The Big Sleep (8 page)

SIXTEEN

I went over to the folded-back French window and looked at the small broken pane in the upper part of it. The bullet from Carmen’s gun had smashed the glass like a blow. It had not made a hole. There was a small hole in the plaster which a keen eye would find quickly enough. I pulled the drapes over the broken pane and took Carmen’s gun out of my pocket. It was a Banker’s Special, .22 caliber, hollow point cartridges. It had a pearl grip, and a small round silver plate set into the butt was engraved: “Carmen from Owen.” She made saps of all of them.

I put the gun back in my pocket and sat down close to Brody and stared into his bleak brown eyes. A minute passed. The blonde adjusted her face by the aid of a pocket mirror. Brody fumbled around with a cigarette and jerked: “Satisfied?”

“So far. Why did you put the bite on Mrs. Regan instead of the old man?”

“Tapped the old man once. About six, seven months ago. I figure maybe he gets sore enough to call in some law.”

“What made you think Mrs. Regan wouldn’t tell him about it?”

He considered that with some care, smoking his cigarette and keeping his eyes on my face. Finally he said: “How well you know her?”

“I’ve met her twice. You must know her a lot better to take a chance on that squeeze with the photo.”

“She skates around plenty. I figure maybe she has a couple of soft spots she don’t want the old man to know about. I figure she can raise five grand easy.”

“A little weak,” I said. “But pass it. You’re broke, eh?”

“I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.”

“What you do for a living?”

“Insurance. I got desk room in Puss Walgreen’s office, Fulwider Building, Western and Santa Monica.”

“When you open up, you open up. The books here in your apartment?”

He snapped his teeth and waved a brown hand. Confidence was oozing back into his manner. “Hell, no. In storage.”

“You had a man bring them here and then you had a storage outfit come and take them away again right afterwards?”

“Sure. I don’t want them moved direct from Geiger’s place, do I?”

“You’re smart, ” I said admiringly. “Anything incriminating in the joint right now?”

He looked worried again. He shook his head sharply.

“That’s fine,” I told him. I looked across at Agnes. She had finished fixing her face and was staring at the wall, blank-eyed, hardly listening. Her face had the drowsiness which strain and shock induce, after their first incidence.

Brody flicked his eyes warily. “Well?”

“How’d you come by the photo?”

He scowled. “Listen, you got what you came after, got it plenty cheap. You done a nice neat job. Now go peddle it to your top man. I’m clean. I don’t know nothing about any photo, do I, Agnes?”

The blonde opened her eyes and looked at him with vague but uncomplimentary speculation. “A half smart guy,” she said with a tired sniff. “That’s all I ever draw. Never once a guy that’s smart all the way around the course. Never once.”

I grinned at her. “Did I hurt your head much?”

“You and every other man I ever met.”

I looked back at Brody. He was pinching his cigarette between his fingers, with a sort of twitch. His hand seemed to be shaking a little. His brown poker face was still smooth.

“We’ve got to agree on a story,” I said. “For instance, Carmen wasn’t here. That’s very important. She wasn’t here. That was a vision you saw.”

“Huh!” Brody sneered. “If you say so, pal, and if—” he put his hand out palm up and cupped the fingers and rolled the thumb gently against the index and middle fingers.

I nodded. “We’ll see. There might be a small contribution. You won’t count it in grands, though. Now where did you get the picture?”

“A guy slipped it to me.”

“Uh-huh. A guy you just passed in the street. You wouldn’t know him again. You never saw him before.”

Brody yawned. “It dropped out of his pocket,” he leered.

“Uh-huh. Got an alibi for last night, poker pan?”

“Sure. I was right here. Agnes was with me. Okey, Agnes?”

“I’m beginning to feel sorry for you again,” I said.

His eyes flicked wide and his mouth hung loose, the cigarette balanced on his lower lip.

“You think you’re smart and you’re so goddamned dumb,” I told him. “Even if you don’t dance off up in Quentin, you have such a bleak long lonely time ahead of you.”

His cigarette jerked and dropped ash on his vest.

“Thinking about how smart you are,” I said.

“Take the air,” he growled suddenly. “Dust. I got enough chinning with you. Beat it.”

