Anna sighed wearily and flicked ash around on her desk.
«Sure,» I said. «But gamblers can’t afford to let people welsh on them. After all, if your son had won, Marty would have paid ‘him’.»
«I’m not interested in that,» the tall thin man said coldly.
«Yeah, but think of Marty sitting there with fifty grand in notes. Not worth a nickel. How will he sleep nights?»
Mr. Jeeter looked thoughtful. «You mean there is danger of violence?» he suggested, almost suavely.
«That’s hard to say. He runs an exclusive place, gets a good movie crowd. He has his own reputation to think of. But he’s in a racket and he knows people. Things can happen — a long way off from where Marty is. And Marty is no bathmat. He gets up and walks.»
Mr. Jeeter looked at his watch again and it annoyed him. He slammed it back into his vest. «All that is your affair,» he snapped. «The district attorney is a personal friend of mine. If this matter seems to be beyond your powers —»
«Yeah,» I told him. «But you came slumming down our street just the same. Even if the D.A. is in your vest pocket — along with that watch.»
He put his hat on, drew on one glove, tapped the edge of his shoe with his stick, walked to the door and opened it.
«I ask results and I pay for them,» he said coldly. «I pay promptly. I even pay generously sometimes, although I am not considered a generous man. I think we all understand one another.»
He almost winked then and went on out. The door closed softly against the cushion of air in the door-closer. I looked at Anna and grinned.
«Sweet, isn’t he?» she said. «I’d like eight of him for my cocktail set.»
I gouged twenty dollars out of her — for expenses.
TWO
The Arbogast I wanted was John D. Arbogast and he had an office on Sunset near Ivar. I called him up from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest.
«Mr. John D. Arbogast?»
«Yeah.»
«This is Philip Marlowe, a private detective working on a case you did some experting on. Party named Jeeter.»
«Yeah?»
«Can I come up and talk to you about it — after I eat lunch?»
«Yeah.» He hung up. I decided he was not a talkative man.
I had lunch and drove out there. It was east of Ivar, an old two-story building faced with brick which had been painted recently. The street floor was stores and a restaurant. The building entrance was the foot of a wide straight stairway to the second floor. On the directory at the bottom I read: John D. Arbogast, Suite 212. I went up the stairs and found myself in a wide straight hall that ran parallel with the street. A man in a smock was standing in an open doorway down to my right. He wore a round mirror strapped to his forehead and pushed back, and his face had a puzzled expression. He went back to his office and shut the door.
I went the other way, about half the distance along the hall. A door on the side away from Sunset was lettered: JOHN D. ARBOGAST, EXAMINER OF QUESTIONED DOCUMENTS. PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. ENTER. The door opened without resistance onto a small windowless anteroom with a couple of easy chairs, some magazines, two chromium smoking stands. There were two floor lamps and a ceiling fixture, all lighted. A door on the other side of the cheap but thick new rug was lettered: JOHN D. ARBOGAST, EXAMINER OF QUESTIONED DOCUMENTS. PRIVATE.
A buzzer had rung when I opened the outer door and gone on ringing until it closed. Nothing happened. Nobody was in the waiting room. The inner door didn’t open. I went over and listened at the panel — no sound of conversation inside. I knocked. That didn’t buy me anything either. I tried the knob. It turned, so I opened the door and went in.
This room had two north windows, both curtained at the sides and both shut tight. There was dust on the sills. There was a desk, two filing cases, a carpet which was just a carpet, and walls which were just walls. To the left another door with a glass panel was lettered: JOHN D. ARBOGAST. LABORATORY. PRIVATE.
I had an idea I might be able to remember the name.
The room in which I stood was small. It seemed almost too small even for the pudgy hand that rested on the edge of the desk, motionless, holding a fat pencil like a carpenter’s pencil. The hand had a wrist, hairless as a plate. A buttoned shirt cuff, not too clean, came down out of a coat sleeve. The rest of the sleeve dropped over the far edge of the desk out of sight. The desk was less than six feet long, so he couldn’t have been a very tall man. The hand and the ends of the sleeves were all I saw of him from where I stood. I went quietly back through the anteroom and fixed its door so that it couldn’t be opened from the outside and put out the three lights and went back to the private office. I went around an end of the desk.
He was fat all right, enormously fat, fatter by far than Anna Halsey. His face, what I could see of it, looked about the size of a basket ball. It had a pleasant pinkness, even now. He was kneeling on the floor. He had his large head against the sharp inner corner of the kneehole of the desk, and his left hand was flat on the floor with a piece of yellow paper under it. The fingers were outspread as much as such fat fingers could be, and the yellow paper showed between. He looked as if he were pushing hard on the floor, but he wasn’t really. What was holding him up was his own fat. His body was folded down against his enormous thighs, and the thickness and fatness of them held him that way, kneeling, poised solid. It would have taken a couple of good blocking backs to knock him over. That wasn’t a very nice idea at the moment, but I had it just the same. I took time out and wiped the back of my neck, although it was not a warm day.
His hair was gray and clipped short and his neck had as many folds as a concertina. His feet were small, as the feet of fat men often are, and they were in black shiny shoes which were sideways on the carpet and close together and neat and nasty. He wore a dark suit that needed cleaning. I leaned down and buried my fingers in the bottomless fat of his neck. He had an artery in there somewhere, probably, but I couldn’t find it and he didn’t need it any more anyway. Between his bloated knees on the carpet a dark stain had spread and spread —
I knelt in another place and lifted the pudgy fingers that were holding down the piece of yellow paper. They were cool, but not cold, and soft and a little sticky. The paper was from a scratch pad. It would have been very nice if it had had a message on it, but it hadn’t. There were vague meaningless marks, not words, not even letters. He had tried to write something after he was shot — perhaps even thought he was writing something — but all he managed was some hen scratches.
He had slumped down then, still holding the paper, pinned it to the floor with his fat hand, held on to the fat pencil with his other hand, wedged his torso against his huge thighs, and so died. John D. Arbogast. Examiner of Questioned Documents. Private. Very damned private. He had said «yeah» to me three times over the phone.
And here he was.
I wiped doorknobs with my handkerchief, put off the lights in the anteroom, left the outer door so that it was locked from the outside, left the hallway, left the building and left the neighborhood. So far as I could tell nobody saw me go. So far as I could tell.
THREE
The El Milano was, as Anna had told me, in the 1900 block on North Sycamore. It was most of the block. I parked fairly near the ornamental forecourt and went along to the pale blue neon sign over the entrance to the basement garage. I walked down a railed ramp into a bright space of glistening cars and cold air. A trim light-colored Negro in a spotless coverall suit with blue cuffs came out of a glass office. His black hair was as smooth as a bandleader’s.