«Yeah,» I said. «You’d call her up and chew her ear off. Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Marineau. This is confidential, of course. I mean confidential.»
«Oh, by all means!»
She wanted to talk longer but I pushed past her out of the house and went back down the flagged walk. I could feel her eyes on me all the way, so I didn’t do any laughing.
The lad with the restless hands and the full red lips had had what he thought was a very cute idea. He had given me the first address that came into his head, his own. Probably he had expected his wife to be out. I didn’t know. It looked awfully silly, however I thought about it — unless he was pressed for time.
Wondering why he should be pressed for time, I got careless. I didn’t see the blue coupé double-parked almost at the gates until I also saw the man step from behind it.
He had a gun in his hand.
He was a big man, but not anything like Skalla’s size. He made a sound with his lips and held his left palm out and something glittered in it. It might have been a piece of tin or a police badge.
Cars were parked along both sides of Flores. Half a dozen people should have been in sight. There wasn’t one — except the big man with the gun and myself.
He came closer, making soothing noises with his mouth.
«Pinched,» he said. «Get in my hack and drive it, like a nice lad.» He had a soft, husky voice, like an overworked rooster trying to croon.
«You all alone?»
«Yeah, but I got the gun,» he sighed. «Act nice and you’re as safe as the bearded woman at a Legion convention. Safer.»
He was circling slowly, carefully. I saw the metal thing now.
«That’s a special badge,» I said. «You’ve got no more right to pinch me than I have to pinch you.»
«In the hack, ho. Be nice or your guts lie on this here street. I got orders.» He started to pat me gently. «Hell, you ain’t even rodded.»
«Skip it!» I growled. «Do you think you could take me if I was?»
I walked over to his blue coupé and slid under its wheel. The motor was running. He got in beside me and put his gun in my side and we went on down the hill.
«Take her west on Santa Monica,» he husked. «Then up, say, Canyon Drive to Sunset. Where the bridle path is.»
I took her west on Santa Monica, past the bottom of Holloway, then a row of junk yards and some stores. The street widened and became a boulevard past Doheney. I let the car out a little to feel it. He stopped me doing that. I swung north to Sunset and then west again. Lights were being lit in big houses up the slopes. The dusk was full of radio music.
I eased down and took a look at him before it got too dark. Even under the pulled-down hat on Flores I had seen the eyebrows, but I wanted to be sure. So I looked again. They were the eyebrows, all right.
They were almost as even, almost as smoothly black, and fully as wide as a half-inch strip of black plush pasted across his broad face above the eyes and nose. There was no break in the middle. His nose was large and coarse-grained and had hung out over too many beers.
«Bub McCord,» I said. «Ex-copper. So you’re in the snatch racket now. It’s Folsom for you this time, baby.»
«Aw, can it.» He looked hurt and leaned back in the corner. Bub McCord, caught in a graft tangle, had done a three in Quentin. Next time he would go to the recidivist prison, which is Folsom in our state.
He leaned his gun on his left thigh and cuddled the door with his fat back. I let the car drift and he didn’t seem to mind. It was betweentimes, after the homeward rush of the office man, before the evening crowd came out
«This ain’t no snatch,» he complained. «We just don’t want no trouble. You can’t expect to go up against an organization like KLBL with a two-bit shakedown, and get no kickback. It ain’t reasonable.» He spat out of the window without turning his head. «Keep her rollin’, ho.»
«What shakedown?»
«You wouldn’t know, would you? Just a wandering peeper with his head stuck in a knothole, huh? That’s you. Innocent, as the guy says.»
«So you work for Marineau. That’s all I wanted to know. Of course I knew it already, after I back-alleyed you, and you showed up again.»
«Neat work, ho — but keep her rollin’. Yeah, I had to phone in. Just caught him.»
«Where do we go from here?»
«I take care of you till nine-thirty. After that we go to a place.»
«What place?»
«It ain’t nine-thirty. Hey, don’t go to sleep in that there corner.»
«Drive it yourself, if you don’t like my work.»
He pushed the gun at me hard. It hurt. I kicked the coupé out from under him and set him back in his corner, but he kept his gun in a good grip. Somebody called out archly on somebody’s front lawn.
Then I saw a red light winking ahead, and a sedan just passing it, and through the rear window of the sedan two flat caps side by side.
«You’ll get awfully tired of holding that gun,» I told McCord. «You don’t dare use it anyway. You’re copper-soft. There’s nothing so soft as a copper who’s had his badge torn off. Just a big heel. Copper-soft.»
We weren’t near to the sedan, but I wanted his attention. I got it. He slammed me over the head and grabbed the wheel and yanked the brake on. We ground to a stop. I shook my head woozily. By the time I came out of it he was away from me again, in his corner.
«Next time,» he said thinly, for all his huskiness, «I put you to sleep in the rumble. Just try it, ho. Just try it, Now roll — and keep the wisecracks down in your belly.»
I drove ahead, between the hedge that bordered the bridle path and the wide parkway beyond the curbing. The cops in the sedan tooled on gently, drowsing, listening with half an ear to their radio, talking of this and that. I could almost hear them in my mind, the sort of thing they would be saying.
«Besides,» McCord growled. «I don’t need no gun to handle you. I never see the guy I couldn’t handle without no gun.»
«I saw one this morning,» I said. I started to tell him about Steve Skalla.
Another red stoplight showed. The sedan ahead seemed loath to leave it. McCord lit a cigarette with his left hand, bending his head a little.
I kept telling him about Skalla and the bouncer at Shamey’s.
Then I tramped on the throttle.
The little car shot ahead without a quiver. McCord started to swing his gun at me. I yanked the wheel hard to the right and yelled: «Hold tight! It’s a crash!»
We hit the prowl car almost on the left rear fender. It waltzed around on one wheel, apparently, and loud language came out of it. It slewed, rubber screamed, metal made a grinding sound, the left tailight splintered and probably the gas tank bulged.
The little coupé sat back on its heels and quivered like a scared rabbit.
McCord could have cut me in half. His gun muzzle was inches from my ribs. But he wasn’t a hard guy, really. He was just a broken cop who had done time and got himself a cheap job after it and was on an assignment he didn’t understand.
He tore the right-hand door open, and jumped out of the car.
One of the cops was out by this time, on my side. I ducked down under the wheel. A flash beam burned across the top of my hat.
It didn’t work. Steps came near and the flash jumped into my face.
«Come on out of that,» a voice snarled. «What the hell you think this is — a racetrack?»
I got out sheepishly. McCord was crouched somewhere behind the coupé, out of sight.
«Lemme smell of your breath.»
I let him smell my breath.
«Whisky,» he said. «I thought so. Walk, baby. Walk.» He prodded me with the flashlight.
I walked.
The other cop was trying to jerk his sedan loose from the coupé. He was swearing, but he was busy with his own troubles.