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Chapter 9 The Montecito




The old woman in the house next door was still watching every­thing that moved in the street and her eyes were just as sharp as ever. She didn't have anything new to tell us so we walked across to the next house. The same washing was still hanging stiffly on the washing line at the side of the house. There was no answer when we rang the bell and none when we knocked at the door. The door was locked this time. We went round to the back door. That was locked too but Randall kicked it open and we walked past a row of empty whisky bottles in the kitchen, into the living-room. The place smelled horrible. The radio was off.

'Nice radio,' said Randall.

Mrs Florian was in the bedroom. She hadn't been dead for very long. Long enough to be completely dead, though. Randall looked at her.

'This was done the quiet way,' he said. 'Just one large pair of hands round her neck. Enormous hands. Look at the marks on her neck.'

'You look at them,' I said and turned away, feeling ill again.

We went back to Randall's office at the police station, and Randall made me make a full report on the story I had told him in the car and on the murder we had found at West 54th Place. I signed four copies.

'Now let me tell you something, Marlowe,' he said, sitting back in his chair. 'Her neck was broken first and then the mur­derer started to hit her. Why did he hit her when she was already dead? Answer: he was angry with her. A thousand dollars was paid to the person who gave Malloy's name to the police after the Great Bend bank job eight years ago, and I think the Florians got some of that money. Malloy may have thought the same thing. Maybe he was just trying to make her tell him who gave the police his name. It was Malloy who killed her all right, even if it was a mistake. Perhaps he's just too strong.'

'Perhaps,' I answered.

'Now here's some advice for you, Marlowe, from a friend.' He used another one of his four smiles for the day on me. 'Go home and forget this whole investigation completely. Leave it alone. If you don't, you'll find yourself deep in trouble you won't be able to climb out of. Understand?'

I said I understood. He looked at me for ten seconds, then he smiled again. He was doing a lot of smiling that day. Enough for a whole week.

I stood up and said goodbye, went home to get my car and ate some lunch in Hollywood before I drove over to Bay City. It was a beautiful afternoon, sunny but cool.

I went to see the Chief of Police, a fat man named John Wax, who sat doing nothing in a big office marked 'Private'. I told him I was working for Mrs Grayle and that I was trying to find out more about Jules Amthor, the psychiatrist, and about the odd hospital for drink and drugs problems right there under his nose in Bay City. Could he help? It was the name Grayle which made him sit up straight in his chair. He asked me to go and lock the door, pulled out a bottle from somewhere in his desk and poured two drinks. He looked hurt as he drank his drink but in the end he agreed to help me in any way he could.

He sent a man down with me to look at the hospital on Descanso Street. It was a pleasant place by daylight, with a garden full of flowers of all sorts. It was quiet and still in the early afternoon sun. Outside, two men were studying a tall tree, as if they were wondering how to move it, and another was sitting in a car down the street reading a newspaper. My friendly Bay City policeman just drove straight past the house. He wasn't smiling.

'Los Angeles police. What the hell are they doing down here? This is our part of town, our side of the line. The Chief won't be pleased.'

He drove round the next corner and stopped.

'Who are the big guys in crime down here in Bay City?' I asked him. 'What kind of problems do you face down here?'

He didn't answer straight away. Then he said very quietly, so that I could only just hear: 'Man named Laird Brunette runs this town. Runs all the crime in Bay City. Owns those two gambling ships out in the ocean there, too, just beyond where we can reach them. We can't touch his gambling business or any other business out there . . .' He stopped. He'd said enough. His eyes started to worry that he'd said too much.

'Thanks,' I said and gave him my hand. He had given me my next idea.

I found a hotel room down by the waterfront in Bay City and waited until it was dark. I could hear people talking together and cars passing along the street outside. I thought about the whole story of Malloy and Velma, Marriott and the beautiful Mrs Grayle, the attractive Miss Anne Riordan, the slow and stupid Nulty, the fat and lazy John Wax and the clever and deadly Detective Randall. I thought of psychiatrists and jewel gangs and hard men who took me by the throat and tried to stop me breathing. I thought about a lot of things. It got darker. I needed a drink, I needed a holiday in the sun, I needed a home in the country and I needed a friend, but all I had was a coat and a hat and a gun. I got up, washed my face and got ready for the night's work in front of me.

