Come Die with Me (3 page)

I thanked him and hung up.

So what did I have to tell Mrs. Malone? I was glad she hadn’t paid me. All I had learned was that her husband was a miserable little hoodlum, who was probably backdooring her with Frank Giovanni’s niece.

So I had wasted half a day but it hadn’t been the first time. There wasn’t any business anyway; all I had really wasted was gas. I decided to tell Mrs. Malone I had learned nothing.

The sun grew hotter and the afternoon brighter. I read the sport pages and wrote out a check for my light bill at the apartment and went to the window to look at the new, bright day.

I was looking at it when the door from the hall opened. I turned and saw the pair of them, both tanned, both expensively and badly dressed, both silently malignant. They closed the door quietly and stared at me.

I sighed and shook my head. “This is what ruined the picture business.”

“What is?” the one on the right asked.

“This cliché scene. A poor but strong private peeper looking down at the traffic from his second-floor office and the door opening and a couple of hoodlums walking in without so much as a how-do-you-do. This is what makes me resent my trade, these repetitive scenes of imminent violence.”

The one on the left smiled. “What makes you think we’re hoodlums? Do we look like hoodlums? Threads like we’re wearing? You look like the hoodlum, with that wrinkled ready made of yours.”

“I apologize,” I said. “You are a couple of nuclear physicists who dropped in to kick around a new theory. Sit down, boys, and we’ll crack an atom together.”

The taller one, the one on the right, laughed and said, “Look, Rock, my name is Pete Petroff. This is my brother Dave.”

I came back to the desk, extended a hand across it and they both shook it, genially and in turn. I sat down and Pete sat down. Dave stood next to him.

He opened a new pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I told him I didn’t smoke. He lighted one and blew some smoke toward the ceiling and asked, “Have you ever heard of us?”

I nodded. “Gamblers. Didn’t you have a piece of one of those Vegas sucker traps, one of the lusher ones?”

Pete said, “That’s right. The Comstock Jewel. We sold out our share two months ago. We might even retire.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “You must have saved your money. You’re both young.”

Dave Petroff, the shorter one who was still standing, looked at his brother and frowned. Pete didn’t seem to notice.

Dave asked, “Why so snotty? What’s your beef?”

“It’s general,” I said. “Not specific. My dad was a cop and he was killed by a hoodlum.”

Pete said sharply, “For Christ’s sake, we’re not hoodlums! Are all gamblers hoodlums?”

“Yes,” I said.

Pete stared at me. Dave looked at the top of my desk. I stared back at Pete. Finally he sighed and said, “Okay, we’ll go quietly.” He stood up. “We came to reason with you. We were warned that wasn’t easy but figured nobody could be as ornery as your reputation.” He shrugged. “The punk is really nothing to us, anyway.”

They were just about to the door when I asked, “What punk?”

Pete turned and said, “Tip Malone. He asked us if we would talk to you. It was his idea.”

“What did he want you to talk about?”

Pete said, “About this afternoon. About you dropping in and seeing him in Frank’s apartment. That’s no good for a jock, you know.”

“That’s not what he’s worried about,” I said.

“So, all right. So the broad was there. You going to tell Tip’s wife that?”

“Probably not,” I said. “I didn’t take the money she offered me so I wasn’t really working for her. I don’t handle divorce work.”

Pete’s smile was back. Even Dave looked happier. Pete said. “Tip suggested we slip you half a C. Fair enough?”

“No charge,” I said. “Tell him to rest easy.”

They both stood there staring. Finally Pete said, “You wouldn’t take her money and you won’t take his. Where’s your pay-off?”

I tapped my heart. “In here, boys, in here. And upstairs, when I get there, through those pearly gates. That’s the big pay-off, boys.”

“Come on, Callahan,” Pete said. “Level with us. Frank paying you?”

“Giovanni?” I shook my head. “Today I showed a loss—about three gallons of gas. I investigated the case and learned I didn’t want it and am here and now withdrawing from it. That’s the gospel.”

Pete looked at me and at Dave. Dave looked at Pete and at me and back at Pete and then he shrugged. Pete said wonderingly, “We heard you were a little punchy. But Jesus, honest, too, in your racket?”

“Why not? The big agencies are all honest.”

