Trouble Is My Business (2 page)

He had slumped down then, still holding the paper, pinned it to the floor with his fat hand, held on to the fat pencil with his other hand, wedged his torso against his huge thighs, and so died. John D. Arbogast. Examiner of Questioned Documents. Private. Very damned private. He had said “yeah” to me three times over the phone.

And here he was.

I wiped doorknobs with my handkerchief, put off the lights in the anteroom, left the outer door so that it was locked from the outside, left the hallway, left the building and left the neighborhood. So far as I could tell nobody saw me go. So far as I could tell.

THREE

The El Milano was, as Anna had told me, in the 1900 block on North Sycamore. It was most of the block. I parked fairly near the ornamental forecourt and went along to the pale blue neon sign over the entrance to the basement garage. I walked down a railed ramp into a bright space of glistening cars and cold air. A trim light-colored Negro in a spotless coverall suit with blue cuffs came out of a glass office. His black hair was as smooth as a bandleader’s.

“Busy?” I asked him.

“Yes and no, sir.”

“I’ve got a car outside that needs a dusting. About five bucks worth of dusting.”

It didn’t work. He wasn’t the type. His chestnut eyes became thoughtful and remote. “That is a good deal of dusting, sir. May I ask if anything else would be included?”

“A little. Is Miss Harriet Huntress’ car in?”

He looked. I saw him look along the glistening row at a canary-yellow convertible which was about as inconspicuous as a privy on the front lawn.

“Yes, sir. It is in.”

“I’d like her apartment number and a way to get up there without going through the lobby. I’m a private detective.” I showed him a buzzer. He looked at the buzzer. It failed to amuse him.

He smiled the faintest smile I ever saw. “Five dollars is nice money, sir, to a working man. It falls a little short of being nice enough to make me risk my position. About from here to Chicago short, sir. I suggest that you save your five dollars, sir, and try the customary mode of entry.”

“You’re quite a guy,” I said. “What are you going to be when you grow up-a five-foot shelf?”

“I am already grown up, sir. I am thirty-four years old, married happily, and have two children. Good afternoon, sir.”

He turned on his heel. “Well, goodbye,” I said. “And pardon my whiskey breath. I just got in from Butte.”

I went back up along the ramp and wandered along the street to where I should have gone in the first place. I might have known that five bucks and a buzzer wouldn’t buy me anything in a place like the El Milano.

The Negro was probably telephoning the office right now.

The building was a huge white stucco affair, Moorish in style, with great fretted lanterns in the forecourt and huge date palms. The entrance was at the inside corner of an L, up marble steps, through an arch framed in California or dishpan mosaic.

A doorman opened the door for me and I went in. The lobby was not quite as big as the Yankee Stadium. It was floored with a pale blue carpet with sponge rubber underneath. It was so soft it made me want to lie down and roll. I waded over to the desk and put an elbow on it and was stared at by a pale thin clerk with one of those mustaches that get stuck under your fingernail. He toyed with it and looked past my shoulder at an Ali Baba oil jar big enough to keep a tiger in.

“Miss Huntress in?”

“Who shall I announce?”

“Mr. Marty Estel.”

That didn’t take any better than my play in the garage. He leaned on something with his left foot. A blue-and-gilt door opened at the end of the desk and a large sandy-haired man with cigar ash on his vest came out and leaned absently on the end of the desk and stared at the Ali Baba oil jar, as if trying to make up his mind whether it was a spittoon.

The clerk raised his voice. “You are Mr. Marty Estel?”

“From him.”

“Isn’t that a little different? And what is your name, sir, if one may ask?”

“One may ask,” I said. “One may not be told. Such are my orders. Sorry to be stubborn and all that rot.”

He didn’t like my manner. He didn’t like anything about me. “I’m afraid I can’t announce you,” he said coldly. “Mr. Hawkins, might I have your advice on a matter?”

The sandy-haired man took his eyes off the oil jar and slid along the desk until he was within blackjack range of me.

“Yes, Mr. Gregory?” he yawned.

“Nuts to both of you,” I said. “And that includes your lady friends.”

Hawkins grinned. “Come into my office, bo. We’ll kind of see if we can get you straightened out.”