Outside, I walked slowly along the seafront and back again, watching the faces in the crowd and the lights of the two gambling ships out there on the dark ocean. A hamburger seller was shouting 'Get hungry, friends, get hungry! Nice fat hamburgers here. Get hungry!' I stopped and asked him the names of the two ships.

'Montecito and Royal Crown,' he said, looking at me with careful eyes. 'Why are you interested?'

I laughed and waited while he served a young couple with hamburgers. Then he came close and said quietly: 'You want to hide out there? It'd cost you a lot, friend. Not less than fifty to take you out there. The Montecito is the one you'd want.'

I left him wondering why I had asked him at all and walked further along the seafront, found a place to have dinner and sat down with a drink. The dinner tasted like a postman's sack and the waiter looked as if he'd cut my throat for a dollar. But the drink was good.

I took a water-taxi out to the Montecito for a quarter of a dollar. It was a long way out over the dark sea. I stared at the orange lights of Bay City getting further and further away, disappearing now and then as the boat rode down between two waves. When we arrived, a dark-eyed young man in a blue jacket stepped in front of me as I went up the steps.

'Sorry, mister. No guns on the boat.'

'It's part of my clothes,' I told him. 'I'm here to see Mr Brunette on business.'

Never heard of him,' he said, with a face like stone. 'Get back in the taxi and get on your way - fast. We're not in Bay City now. We're not even in California, so move.'

I got back in the boat. Blue Jacket watched me with a silent smile. The taximan didn't say a word the whole way back. As I got off at the waterfront, he handed me a quarter- dollar. 'Some other night, maybe,' he said in a tired voice.

There was a very big guy with red hair, dirty shoes and torn sailor's trousers in the crowd waiting for the next taxi. He didn't fit in at all. As I went past him, he took my elbow. I stopped.

'What's the matter with you?' I asked. I wasn't feeling polite, even though he was three inches taller than me and heavier too.

'Couldn't get onto the ship?' he asked between his teeth. 'Trouble getting on with that gun under your coat, huh?' He looked up and down the waterfront. 'I can help, maybe. Can be done, you know. Fifty dollars.' I started to walk away but he kept hold of my elbow.

'OK. Twenty-five, for a friend.'

'I don't have any friends,' I said, and walked away. He didn't try to stop me. He followed me slowly along the waterfront, through the crowds. I stopped to watch some people playing bingo and he came up next to me - a handsome guy with blue eyes, as big as Moose Malloy but he looked younger and faster on his feet.

He said into my ear: 'What's your business? Private investiga­tion? I was on the police here once. I can recognize guys like you.' He smiled.

'Know a man named Brunette, then?' I asked. The smile stayed on his face.

'I can borrow a very quiet boat, friend, and there's a place along there, with no lights, where we can leave and come in again without anyone seeing us.' He pointed along the water-front with his chin. 'I know where there's a delivery door on the Montecito which you can open and get in, too.'

I got my wallet out and gave him twenty-five in new notes. He disappeared quietly among the crowd, with a smile. 'Give me ten minutes. My name's Red,' was all he said.

The noise of the bars and crowds died away behind me, and I found the nice dark place along the waterfront ten minutes later with no trouble. There were some steps down to the sea. I went down them as carefully as a cat and a big black shape suddenly appeared out of the darkness next to me. He pointed down to a boat riding on the sea with its engine going almost noiselessly
and said: 'OK. Get in.'

We moved out into the blackness of the sea and the wave again. It was not the happiest moment of my life. As we went out across the dark water, I told this big friendly giant why I was there, that I wanted to talk to a man called Laird Brunette, that I wanted to find an ex-prisoner and murderer called Moose Malloy who might be hiding out on the Montecito. I told him more than I meant to, but he listened and thought a bit and then said: 'Yeah. Brunette runs all the gambling, the drugs and the women in this town. Maybe he runs that hospital they put you in, too. But I just don't think Brunette would be behind that jewel robbery you were talking about. He's big time, and that's too small. I don't think he had anything to do with that. And I don't think Brunette would hide a man like Malloy,' he said, 'unless there's something other than money behind it which is worrying him.' He moved his hands on the wheel of the boat and said: 'I don't like these guys at all. I really hate them, in fact.' So I had a friend. We moved quietly in towards the enormous black side of the Montecito. There were two big iron doors in the side of the ship, just higher than our little boat. We stopped near them and rode up and down on the waves, listening. Everything was quiet except the sound of water and the music up above us.

