I drove around a white curve that looked like moonlight itself and parked and walked up the hill the rest of the way. I carried a flash, but I didn't need it to see there was nobody on the doorstep waiting for the milk. I didn't go in the front way. There might just happen to be some snooper with night glasses up on the hill.

  I sneaked up the bank from behind, between the house and the empty garage. I found a window I could reach and made not much noise breaking it with a gun inside my hat. Nothing happened except that the crickets and tree frogs stopped for a moment.

  I picked a way to the bedroom and prowled my flash around discreetly, after lowering the shades and pulling the drapes across them. The light dropped on a tumbled bed, on daubs of print powder, on cigarette butts on the window sills and heel marks in the nap of the carpet. There was a green and silver toilet set on the dressing table and three suitcases in the closet. There was a built-in bureau back in there with a lock that meant business. I had a chilled-steel screwdriver with me as well as the flash. I jimmied it.

  The jewelry wasn't worth a thousand dollars. Perhaps not half. But it meant a lot to a girl in show business. I put it back where I got it.

  The living room had shut windows and a queer, unpleasant, sadistic smell. The law enforcement had taken care of the Vat 69, to make it easier for the fingerprint men. I had to use my own. I got a chair that hadn't been bled on into a corner, wet my throat and waited in the darkness.

  A shade flapped in the basement or somewhere. That made me wet my throat again. Somebody came out of a house half a dozen blocks away and whooped. A door banged. Silence. The tree frogs started again, then the crickets. Then the electric clock on the radio got louder than all the other sounds together.

  Then I went to sleep.

  When I woke up the moon had gone from the front windows and a car had stopped somewhere. Light, delicate, careful steps separated themselves from the night. They were outside the front door. A key fumbled in the lock.

  In the opening door the dim sky showed a head without a hat. The slope of the hill was too dark to outline any more. The door clicked shut.

  Steps rustled on the rug. I already had the lamp cord in my fingers. I yanked it and there was light.

  The girl didn't make a sound, not a whisper of sound. She just pointed the gun at me.

  I said, "Hello, Beulah."

  She was worth waiting for.

  Not too tall, not too short; that girl. She had the long legs that can walk and dance. Her hair even by the light of the one lamp was like a brush fire at night. Her face had laughter wrinkles at the corner of the eyes. Her mouth could laugh.

  The features were shadowed and had that drawn look that makes some faces more beautiful because it makes them more delicate. I couldn't see her eyes. They might have been blue enough to make you jump, but I couldn't see.

  The gun looked about a .32, but had the extreme rightangled grip of a Mauser.

  After a while she said very softly, "Police, I suppose."

  She had a nice voice, too. I still think of it, at times.

  I said, "Let's sit down and talk. We're all alone here. Ever drink out of the bottle?"

  She didn't answer. She looked down at the gun she was holding, half smiled, shook her head.

  "You wouldn't make two mistakes," I said. "Not a girl as smart as you are."

  She tucked the gun into the side pocket of a long ulsterlike coat with a military collar.

  "Who are you?"

  "Just a shamus. Private detective to you. Carmady is the name. Need a lift?"

  I held my bottle out. It hadn't grown to my hand yet. I still had to hold it.

  "I don't drink, Who hired you?"

  "KLBL. To protect you from Steve Skalla."

  "So they know," she said. "So they know about him."

  I digested that and said nothing.

  "Who's been here?" she went on sharply. She was still standing in the middle of the room, with her hands in her coat pockets now, and no hat.

  "Everybody but the plumber," I said. "He's a little late, as usual."

  "You're one of those men." Her nose seemed to curl a little. "Drugstore comics."

  "No," I said. "Not really. It's just a way I get talking to the people I have to talk to. Skalla came back again and ran into trouble and got shot up and arrested. He's in the hospital. Pretty bad."

  She didn't move. "How bad?"

  "He might live if he'd have surgery. Doubtful, even with that. Hopeless without. He has three in the intestines and one in the liver."

  She moved at last and started to sit down. "Not in that chair," I said quickly. "Over here."

