Trouble Is My Business (15 page)

It occurred to me that I was turning my back too much to people. I swung around, got the telephone in my hands, still on the hook, and put my gun down on the desk.

“Listen! Give me a break,” she said wildly. “Dorr framed it all with Pina, the croupier. Pina was one of the gang that got Shannon where they could fix him. I didn’t—”

I said: “Sure—that’s all right. Take it easy.”

The room, the whole house seemed very still, as if a lot of people were hunched outside the door, listening.

“It wasn’t a bad idea,” I said, as if I had all the time in the world. “Lou was just a white chip to Frank Dorr. The play he figured put us both out as witnesses. But it was too elaborate, took in too many people. That sort always blows up in your face.”

“Lou was getting out of the state,” she said, clutching at her dress. “He was scared. He thought the roulette trick was some kind of a pay-off to him.”

I said: “Yeah,” lifted the phone and asked for police headquarters.

The room door came open again then and the secretary barged in with a gun. A uniformed chauffeur was behind him with another gun.

I said very loudly into the phone: “This is Frank Dorr’s house. There’s been a killing . . .”

The secretary and the chauffeur dodged out again. I heard running in the hall. I clicked the phone, called the
Telegram
office and got Von Ballin. When I got through giving him the flash Miss Glenn was gone out of the window into the dark garden.

I didn’t go after her. I didn’t mind very much if she got away.

I tried to get Ohls, but they said he was still down at Solano. And by that time the night was full of sirens.

I had a little trouble but not too much. Fenweather pulled too much weight. Not all of the story came out, but enough so that the City Hall boys in the two-hundred-dollar suits had their left elbows in front of their faces for some time.

Pina was picked up in Salt Lake City. He broke and implicated four others of Manny Tinnen’s gang. Two of them were killed resisting arrest, the other two got life without parole.

Miss Glenn made a clean getaway and was never heard of again. I think that’s about all, except that I had to turn the twenty-two grand over to the Public Administrator. He allowed me two hundred dollars fee and nine dollars and twenty cents mileage. Sometimes I wonder what he did with the rest of it.

GOLDFISH

ONE

I wasn’t doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot-dangling. A warm gusty breeze was blowing in at the office window and the soot from the Mansion House Hotel oil burners across the alley was rolling across the glass top of my desk in tiny particles, like pollen drifting over a vacant lot.

I was just thinking about going to lunch when Kathy Horne came in.

She was a tall, seedy, sad-eyed blonde who had once been a policewoman and had lost her job when she married a cheap little check bouncer named Johnny Horne, to reform him. She hadn’t reformed him, but she was waiting for him to come out so she could try again. In the meantime she ran the cigar counter at the Mansion House, and watched the grifters go by in a haze of nickel cigar smoke. And once in a while lent one of them ten dollars to get out of town. She was just that soft. She sat down and opened her big shiny bag and got out a package of cigarettes and lit one with my desk lighter. She blew a plume of smoke, wrinkled her nose at it.

“Did you ever hear of the Leander pearls?” she asked. “Gosh, that blue serge shines. You must have money in the bank, the clothes you wear.”

“No,” I said, “to both your ideas. I never heard of the Leander pearls and don’t have any money in the bank.”

“Then you’d like to make yourself a cut of twenty-five grand maybe.”

I lit one of her cigarettes. She got up and shut the window, saying: “I get enough of that hotel smell on the job.”

She sat down again, went on: “It’s nineteen years ago. They had the guy in Leavenworth fifteen and it’s four since they let him out. A big lumberman from up north named Sol Leander bought them for his wife—the pearls, I mean—just two of them. They cost two hundred grand.”

“It must have taken a hand truck to move them,” I said.

“I see you don’t know a lot about pearls,” Kathy Horne said. “It’s not just size. Anyhow they’re worth more today and the twenty-five-grand reward the Reliance people put out is still good.”

“I get it,” I said. “Somebody copped them off.”

“Now you’re getting yourself some oxygen.” She dropped her cigarette into a tray and let it smoke, as ladies will. I put it out for her. “That’s what the guy was in Leavenworth for, only they never proved he got the pearls. It was a mail-car job. He got himself hidden in the car somehow and up in Wyoming he shot the clerk, cleaned out the registered mail and dropped off. He got to B. C. before he was nailed. But they didn’t get any of the stuff—not then. All they got was him. He got life.”

“If it’s going to be a long story, let’s have a drink.”

“I never drink until sundown. That way you don’t get to be a heel.”

“Tough on the Eskimos,” I said. “In the summertime anyway.”

She watched me get my little flat bottle out. Then she went on: “His name was Sype—Wally Sype. He did it alone. And he wouldn’t squawk about the stuff, not a peep. Then after fifteen long years they offered him a pardon, if he would loosen up with the loot. He gave up everything but the pearls.”

“Where did he have it?” I asked. “In his hat?”

“Listen, this ain’t just a bunch of gag lines, I’ve had a lead to those marbles.”