Chapter 10 'My Little Velma'

 

Red threw a rope up over the side of the Montecito and pulled himself up quietly to the two iron doors. There was a sound of metal over my head and then I started up the rope. It was the longest journey I've ever made. It finished inside the oily, bitter-smelling darkness of the ship with rats running across the boxes and ropes on the floor.

A voice next to my ear said quietly: 'From here we go straight up through the engine-room. There'll probably be one guy in there. Might have a gun, but that's no problem. Then I'll show you the way up to the gambling rooms. That's where you're going to find Brunette. I'll wait for you in the engine-room. You may need some help up there.'

'You got family on this ship or something?' I asked, but he was already in front of me, the rats running away from his enormous feet in the darkness. The man in the engine-room was no problem, as Red had promised. He hit him hard, once, and caught him as he fell. Then he showed me the stairs up to the music and the people.

'How long will you be?' he asked.

'Don't know. An hour or less, I guess. But don't wait for me. Get out now. I'm going to make some trouble on this ship.' And I went away up the steps.

I came out on an open walkway on the ocean side of the ship. There was a man with a small machine-gun in the shadows there. I went up behind him silently and put my gun in his back.

'I have a very loud gun,' I said. 'But it doesn't have to go off. All I want is to talk to Brunette. Now why don't you show me the way nice and peacefully?'

He took a moment or two to think about all that. Then he said: 'OK. Follow me across to that door. We're going down to the offices past the gambling tables.'

We went into the bright lights inside the ship and through the gambling rooms, where sixty or seventy people were trying not to lose their shirts. I put my gun away under my coat as we went.

Two quiet men in black dinner jackets came through a door on the other side of a bar and came towards us.

'People round here don't seem to follow their orders,' the short one said.

'You're Brunette,' I said suddenly.

'Of course.' He turned and opened a door behind him. 'In here. We can talk more easily.'

I followed him through into a comfortable small office with photographs on the tables and a small private bar in one corner. He sat down.

'He has a gun,' Brunette said.

A hand took the gun away from me and put it down on Brunette's desk.

'Anything more, boss?' a voice asked.

'Not now.' He turned to me and said: 'Who are you and what do you want?'

'My name's Marlowe. I'm a private detective and I want to talk to a man called Moose Malloy. I'm investigating a murder, the murder of a man named Marriott. That murder has something to do with another one — of an old woman — which was done by Malloy. Malloy was staying at a hospital for drug problems over in Bay City, hiding from the law, and now he's disappeared. I think he could be hiding here on your nice gambling boat.'

'You're simple,' Brunette said. 'Why should I hide gangsters here? I'm in another business. Sorry, but I can't do anything for you. But I'd like to know how you got onto my ship.'

'I just can't remember.'

'You do take some terrible chances, Mr Marlowe.' He smiled a nasty, cold smile.

'Just give this to Malloy first,' I said, and I reached across his desk, took a card and wrote five words on it. 'It'll mean some­thing important to him.'

'OK,' he said. 'If I can get this to Malloy, I will. I don't know why I'm doing it for you.' He pushed my gun back across the desk to me and stood up. 'But I promise nothing, Marlowe.' He put out his hand and I shook it. I went back to Bay City the ordinary way, in a water-taxi. There was already a new man at the top of the steps — Blue Jacket was gone. I wondered if he was already dead or working down in the engine-room for letting me get onto his boss's ship with my gun.

Back on the waterfront I found Red.

'Get your man?' he asked.

'No. But I think Brunette will find a way to get a message to him for me. Could take hours; could take days. I might never find him - alive.'

I drove back to my apartment in Hollywood and called the Grayle number. Mrs Grayle agreed to come over to my apart­ment and go out somewhere for a drink. Then I lay down on my bed and tried not to go to sleep. I failed, though. I could have slept for a week.

I woke up slowly and stared at the light of the lamp on the ceiling. Something moved gently in the room. Moose Malloy, with a gun in his hand and his hat pushed back on his head. He saw me open my eyes.

'Glad you came over,' I said.

'Your door wasn't locked so I came on in. You waiting for visitors?'

'A lady. She may not come. But I'd prefer to talk to you.'

A smile touched the corners of his mouth.