  She came over and sat near me, on one of the davenports. Lights twisted in her eyes. I could see them now. Little twisting lights like Catherine wheels spinning brightly.

  She said, "Why did he come back?"

  "He thought he ought to tidy up. Remove the body and so on. A nice guy, Skalla."

  "Do you think so?"

  "Lady, if nobody else in the world thinks so, I do."

  "I'll take that drink," she said.

  I handed her the bottle. I grabbed it away in a hurry. "Gosh," I said. "You have to break in on this stuff."

  She looked towards the side door that led to the bedroom back of me.

  "Gone to the morgue," I said. "You can go in there."

  She stood up at once and went out of the room. She came back almost at once.

  "What have they got on Steve?" she asked. "If he recovers."

  "He killed a nigger over on Central this morning. It was more or less self-defense on both sides. I don't know. Except for Marineau he might get a break."

  "Marineau?" she said.

  "Yeah. You knew he killed Marineau."

  "Don't be silly," she said. "I killed Dave Marineau."

  "Okay," I said. "But that's not the way Steve wants it."

  She stared at me. "You mean Steve came back here deliberately to take the blame?"

  "If he had to, I guess. I think he really meant to cart Marineau off to the desert and lose him. Only a woman showed up here-Mrs. Marineau."

  "Yes," the girl said tonelessly. "She thinks I was his mistress. That greasy spoon."

  "Were you?" I asked.

  "Don't try that again," she said. "Even if I did work on Central Avenue once." She went out of the room again.

  Sounds of a suitcase being yanked about came into the living room. I went in after her. She was packing pieces of cobweb and packing them as if she liked nice things nicely packed.

  "You don't wear that stuff down in the tank," I told her, leaning in the door.

  She ignored me some more. "I was going to make a break for Mexico," she said. "Then South America. I didn't mean to shoot him. He roughed me up and tried to blackmail me into something and I went and got the gun. Then we struggled again and it went off. Then I ran away."

  "Just what Skalla said he did," I said. "Hell, couldn't you just have shot the-on purpose?"

  "Not for your benefit," she said. "Or any cop. Not when I did eight months in Dalhart, Texas, once for rolling a drunk. Not with that Marineau woman yelling her head off that I seduced him and then got sick of him."

  "A lot she'll say," I grunted. "After I tell how she spat in Skalla's face when he had four slugs in him."

  She shivered. Her face whitened. She went on taking the things out of the suitcase and putting them in again.

  "Did you roll the drunk really?"

  She looked up at me, then down. "Yes," she whispered.

  I went over nearer to her. "Got any bruises or torn clothes to show?" I asked.

  "No."

  "Too bad," I said, and took hold of her.

  Her eyes flamed at first and then turned to black stone, I tore her coat off, tore her up plenty, put hard fingers into her arms and neck and used my knuckles on her mouth. I let her go, panting. She reeled away from me, but didn't quite fall.

  "We'll have to wait for the bruises to set and darken," I said. "Then we'll go downtown."

  She began to laugh. Then she went over to the mirror and looked at herself. She began to cry.

  "Get out of here while I change my clothes!" she yelled. "I'll give it a tumble. But if it makes any difference to Steve-I'm going to tell it right."

  "Aw, shut up and change your clothes," I said.

  I went out and banged the door.

  I hadn't even kissed her. I could have done that, at least. She wouldn't have minded any more than the rest of the knocking about I gave her.

  We rode the rest of the night, first in separate cars to hide hers in my garage, then in mine. We rode up the coast and had coffee and sandwiches at Malibu, then on up and over. We had breakfast at the bottom of the Ridge Route, just north of San Fernando.

  Her face looked like a catcher's mitt after a tough season. She had a lower lip the size of a banana and you could have cooked steaks on the bruises on her arms and neck, they were so hot.

  With the first strong daylight we went to the City Hall.

  They didn't even think of holding her or checking her up. They practically wrote the statement themselves. She signed it blank-eyed, thinking of something else. Then a man from KLBL and his wife came down to get her.

  So I didn't get to ride her to a hotel. She didn't get to see Skalla either, not then. He was under morphine.