“In a way. But you’re a one-man agency and I’d like you to name me an honest one-man agency.”

“You’re standing in the home office of one, boys.”

“I meant
another
one.”

“Joe Puma.”

“Huh! Not that greaseball. Well, Callahan, if we get any work in your line, we’ll sure as hell know where to bring it.”

“Thanks. And there’s a question that’s been bothering me. You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.”

“Shoot,” Pete said.

“What does Frank Giovanni think of his niece hanging around with a statutory rapist like Tip Malone?”

Pete looked at Dave and Dave shrugged. Pete looked at me, hesitated, and finally said, “This is off the record, but Frank don’t like it one goddamned little bit.”

“I figured as much,” I said. “And Frank sent you, didn’t he, not Malone? Frank doesn’t want Big Bill Duster to hear about his son-in-law’s indiscretions.”

Pete raised a hand, palm toward me. “Scout’s honor; Frank didn’t send us and doesn’t know we’re here. This was Malone’s idea.”

“Okay, boys,” I said in farewell. “See you around.”

That “scout’s honor” hadn’t fooled me; he was no Boy Scout. It was Giovanni who had sent them.

So I had wasted half a day, I told myself. I would probably never hear from any of these people again. But it had been kind of interesting, learning once more how wrong the obvious had been, how atypical the apparently typical. Maybe Pete Petroff
was
a Boy Scout.

Again my phone rang, and this time it was my love, my nettle, my Jan. “I’ve been thinking about you,” she said with some sadness.

“Obsessively or casually?”

“Tenderly. Why do I needle you all the time? Why do I try to make you something you aren’t?”

“It’s a natural female instinct; don’t fret about it. I have had an interesting and unproductive day that might be good material for one of our talks.”

“One of our horizontal discussions, you mean. Damn it, we’ll
never
get married, will we?”

“Not as long as your work keeps you in the homes of rich people. Not until you can get over your antipathy to the middle-class life.”

“You’re not even middle-class. You’re poor, poor, poor … And you don’t need to be!”

I said nothing.

After a few seconds she said, “There I go again, huh?”

“I could bring some steaks,” I said, “and if your conscience is in one of its rare moments of ascendancy, we could watch television or play gin rummy. You decide; I’m not coming over there to fight.”

“Come over,” she said. “If I don’t answer the door, come in; it will be unlocked. I’ll be taking a shower.”

That was a promising note. She wouldn’t need a shower to watch television or play gin rummy.

I
T HAD BEEN SOME TIME
since our last encounter. For a small girl, Jan was surprisingly strong and active.

Becalmed eventually, she listened while I told her about my day.

When I had finished she asked, “Shall I comment?”

“Please do.”

“First of all, why didn’t you accept Mrs. Malone’s money?”

“I wasn’t sure I could perform a useful service for her.”

“What difference does it make? A hundred and fifty dollars to her is like ten cents to you and me. Don’t you usually tip more than ten cents?”

“Yes. For a service.”

“If the service is bad, do you still tip?”

“Sure. I’m a social coward. I shouldn’t, but I do. Now look, the hundred and fifty dollars may be nothing to Mrs. Malone, but my getting paid for something I can’t deliver is very important to me. It all ends there, with my version of integrity, and you can argue until you’re blue in the face without changing that.”

“Then I won’t argue. Let’s get up and have a glass of milk and watch Levant.”

She was in one of her agreeable moods. I love her all the time but I love her best then. We drank milk and ate cheese crackers and watched Levant with Isherwood and Huxley, with Nanette Fabray and Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom, all on a local show, a brilliant phenomenon in a tedious medium.

We listened to a quarter-hour news program after that and then Jan said, hesitantly, “Would it be wanton of me to suggest a second helping? I’m ready, if you are.”

And after that we slept.

In the morning, the sun was hot, the sky cloudless. The Doberman next door was barking at something in his idiotic way and Jan was scrambling eggs. The rain was behind us for a while, the night still a warm memory; my attitude was three hundred percent improved.

“Get the paper, will you?” she called. “We’ll eat on my little patio.”

Her little patio was eight feet by ten feet and I had laid the concrete myself. The carrier had thrown her morning
Times
onto the ice plant that protected the slope from the house next door, and the Doberman went crazy as I clambered up near the wire-mesh fence to get the paper. He had hated me from our first meeting. Jan turns him to abject jelly.

