“And how well did you know Steelgrave, Miss Weld?”
“Intimately. He was very charming in some ways. I can hardly believe—” She broke off and shrugged.
“And you are prepared to take the stand and swear as to the time and place when this photograph was taken?” He turned the photograph over and showed it to her.
Farrell said indifferently, “Just a moment. Is that that the evidence Mr. Marlowe is supposed to have suppressed?
“I ask the questions,” Endicott said sharply.
Farrell smiled. “Well, in case the answer is yes, that photo isn’t evidence of anything.”
Endicott said softly: “Will you answer my question, Miss Weld?”
She said quietly and easily: “No, Mr. Endicott, I couldn’t swear when that picture was taken or where. I didn’t know it was being taken.”
“All you have to do is look at it,” Endicott suggested.
“And all I know is what I get from looking at it,” she told him.
I grinned. Farrell looked at me with a twinkle. Endicott caught the grin out of the corner of his eye. “Something you find amusing?” he snapped at me.
“I’ve been up all night. My face keeps slipping,” I said.
He gave me a stern look and turned to Mavis Weld again.
“Will you amplify that, Miss Weld?”
“I’ve had a lot of photos taken of me, Mr. Endicott. In a lot of different places and with a lot of different people. I have had lunch and dinner at The Dancers with Mr. Steelgrave and with various other men. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Farrell put in smoothly, “If I understand your point, you would like Miss Weld to be your witness to connect this photo up. In what kind of proceeding?”
“That’s my business,” Endicott said shortly. “Somebody shot Steelgrave to death last night. It could have been a woman. It could even have been Miss Weld. I’m sorry to say that, but it seems to be in the cards.”
Mavis Weld looked down at her hands. She twisted a white glove between her fingers.
“Well, let’s assume a proceeding,” Farrell said. “One in which that photo is part of your evidence—if you can get it in. But you can’t get it in. Miss Weld won’t get it in for you. All she knows about the photo is what she sees by looking at it. What anybody can see. You’d have to connect it up with a witness who could swear as to when, how and where it was taken. Otherwise I’d object—if I happened to be on the other side. I could even introduce experts to swear the photo was faked.”
“I’m sure you could,” Endicott said dryly.
“The only man who could connect it up for you is the man who took it,” Farrell went on without haste or heat. “I understand he’s dead. I suspect that was why he was killed.”
Endicott said: “This photo is clear evidence of itself that at a certain time and place Steelgrave was not in jail and therefore had no alibi for the killing of Stein.”
Farrell said: “It’s evidence when and if you get it introduced in evidence, Endicott. For Pete’s sake, I’m not trying to tell you the law. You know it. Forget that picture. It proves nothing whatsoever. No paper would dare print it. No judge would admit it in evidence, because no competent witness can connect it up. And if that’s the evidence Marlowe suppressed, then he didn’t in a legal sense suppress evidence at all.”
“I wasn’t thinking of trying Steelgrave for murder,” Endicott said dryly. “But I am a little interested in who killed him. The police department, fantastically enough, also has an interest in that. I hope our interest doesn’t offend you.”
Farrell said: “Nothing offends me. That’s why I’m where I am. Are you sure Steelgrave was murdered?”
Endicott just stared at him. Farrell said easily: “I understand two guns were found, both the property of Steelgrave.”
“Who told you?” Endicott asked sharply. He leaned forward frowning.
Farrell dropped his cigarette into the smoking stand and shrugged. “Hell, these things come out. One of these guns had killed Quest and also Stein. The other had killed Steelgrave. Fired at close quarters too. I admit those boys don’t as a rule take that way out. But it could happen.”
Endicott said gravely: “No doubt. Thanks for the suggestion. It happens to be wrong.”
Farrell smiled a little and was silent. Endicott turned slowly to Mavis Weld.
“Miss Weld, this office—or the present incumbent of it at least—doesn’t believe in seeking publicity at the expense of people to whom a certain kind of publicity might be fatal. It is my duty to determine whether any one should be brought to trial for any of these murders and to prosecute them, if the evidence warrants it. It is not my duty to ruin your career by exploiting the fact that you had the bad luck or bad judgment to be the friend of a man who, although never convicted or even indicted for any crime, was undoubtedly a member of a criminal mob at one time. I don’t think you have been quite candid with me about this photograph, but I won’t press the matter now. There is not much point in my asking you whether you shot Steelgrave. But I do ask you whether you have any knowledge that would point to who may have or might have killed him.”
Farrell said quickly: “Knowledge, Miss Weld—not mere suspicion.”
She faced Endicott squarely. “No.”
He stood up and bowed. “That will be all for now then. Thanks for coming in.”
Farrell and Mavis Weld stood up. I didn’t move. Farrell said: “Are you calling a press conference?”
“I think I’ll leave that to you, Mr. Farrell. You have always been very skillful in handling the press.”
Farrell nodded and went to open the door. They went out. She didn’t seem to look at me when she went out, but something touched the back of my neck lightly. Probably accidental. Her sleeve.
Endicott watched the door close. He looked across the desk at me. “Is Farrell representing you? I forgot to ask him.”
“I can’t afford him. So I’m vulnerable.”
He smiled thinly. “I let them take all the tricks and then salve my dignity by working out on you, eh?”
“I couldn’t stop you.”
“You’re not exactly proud of the way you have handled things, are you, Marlowe?”
“I got off on the wrong foot. After that I just had to take my lumps.”
“Don’t you think you owe a certain obligation to the law?”
“I would—if the law was like you.”
He ran his long pale fingers through his tousled black hair.
“I could make a lot of answers to that,” he said. They’d all sound about the same. The citizen is the law. In this country we haven’t got around to understanding that. We think of the law as an enemy. We’re a nation of cop-haters.”
“It’ll take a lot to change that,” I said. “On both sides.
He leaned forward and pressed a buzzer. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It will. But somebody has to make a beginning. Thanks for coming in.”
As I went out a secretary came in at another door with a fat file in her hand.
33
A shave and a second breakfast made me feel a little less like the box of shavings the cat had had kittens in. I went up to the office and unlocked the door and sniffed in the twice-breathed air and the smell of dust. I opened a window and inhaled the fry-cook smell from the coffee shop next door. I sat down at my desk and felt the grit on it with my fingertips. I filled a pipe and lit it and leaned back and looked around.
“Hello,” I said.
I was just talking to the office equipment, the three green filing cases, the threadbare piece of carpet, the customer’s chair across from me, and the light fixture in the ceiling with three dead moths in it that had been there for at least six months. I was talking to the pebbled glass panel and the grimy woodwork and the pen set on the desk and the tired, tired telephone. I was talking to the scales on an alligator, the name of the alligator being Marlowe, a private detective in our thriving little community. Not the brainiest guy in the world, but cheap. He started out cheap and he ended cheaper still.