  He died at two-thirty the same afternoon. She was holding one of his huge, limp fingers, but he didn't know her from the Queen of Siam.

  * * *

  © Aerius, 2004

  Raymond Chandler

  Smart-Aleck Kill

  (1934)

  * * *

  © R.Chandler, Smart-Aleck Kill, 1934

  Source: R.Chandler. The Simple Art of Murder (collection)

  E-Text: Greylib .

  * * *

  Contents

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  * * *

  ONE

  The doorman of the Kilmarnock was six foot two. He wore a pale blue uniform, and white gloves made his hands look enormous. He opened the door of the Yellow taxi as gently as an old maid stroking a cat.

  Johnny Dalmas got out and turned to the red-haired driver. He said: "Better wait for me around the corner, Joey."

  The driver nodded, tucked a toothpick a little farther back in the corner of his mouth, and swung his cab expertly away from the white-marked loading zone. Dalmas crossed the sunny sidewalk and went into the enormous cool lobby of the Kilmarnock. The carpets were thick, soundless. Bellboys stood with folded arms and the two clerks behind the marble desk looked austere.

  Dalmas went across to the elevator lobby. He got into a paneled car and said: "End of the line, please."

  The penthouse floor had a small quiet lobby with three doors opening off it, one to each wall. Dalmas crossed to one of them and rang the bell.

  Derek Walden opened the door. He was about forty-five, possibly a little more, and had a lot of powdery gray hair and a handsome, dissipated face that was beginning to go pouchy. He had on a monogrammed lounging robe and a glass full of whiskey in his hand. He was a little drunk.

  He said thickly, morosely: "Oh, it's you. C'mon in, Dalmas."

  He went back into the apartment, leaving the door open. Dalmas shut it and followed him into a long, high-ceilinged room with a balcony at one end and a line of french windows along the left side. There was a terrace outside.

  Derek Walden sat down in a brown and gold chair against the wall and stretched his legs across a foot stool. He swirled the whiskey around in his glass, looking down at it.

  "What's on your mind?" he asked.

  Dalmas stared at him a little grimly. After a moment he said: "I dropped in to tell you I'm giving you back your job."

  Walden drank the whiskey out of his glass and put it down on the corner of a table. He fumbled around for a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth and forgot to light it.

  "Tha' so?" His voice was blurred but indifferent.

  Dalmas turned away from him and walked over to one of the windows. It was open and an awning flapped outside. The traffic noise from the boulevard was faint.

  He spoke over his shoulder:

  "The investigation isn't getting anywhere-because you don't want it to get anywhere. You know why you're being blackmailed. I don't. Eclipse Fllms is interested because they have a lot of sugar tied up in film you have made."

  "To hell with Eclipse Films," Walden said, almost quitely.

  Dalmas shook his head and turned around. "Not from my angle. They stand to lose if you get in a jam the publicity hounds can't handle. You took me on because you were asked to. It was a waste of time. You haven't cooperated worth a cent."

  Walden said in an unpleasant tone: "I'm handling this my own way and I'm not gettin' into any jam. I'll make my own deal-when I can buy something that'll stay bought . . . And all you have to do is make the Eclipse people think the situation's hem' taken care of. That clear?"

  Dalmas came partway back across the room. He stood with one hand on top of a table, beside an ash tray littered with cigarette stubs that had very dark lip rouge on them. He looked down at these absently.

  "That wasn't explained to me, Walden," he said coldly.

  "I thought you were smart enough to figure it out," Walden sneered. He leaned sidewise and slopped some more whiskey into his glass. "Have a drink?"

  Dalmas said: "No, thanks."

  Walden found the cigarette in his mouth and threw it on the floor. He drank. "What the hell!" he snorted. "You're a private detective and you're being paid to make a few motions that don't mean anything. It's a clean job-as your racket goes."

  Dalmas said: "That's another crack I could do without hearing."

  Walden made an abrupt, angry motion. His eyes glittered. The corners of his mouth drew down and his face got sulky. He avoided Dalmas' stare.