I snarled at him as he charged the fence and shivered as I watched him slash at the wire. Even most dog lovers don’t like Dobermans.

As I brought the paper out to the patio, Jan said, “Why do you always tease him? He never barks at me.”

I didn’t answer. From the front page of the
Times
a face I had seen only yesterday stared out at me. I read the caption beneath the picture and started to read the story.

“What’s the matter?” Jan asked. “Why the great interest? Has something important happened?”

“Tip Malone is dead,” I told her. “He was murdered.” I sat down and handed her the inside sections.

He had been stabbed with twelve inches of carving knife, and found on the floor of the living room in a Gollago Lake hideaway he and his wife, Gloria (Duster) Malone, had only recently purchased. It was not the season for Gollago Lake and the distraught Gloria Malone had been as puzzled as the police as to what Tip had been doing up there.

The word “infidelity” was used nowhere in the dignified and factual
Times
story but the aura of adultery somehow permeated the piece. I wondered what the less sedate afternoon papers would do with the case.

Malone had been found by a neighbor who had seen lights on at the house and gone over to investigate. According to this man, he had not known the house had been only recently sold; the “for sale” sign had not been removed and he was understandably suspicious because the area had just gone through a siege of teenage looting.

The last person to see Tip Malone alive, so far as was presently known, was his agent, Harry Adler. Harry had been with him at four o’clock yesterday afternoon.

From the other end of the redwood table Jan asked, “Do they know who did it? The police, I mean?”

I shook my head. I handed her the front page and continued to read the carry-over residue of the story. Gollago Lake was in the hills to the West, but still technically within the Los Angeles city limits. It was sparsely inhabited; the neighbor who had found the body had been there to do some spring repairing.

Jan put the paper down and said smugly, “Now aren’t you glad I gave you that letter to Mr. Duster?”

I stared at her wonderingly.

“He’ll want this investigated, won’t he?” she explained. “And you can solicit him before the others do.”

“Honey,” I said patiently, “private investigators don’t solicit business. It’s unethical.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “They advertise, don’t they? I’ll bet the aggressive agencies solicit plenty.”

I shook my head and drank some coffee. I could feel her eyes on me. I didn’t look at her.

She sighed.

“Don’t say it,” I warned her. “I’m probably involved right now. I wouldn’t be a damned bit surprised if Captain Apoyan didn’t try to get me at home last night.”

“Why should he?”

“Because I talked to him yesterday about Tip Malone. He knows I was investigating him.” I took a breath and looked at her. “And if he asks me where I was all night, what will I tell him?”

“Take the Fifth Amendment or find a new girl.”

“Seriously, he’ll probably ask.”

“Nonsense,” she said again—and the phone rang.

It wasn’t Captain Apoyan; it was my old semifriend, Sergeant Pascal, the man with the bloodhound’s face and the Doberman’s temperament.

He said, “I’ve been trying to get you all night. About five minutes ago, your phone-answering service suggested you
might
be at this number. You been there all night?”

“That’s an impertinent question, Sergeant. What’s on your mind?”

“You know what’s on my mind. Stay where you are; I’m coming out.”

I hung up and looked at Jan. I thought she was blushing but could have been wrong. I said, “It’s Sergeant Pascal. He’s on his way here now.”

“How did he get this number? This is an unlisted number.”

“My phone-answering service has it. Though I swear to you I didn’t give it to them yesterday. I—never give it to them when I intend to be gone—all night.”

“Damn it!” she said. “Damn you and damn me. This is absurd and embarrassing.”

I said nothing.

“It’s vulgar,” she said. “It’s demeaning.”

I didn’t comment.

She glared at me. “Damn it, haven’t you anything to say?”

I nodded sadly. “It’s everything you said, absurd and embarrassing, vulgar and demeaning.” I sighed. “But my memory is good and I still remember it as also wonderful.”

She muttered something I didn’t catch and began to pick up the dishes. She was in the bathroom when Pascal came.

He wasn’t alone. My other semifriend, the fat and perspiring officer Caroline was with him. Caroline looked around, smirked, and said, “What a headline—
Peeper Nailed in Beverly Glen Love Nest
.”