Farewell, My Lovely - Chandler Raymond. Страница 33

I could see part of a room and it was furnished like a room, not like a cell. There was a dark bureau with a hat on it and some magazines. Windows with lace curtains, a good carpet.

Bed springs creaked heavily. A big guy, like his cough. I reached out fingertips and pushed the door an inch or two. Nothing happened. Nothing ever was slower than my head craning in. I saw the room now, the bed, and the man on it, the ashtray heaped with stubs that overflowed on to a night table and from that to the carpet. A dozen mangled newspapers all over the bed. One of them in a pair of huge hands before a huge face. I saw the hair above the edge of the green paper. Dark, curly — black even — and plenty of It. A line of white skin under it. The paper moved a little more and I didn’t breathe and the man on the bed didn’t look up.

He needed a shave. He would always need a shave. I had seen him before, over on Central Avenue, in a Negro dive called Florian’s. I had seen him in a loud suit with white golf balls on the coat and a whiskey sour in his hand. And had seen him with an Army Colt looking like a toy in his fist, stepping softly through a broken door. I had seen some of his work and it was the kind of work that stays done.

He coughed again and rolled his buttocks on the bed and yawned bitterly and reached sideways for a frayed pack of cigarettes on the night table. One of them went into his mouth. Light flared at the end of his thumb. Smoke came out of his nose.

“Ah,” he said, and the paper went up in front of his face again.

I left him there and went back along the side hall. Mr. Moose Malloy seemed to be in very good hands. I went back to the stairs and down.

A voice murmured behind the almost closed door. I waited for the answering voice. None. It was a telephone conversation. I went over close to the door and listened. It was a low voice, a mere murmur. Nothing carried that meant anything. There was finally a dry clicking sound. Silence continued inside the room after that.

This was the time to leave, to go far away. So I pushed the door open and stepped quietly in.

27

It was an office, not small, not large, with a neat professional look. A glass-doored bookcase with heavy books inside. A first aid cabinet on the wall. A white enamel and glass sterilizing cabinet with a lot of hypodermic needles and syringes inside it being cooked. A wide flat desk with a blotter on it, a bronze paper cutter, a pen set, an appointment book, very little else, except the elbows of a man who sat brooding, with his face in his hands.

Between the spread yellow fingers I saw hair the color of wet brown sand, so smooth that it appeared to be painted on his skull. I took three more steps and his eyes must have looked beyond the desk and seen my shoes move. His head came up and he looked at me. Sunken colorless eyes in a parchment-like face. He unclasped his hands and leaned back slowly and looked at me with no expression at all.

Then he spread his hands with a sort of helpless but disapproving gesture and when they came to rest again, one of them was very close to the corner of the desk.

I took two steps more and showed him the blackjack. His index and second finger still moved towards the corner of the desk.

“The buzzer,” I said, “won’t buy you anything tonight. I put your tough boy to sleep.”

His eyes got sleepy. “You have been a very sick man, air. A very sick man. I can’t recommend your being up and about yet.”

I said: “The right hand.” I snapped the blackjack at it. It coiled into itself like a wounded snake.

I went around the desk grinning without there being anything to grin at. He had a gun in the drawer of course. They always have a gun in the drawer and they always get it too late, if they get it at all. I took it out. It was a .38 automatic, a standard model not as good as mine, but I could use its ammunition. There didn’t seem to be any in the drawer. I started to break the magazine out of his.

He moved vaguely, his eyes still sunken and sad.

“Maybe you’ve got another buzzer under the carpet,” I said. “Maybe it rings in the Chief’s office down at headquarters. Don’t use it. Just for an hour I’m a very tough guy. Anybody comes in that door is walking into a coffin.”

“There is no buzzer under the carpet,” he said. His voice had the slightest possible foreign accent.

I got his magazine out and my empty one and changed them. I ejected the shell that was in the chamber of his gun and let it lie. I jacked one up into the chamber of mine and went back to the other side of the desk again.

There was a spring lock on the door. I backed towards it and pushed it shut and heard the lock click. There was also a bolt. I turned that.

I went back to the desk and sat in a chair. It took my last ounce of strength.

“Whiskey,” I said.

He began to move his hands around.

“Whiskey,” I said.

He went to the medicine cabinet and got a flat bottle with a green revenue stamp on it and a glass.

“Two glasses,” I said. “I tried your whiskey once. I damn near hit Catalina Island with it.”

He brought two small glasses and broke the seal and filled the two glasses.

“You first,” I said.

He smiled faintly and raised one of the glasses.

“Your health, sir — what remains of it.” He drank. I drank. I reached for the bottle and stood it near me and waited for the heat to get to my heart. My heart began to pound, but it was back up in my chest again, not hanging on a shoelace.

“I had a nightmare,” I said. “Silly idea. I dreamed I was tied to a cot and shot full of dope and locked in a barred room. I got very weak. I slept. I had no food. I was a sick man. I was knocked on the head and brought into a place where they did that to me. They took a lot of trouble. I’m not that important.”

He said nothing. He watched me. There was a remote speculation in his eyes, as if he wondered how long I would live.

“I woke up and the room was full of smoke,” I said. “It was just a hallucination, irritation of the optic nerve or whatever a guy like you would call it. Instead of pink snakes I had smoke. So I yelled and a toughie in a white coat came and showed me a blackjack. It took me a long time to get ready to take it away from him. I got his keys and my clothes and even took my money out of his pocket. So here I am. All cured. What were you saying?”

“I made no remark,” he said.

“Remarks want you to make them,” I said. “They have their tongues hanging out waiting to be said. This thing here — “ I waved the blackjack lightly, “is a persuader. I had to borrow it from a guy.”

“Please give it to me at once,” he said with a smile you would get to love. It was like the executioner’s smile when he comes to your cell to measure you for the drop. A little friendly, a little paternal, and a little cautious at the same time. You would get to love it if there was any way you could live long enough.

I dropped the blackjack into his palm, his left palm.

“Now the gun, please,” he said softly. “You have been a very sick man, Mr. Marlowe. I think I shall have to insist that you go back to bed.”

I stared at him.

“I am Dr. Sonderborg,” he said, “and I don’t want any nonsense.”

He laid the blackjack down on the desk in front of him. His smile was as stiff as a frozen fish. His long fingers made movements like dying butterflies.

“The gun, please,” he said softly. “I advise strongly — “

“What time is it, warden?”

He looked mildly surprised. I had my wrist watch on now, but it had run down.

“It is almost midnight. Why?”

“What day is it?”

“Why, my dear sir — Sunday evening, of course.”

I steadied myself on the desk and tried to think and held the gun close enough to him so that he might try and grab it.

“That’s over forty-eight hours. No wonder I had fits. Who brought me here?”