Five Sinister Characters
TROUBLE IS MY BUSINESS
ONE
Anna Halsey was about two hundred and forty pounds of middle-aged putty-faced woman in a black tailor-made suit. Her eyes were shiny black shoe buttons, her cheeks were as soft as suet and about the same color. She was sitting behind a black glass desk that looked like Napoleon’s tomb and she was smoking a cigarette in a black holder that was not quite as long as a rolled umbrella. She said: «I need a man.»
I watched her shake ash from the cigarette to the shiny top of the desk where flakes of it curled and crawled in the draft from an open window.
«I need a man good-looking enough to pick up a dame who has a sense of class, but he’s got to be tough enough to swap punches with a power shovel. I need a guy who can act like a bar lizard and backchat like Fred Allen, only better, and get hit on the head with a beer truck and think some cutie in the leg-line topped him with a breadstick.»
«It’s a cinch,» I said. «You need the New York Yankees, Robert Donat, and the Yacht Club Boys.»
«You might do,» Anna said, «cleaned up a little. Twenty bucks a day and ex’s. I haven’t brokered a job in years, but this one is out of my line. I’m in the smooth-angles of the detecting business and I make money without getting my can knocked off. Let’s see how Gladys likes you.»
She reversed the cigarette holder and tipped a key on a large black-and-chromium annunciator box. «Come in and empty Anna’s ash tray, honey.»
We waited.
The door opened and a tall blonde dressed better than the Duchess of Windsor strolled in.
She swayed elegantly across the room, emptied Anna’s ash tray, patted her fat cheek, gave me a smooth rippling glance and went out again.
«I think she blushed,» Anna said when the door closed. «I guess you still have It.»
«She blushed — and I have a dinner date with Darryl Zanuck,» I said. «Quit horsing around. What’s the story?»
«It’s to smear a girl. A redheaded number with bedroom eyes. She’s shill for a gambler and she’s got her hooks into a rich man’s pup.»
«What do I do to her?»
Anna sighed. «It’s kind of a mean job, Philip, I guess. If she’s got a record of any sort, you dig it up and toss it in her face. If she hasn’t, which is more likely as she comes from good people, it’s kind of up to you. You get an idea once in a while, don’t you?»
«I can’t remember the last one I had. What gambler and what rich man?»
«Marty Estel.»
I started to get up from my chair, then remembered that business had been bad for a month and that I needed the money.
I sat down again.
«You might get into trouble, of course,» Anna said. «I never heard of Marty bumping anybody off in the public square at high noon, but he don’t play with cigar coupons.»
«Trouble is my business,» I said. «Twenty-five a day and guarantee of two-fifty, if I pull the job.»
«I gotta make a little something for myself,» Anna whined.
«O.K. There’s plenty of coolie labor around town. Nice to have seen you looking so well. So long, Anna.»
I stood up this time. My life wasn’t worth much, but it was worth that much. Marty Estel was supposed to be pretty tough people, with the right helpers and the right protection behind him. His place was out in West Hollywood, on the Strip. He wouldn’t pull anything crude, but if he pulled at all, something would pop.
«Sit down, it’s a deal,» Anna sneered. «I’m a poor old broken-down woman trying to run a high-class detective agency on nothing but fat and bad health, so take my last nickel and laugh at me.»
«Who’s the girl?» I had sat down again.
«Her name is Harriet Huntress — a swell name for the part too. She lives in the El Milano, nineteen-hundred block on North Sycamore, very high-class. Father went broke back in thirty-one and jumped out of his office window. Mother dead. Kid sister in boarding school back in Connecticut. That might make an angle.»
«Who dug up all this?»
«The client got a bunch of photostats of notes the pup had given to Marty. Fifty grand worth. The pup — he’s an adopted son to the old man — denied the notes, as kids will. So the client had the photostats experted by a guy named Arbogast, who pretends to be good at that sort of thing. He said O.K. and dug around a bit, but he’s too fat to do legwork, like me, and he’s off the case now.»
«But I could talk to him?»
«I don’t know why not.» Anna nodded several of her chins.
«This client — does he have a name?»
«Son, you have a treat coming. You can meet him in person — right now.»
She tipped the key of her call box again. «Have Mr. Jeeter come in, honey.»
«That Gladys,» I said, «does she have a steady?»
«You lay off Gladys!» Anna almost screamed at me. «She’s worth eighteen grand a year in divorce business to me. Any guy that lays a finger on her, Philip Marlowe, is practically cremated.»
«She’s got to fall some day,» I said. «Why couldn’t I catch her?»
The opening door stopped that.
I hadn’t seen him in the paneled reception room, so he must have been waiting in a private office. He hadn’t enjoyed it. He came in quickly, shut the door quickly, and yanked a thin octagonal platinum watch from his vest and glared at it. He was a tall white-blond type in pin-striped flannel of youthful cut. There was a small pink rosebud in his lapel. He had a keen frozen face, a little pouchy under the eyes, a little thick in the lips. He carried an ebony cane with a silver knob, wore spats and looked a smart sixty, but I gave him close to ten years more. I didn’t like him.
«Twenty-six minutes, Miss Halsey,» he said icily. «My time happens to be valuable. By regarding it as valuable I have managed to make a great deal of money.»
«Well, we’re trying to save you some of the money,» Anna drawled. She didn’t like him either. «Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Jeeter, but you wanted to see the operative I selected and I had to send for him.»
«He doesn’t look the type to me,» Mr. Jeeter said, giving me a nasty glance. «I think more of a gentleman —»
«You’re not the Jeeter of ‘Tobacco Road’, are you?» I asked him.
He came slowly towards me and half lifted the stick. His icy eyes tore at me like claws. «So you insult me,» he said. «Me — a man in my position.»
«Now wait a minute,» Anna began.
«Wait a minute nothing,» I said. «This party said I was not a gentleman. Maybe that’s O.K. for a man in his position, whatever it is — but a man in my position doesn’t take a dirty crack from anybody. He can’t afford to. Unless, of course, it wasn’t intended.»
Mr. Jeeter stiffened and glared at me. He took his watch out again and looked at it. «Twenty-eight minutes,» he said. «I apologize, young man. I had no desire to be rude.»
«That’s swell,» I said. «I knew you weren’t the Jeeter in ‘Tobacco Road’ all along.»
That almost started him again, but he let it go. He wasn’t sure how I meant it.
«A question or two while we are together,» I said. «Are you willing to give this Huntress girl a little money — for expenses?»
«Not one cent,» he barked. «Why should I?»
«It’s got to be a sort of custom. Suppose she married him. What would he have?»
«At the moment a thousand dollars a month from a trust fund established by his mother, my late wife.» He dipped his head. «When he is twenty-eight years old, far too much money.»
«You can’t blame the girl for trying,» I said. «Not these days. How about Marty Estel? Any settlement there?»
He crumpled his gray gloves with a purple-veined hand. «The debt is uncollectible. It is a gambling debt.»