«Seen a lady in here, buddy? Tall, pretty, brown hair, in a print bolero jacket over a blue crêpe silk dress. Wearing a widebrimmed straw hat with a velvet band.» He had a tight voice I didn’t like.
«No, sir. Nobody like that’s been in,» the bar kid said.
«Thanks. Straight Scotch. Make it fast, will you?»
The kid gave it to him and the fellow paid and put the drink down in a gulp and started to go out. He took three or four steps and stopped, facing the drunk. The drunk was grinning. He swept a gun from somewhere so fast that it was just a blur coming out. He held it steady and he didn’t look any drunker than I was. The tall dark guy stood quite still and then his head jerked back a little and then he was still again.
A car tore by outside. The drunk’s gun was a .22 target automatic, with a large front sight. It made a couple of hard snaps and a little smoke curled — very little.
«So long, Waldo,» the drunk said.
Then he put the gun on the barman and me.
The dark guy took a week to fall down. He stumbled, caught himself, waved one arm, stumbled again. His hat fell off, and then he hit the floor with his face. After he hit it he might have been poured concrete for all the fuss he made.
The drunk slid down off the stool and scooped his dimes into a pocket and slid towards the door. He turned sideways, holding the gun across his body. I didn’t have a gun. I hadn’t thought I needed one to buy a glass of beer. The kid behind the bar didn’t move or make the slightest sound.
The drunk felt the door lightly with his shoulder, keeping his eyes on us, then pushed through it backwards. When it was wide a hard gust of air slammed in and lifted the hair of the man on the floor. The drunk said: «Poor Waldo. I bet I made his nose bleed.»
The door swung shut. I started to rush it — from long practice in doing the wrong thing. In this case it didn’t matter. The car outside let out a roar and when I got onto the sidewalk it was flicking a red smear of taillight around the nearby corner. I got its license number the way I got my first million.
There were people and cars up and down the block as usual. Nobody acted as if a gun had gone off. The wind was making enough noise to make the hard quick rap of .22 ammunition sound like a slammed door, even if anyone heard it. I went back into the cocktail bar.
The kid hadn’t moved, even yet. He just stood with his hands flat on the bar, leaning over a little and looking down at the dark guy’s back. The dark guy hadn’t moved either. I bent down and felt his neck artery. He wouldn’t move — ever.
The kid’s face had as much expression as a cut of round steak and was about the same color. His eyes were more angry than shocked.
I lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling and said shortly: «Get on the phone.»
«Maybe he’s not dead,» the kid said.
«When they use a twenty-two that means they don’t make mistakes. Where’s the phone?»
«I don’t have one. I got enough expenses without that. Boy, can I kick eight hundred bucks in the face!»
«You own this place?»
«I did till this happened.»
He pulled his white coat off and his apron and came around the inner end of the bar. «I’m locking this door,» he said, taking keys out.
He went out, swung the door to and jiggled the lock from the outside until the bolt clicked into place. I bent down and rolled Waldo over. At first I couldn’t even see where the shots went in. Then I could. A couple of tiny holes in his coat, over his heart. There was a little blood on his shirt.
The drunk was everything you could ask — as a killer.
The prowl-car boys came in about eight minutes. The kid, Lew Petrolle, was back behind the bar by then. He had his white coat on again and he was counting his money in the register and putting it in his pocket and making notes in a little book.
I sat at the edge of one of the half-booths and smoked cigarettes and watched Waldo’s face get deader and deader. I wondered who the girl in the print coat was, why Waldo had left the engine of his car running outside, why he was in a hurry, whether the drunk had been waiting for him or just happened to be there.
The prowl-car boys came in perspiring. They were the usual large size and one of them had a flower stuck under his cap and his cap on a bit crooked. When he saw the dead man he got rid of the flower and leaned down to feel Waldo’s pulse.
«Seems to be dead,» he said, and rolled him around a little more. «Oh yeah, I see where they went in. Nice clean work. You two see him get it?»
I said yes. The kid behind the bar said nothing. I told them about it, that the killer seemed to have left in Waldo’s car.
The cop yanked Waldo’s wallet out, went through it rapidly and whistled. «Plenty jack and no driver’s license.» He put the wallet away. «O.K., we didn’t touch him, see? Just a chance we could find did he have a car and put it on the air.»
«The hell you didn’t touch him,» Lew Patrolle said.
The cop gave him one of those looks. «O.K., pal,» he said softly. «We touched him.»
The kid picked up a clean highball glass and began to polish it. He polished it all the rest of the time we were there.
In another minute a homicide fast-wagon sirened up and screeched to a stop outside the door and four men came in, two dicks, a photographer and a laboratory man. I didn’t know either of the dicks. You can be in the detecting business a long time and not know all the men on a big city force.
One of them was a short, smooth, dark, quiet, smiling man, with curly black hair and soft intelligent eyes. The other was big, raw-boned, long-jawed, with a veined nose and glassy eyes. He looked like a heavy drinker. He looked tough, but he looked as if he thought he was a little tougher than he was. He shooed me into the last booth against the wall and his partner got the kid up front and the bluecoats went out. The fingerprint man and photographer set about their work.
A medical examiner came, stayed just long enough to get sore because there was no phone for him to call the morgue wagon.
The short dick emptied Waldo’s pockets and then emptied his wallet and dumped everything into a large handkerchief on a booth table. I saw a lot of currency, keys, cigarettes, another handkerchief, very little else.
The big dick pushed me back into the end of the half-booth. «Give,» he said. «I’m Copernik, Detective Lieutenant.»
I put my wallet in front of him. He looked at it, went through it, tossed it back, made a note in a book.
«Philip Marlowe, huh? A shamus. You here on business?»
«Drinking business,» I said. «I live just across the street in the Berglund.»
«Know this kid up front?»
«I’ve been in here once since he opened up.»
«See anything funny about him now?»
«No.»
«Takes it too light for a young fellow, don’t he? Never mind answering. Just tell the story.»
I told it — three times. Once for him to get the outline, once for him to get the details and once for him to see if I had it too pat. At the end he said: «This dame interests me. And the killer called the guy Waldo, yet didn’t seem to be anyways sure he would be in. I mean, if Waldo wasn’t sure the dame would be here, nobody could be sure Waldo would be here.»
«That’s pretty deep,» I said.
He studied me. I wasn’t smiling. «Sounds like a grudge job, don’t it? Don’t sound planned. No getaway except by accident. A guy don’t leave his car unlocked much in this town. And the killer works in front of two good witnesses. I don’t like that.»
«I don’t like being a witness,» I said. «The pay’s too low.»