She opened the door and dragged the little ape in with her. Diagonally across the intersection was a big white colonial mansion with a portico which was roofed and much too small for the house. Floodlight reflectors were set into the front lawn. The walk was bordered by tree roses in bloom. A large black and silver sign over the portico said: “The Garland Home of Peace.” I wondered how Dr. Lagardie liked looking out of his front windows at a funeral parlor. Maybe it made him careful.
I turned around at the intersection and drove back to Los Angeles, and went up to the office to look at my mail and lock my catch from the Bay City Camera Shop up in the battered green safe—all but one print. I sat down at the desk and studied this through a magnifying glass. Even with that and the camera shop blow-up the detail was still clear. There was an evening paper, a News-Chronicle, lying on the table in front of the dark thin expressionless man who sat beside Mavis Weld. I could just read the headline. LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CONTENDER SUCCUMBS TO RING INJURIES. Only a noon or late sports edition would use a headline like that. I pulled the phone towards me. It rang just as I got my hand on it.
“Marlowe? This is Christy French downtown. Any ideas this morning?”
“Not if your teletype’s working. I’ve seen a Bay City paper.”
“Yeah, we got that,” he said casually. “Sounds like the same guy, don’t it? Same initials, same description, same method of murder, and the time element seems to check. I hope to Christ this doesn’t mean Sunny Moe Stein’s mob have started in business again.”
“If they have, they’ve changed their technique,” I said. “I was reading up on it last night. The Stein mob used to jab their victims full of holes. One of them had over a hundred stab wounds in him.”
“They could learn better,” French said a little evasively, as if he didn’t want to talk about it. “What I called you about was Flack. Seen anything of him since yesterday afternoon?”
“No.”
“He skipped out. Didn’t come to work. Hotel called his landlady. Packed up and left last night. Destination unknown.”
“I haven’t seen him or heard from him,” I said.
“Didn’t it strike you as kind of funny our stiff only had fourteen bucks in his kick?”
“It did a little. You answered that yourself.”
“I was just talking. I don’t buy that any more. Flack’s either scared out or come into money. Either he saw something he didn’t tell and got paid to breeze, or else he lifted the customer’s case dough, leaving the fourteen bucks to make it look better.”
I said: “I’ll buy either one. Or both at the same time. Whoever searched that room so thoroughly wasn’t looking for money.”
“Why not?”
“Because when this Dr. Hambleton called me up I suggested the hotel safe to him. He wasn’t interested.”
“A type like that wouldn’t have hired you to hold his dough anyway,” French said. “He wouldn’t have hired you to keep anything for him. He wanted protection or he wanted a sidekick—or maybe just a messenger.”
“Sorry,” I said. “He told me just what I told you.”
“And seeing he was dead when you got over there,” French said, with a too casual drawl, “you couldn’t hardly have given him one of your business cards.”
I held the phone too tight and thought back rapidly over my talk with Hicks in the Idaho Street rooming house. I saw him holding my card between his fingers, looking down at it. And then I saw myself taking it out of his hand quickly, before he froze to it. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Hardly,” I said. “And stop trying to scare me to death.”
“He had one, chum. Folded twice across in his pants watch pocket. We missed it the first time.”
“I gave Flack a card,” I said, stiff-lipped.
There was silence. I could hear voices in the background and the clack of a typewriter. Finally French said dryly: “Fair enough. See you later.” He hung up abruptly.
I put the phone down very slowly in its cradle and flexed my cramped fingers. I stared down at the photo lying on the desk in front of me. All it told me was that two people, one of whom I knew, were having lunch at The Dancers. The paper on the table told me the date, or would.
I dialed the News-Chronicle and asked for the sports section. Four minutes later I wrote on a pad: “Ritchy Belleau, popular young light heavyweight contender, died in the Sisters Hospital just before midnight February 19 as a result of ring injuries sustained the previous evening in the main event at the Hollywood Legion Stadium. The News-Chronicle Noon Sports Edition for February 20 carried the headlines.”
I dialed the same number again and asked for Kenny Haste in the City Room. He was an ex-crime reporter I had known for years. We chatted around for a minute and then I said:
“Who covered the Sunny Moe Stein killing for you?”
“Tod Barrow. He’s on the Post-Dispatch now. Why?”
“I’d like the details, if any.”
He said he would send to the morgue for the file and call me, which he did ten minutes later. “He was shot twice in the head, in his car, about two blocks from the Chateau Bercy on Franklin. Time, about 11.15 P.M.”
“Date, February 20,” I said, “or was it?”
“Check, it was. No witnesses, no arrests except the usual police stock company of book-handlers, out-of-work fight managers and other professional suspects. What’s in it?”
“Wasn’t a pal of his supposed to be in town about that time?”
“Nothing here says so. What name?”
“Weepy Moyer. A cop friend of mine said something about a Hollywood money man being held on suspicion and then released for lack of evidence.”
Kenny said: “Wait a minute. Something’s coming back to me—yeah. Fellow named Steelgrave, owns The Dancers, supposed to be a gambler and so on. Nice guy. I’ve met him. That was a bust.”
“How do you mean, a bust?”
“Some smart monkey tipped the cops he was Weepy Moyer and they held him for ten days on an open charge for Cleveland. Cleveland brushed it off. That didn’t have anything to do with the Stein killing. Steelgrave was under glass all that week. No connection at all. Your cop friend has been reading pulp magazines.”
“They all do,” I said. “That’s why they talk so tough. Thanks, Kenny.”
We said goodbye and hung up and I sat leaning back in my chair and looking at my photograph. After a while I took scissors and cut out the piece that contained the folded newspaper with the headline. I put the two pieces in separate envelopes and put them in my pocket with the sheet from the pad.
I dialed Miss Mavis Weld’s Crestview number. A woman’s voice answered after several rings. It was a remote and formal voice that I might or might not have heard before. All it said was, “Hello?”
“This is Philip Marlowe. Is Miss Weld in?”
“Miss Weld will not be in until late this evening. Do you care to leave a message?”
“Very important. Where could I reach her?”
“I’m sorry. I have no information.”
“Would her agent know?”
“Possibly.”
“You’re quite sure you’re not Miss Weld?”
“Miss Weld is not in.” She hung up.
I sat there and listened to the voice. At first I thought yes, then I thought no. The longer I thought the less I knew. I went down to the parking lot and got my car out.
17
On the terrace at The Dancers a few early birds were getting ready to drink their lunch. The glass-fronted upstairs room had the awning let down in front of it. I drove on past the curve that goes down into the Strip and stopped across the street from a square building of two stories of rose-red brick with small white leaded bay windows and a Greek porch over the front door and what looked, from across the street, like an antique pewter doorknob. Over the door was a fanlight and the name Sheridan Ballou, Inc., in black wooden letters severely stylized. I locked my car and crossed to the front door. It was white and tall and wide and had a keyhole big enough for a mouse to crawl through. Inside this keyhole was the real lock. I went for the knocker, but they had thought of that too. It was all in one piece and didn’t knock.