I walked across to the window and looked down into the street, and the small black sedan was there by the curb, as she had said, and I could see in the dense darkness of its interior the tiny glow of a bright coal when someone drew on a cigarette. I could smell Robin Robbins beside me. I could hear her breathing, and I had a notion that I could hear, if I listened intently, the beating of her heart. She smelled good, and the soft sound of her life, which breathing is, was at once comforting and exciting.
“Silas Lawler?” I said.
“No. If Silas were having it done, it would be Darcy doing it. That isn’t Darcy.”
“Who, then?”
“That’s your question. You answer it.”
“Sure. I’m the detective. You keep telling me and telling me. All right, honey. Wait for me. Don’t go away.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Not for a while.”
I went back across the room to the door, and I had opened the door and had a foot in the hall before she spoke again.
“Play it cool,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. “It helps to know you care.” I went on out and downstairs and straight across the street toward the black sedan. I was half way there before the guy behind the wheel awoke to events and jammed his foot on the starter. Fortunately, it was an old car, a little tired, and did not come to life easily. By the time the engine had caught fire, I had jerked open the door and snatched the ignition key. The engine died with a cough and a twitch of a piston, as if dying were welcome and better than living. The guy behind the wheel cursed and slapped at the wrist of the hand that held the key. His nails raked flesh.
“What the hell!” he said.
I reached in and grabbed his tie and twisted and pulled, and he came out of the car like a grape from its skin. He was six inches shorter than me, forty pounds lighter. I could whip him easily if necessary, and I was glad, because I felt like whipping someone. His name was Colly Alder, and I knew him. He was a fair private detective, not so good as a lot and a little better than a few.
“Hello, Colly,” I said. “We haven’t met for a while.”
“Cut it out, Percy.” He pawed at the hand that twisted the tie that cut his wind. “God-damn it, you’re choking me.”
“Certainly I’m choking you,” I said, “and after I get through choking you, I’m going to slap your chops and stand you on your head and kick you over your car. I’m going to do this, Colly, simply because I’m big enough and feel like it. I was worked over myself today by a couple of experts, and it hurt my face and my feelings, to say nothing of my professional prestige, and ever since it happened I’ve been looking for someone to work over in return, and you seem to be it. I admit that this isn’t fair. I think it’s psychological or something. I have a friend who is sharp about such things, and I’ll ask her later.”
His eyes were popping a little, as much from what I said, I think, as from his assaulted trachea. His voice, working under handicap, was hoarse and sporadic, issuing in short bursts.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Percy? You drunk or crazy or what?”
“I told you what’s the matter. My feelings have been hurt, and I’m looking for someone to stomp. It doesn’t help my feelings any to find myself being tailed by another private detective. There’s something reprehensible about it, Colly. It’s treason, sort of.”
His face was getting darker than I liked, not liking homicide, and so I let him go. He slipped the knot of his tie and loosened his collar and began massaging his throat with his fingers. While doing this, he uttered plaintive little retching sounds that almost made me bleed.
“You think I’m tailing you?” he said finally.
“I know damn well you’re tailing me.”
“Honest to God, I’m not, Percy. I swear I’m not.”
“Sure you do. You swear and swear, and you’re a damn liar. I think I’ll choke you some more, Colly. It’s fun.”
I reached for him, and he skipped backward, plastering himself against the side of the car.
“All right, Percy, all right. So I’m tailing you. It’s legitimate, God damn it. A guy’s got a right to take a case where he finds it.”
“Sure he has, Colly. He can take the case, and he can take the consequences. That’s something I learned a long time ago, and I started learning it all over again today. Who hired you?”
He looked sullen, shaking his head.
“That’s privileged stuff, Percy.”
“The hell it is. Private detectives don’t receive privileged communications.”
“Not legally, maybe, but we got to respect each other’s privilege in the trade. You know that as well as I do, Percy, and you got no right to ask me.”
He had me there, and I had to admit it. It was a privilege I’d exercised myself and would exercise again whenever it was necessary and I could get away with it. It had no legal status, as Colly said, but it was accepted and honored by honorable members of the trade, if by no one else. I was still hurting and still mad and still wanting to slap Colly around, but I decided under the circumstances that I’d better spit in his eye and let him go.
“All right,” I said. “You’ve got a right to a case, and you’ve also got a right to turn one down. I didn’t think you’d do this to me, Colly, and I’m disappointed. I’ll respect your privilege to keep your client’s name to yourself, and it doesn’t matter a hell of a lot, to tell the truth, because I’ve got a good idea who he is, and you can go back to him tomorrow and tell him you loused up the job by getting caught and won’t be any good to him any longer. Even if you decide to keep the job for the fee, you might as well go home and go to bed now, because that’s what I’m going to do, and it would be a shame for you to lose your sleep for nothing. Good-night, Colly. I don’t think, from now on, that I’m going to like you much.”
Tossing the ignition key onto the front seat of the car, I started back across the street. Before I had reached the curb, the starter of the car was grinding, and the tired engine coughed and caught fire with a roar. By the time I had crossed the sidewalk to the entrance of the building, the car and Colly were half way to the corner under a full head. I went inside and back up the long, long stairs and into my room.
It was still dark in there, and this time I found the switch and flipped it. Jim Beam was still sitting on the table, where I’d put it before going down, but Robin Robbins had moved. She had left the window and was sitting in a corner of a sofa. She was wearing what she had been wearing when I had seen her earlier in Silas Lawler’s office, and what this was primarily was a black sheath dress with a slit in the skirt to give leg room for walking. Her high-heeled sandals were black also, and the sandals and the dress and her hair and her eye made quite a lot of black altogether, but on her it all looked good and not in the least mournful, even the eye. The slit skirt of the tight sheath had slipped up an inch or two on her thighs, which is inevitable in a sheath in a sitting position, and this left quite a lot of pretty nylon out in the open.
“I watched from the window,” she said. “You handled him nicely.”
“He was a little guy,” I said. “I had a notion to get real tough.”
“Who was he?”
“One of the brotherhood. A private detective. His name’s Colly Alder.”
“You know him before?”
“Slightly. We’d brushed against each other in some connection.”
“Who put him on your tail?”
“He didn’t want to say.”
“Couldn’t you persuade him? As you said, he was a little guy.”
“I guess I’m just a softy. The sight of blood makes me sick.”
She tilted her head to one side and stared at me with a speculative expression. In accomplishing this, besides tilting her head, she closed her plain eye and stared with the one that had been decorated.