The Big Sleep (7 page)

FOURTEEN

It was ten minutes to five when I parked near the lobby entrance of the apartment house on Randall Place. A few windows were lit and radios were bleating at the dusk. I rode the automatic elevator up to the fourth floor and went along a wide hall carpeted in green and paneled in ivory. A cool breeze blew down the hall from the open screened door to the fire escape.

There was a small ivory pushbutton beside the door marked “405.” I pushed it and waited what seemed a long time. Then the door opened noiselessly about a foot. There was a steady, furtive air in the way it opened. The man was long-legged, long-waisted, high-shouldered and he had dark brown eyes in a brown expressionless face that had learned to control its expressions long ago. Hair like steel wool grew far back on his head and gave him a great deal of domed brown forehead that might at a careless glance have seemed a dwelling place for brains. His somber eyes probed at me impersonally. His long thin brown fingers held the edge of the door. He said nothing.

I said: “Geiger?”

Nothing in the man’s face changed that I could see. He brought a cigarette from behind the door and tucked it between his lips and drew a little smoke from it. The smoke came towards me in a lazy, contemptuous puff and behind it words in a cool, unhurried voice that had no more inflection than the voice of a faro dealer.

“You said what?”

“Geiger. Arthur Gwynn Geiger. The guy that has the books.”

The man considered that without any haste. He glanced down at the tip of his cigarette. His other hand, the one that had been holding the door, dropped out of sight. His shoulder had a look as though his hidden hand might be making motions.

“Don’t know anybody by that name,” he said. “Does he live around here?”

I smiled. He didn’t like the smile. His eyes got nasty. I said: “You’re Joe Brody?”

The brown face hardened. “So what? Got a grift, brother—or just amusing yourself?”

“So you’re Joe Brody,” I said. “And you don’t know anybody named Geiger. That’s very funny.”

“Yeah? You got a funny sense of humor maybe. Take it away and play on it somewhere else.”

I leaned against the door and gave him a dreamy smile. “You got the books, Joe. I got the sucker list. We ought to talk things over.”

He didn’t shift his eyes from my face. There was a faint sound in the room behind him, as though a metal curtain ring clicked lightly on a metal rod. He glanced sideways into the room. He opened the door wider.

“Why not—if you think you’ve got something?” he said coolly. He stood aside from the door. I went past him into the room.

It was a cheerful room with good furniture and not too much of it. French windows in the end wall opened on a stone porch and looked across the dusk at the foothills. Near the windows a closed door in the west wall and near the entrance door another door in the same wall. This last had a plush curtain drawn across it on a thin brass rod below the lintel.

That left the east wall, in which there were no doors. There was a davenport backed against the middle of it, so I sat down on the davenport. Brody shut the door and walked crab-fashion to a tall oak desk studded with square nails. A cedarwood box with gilt hinges lay on the lowered leaf of the desk. He carried the box to an easy chair midway between the other two doors and sat down. I dropped my hat on the davenport and waited.

“Well, I’m listening,” Brody said. He opened the cigar box and dropped his cigarette stub into a dish at his side. He put a long thin cigar in his mouth. “Cigar?” He tossed one at me through the air.

I reached for it. Brody took a gun out of the cigar box and pointed it at my nose. I looked at the gun. It was a black Police .38. I had no argument against it at the moment.

“Neat, huh?” Brody said. “Just kind of stand up a minute. Come forward just about two yards. You might grab a little air while you’re doing that.” His voice was the elaborately casual voice of the tough guy in pictures. Pictures have made them all like that.

“Tsk, tsk,” I said, not moving at all. “Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains. You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail. Put it down and don’t be silly, Joe.”

His eyebrows came together and he pushed his chin at me. His eyes were mean.

“The other guy’s name is Eddie Mars,” I said. “Ever hear of him?”

“No.” Brody kept the gun pointed at me.

“If he ever gets wise to where you were last night in the rain, he’ll wipe you off the way a check raiser wipes a check.”

“What would I be to Eddie Mars?” Brody asked coldly. But he lowered the gun to his knee.

“Not even a memory,” I said.

We stared at each other. I didn’t look at the pointed black slipper that showed under the plush curtain on the doorway to my left.

Brody said quietly: “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a tough guy—just careful. I don’t know hell’s first whisper about you. You might be a lifetaker for all I know.”

“You’re not careful enough,” I said. “That play with Geiger’s books was terrible.”