I shut my mouth with my hand and looked solemn.

“He said he never had the pearls and they must have halfway believed him because they gave him the pardon. Yet the pearls were in the load, registered mail, and they were never seen again.”

My throat began to feel a little thick. I didn’t say anything.

Kathy Horne went on: “One time in Leavenworth, just one time in all those years, Wally Sype wrapped himself around a can of white shellac and got as tight as a fat lady’s girdle. His cell mate was a little man they called Peeler Mardo. He was doing twenty-seven months for splitting twenty-dollar bills. Sype told him he had the pearls buried somewhere in Idaho.”

I leaned forward a little.

“Beginning to get to you, eh?” she said. “Well, get this. Peeler Mardo is rooming at my house and he’s a coke hound and he talks in his sleep.”

I leaned back again. “Good grief,” I said. “And I was practically spending the reward money.”

She stared at me coldly. Then her face softened. “All right,” she said a little hopelessly. “I know it sounds screwy. All those years gone by and all the smart heads that must have worked on the case, postal men and private agencies and all. And then a cokehead to turn it up. But he’s a nice little runt and somehow I believe him. He knows where Sype is.”

I said: “Did he talk all this in his sleep?”

“Of course not. But you know me. An old policewoman’s got ears. Maybe I was nosy, but I guessed he was an ex-con and I worried about him using the stuff so much. He’s the only roomer I’ve got now and I’d kind of go in by his door and listen to him talking to himself. That way I got enough to brace him. He told me the rest. He wants help to collect.”

I leaned forward again. “Where’s Sype?”

Kathy Horne smiled, and shook her head. “That’s the one thing he wouldn’t tell, that and the name Sype is using now. But it’s somewhere up north, in or near Olympia, Washington. Peeler saw him up there and found out about him and he says Sype didn’t see him.”

“What’s Peeler doing down here?” I asked.

“Here’s where they put the Leavenworth rap on him. You know an old con always goes back to look at the piece of sidewalk he slipped on. But he doesn’t have any friends here now.”

I lit another cigarette and had another little drink.

“Sype has been out four years, you say. Peeler did twenty-seven months. What’s he been doing with all the time since?”

Kathy Horne widened her china-blue eyes pityingly. “Maybe you think there’s only one jailhouse he could get into.”

“Okey,” I said. “Will he talk to me? I guess he wants help to deal with the insurance people, in case there are any pearls and Sype will put them right in Peeler’s hand and so on. Is that it?”

Kathy Horne sighed. “Yes, he’ll talk to you. He’s aching to. He’s scared about something. Will you go out now, before he gets junked up for the evening?”

“Sure—if that’s what you want.”

She took a flat key out of her bag and wrote an address on my pad. She stood up slowly.

“It’s a double house. My side’s separate. There’s a door in between, with the key on my side. That’s just in case he won’t come to the door.”

“Okey,” I said. I blew smoke at the ceiling and stared at her.

She went towards the door, stopped, came back. She looked down at the floor.

“I don’t rate much in it,” she said. “Maybe not anything. But if I could have a grand or two waiting for Johnny when he came out, maybe—”

“Maybe you could hold him straight,” I said. “It’s a dream, Kathy. It’s all a dream. But if it isn’t, you cut an even third.”

She caught her breath and glared at me to keep from crying. She went towards the door, stopped and came back again.

“That isn’t all,” she said. “It’s the old guy—Sype. He did fifteen years. He paid. Paid hard. Doesn’t it make you feel kind of mean?”

I shook my head. “He stole them, didn’t he? He killed a man. What does he do for a living?”

“His wife has money,” Kathy Horne said. “He just plays around with goldfish.”

“Goldfish?” I said. “To hell with him.”

She went on out.

TWO

The last time I had been in the Gray Lake district I had helped a D.A.’s man named Bernie Ohls shoot a gunman named Poke Andrews. But that was higher up the hill, farther away from the lake. This house was on the second level, in a loop the street made rounding a spur of the hill. It stood on a terrace, with a cracked retaining wall in front and several vacant lots behind.

Being originally a double house it had two front dooms and two sets of front steps. One of the dooms had a sign tacked over the grating that masked the peep window: Ring 1432.

I parked my car and went up rightangle steps, passed between two lines of pinks, went up more steps to the side with the sign. That should be the roomer’s side. I rang the bell. Nobody answered it, so I went across to the other door. Nobody answered that one either.

While I was waiting a gray Dodge coupe whished around the curve and a small neat girl in blue looked up at me for a second. I didn’t see who else was in the car. I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t know it was important.

I took out Kathy Horne’s key and let myself into a closed living room that smelled of cedar oil. There was just enough furniture to get by, net curtains, a quiet shaft of sunlight under the drapes in front. There was a tiny breakfast room, a kitchen, a bedroom in the back that was obviously Kathy’s, a bathroom, another bedroom in front that seemed to be used as a sewing room. It was this room that had the doom cut through to the other side of the house.

