The Little Sister (3 page)

“Vince! The Doc!” he shouted angrily. He shook the receiver and threw it away from him. He put his hands down on the floor and started to crawl in a circle. When he saw me he looked surprised and annoyed. He got shakily to his feet again and held his hand out. “Gimme a drink.”

I retrieved the fallen glass and milked the gin bottle into it. He accepted it with the dignity of an intoxicated dowager, drank it down with an airy flourish, walked calmly over to the couch and lay down, putting the glass under his head for a pillow. He went to sleep instantly.

I put the telephone receiver back on its hook, glanced out in the kitchen again, felt the man on the couch over and dug some keys out of his pocket. One of them was a passkey. The door to the hallway had a spring lock and I fixed it so that I could come in again and started up the stairs. I paused on the way to write “Doc—Vince, 13572” on an envelope. Maybe it was a clue.

The house was quite silent as I went on up.

4

The manager’s much filed passkey turned the lock of Room 214 without noise. I pushed the door open. The room was not empty. A chunky, strongly built man was bending over a suitcase on the bed, with his back to the door. Shirts and socks and underwear were laid out on the bed cover, and he was packing them leisurely and carefully, whistling between his teeth in a low monotone.

He stiffened as the door hinge creaked. His hand moved fast for the pillow on the bed.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “The manager told me this room was vacant.”

He was as bald as a grapefruit. He wore dark gray flannel slacks and transparent plastic suspenders over a blue shirt. His hands came up from the pillow, went to his head, and down again. He turned and he had hair.

It looked as natural as hair ever looked, smooth, brown, not parted. He glared at me from under it.

“You can always try knocking,” he said.

He had a thick voice and a broad careful face that had been around.

“Why would I? If the manager said the room was empty?”

He nodded, satisfied. The glare went out of his eyes.

I came further into the room without invitation. An open love-pulp magazine lay face down on the bed near the suitcase. A cigar smoked in a green glass ashtray. The room was careful and orderly, and, for that house, clean.

“He must have thought you had already moved out,” I said, trying to look like a well-meaning party with some talent for the truth.

“Have it in half an hour,” the man said.

“O.K. if I look around?”

He smiled mirthlessly. “Ain’t been in town long, have you?”

“Why?”

“New around here, ain’t you?”

“Why?”

“Like the house and the neighborhood?”

“Not much,” I said. “The room looks all right.”

He grinned, showing a porcelain jacket crown that was too white for his other teeth. “How long you been looking?”

“Just started,” I said. “Why all the questions?”

“You make me laugh,” the man said, not laughing. “You don’t look at rooms in this town. You grab them sight unseen. This burg’s so jam-packed even now that I could get ten bucks just for telling there’s a vacancy here.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “A man named Orrin P. Quest told me about the room. So there’s one sawbuck you don’t get to spend.”

“That so?” Not a flicker of an eye. Not a movement of a muscle. I might as well have been talking to a turtle.

“Don’t get tough with me,” the man said. “I’m a bad man to get tough with.”

He picked his cigar out of the green glass ashtray and blew a little smoke. Through it he gave me the cold gray eye. I got a cigarette out and scratched my chin with it.

“What happens to people that get tough with you?” I asked him. “You make them hold your toupee?”

“You lay off my toupee,” he said savagely.

“So sorry,” I said.

“There’s a ‘No Vacancy’ sign on the house,” the man said. “So what makes you come here and find one?”

“You didn’t catch the name,” I said. “Orrin P. Quest.” I spelled it for him. Even that didn’t make him happy. There was a dead-air pause.

He turned abruptly and put a pile of handkerchiefs into his suitcase. I moved a little closer to him. When he turned back there was what might have been a watchful look on his face. But it had been a watchful face to start with.

“Friend of yours?” he asked casually.

“We grew up together,” I said.

“Quiet sort of guy,” the man said easily. “I used to pass the time of day with him. Works for Cal-Western, don’t he?”

“He did,” I said.

“Oh. He quit?”

“Let out.”

