Steve said: «Go and write it. You were the one called Leopardi up and pretended to be the girl, huh?»
Millar said: «Yes. I’ll write it all down, Steve. I’ll sign it and then you’ll let me go — just for an hour. Won’t you, Steve? Just an hour’s start. That’s not much to ask of an old friend, is it, Steve?»
Millar smiled. It was a small, frail, ghostly smile. Steve bent beside the big sprawled man and felt his neck artery. He looked up, said: «Quite dead … Yes, you get an hour’s start, George — if you write it all out.»
Millar walked softly over to a tall oak highboy desk, studded with tarnished brass nails. He opened the flap and sat down and reached for a pen. He unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and began to write in his neat, clear accountant’s handwriting.
Steve Grayce sat down in front of the fire and lit a cigarette and stared at the ashes. He held the gun with his left hand on his knee. Outside the cabin, birds began to sing. Inside there was no sound but the scratching pen.
NINE
The sun was well up when Steve left the cabin, locked it up, walked down the steep path and along the narrow gravel road to his car. The garage was empty now. The gray sedan was gone. Smoke from another cabin floated lazily above the pines and oaks half a mile away. He started his car, drove it around a bend, past two old boxcars that had been converted into cabins, then on to a main road with a stripe down the middle and so up the hill to Crestline.
He parked on the main street before the Rim-of-the-World Inn, had a cup of coffee at the counter, then shut himself in a phone booth at the back of the empty lounge. He had the long distance operator get Jumbo Walters’ number in Los Angeles, then called the owner of the Club Shalotte.
A voice said silkily: «This is Mr. Walters’ residence.»
«Steve Grayce. Put him on, if you please.»
«One moment, please.» A click, another voice, not so smooth and much harder. «Yeah?»
«Steve Grayce. I want to speak to Mr. Walters.»
«Sorry. I don’t seem to know you. It’s a little early, amigo. What’s your business?»
«Did he go to Miss Chiozza’s place?»
«Oh.» A pause. «The shamus. I get it. Hold the line, pal.»
Another voice now — lazy, with the faintest color of Irish in it. «You can talk, son. This is Walters.»
«I’m Steve Grayce. I’m the man —»
«I know all about that, son. The lady is O.K., by the way. I think she’s asleep upstairs. Go on.»
«I’m at Crestline — top of the Arrowhead grade. Two men murdered Leopardi. One was George Millar, night auditor at the Carlton Hotel. The other his brother, an ex-fighter named Gaff Talley. Talley’s dead — shot by his brother. Millar got away — but he left me a full confession signed, detailed, complete.»
Walters said slowly: «You’re a fast worker, son — unless you’re just plain crazy. Better come in here fast. Why did they do it?»
«They had a sister.»
Walters repeated quietly: «They had a sister … What about this fellow that got away? We don’t want some hick sheriff or publicity-hungry county attorney to get ideas —»
Steve broke in quietly: «I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that, Mr. Walters. I think I know where he’s gone.»
He ate breakfast at the inn, not because he was hungry, but because he was weak. He got into his car again and started down the long smooth grade from Crestline to San Bernardino, a broad paved boulevard skirting the edge of a sheer drop into the deep valley. There were places where the road went close to the edge, white guard-fences alongside.
Two miles below Crestline was the place. The road made a sharp turn around a shoulder of the mountain. Cars were parked on the gravel off the pavement — several private cars, an official car, and a wrecking car. The white fence was broken through and men stood around the broken place looking down.
Eight hundred feet below, what was left of a gray sedan lay silent and crumpled in the morning sunshine.
RED WIND
ONE
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
I was getting one in a flossy new place across the street from the apartment house where I lived. It had been open about a week and it wasn’t doing any business. The kid behind the bar was in his early twenties and looked as if he had never had a drink in his life.
There was only one other customer, a souse on a bar stool with his back to the door. He had a pile of dimes stacked neatly in front of him, about two dollars’ worth. He was drinking straight rye in small glasses and he was all by himself in a world of his own.
I sat farther along the bar and got my glass of beer and said: «You sure cut the clouds off them, buddy. I will say that for you.»
«We just opened up,» the kid said. «We got to build up trade. Been in before, haven’t you, mister?»
«Uh-huh.»
«Live around here?»
«In the Berglund Apartments across the street,» I said. «And the name is Philip Marlowe.»
«Thanks, mister. Mine’s Lew Petrolle.» He leaned close to me across the polished dark bar. «Know that guy?»
«No.»
«He ought to go home, kind of. I ought to call a taxi and send him home. He’s doing his next week’s drinking too soon.»
«A night like this,» I said. «Let him alone.»
«It’s not good for him,» the kid said, scowling at me.
«Rye!» the drunk croaked, without looking up. He snapped his fingers so as not to disturb his piles of dimes by banging on the bar.
The kid looked at me and shrugged. «Should I?»
«Whose stomach is it? Not mine.»
The kid poured him another straight rye and I think he doctored it with water down behind the bar because when he came up with it he looked as guilty as if he’d kicked his grandmother. The drunk paid no attention. He lifted coins off his pile with the exact care of a crack surgeon operating on a brain tumor.
The kid came back and put more beer in my glass. Outside the wind howled. Every once in a while it blew the stainedglass door open a few inches. It was a heavy door.
The kid said: «I don’t like drunks in the first place and in the second place I don’t like them getting drunk in here, and in the third place I don’t like them in the first place.»
«Warner Brothers could use that,» I said.
«They did.»
Just then we had another customer. A car squeaked to a stop outside and the swinging door came open. A fellow came in who looked a little in a hurry. He held the door and ranged the place quickly with flat, shiny, dark eyes. He was well set up, dark, good-looking in a narrow-faced, tight-lipped way. His clothes were dark and a white handkerchief peeped coyly from his pocket and he looked cool as well as under a tension of some sort. I guessed it was the hot wind. I felt a bit the same myself only not cool.
He looked at the drunk’s back. The drunk was playing checkers with his empty glasses. The new customer looked at me, then he looked along the line of half-booths at the other side of the place. They were all empty. He came on in — down past where the drunk sat swaying and muttering to himself — and spoke to the bar kid.