He drew a long slow breath and let it out silently. Then he leaned back and crossed his long legs and held the Colt on his knee.

“Don’t kid yourself I won’t use this heat, if I have to,” he said. “What’s your story?”

“Have your friend with the pointed slippers come on in. She gets tired holding her breath.”

Brody called out without moving his eyes off my stomach. “Come on in, Agnes.”

The curtain swung aside and the green-eyed, thigh-swinging ash blonde from Geiger’s store joined us in the room. She looked at me with a kind of mangled hatred. Her nostrils were pinched and her eyes had darkened a couple of shades. She looked very unhappy.

“I knew damn well you were trouble,” she snapped at me. “I told Joe to watch his step.”

“It’s not his step, it’s the back of his lap he ought to watch,” I said.

“I suppose that’s funny,” the blonde squealed.

“It has been,” I said. “But it probably isn’t any more.”

“Save the gags,” Brody advised me. “Joe’s watchin’ his step plenty. Put some light on so I can see to pop this guy, if it works out that way.”

The blonde snicked on a light in a big square standing lamp. She sank down into a chair beside the lamp and sat stiffly, as if her girdle was too tight. I put my cigar in my mouth and bit the end off. Brody’s Colt took a close interest in me while I got matches out and lit the cigar. I tasted the smoke and said:

“The sucker list I spoke of is in code. I haven’t cracked it yet, but there are about five hundred names. You got twelve boxes of books that I know of. You should have at least five hundred books. There’ll be a bunch more out on loan, but say five hundred is the full crop, just to be cautious. If it’s a good active list and you could run it even fifty per cent down the line, that would be one hundred and twenty-five thousand rentals. Your girl friend knows all about that. I’m only guessing. Put the average rental as low as you like, but it won’t be less than a dollar. That merchandise costs money. At a dollar a rental you take one hundred and twenty-five grand and you still have your capital. I mean, you still have Geiger’s capital. That’s enough to spot a guy for.”

The blonde yelped: “You’re crazy, you goddam eggheaded—!”

Brody put his teeth sideways at her and snarled: “Pipe down, for Chrissake. Pipe down!”

She subsided into an outraged mixture of slow anguish and bottled fury. Her silvery nails scraped on her knees.

“It’s no racket for bums,” I told Brody almost affectionately. “It takes a smooth worker like you, Joe. You’ve got to get confidence and keep it. People who spend their money for second-hand sex jags are as nervous as dowagers who can’t find the rest room. Personally I think the blackmail angles are a big mistake. I’m for shedding all that and sticking to legitimate sales and rentals.”

Brody’s dark brown stare moved up and down my face. His Colt went on hungering for my vital organs. “You’re a funny guy,” he said tonelessly. “Who has this lovely racket?”

“
You
have,” I said. “Almost.”

The blonde choked and clawed her ear. Brody didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.

“What?” the blonde yelped. “You sit there and try to tell us Mr. Geiger ran that kind of business right down on the main drag? You’re nuts!”

I leered at her politely. “Sure I do. Everybody knows the racket exists. Hollywood’s made to order for it. If a thing like that has to exist, then right out on the street is where all practical coppers want it to exist. For the same reason they favor red light districts. They know where to flush the game when they want to.”

“My God,” the blonde wailed. “You let this cheesehead sit there and insult me, Joe? You with a gun in your hand and him holding nothing but a cigar and his thumb?”

“I like it,” Brody said. “The guy’s got good ideas. Shut your trap and keep it shut, or I’ll slap it shut for you with this.” He flicked the gun around in an increasingly negligent manner.

The blonde gasped and turned her face to the wall. Brody looked at me and said cunningly: “
How
have I got that lovely racket?”

“You shot Geiger to get it. Last night in the rain. It was dandy shooting weather. The trouble is he wasn’t alone when you whiffed him. Either you didn’t notice that, which seems unlikely, or you got the wind up and lammed. But you had nerve enough to take the plate out of his camera and you had nerve enough to come back later on and hide his corpse, so you could tidy up on the books before the law knew it had a murder to investigate.”

“Yah,” Brody said contemptuously. The Colt wobbled on his knee. His brown face was as hard as a piece of carved wood. “You take chances, mister. It’s kind of god-damned lucky for you I
didn’t
bop Geiger.”

“You can step off for it just the same,” I told him cheerfully. “You’re made to order for the rap.”