We went on staring at each other. It didn’t get either of us anywhere. We both had done too much of it in our lives to expect miracles.

The man put the cigar back in his face and sat down on the side of the bed beside the open suitcase. Glancing into it I saw the square butt of an automatic peeping out from under a pair of badly folded shorts.

“This Quest party’s been out of here ten days,” the man said thoughtfully. “So he still thinks the room is vacant, huh?”

“According to the register it is vacant,” I said.

He made a contemptuous noise. “That rummy downstairs probably ain’t looked at the register in a month. Say—wait a minute.” His eyes sharpened and his hand wandered idly over the open suitcase and gave an idle pat to something that was close to the gun. When the hand moved away, the gun was no longer visible.

“I’ve been kind of dreamy all morning or I’d have wised up,” he said. “You’re a dick.”

“All right. Say I’m a dick.”

“What’s the beef?”

“No beef at all. I just wondered why you had the room.”

“I moved from 215 across the hail. This here is a better room. That’s all. Simple. Satisfied?”

“Perfectly,” I said, watching the hand that could be near the gun if it wanted to.

“What kind of dick? City? Let’s see the buzzer.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I don’t believe you got no buzzer.”

“If I showed it to you, you’re the type of guy would say it was counterfeit. So you’re Hicks.”

He looked surprised.

“George W. Hicks,” I said. “It’s in the register. Room 215. You just got through telling me you moved from 215.” I glanced around the room. “If you had a blackboard here, I’d write it out for you.”

“Strictly speaking, we don’t have to get into no snarling match,” he said. “Sure I’m Hicks. Pleased to meetcha. What’s yours?”

He held his hand out. I shook hands with him, but not as if I had been longing for the moment to arrive.

“My name’s Marlowe,” I said. “Philip Marlowe.”

“You know something,” Hicks said politely, “you’re a Goddamn liar.”

I laughed in his face.

“You ain’t getting no place with that breezy manner, bub. What’s your connection?”

I got my wallet out and handed him one of my business cards. He read it thoughtfully and tapped the edge against his porcelain crown.

“He coulda went somewhere without telling me,” he mused.

“Your grammar,” I said, “is almost as loose as your toupee.”

“You lay off my toupee, if you know what’s good for you,” he shouted.

“I wasn’t going to eat it,” I said. “I’m not that hungry.” He took a step towards me, and dropped his right shoulder. A scowl of fury dropped his lip almost as far.

“Don’t hit me. I’m insured,” I told him.

“Oh hell. Just another screwball.” He shrugged and put his lip back up on his face. “What’s the lay?”

“I have to find this Orrin P. Quest,” I said.

“Why?”

I didn’t answer that.

After a moment he said: “O.K. I’m a careful guy myself. That’s why I’m movin’ out.”

“Maybe you don’t like the reefer smoke.”

“That,” he said emptily, “and other things. That’s why Quest left. Respectable type. Like me. I think a couple of hard boys threw a scare into him.”

“I see,” I said. “That would be why he left no forwarding address. And why did they throw a scare into him?”

“You just mentioned reefer smoke, didn’t you? Wouldn’t he be the type to go to headquarters about that?”

“In Bay City?” I asked. “Why would he bother? Well, thanks a lot, Mr. Hicks. Going far?”

“Not far,” he said. “No. Not very far. Just far enough.”

“What’s your racket?” I asked him.

“Racket?” He looked hurt.

“Sure. What do you shake them for? How do you make your dibs?”

“You got me wrong, brother. I’m a retired optometrist.”

“That why you have the .45 gun in there?” I pointed to the suitcase.

“Nothing to get cute about,” he said sourly. “It’s been in the family for years.” He looked down at the card again. “Private investigator, huh?” he said thoughtfully. “What kind of work do you do mostly?”

“Anything that’s reasonably honest,” I said.

He nodded. “Reasonably is a word you could stretch. So is honest.”