I followed him into the doghole he had come out of. It was large enough for a pint-sized desk, two chairs, a knee-high cuspidor, and an open box of cigars. He placed his rear end against the desk and grinned at me sociably.

“Didn’t play it very smooth, did you, bo? I’m the house man here. Spill it.”

“Some days I feel like playing smooth,” I said, “and some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.” I got my wallet out and showed him the buzzer and the small photostat of my license behind a celluloid window.

“One of the boys, huh?” He nodded. “You ought to of asked for me in the first place.”

“Sure. Only I never heard of you. I want to see this Huntress frail. She doesn’t know me, but I have business with her, and it’s not noisy business.”

He made a yard and half sideways and cocked his cigar in the other corner of his mouth. He looked at my right eyebrow. “What’s the gag? Why try to apple-polish the dinge downstairs? You gettin’ any expense money?”

“Could be.”

“I’m nice people,” he said. “But I gotta protect the guests.”

“You’re almost out of cigars,” I said, looking at the ninety or so in the box. I lifted a couple, smelled them, tucked a folded ten-dollar bill below them and put them back.

“That’s cute,” he said. “You and me could get along. What you want done?”

“Tell her I’m from Marty Estel. She’ll see me.”

“It’s the job if I get a kickback.”

“You won’t. I’ve got important people behind me.”

I started to reach for my ten, but he pushed my hand away. “I’ll take a chance,” he said. He reached for his phone and asked for Suite 814 and began to hum. His humming sounded like a cow being sick. He leaned forward suddenly and his face became a honeyed smile. His voice dripped.

“Miss Huntress? This is Hawkins, the house man. Hawkins. Yeah . . . Hawkins. Sure, you meet a lot of people, Miss Huntress. Say, there’s a gentleman in my office wanting to see you with a message from Mr. Estel. We can’t let him up without your say so, because he don’t want to give us no name . . . Yeah, Hawkins, the house detective, Miss Huntress. Yeah, he says you don’t know him personal, but he looks O.K. to me . . . O.K. Thanks a lot, Miss Huntress. Serve him right up.”

He put the phone down and patted it gently.

“All you needed was some background music,” I said.

“You can ride up,” he said dreamily. He reached absently into his cigar box and removed the folded bill. “A darb,” he said softly. “Every time I think of that dame I have to go out and walk around the block. Let’s go.”

We went out to the lobby again and Hawkins took me to the elevator and highsigned me in.

As the elevator doors closed I saw him on his way to the entrance, probably for his walk around the block.

The elevator had a carpeted floor and mirrors and indirect lighting. It rose as softly as the mercury in a thermometer. The doors whispered open, I wandered over the moss they used for a hall carpet and came to a door marked 814. I pushed a little button beside it, chimes rang inside and the door opened.

She wore a street dress of pale green wool and a small cock-eyed hat that hung on her ear like a butterfly. Her eyes were wide-set and there was thinking room between them. Their color was lapis-lazuli blue and the color of her hair was dusky red, like a fire under control but still dangerous. She was too tall to be cute. She wore plenty of make-up in the right places and the cigarette she was poking at me had a built-on mouth-piece about three inches long. She didn’t look hard, but she looked as if she had heard all the answers and remembered the ones she thought she might be able to use sometime.

She looked me over coolly. “Well, what’s the message, brown-eyes?”

“I’d have to come in,” I said. “I never could talk on my feet.”

She laughed disinterestedly and I slid past the end of her cigarette into a long rather narrow room with plenty of nice furniture, plenty of windows, plenty of drapes, plenty of everything. A fire blazed behind a screen, a big log on top of a gas teaser. There was a silk Oriental rug in front of a nice rose davenport in front of the nice fire, and beside that there was Scotch and swish on a tabouret, ice in a bucket, everything to make a man feel at home.

“You’d better have a drink,” she said. “You probably can’t talk without a glass in your hand.”

I sat down and reached for the Scotch. The girl sat in a deep chair and crossed her knees. I thought of Hawkins walking around the block. I could see a little something in his point of view.

“So you’re from Marty Estel,” she said, refusing a drink.

“Never met him.”

“I had an idea to that effect. What’s the racket, bum? Marty will love to hear how you used his name.”

“I’m shaking in my shoes. What made you let me up?”