“Okey.” I stood up and went over to the tall oak desk and took his two guns out of my pockets, laid them side by side on the blotter so that the barrels were exactly parallel. I reached my hat off the floor beside the davenport and started for the door.

Brody yelped: “Hey!”

I turned and waited. His cigarette was jiggling like a doll on a coiled spring. “Everything’s smooth, ain’t it?” he asked.

“Why, sure. This is a free country. You don’t have to stay out of jail, if you don’t want to. That is, if you’re a citizen. Are you a citizen?”

He just stared at me, jiggling the cigarette. The blonde Agnes turned her head slowly and stared at me along the same level. Their glances contained almost the exact same blend of foxiness, doubt and frustrated anger. Agnes reached her silvery nails up abruptly and yanked a hair out of her head and broke it between her fingers, with a bitter jerk.

Brody said tightly: “You’re not going to any cops, brother. Not if it’s the Sternwoods you’re working for. I’ve got too much stuff on that family. You got your pictures and you got your hush. Go and peddle your papers.”

“Make your mind up,” I said. “You told me to dust, I was on my way out, you hollered at me and I stopped, and now I’m on my way out again. Is that what you want?”

“You ain’t got anything on me,” Brody said.

“Just a couple of murders. Small change in your circle.”

He didn’t jump more than an inch, but it looked like a foot. The white cornea showed all around the tobacco-colored iris of his eyes. The brown skin of his face took on a greenish tinge in the lamplight.

Blonde Agnes let out a low animal wail and buried her head in a cushion on the end of the davenport. I stood there and admired the long line of her thighs.

Brody moistened his lips slowly and said: “Sit down, pal. Maybe I have a little more for you. What’s that crack about two murders mean?”

I leaned against the door. “Where were you last night about seven-thirty, Joe?”

His mouth drooped sulkily and he stared down at the floor. “I was watching a guy, a guy who had a nice racket I figured he needed a partner in. Geiger. I was watching him now and then to see had he any tough connections. I figure he has friends or he don’t work the racket as open as he does. But they don’t go to his house. Only dames.”

“You didn’t watch hard enough,” I said. “Go on.”

“I’m there last night on the street below Geiger’s house. It’s raining hard and I’m buttoned up in my coupe and I don’t see anything. There’s a car in front of Geiger’s and another car a little way up the hill. That’s why I stay down below. There’s a big Buick parked down where I am and after a while I go over and take a gander into it. It’s registered to Vivian Regan. Nothing happens, so I scram. That’s all.” He waved his cigarette. His eyes crawled up and down my face.

“Could be,” I said. “Know where that Buick is now?”

“Why would I?”

“In the Sheriff’s garage. It was lifted out of twelve feet of water off Lido fish pier this a.m. There was a dead man in it. He had been sapped and the car pointed out the pier and the hand throttle pulled down.”

Brody was breathing hard. One of his feet tapped restlessly. “Jesus, guy, you can’t pin that one on me,” he said thickly.

“Why not? This Buick was down back of Geiger’s according to you. Well, Mrs. Regan didn’t have it out. Her chauffeur, a lad named Owen Taylor, had it out. He went over to Geiger’s place to have words with him, because Owen Taylor was sweet on Carmen, and he didn’t like the kind of games Geiger was playing with her. He let himself in the back way with a jimmy and a gun and he caught Geiger taking a photo of Carmen without any clothes on. So his gun went off, as guns will, and Geiger fell down dead and Owen ran away, but not without the photo negative Geiger had just taken. So you ran after him and took the photo from him. How else would you have got hold of it?”

Brody licked his lips. “Yeah,” he said. “But that don’t make me knock him off. Sure, I heard the shots and saw this killer come slamming down the back steps into the Buick and off. I took out after him. He hit the bottom of the canyon and went west on Sunset. Beyond Beverly Hills he skidded off the road and had to stop and I came up and played copper. He had a gun but his nerve was bad and I sapped him down. So I went through his clothes and found out who he was and I lifted the plateholder, just out of curiosity. I was wondering what it was all about and getting my neck wet when he came out of it all of a sudden and knocked me off the car. He was out of sight when I picked myself up. That’s the last I saw of him.”

“How did you know it was Geiger he shot?” I asked gruffly.

