I got up then, and sat on the bed and read the story. Mae Jackman had been murdered at around three-thirty in the morning, as near as the police could figure, in her apartment at the Mara. The body had been discovered at eight-thirty by the maid. The dragnet was out for Tony Aricci.
I had breakfast at a little joint down the street a few doors from the hotel. When I went back up to my room there was a man standing in the dim elbow of the corridor just outside my door. It was Tony. He stepped close to me and jabbed an automatic into my belly. I unlocked the door and we went into my room and closed the door.
I said: “What’s it all about?”
Tony’s face was something I still dream about when I have too much lobster and cherry brandy. His usually dark swarthy skin was gray; his mouth was a dark gray slit across the lower part of his face, and his eyes were stark crazy.
When he spoke it sounded like the words were coming up out of a well. He said: “You killed Mae.” There was no intonation — the words were of exactly the same pitch.
I didn’t feel especially good. I edged away from him slowly, sat down very slowly in the chair by the window. While I was doing that I was saying: “For the love of Christ, Tony — where did you get such a dumb idea?”
He said: “If you didn’t kill her you know who did. She’s been calling you for three days. You talked to her alone last night while I was at Cora’s — all the time I was away. There is something I do not know. I have known there was something I did not know for a long time. You must tell me what it is. If you do not tell me what it is I am going to kill you.”
If I have any gift for figuring whether people mean what they say, he meant it. I stalled, lit a cigarette.
I said: “Sit down, Tony.”
He shook his head very sharply.
I went on. “You’re on the wrong track, Tony. If that gang of drunks officed you that Mae and I were in the bedroom while you were upstairs — she took me in to show me the stills on her last picture. We talked about old times...” I leaned forward, shook my head slowly. “I thought you had killed her when I read it in the paper just now. I thought you’d had one of your battles and you’d gone a little too far.”
He wilted suddenly. He fell down on his knees beside the bed and the automatic clattered to the floor and he put his head in his arms on the bed and sobbed in a terrible dry way like a sick animal. He said brokenly and his voice was muffled by his arms, seemed to come from very faraway: “My dear God. My dear God! I kill her! — I kill her who I loved more than anything! Why, my dear God, do they say I killed her?...”
It was embarrassing to see a guy like Tony break down like that. I got up and picked up the automatic and dropped it into the pocket of my topcoat and patted Tony’s shoulder. I didn’t know what else to do and I didn’t know what to say, so I went back and sat down and looked out the window.
Pretty soon Tony got up. He said: “I had to go to Long Beach last night. I left Mae about one-thirty. All the gang had gone home. I did not get back until a little while ago. I stopped at Sardis for breakfast because I did not want to wake Mae up — and I saw the paper.” He cleared his throat. “I am going to Cora. Cora will know something — she will tell me what it is...”
I said: “No. You are not going to do anything like that. You can’t stay here because if the Law finds out I came to your place last night they’ll come here to ask me a lot of questions, but I’m going to take you to a friend of mine upstairs and I want you to stay with her until I come back. I’m going to see what I can do about getting you in the clear and if I can’t do that we will see what we can do about getting you out of town.”
He smiled in a way that was not pleasant to see. He said: “I do not care about the clear, and I do not care about getting away. I care about finding the man who killed Mae and cutting his heart out of his body.”
I nodded and tried to look as if I felt like doing the same thing. I steered him out of the room and we went up the back stairs to the eighth floor and I knocked at Opal Crane’s door. Opal was still in bed; she yelled, “Who is it?” and I told her and in a minute she came to the door and opened it. She was rubbing her eyes and yawning and when I introduced Tony to her and told her I wanted her to let him stay there a little while she didn’t look very enthusiastic.
She jerked her head at Tony, who had sat down and was staring out the window, and said: “Hot?”
I nodded.
She looked a little less enthusiastic and I asked her if she thought I’d ask her to do it if I wasn’t sure it was all right. She shook her head and yawned some more and went into the bathroom.
I said to Tony: “I’ll be back or call you as soon as I can.”
He bobbed his head up and down vacantly and then he said: “Give me my gun.”
I said: “No. You won’t need it, and I might.”
I left him sitting by the window staring out into the gray morning and went out softly and closed the door.
Back in my room I called up Danny Scheyer who is a police reporter on the Post. I asked him to find out all he could about the inside on the Jackman murder, whether the police were satisfied that it was Tony or were working on any other angles, I asked him particularly to find out if a check that might have some bearing on the case had been found on Mae or in the apartment. Scheyer had a swell in at headquarters and I knew he’d get all the dope there was to get. I told him I’d call him again in a little while.
It was almost twelve-thirty and I figured Steinlen would be at lunch but I called up anyway. He was at lunch and I talked to his secretary. I told her I wanted to make an appointment with Steinlen for around one-thirty and she asked what I wanted to see him about. I told her to tell him that Mister Black, from Arrowhead, would be over at one-thirty and that his business was very personal. Then I went over to the Derby and had some more coffee.
I called Scheyer again from the Derby and he said they hadn’t found anything on Mae or in the apartment that meant anything and that it looked like a cinch for Tony Aricci.
I said: “Maybe not.” I told Scheyer he’d get first call on anything turned up and thanked him.
Steinlen was younger than I’d figured him to be — somewhere between thirty-five and forty. He was a thin, nervous man with a long, bony face, deep-set brown eyes. His hands were always moving.
He said: “What can I do for you, Mister Black?”
I leaned forward and put my cigarette out in a tray on his desk and then leaned back and made myself comfortable. I said: “You can’t do anything for me but I can do an awful lot for you.”
He smiled a little and moved his head up and down. “People are doing things for me all the time,” he said, “That’s the reason I’m getting so gray.” He scratched his long nose and then put his hand down on the desk and drummed with his fingers. “What are you selling?”
“I sell peace of mind,” I said. “They used to call me the Trouble-Chaser back East; I kept people out of jams — and when they got into jams I got them out. I worked at it then — now it’s more or less of a hobby.”
He was still smiling. He said: “Go on.”
The way he kept moving his hands made me jumpy. I still had my topcoat on and I was practically lying down in the chair; I had my hand on Tony’s gun in my coat pocket.
I said: “You murdered Mae Jackman.”
His face didn’t change. He stopped drumming on the desk with his fingers and he was entirely still for maybe ten or fifteen seconds. He was looking straight at me and he was still smiling. Then he shook his head very slowly and said: “No.”