'I'd like to talk about the killing of a woman. Jessie Florian. I think that was a bad mistake. You didn't mean to kill her; you just wanted her to tell you something. That's all, isn't it? You wanted her to tell you where Velma was, but she didn't even know. Velma was too clever for her.'

The smile had gone from his mouth. He kept quiet.

There was a knock on the door. I got up from the bed and went through to the living-room to open it. Malloy stayed in the bedroom, in the dark. She stood there half-smiling, beautiful, in a high-necked white evening dress with deep, red stones circling the creamy white of her neck. Her smile died when she saw me in my old work suit and her eyes went cold. I stood to one side and held the door open. She walked in past me and then turned quickly, annoyed.

'Have a drink,' I said. 'Then let's talk. Not about stolen diamond rings, but about murder.'

I went through to the kitchen and mixed some drinks, leaving her staring at my back. When I came back, she was sitting coolly in my best chair, blowing smoke from her cigarette up at the ceiling.

'Personally, I don't believe that Lindsay Marriott was the finger man for a jewel gang, though that's what the police seem to think,' I began. 'And I don't think he was a blackmailer either. Funny, isn't it, Mrs Grayle? And I don't think he was killed by any gang, or that he was going to Purissima Canyon that night to buy back a diamond ring for you. I don't think a diamond ring was ever stolen, in fact. I think he thought he was going there to help someone with a murder, but in fact he was going there to die. Someone wanted Lin Marriott dead.'

Her smile was like broken glass now. Suddenly she wasn't beautiful any more; she was wild and very dangerous. All she said was: 'And who did he think he was going to help murder, Mr Marlowe?'

'Me. Philip Marlowe. And I'll tell you why. Simply because I was trying to find a girl who used to sing at a nightclub over on Main Street, a place called Florian's. Her boyfriend was looking for her too — an ex-prisoner named Moose Malloy. Perhaps I was helping Malloy find this girl, and I was starting to ask all the wrong questions, so he was told I had to die.'

She nodded and said, 'Very interesting, if I knew what you were talking about.'

'And you do,' I said.

We stared at each other. She had her right hand inside her little white handbag now. I knew what she held in it but she wasn't ready yet. These things take time.

'Let's stop playing games, shall we, Mrs Grayle? A girl who came up the hard way eventually married a very, very rich man and went to live with him at his place near the ocean. Aster Drive. But one day, an old woman recognized her and this old woman started to blackmail our beautiful young lady. The old woman had to be kept quiet. Marriott helped his beautiful friend by paying some money to the old woman on the first of every month, special delivery, but he and the old woman were the only two people who knew the secret. Some day, the young woman's boyfriend was going to get out of prison and come looking for his girlfriend, and she didn't want him to find her. So when this Private investigator started pushing his nose in and asking questions, Marriott had to die, even though he thought he was going to help murder me. He knew too much. He was the real danger, not me. So you killed him, didn't you, Mrs Grayle?'

Her gun came out then. She pointed it at me and smiled. I did nothing. But Moose Malloy stepped through the door of the bedroom with a larger gun in his hand. He didn't look at me at all. He spoke softly: 'Thought I knew the voice. I tried to remember that voice for eight years while I was away. I liked your hair better when it was red, though. Hello, baby.'

She turned the gun on him.

'Get away from me,' she said.

'And I just realized in there who it was that gave my name to the police after the Great Bend bank job. You. Little Velma. You sent me away for eight years. My little Velma.'

She shot him five times. He stayed standing, then he fell face down. She ran to the door and out. I didn't try to stop her. I turned Malloy over carefully and put a pillow under his head, but after five shots in the body even Moose Malloy wasn't going to live very long. Then I called Randall at his home and told him what had happened.

The police cars were there with a doctor a couple of minutes later and the doctor said he had a chance. I knew he wouldn't want it. He didn't. He died in the night.

It took three months to find Velma. Randall told me the details. She was hiding in the most obvious place. One night, a detective with a good memory walked into a nightclub in New York and heard a singer he liked there. But something about her face made him go back and look at the 'Wanted' photographs on the wall of his office. She was there, all right, so he went back to the club and showed her her name and picture on the list. But he was too careless. She pulled a gun out of her bag when he was taking her in, and shot him three times. Then she used her last two bullets on herself. Velma was tired of running away.


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