twenty-ninth. Run by a man named Sundstrand. I was shot so full of hop myself I could have been Rockefeller’s pet dime trying to spin myself.»
«That Sundstrand,» Galbraith said heavily. «That guy’s been a flea in our pants for a long time. Should we go out and push him in the face, Chief?»
«It’s a cinch Farmer Saint put Carmady in there,» Fulwider said solemnly. «So there must be some tie-up. I’d say yes, and take Carmady with you. Want to go?» he asked me.
«Do I?» I said heartily.
Gaibraith looked at the whisky bottle. He said carefully: «There’s a grand each on this Saint and his sister. If we gather them in, how do we cut it?»
«You cut me out,» I said. «I’m on a straight salary and expenses.»
Gaibraith grinned again. He teetered on his heels, grinning with thick amiability.
«Okydoke. We got your car in the garage downstairs. Some Jap phoned in about it. We’ll use that to go in — just you and me.»
«Maybe you ought to have more help, Gal,» the chief said doubtfully.
«Uh-uh. Just me and him’s plenty. He’s a tough baby or he wouldn’t be walkin’ around.»
«Well, all right,» the chief said brightly. «And we’ll just have a little drink on it.»
But he was still rattled. He forgot the cardamom seeds.
SEVEN
It was a cheerful spot by daylight. Tea-rose begonias made a solid mass under the front windows and pansies were a round carpet about the base of an acacia. A scarlet climbing rose covered a trellis to one side of the house, and a bronze-green hummingbird was prodding delicately in a mass of sweet peas that grew up the garage wall.
It looked like the home of a well-fixed elderly couple who had come to the ocean to get as much sun as possible in their old age.
Galbraith spat on my runningboard and shook his pipe out and tickled the gate open, stamped up the path and flattened his thumb against a neat copper bell.