Brody’s voice rustled. “Think you got me framed for it?”

“Positive.”

“How come?”

“There’s somebody who’ll tell it that way. I told you there was a witness. Don’t go simple on me, Joe.”

He exploded then. “That goddamned little hot pants!” he yelled. “She would, god damn her! She would—just that!”

I leaned back and grinned at him. “Swell. I thought you had those nude photos of her.”

He didn’t say anything. The blonde didn’t say anything. I let them chew on it. Brody’s face cleared slowly, with a sort of grayish relief. He put his Colt down on the end table beside his chair but kept his right hand close to it. He knocked ash from his cigar on the carpet and stared at me with eyes that were a tight shine between narrowed lids.

“I guess you think I’m dumb,” Brody said.

“Just average, for a grifter. Get the pictures.”

“What pictures?”

I shook my head. “Wrong play, Joe. Innocence gets you nowhere. You were either there last night, or you got the nude photo from somebody that was there. You knew she was there, because you had your girl friend threaten Mrs. Regan with a police rap. The only ways you could know enough to do that would be by seeing what happened or by holding the photo and knowing where and when it was taken. Cough up and be sensible.”

“I’d have to have a little dough,” Brody said. He turned his head a little to look at the green-eyed blonde. Not now green-eyed and only superficially a blonde. She was as limp as a fresh-killed rabbit.

“No dough,” I said.

He scowled bitterly. “How’d you get to me?”

I flicked my wallet out and let him look at my buzzer. “I was working on Geiger—for a client. I was outside last night, in the rain. I heard the shots. I crashed in. I didn’t see the killer. I saw everything else.”

“And kept your lip buttoned,” Brody sneered.

I put my wallet away. “Yes,” I admitted. “Up till now. Do I get the photos or not?”

“About these books,” Brody said. “I don’t get that.”

“I tailed them here from Geiger’s store. I have a witness.”

“That punk kid?”

“What punk kid?”

He scowled again. “The kid that works at the store. He skipped out after the truck left. Agnes don’t even know where he flops.”

“That helps,” I said, grinning at him. “That angle worried me a little. Either of you ever been in Geiger’s house—before last night?”

“Not even last night,” Brody said sharply. “So she says I gunned him, eh?”

“With the photos in hand I might be able to convince her she was wrong. There was a little drinking being done.”

Brody sighed. “She hates my guts. I bounced her out. I got paid, sure, but I’d of had to do it anyway. She’s too screwy for a simple guy like me.” He cleared his throat. “How about a little dough? I’m down to nickels. Agnes and me gotta move on.”

“Not from my client.”

“Listen—”

“Get the pictures, Brody.”

“Oh, hell,” he said. “You win.” He stood up and slipped the Colt into his side pocket. His left hand went up inside his coat. He was holding it there, his face twisted with disgust, when the door buzzer rang and kept on ringing.

FIFTEEN

He didn’t like that. His lower lip went in under his teeth, and his eyebrows drew down sharply at the corners. His whole face became sharp and foxy and mean.

The buzzer kept up its song. I didn’t like it either. If the visitors should happen to be Eddie Mars and his boys, I might get chilled off just for being there. If it was the police, I was caught with nothing to give them but a smile and a promise. And if it was some of Brody’s friends—supposing he had any—they might turn out to be tougher than he was.

The blonde didn’t like it. She stood up in a surge and chipped at the air with one hand. Nerve tension made her face old and ugly.

Watching me, Brody jerked a small drawer in the desk and picked a bone-handled automatic out of it. He held it at the blonde. She slid over to him and took it, shaking.

“Sit down next to him,” Brody snapped. “Hold it on him low down, away from the door. If he gets funny use your own judgment. We ain’t licked yet, baby.”

“Oh, Joe,” the blonde wailed. She came over and sat next to me on the davenport and pointed the gun at my leg artery. I didn’t like the jerky look in her eyes.

The door buzzer stopped humming and a quick impatient rapping on the wood followed it. Brody put his hand in his pocket, on his gun, and walked over to the door and opened it with his left hand. Carmen Sternwood pushed him back into the room by putting a little revolver against his lean brown lips.