Brody shrugged. “I figure it was, but I can be wrong. When I had the plate developed and saw what was on it, I was pretty damn sure. And when Geiger didn’t come down to the store this morning and didn’t answer his phone I was plenty sure. So I figure it’s a good time to move his books out and make a quick touch on the Sternwoods for travel money and blow for a while.”

I nodded. “That seems reasonable. Maybe you didn’t murder anybody at that. Where did you hide Geiger’s body?”

He jumped his eyebrows. Then he grinned. “Nix, nix. Skip it. You think I’d go back there and handle him, not knowing when a couple carloads of law would come tearing around the corner? Nix.”

“Somebody hid the body,” I said.

Brody shrugged. The grin stayed on his face. He didn’t believe me. While he was still not believing me the door buzzer started to ring again. Brody stood up sharply, hard-eyed. He glanced over at his guns on the desk.

“So she’s back again,” he growled.

“If she is, she doesn’t have her gun,” I comforted him. “Don’t you have any other friends?”

“Just about one,” he growled. “I got enough of this puss in the corner game.” He marched to the desk and took the Colt. He held it down at his side and went to the door. He put his left hand to the knob and twisted it and opened the door a foot and leaned into the opening, holding the gun tight against his thigh.

A voice said: “Brody?”

Brody said something I didn’t hear. The two quick reports were muffled. The gun must have been pressed tight against Brody’s body. He tilted forward against the door and the weight of his body pushed it shut with a bang. He slid down the wood. His feet pushed the carpet away behind him. His left hand dropped off the knob and the arm slapped the floor with a thud. His head was wedged against the door. He didn’t move. The Colt clung to his right hand.

I jumped across the room and rolled him enough to get the door open and crowd through. A woman peered out of a door almost opposite. Her face was full of fright and she pointed along the hall with a clawlike hand.

I raced down the hall and heard thumping feet going down the tile steps and went down after the sound. At the lobby level the front door was closing itself quietly and running feet slapped the sidewalk outside. I made the door before it was shut, clawed it open again and charged out.

A tall hatless figure in a leather jerkin was running diagonally across the street between the parked cars. The figure turned and flame spurted from it. Two heavy hammers hit the stucco wall beside me. The figure ran on, dodged between two cars, vanished.

A man came up beside me and barked: “What happened?”

“Shooting going on,” I said.

“Jesus!” He scuttled into the apartment house.

I walked quickly down the sidewalk to my car and got in and started it. I pulled out from the curb and drove down the hill, not fast. No other car started up on the other side of the street. I thought I heard steps, but I wasn’t sure about that. I rode down the hill a block and a half, turned at the intersection and started back up. The sound of a muted whistling came to me faintly along the sidewalk. Then steps. I double parked and slid out between two cars and went down low. I took Carmen’s little revolver out of my pocket.

The sound of the steps grew louder, and the whistling went on cheerfully. In a moment the jerkin showed. I stepped out between the two cars and said: “Got a match, buddy?”

The boy spun towards me and his right hand darted up to go inside the jerkin. His eyes were a wet shine in the glow of the round electroliers. Moist dark eyes shaped like almonds, and a pallid handsome face with wavy black hair growing low on the forehead in two points. A very handsome boy indeed, the boy from Geiger’s store.

He stood there looking at me silently, his right hand on the edge of the jerkin, but not inside it yet. I held the little revolver down at my side.

“You must have thought a lot of that queen,” I said.

“Go — yourself,” the boy said softly, motionless between the parked cars and the five-foot retaining wall on the inside of the sidewalk.

A siren wailed distantly coming up the long hill. The boy’s head jerked towards the sound. I stepped in close and put my gun into his jerkin.

“Me or the cops?” I asked him.

His head rolled a little sideways as if I had slapped his face. “Who are you?” he snarled.

“Friend of Geiger’s.”

“Get away from me, you son of a bitch.”

“This is a small gun, kid. I’ll give it you through the navel and it will take three months to get you well enough to walk. But you’ll get well. So you can walk to the nice new gas chamber up in Quentin.”

He said: “Go — yourself.” His hand moved inside the jerkin. I pressed harder on his stomach. He let out a long soft sigh, took his hand away from the jerkin and let it fall limp at his side. His wide shoulders sagged. “What you want?” he whispered.