“Curiosity. I’ve been expecting lads like you any day. I never dodge trouble. Some kind of a dick, aren’t you?”

I lit a cigarette and nodded. “Private. I have a little deal to propose.”

“Propose it.” She yawned.

“How much will you take to lay off young Jeeter?”

She yawned again. “You interest me—so little I could hardly tell you.”

“Don’t scare me to death. Honest, how much are you asking? Or is that an insult?”

She smiled. She had a nice smile. She had lovely teeth. “I’m a bad girl now,” she said. “I don’t have to ask. They bring it to me, tied up with ribbon.”

“The old man’s a little tough. They say he draws a lot of water.”

“Water doesn’t cost much.”

I nodded and drank some more of my drink. It was good Scotch. In fact it was perfect. “His idea is you get nothing. You get smeared. You get put in the middle. I can’t see it that way.”

“But you’re working for him.”

“Sounds funny, doesn’t it? There’s probably a smart way to play this, but I just can’t think of it at the moment. How much would you take—or would you?”

“How about fifty grand?”

“Fifty grand for you and another fifty for Marty?”

She laughed. “Now, you ought to know Marty wouldn’t like me to mix in his business. I was just thinking of my end.”

She crossed her legs the other way. I put another lump of ice in my drink.

“I was thinking of five hundred,” I said.

“Five hundred what?” She looked puzzled.

“Dollars—not Rolls-Royces.”

She laughed heartily. “You amuse me. I ought to tell you to go to hell, but I like brown eyes. Warm brown eyes with flecks of gold in them.”

“You’re throwing it away. I don’t have a nickel.”

She smiled and fitted a fresh cigarette between her lips. I went over to light it for her. Her eyes came up and looked into mine. Hers had sparks in them.

“Maybe I have a nickel already,” she said softly.

“Maybe that’s why he hired the fat boy—so you couldn’t make him dance.” I sat down again.

“Who hired what fat boy?”

“Old Jeeter hired a fat boy named Arbogast. He was on the case before me. Didn’t you know? He got bumped off this afternoon.”

I said it quite casually for the shock effect, but she didn’t move. The provocative smile didn’t leave the corners of her lips. Her eyes didn’t change. She made a dim sound with her breath.

“Does it have to have something to do with me?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know. I don’t know who murdered him. It was done in his office, around noon or a little later. It may not have anything to do with the Jeeter case. But it happened pretty pat—just after I had been put on the job and before I got a chance to talk to him.”

She nodded. “I see. And you think Marty does things like that. And of course you told the police?”

“Of course I did not.”

“You’re giving away a little weight there, brother.”

“Yeah. But let’s get together on a price and it had better be low. Because whatever the cops do to me they’ll do plenty to Marty Estel and you when they get the story—if they get it.”

“A little spot of blackmail,” the girl said coolly. “I think I might call it that. Don’t go too far with me, brown-eyes. By the way, do I know your name?”

“Philip Marlowe.”

“Then listen, Philip. I was in the Social Register once. My family were nice people. Old man Jeeter ruined my father—all proper and legitimate, the way that kind of heel ruins people—but he ruined him, and my father committed suicide, and my mother died and I’ve got a kid sister back East in school and perhaps I’m not too damn particular how I get the money to take care of her. And maybe I’m going to take care of old Jeeter one of these days, too—even if I have to marry his son to do it.”

“Stepson, adopted son,” I said. “No relation at all.”

“It’ll hurt him just as hard, brother. And the boy will have plenty of the long green in a couple of years. I could do worse—even if he does drink too much.”

“You wouldn’t say that in front of him, lady.”

“No? Take a look behind you, gumshoe. You ought to have the wax taken out of your ears.”

I stood up and turned fast. He stood about four feet from me. He had come out of some door and sneaked across the carpet and I had been too busy being clever with nothing on the ball to hear him. He was big, blond, dressed in a rough sporty suit, with a scarf and open-necked shirt. He was red-faced and his eyes glittered and they were not focusing any too well. He was a bit drunk for that early in the day.

“Beat it while you can still walk,” he sneered at me. “I heard it. Harry can say anything she likes about me. I like it. Dangle, before I knock your teeth down your throat!”

The girl laughed behind me. I didn’t like that. I took a step towards the big blond boy. His eyes blinked. Big as he was, he was a pushover.