Brody backed away from her with his mouth working and an expression of panic on his face. Carmen shut the door behind her and looked neither at me nor at Agnes. She stalked Brody carefully, her tongue sticking out a little between her teeth. Brody took both hands out of his pockets and gestured placatingly at her. His eyebrows designed themselves into an odd assortment of curves and angles. Agnes turned the gun away from me and swung it at Carmen. I shot my hand out and closed my fingers down hard over her hand and jammed my thumb on the safety catch. It was already on. I kept it on. There was a short silent tussle, to which neither Brody nor Carmen paid any attention whatever. I had the gun. Agnes breathed deeply and shivered the whole length of her body. Carmen’s face had a bony scraped look and her breath hissed. Her voice said without tone:

“I want my pictures, Joe.”

Brody swallowed and tried to grin. “Sure, kid, sure.” He said it in a small flat voice that was as much like the voice he had used to me as a scooter is like a ten-ton truck.

Carmen said: “You shot Arthur Geiger. I saw you. I want my pictures.” Brody turned green.

“Hey, wait a minute, Carmen,” I yelped.

Blonde Agnes came to life with a rush. She ducked her head and sank her teeth in my right hand. I made more noises and shook her off.

“Listen, kid,” Brody whined. “Listen a minute—”

The blonde spat at me and threw herself on my leg and tried to bite that. I cracked her on the head with the gun, not very hard, and tried to stand up. She rolled down my legs and wrapped her arms around them. I fell back on the davenport. The blonde was strong with the madness of love or fear, or a mixture of both, or maybe she was just strong.

Brody grabbed for the little revolver that was so close to his face. He missed. The gun made a sharp rapping noise that was not very loud. The bullet broke glass in a folded-back French window. Brody groaned horribly and fell down on the floor and jerked Carmen’s feet from under her. She landed in a heap and the little revolver went skidding off into a corner. Brody jumped up on his knees and reached for his pocket.

I hit Agnes on the head with less delicacy than before, kicked her off my feet, and stood up. Brody flicked his eyes at me. I showed him the automatic. He stopped trying to get his hand into his pocket.

“Christ!” he whined. “Don’t let her kill me!”

I began to laugh. I laughed like an idiot, without control. Blonde Agnes was sitting up on the floor with her hands flat on the carpet and her mouth wide open and a wick of metallic blond hair down over her right eye. Carmen was crawling on her hands and knees, still hissing. The metal of her little revolver glistened against the baseboard over in the corner. She crawled towards it relentlessly.

I waved my share of the guns at Brody and said: “Stay put. You’re all right.”

I stepped past the crawling girl and picked the gun up. She looked up at me and began to giggle. I put her gun in my pocket and patted her on the back. “Get up, angel. You look like a Pekinese.”

I went over to Brody and put the automatic against his midriff and reached his Colt out of his side pocket. I now had all the guns that had been exposed to view. I stuffed them into my pockets and held my hand out to him.

“Give.”

He nodded, licking his lips, his eyes still scared. He took a fat envelope out of his breast pocket and gave it to me. There was a developed plate in the envelope and five glossy prints.

“Sure these are all?”

He nodded again. I put the envelope in my own breast pocket and turned away. Agnes was back on the davenport, straightening her hair. Her eyes ate Carmen with a green distillation of hate. Carmen was up on her feet too, coming towards me with her hand out, still giggling and hissing. There was a little froth at the corners of her mouth. Her small white teeth glinted close to her lips.

“Can I have them now?” she asked me with a coy smile.

“I’ll take care of them for you. Go on home.”

“Home?”

I went to the door and looked out. The cool night breeze was blowing peacefully down the hall. No excited neighbors hung out of doorways. A small gun had gone off and broken a pane of glass, but noises like that don’t mean much any more. I held the door open and jerked my head at Carmen. She came towards me, smiling uncertainly.

“Go on home and wait for me,” I said soothingly.

She put her thumb up. Then she nodded and slipped past me into the hall. She touched my cheek with her fingers as she went by. “You’ll take care of Carmen, won’t you?” she cooed.

“Check.”

“You’re cute.”

“What you see is nothing,” I said. “I’ve got a Bali dancing girl tattooed on my right thigh.”

Her eyes rounded. She said: “Naughty,” and wagged a finger at me. Then she whispered: “Can I have my gun?”

“Not now. Later. I’ll bring it to you.”

She grabbed me suddenly around the neck and kissed me on the mouth. “I like you,” she said. “Carmen likes you a lot.” She ran off down the hall as gay as a thrush, waved at me from the stairs and ran down the stairs out of my sight.

I went back into Brody’s apartment.