I gave him a shady leer. “You’re so right,” I agreed. “Let’s get together some quiet afternoon and stretch them.” I reached out and slipped the card from between his fingers and dropped it into my pocket. “Thanks for the time,” I said.

I went out and closed the door, then stood against it listening. I don’t know what I expected to hear. Whatever it was I didn’t hear it. I had a feeling he was standing exactly where I had left him and looking at the spot where I had made my exit. I made noise going along the hall and stood at the head of the stairs.

A car drove away from in front of the house. Somewhere a door closed. I went quietly back to Room 215 and used the passkey to enter. I closed and locked its door silently, and waited just inside.

5

Not more than two minutes passed before Mr. George W. Hicks was on his way. He came out so quietly that I wouldn’t have heard him if I hadn’t been listening for precisely that kind of movement. I heard the slight metallic sound of the doorknob turning. Then slow steps. Then very gently the door was closed. The steps moved off. The faint distant creak of the stairs. Then nothing. I waited for the sound of the front door. It didn’t come. I opened the door of 215 and moved along the hall to the stair head again. Below there was the careful sound of a door being tried. I looked down to see Hicks going into the manager’s apartment. The door closed behind him. I waited for the sound of voices. No voices.

I shrugged and went back to 215.

The room showed signs of occupancy. There was a small radio on a night table, an unmade bed with shoes under it, and an old bathrobe hung over the cracked, pull-down green shade to keep the glare out.

I looked at all this as if it meant something, then stepped back into the hall and relocked the door. Then I made another pilgrimage into Room 214. Its door was now unlocked. I searched the room with care and patience and found nothing that connected it in any way with Orrin P. Quest. I didn’t expect to. There was no reason why I should. But you always have to look.

I went downstairs, listened outside the manager’s door, heard nothing, went in and crossed to put the keys on the desk. Lester B. Clausen lay on his side on the couch with his face to the wall, dead to the world. I went through the desk, found an old account book that seemed to be concerned with rent taken in and expenses paid out and nothing else. I looked at the register again. It wasn’t up to date but the party on the couch seemed enough explanation for that. Orrin P. Quest had moved away. Somebody had taken over his room. Somebody else had the room registered to Hicks. The little man counting money in the kitchen went nicely with the neighborhood. The fact that he carried a gun and a knife was a social eccentricity that would cause no comment at all on Idaho Street.

I reached the small Bay City telephone book off the hook beside the desk. I didn’t think it would be much of a job to sift out the party that went by the name of “Doc” or “Vince” and the phone number one-three-five-seven-two. First of all I leafed back through the register. Something which I ought to have done first. The page with Orrin Quest’s registration had been torn out. A careful man, Mr. George W. Hicks. Very careful.

I closed the register, glanced over at Lester B. Clausen again, wrinkled my nose at the stale air and the sickly sweetish smell of gin and of something else, and started back to the entrance door. As I reached it, something for the first time penetrated my mind. A drunk like Clausen ought to be snoring very loudly. He ought to be snoring his head off with a nice assortment of checks and gurgles and snorts. He wasn’t making any sound at all. A brown army blanket was pulled up around his shoulders and the lower part of his head. He looked very comfortable, very calm. I stood over him and looked down. Something which was not an accidental fold held the army blanket away from the back of his neck. I moved it. A square yellow wooden handle was attached to the back of Lester B. Clausen’s neck. On the side of the yellow handle were printed the words “Compliments of the Crumser Hardware Company.” The position of the handle was just below the occipital bulge.

It was the handle of an ice pick. . . .

I did a nice quiet thirty-five getting away from the neighborhood. On the edge of the city, a frog’s jump from the line, I shut myself in an outdoor telephone booth and called the Police Department.

“Bay City Police. Moot talking,” a furry voice said.

I said: “Number 449 Idaho Street. In the apartment of the manager. His name’s Clausen.”

“Yeah?” The voice said. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a bit of a puzzle to me. But the man’s name is Lester B. Clausen. Got that?”

“What makes it important?” the furry voice said without suspicion.

“The coroner will want to know,” I said, and hung up.