I got a card out with my left hand, held it out to her. She read it in my hand, moving her head just enough. «A detective?» she breathed.
«Yeah.»
She said something in a spitting language. Then in English: «Come in! Thees damn wind dry up my skeen like so much teesue paper.»
«We’re in,» I said. «I just shut the door. Snap out of it, Nazimova. Who was he? The little guy?»
Beyond the bead curtain a man coughed. She jumped as if she had been stuck with an oyster fork. Then she tried to smile. It wasn’t very successful.
«A reward,» she said softly. «You weel wait ’ere? Ten dollars it is fair to pay, no?»
«No,» I said.
I reached a finger towards her slowly and added: «He’s dead.»
She jumped about three feet and let out a yell.
A chair creaked harshly. Feet pounded beyond the bead curtain, a large hand plunged into view and snatched it aside, and a big hard-looking blond man was with us. He had a purple robe over his pajamas, his right hand held something in his robe pocket. He stood quite still as soon as he was through the curtain, his feet planted solidly, his jaw out, his colorless eyes like gray ice. He looked like a man who would be hard to take out on an off-tackle play.
«What’s the matter, honey?» He had a solid, burring voice, with just the right sappy tone to belong to a guy who would go for a woman with gilded toenails.
«I came about Miss Kolchenko’s car,» I said.
«Well, you could take your hat off,» he said. «Just for a light workout.»
I took it off and apologized.
«O.K.,» he said, and kept his right hand shoved down hard in the purple pocket. «So you came about Miss Kolchenko’s car. Take it from there.»
I pushed past the woman and went closer to him. She shrank back against the wall and flattened her palms against it. Camille in a high-school play. The long holder lay empty at her toes.
When I was six feet from the big man he said easily: «I can hear you from there. Just take it easy. I’ve got a gun in this pocket and I’ve had to learn to use one. Now about the car?»
«The man who borrowed it couldn’t bring it,» I said, and pushed the card I was still holding towards his face. He barely glanced at it. He looked back at me.
«So what?» he said.
«Are you always this tough?» I asked. «Or only when you have your pajamas on?»
«So why couldn’t he bring it himself?» he asked. «And skip the mushy talk.»
The dark woman made a stuffed sound at my elbow.
«It’s all right, honeybunch,» the man said. «I’ll handle this. Go on.»
She slid past both of us and flicked through the bead curtain.
I waited a little while. The big man didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t look any more bothered than a toad in the sun.
«He couldn’t bring it because somebody bumped him off,» I said. «Let’s see you handle that.»
«Yeah?» he said. «Did you bring him with you to prove it?»
«No,» I said. «But if you put your tie and crush hat on, I’ll take you down and show you.»
«Who the hell did you say you were, now?»
«I didn’t say. I thought maybe you could read.» I held the card at him some more.
«Oh, that’s right,» he said. «Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. Well, well. So I should go with you to look at who, why?»
«Maybe he stole the car,» I said.
The big man nodded. «That’s a thought. Maybe he did. Who?»
«The little brown guy who had the keys to it in his pocket, and had it parked around the corner from the Berglund Apartments.»
He thought that over, without any apparent embarrassment. «You’ve got something there,» he said. «Not much. But a little. I guess this must be the night of the Police Smoker. So you’re doing all their work for them.»
«Huh?»
«The card says private detective to me,» he said. «Have you got some cops outside that were too shy to come in?»
«No, I’m alone.»
He grinned. The grin showed white ridges in his tanned skin. «So you find somebody dead and take some keys and find a car and come riding out here — all alone. No cops. Am I right?»
«Correct.»
He sighed. «Let’s go inside,» he said. He yanked the bead curtain aside and made an opening for me to go through. «It might be you have an idea I ought to hear.»
I went past him and he turned, keeping his heavy pocket towards me. I hadn’t noticed until I got quite close that there were beads of sweat on his face. It might have been the hot wind but I didn’t think so.
We were in the living room of the house.
We sat down and looked at each other across a dark floor, on which a few Navajo rugs and a few dark Turkish rugs made a decorating combination with some well-used overstuffed furniture. There was a fireplace, a small baby grand, a Chinese screen, a tall Chinese lantern on a teakwood pedestal, and gold net curtains against lattice windows. The windows to the south were open. A fruit tree with a whitewashed trunk whipped about outside the screen, adding its bit to the noise from across the street.
The big man eased back into a brocaded chair and put his slippered feet on a footstool. He kept his right hand where it had been since I met him — on his gun.
The brunette hung around in the shadows and a bottle gurgled and her temple bells gonged in her ears.
«It’s all right, honeybunch,» the man said. «It’s all under control. Somebody bumped somebody off and this lad thinks we’re interested. Just sit down and relax.»
The girl tilted her head and poured half a tumbler of whiskey down her throat. She sighed, said, «Goddam,» in a casual voice, and curled up on a davenport. It took all of the davenport. She had plenty of legs. Her gilded toenails winked at me from the shadowy corner where she kept herself quiet from then on.
I got a cigarette out without being shot at, lit it and went into my story. It wasn’t all true, but some of it was. I told them about the Berglund Apartments and that I had lived there and that Waldo was living there in Apartment 31 on the floor below mine and that I had been keeping an eye on him for business reasons.
«Waldo what?» the blond man put in. «And what business reasons?»
«Mister,» I said, «have you no secrets?» He reddened slightly.
I told him about the cocktail lounge across the street from the Berglund and what had happened there. I didn’t tell him about the printed bolero jacket or the girl who had worn it. I left her out of the story altogether.
«It was an undercover job — from my angle,» I said. «If you know what I mean.» He reddened again, bit his teeth. I went on: «I got back from the city hall without telling anybody I knew Waldo. In due time, when I decided they couldn’t find out where he lived that night, I took the liberty of examining his apartment.»
«Looking for what?» the big man said thickly.
«For some letters. I might mention in passing there was nothing there at all — except a dead man. Strangled and hanging by a belt to the top of the wall bed — well out of sight. A small man, about forty-five, Mexican or South American, well-dressed in a fawn-colored — — -.-
«That’s enough,» the big man said. «I’ll bite, Marlowe. Was it a blackmail job you were on?»
«Yeah. The funny part was this little brown man had plenty of gun under his arm.»
«He wouldn’t have five hundred bucks in twenties in his pocket, of course? Or are you saying?»
«He wouldn’t. But Waldo had over seven hundred in currency when he was killed in the cocktail bar,»
«Looks like I underrated this Waldo,» the big man said calmly. «He took my guy and his pay-off money, gun and all. Waldo have a gun?»
«Not on him.»