  Dalmas said: "I'm not against you, but I never was for you. You're not the kind of guy I could go for, ever. If you had played with me, I'd have done what I could. I still will-but not for your sake. I don't want your money-and you can pull your shadows off my tail any time you like."

  Walden put his feet on the floor. He laid his glass down very carefully on the table at his elbow. The whole expression of his face changed.

  "Shadows?I don't get you." He swallowed. "I'm not having you shadowed."

  Dalmas stared at him. After a moment he nodded. "Okey, then. I'll backtrack on the next one and see if I can make him tell who he's working for11 find out."

  Walden said very quietly: "I wouldn't do that, if I were you. You're-you're monkeying with people that might get nasty . . I know what I'm talking about."

  "That's something I'm not going to let worry me," Dalmas said evenly. "If it's the people that want your money, they were nasty a long time ago."

  He held his hat out in front of him and looked at it. Walden's face glistened with sweat. His eyes looked sick. He opened his mouth to say something.

  The door buzzer sounded.

  Walden scowled quickly, swore. He stared down the room but did not move.

  "Too damn many people come here without hem' announced," he growled. "My Jap boy is off for the day."

  The buzzer sounded again, and Walden started to get up. Dalmas said: "I'll see what it is. I'm on my way anyhow."

  He nodded to Walden, went down the room and opened the door.

  Two men came in with guns in their hands. One of the guns dug sharply into Dalmas' ribs, and the man who was holding it said urgently: "Back up, and make it snappy. This is one of those stick-ups you read about."

  He was dark and good-looking and cheerful. His face was as clear as a cameo, almost without hardness. He smiled.

  The one behind him was short and sandy-haired. He scowled. The dark one said: "This is Walden's dick, Noddy. Take him over and go through him for a gun."

  The sandy-haired man, Noddy, put a short-barreled revolver against Dalmas' stomach and his partner kicked the door shut, then strolled carelessly down the room toward Walden.

  Noddy took a .38 Colt from under Dalmas' arm, walked around him and tapped his pockets. He put his own gun away and transferred Dalmas' Colt to his business hand.

  "Okey, Ricchio. This one's clean," he said in a grumbling voice. Dalmas let his arms fall, turned and went back into the room. He looked thoughtfully at Walden. Walden was leaning forward with his mouth open and an expression of intense concentration on his face. Dalmas looked at the dark stick-up and said softly: "Ricchio?"

  The dark boy glanced at him. "Over there by the table, sweetheart. I'll do all the talkin'."

  Walden made a hoarse sound in his throat. Ricchio stood in front of him, looking down at him pleasantly, his gun dangling from one finger by the trigger guard.

  "You're too slow on the pay-off, Walden. Too damn slow! So we came to tell you about it. Tailed your dick here too. Wasn't that cute?"

  Dalmas said gravely, quietly: "This punk used to be your bodyguard, Walden-if his name is Ricchio."

  Walden nodded silently and licked his lips. Ricchio snarled at Dalmas: "Don't crack wise, dick. I'm tellin' you again." He stared with hot eyes, then looked back at Walden, looked at a watch on his wrist.

  "It's eight minutes past three, Walden. I figure a guy with your drag can still get dough out of the bank. We're giving you an hour to raise ten grand. Just an hour. And we're takin' your shamus along to arrange about delivery."

  Walden nodded again, still silent. He put his hands down on his knees and clutched them until his knuckles whitened.

  Ricchio went on: "We'll play clean. Our racket wouldn't be worth a squashed bug if we didn't. You'll play clean too. If you don't your shamus will wake up on a pile of dirt. Only he won't wake up. Get it?"

  Dalmas said contemptuously: "And if he pays up-I suppose you turn me loose to put the finger on you."

  Smoothly, without looking at him, Ricchio said: "There's an answer to that one, too . . . Ten grand today, Walden. The other ten the first of the week. Unless we have trouble. . . If we do, we'll get paid for our trouble."

  Walden made an aimless, defeated gesture with both hands outspread. "I guess I can arrange it," he said hurriedly.

 

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