I unlocked it and stepped, as it were, through a mirror. Everything was backwards, except the furniture. The living room on that side had twin beds, didn’t have the look of being lived in.

I went towards the back of the house, past the second bathroom, knocked at the shut doom that corresponded to Kathy’s bedroom.

No answer. I tried the knob and went in. The little man on the bed was probably Peeler Mardo. I noticed his feet first, because although he had on trousers and a shirt, his feet were bare and hung over the end of the bed. They were tied there by a rope around the ankles.

They had been burned raw on the soles. There was a smell of scorched flesh in spite of the open window. Also a smell of scorched wood. An electric iron on a desk was still connected. I went over and shut it off.

I went back to Kathy Horne’s kitchen and found a pint of Brooklyn Scotch in the cooler. I used some of it and breathed deeply for a little while and looked out over the vacant lots. There was a narrow cement walk behind the house and green wooden steps down to the street.

I went back to Peeler Mardo’s room. The coat of a brown suit with a med pin stripe hung over a chair with the pockets turned out and what had been in them on the floor.

He was wearing the trousers of the suit, and their pockets were turned out also. Some keys and change and a handkerchief lay on the bed beside him, and a metal box like a woman’s compact, from which some glistening white powder had spilled. Cocaine.

He was a little man, not more than five feet four, with thin brown hair and large ears. His eyes had no particular color. They were just eyes, and very wide open and quite dead. His arms were pulled out from him and tied at the wrists by a rope that went under the bed.

I looked him over for bullet or knife wounds, didn’t find any. There wasn’t a mark on him except his feet. Shock or heart failure or a combination of the two must have done the trick. He was still warm. The gag in his mouth was both warm and wet.

I wiped off everything I had touched, looked out of Kathy’s front window for a while before I left the house.

It was three-thirty when I walked into the lobby of the Mansion House, over to the cigar counter in the corner. I leaned on the glass and asked for Camels.

Kathy Horne flicked the pack at me, dropped the change into my outside breast pocket, and gave me her customer’s smile.

“Well? You didn’t take long,” she said, and looked sidewise along her eyes at a drunk who was trying to light a cigar with the old-fashioned flint and steel lighter.

“It’s heavy,” I told her. “Get set.”

She turned away quickly and flipped a pack of paper matches along the glass to the drunk. He fumbled for them, dropped both matches and cigar, scooped them angrily off the floor and went off looking back over his shoulder, as if he expected a kick.

Kathy looked past my head, her eyes cool and empty.

“I’m set,” she whispered.

“You cut a full half,” I said. “Peeler’s out. He’s been bumped off—in his bed.”

Her eyes twitched. Two fingers curled on the glass near my elbow. A white line showed around her mouth. That was all.

“Listen,” I said. “Don’t say anything until I’m through. He died of shock. Somebody burned his feet with a cheap electric iron. Not yours, I looked. I’d say he died rather quickly and couldn’t have said much. The gag was still in his mouth. When I went out there, frankly, I thought it was all hooey. Now I’m not so sure. If he opened up, we’re through, and so is Sype, unless I can find him first. Those workers didn’t have any inhibitions at all. If he didn’t give up, there’s still time.”

Her head turned, her set eyes looked towards the revolving door at the lobby entrance. White patches glared in her cheeks.

“What do I do?” she breathed.

I poked at a box of wrapped cigars, dropped her key into it. Her long fingers got it out smoothly, hid it.

“When you get home you find him. You don’t know a thing. Leave the pearls out, leave me out. When they check his prints they’ll know he had a record and they’ll just figure it was something caught up with him.”

I broke my cigarettes open and lit one, watched her for a moment. She didn’t move an inch.

“Can you face it down?” I asked. “If you can’t, now’s the time to speak.”

“Of course.” Her eyebrows arched. “Do I look like a torturer?”

“You married a crook,” I said grimly.

She flushed, which was what I wanted. “He isn’t! He’s just a damn fool! Nobody thinks any the worse of me, not even the boys down at Headquarters.”

“All right. I like it that way. It’s not our murder, after all. And if we talk now, you can say goodbye to any share in any reward—even if one is ever paid.”

“Darn tootin’,” Kathy Horne said pertly. “Oh, the poor little runt,” she almost sobbed.

I patted her arm, grinned as heartily as I could and left the Mansion House.

THREE

The Reliance Indemnity Company had offices in the Graas Building, three small rooms that looked like nothing at all. They were a big enough outfit to be as shabby as they liked.

The resident manager was named Lutin, a middle-aged bald-headed man with quiet eyes, dainty fingers that caressed a dappled cigar. He sat behind a large, well-dusted desk and stared peacefully at my chin.

“Marlowe, eh? I’ve heard of you.” He touched my card with a shiny little finger. “What’s on your mind?”

I rolled a cigarette around in my fingers and lowered my voice. “Remember the Leander pearls?”