Screw Chiquita Banana. I always kept my bananas in the refrigerator. They turned brown and looked like hell, but they lasted longer. I found one survivor behind a jar of grape jelly. Ignoring the color, I sliced it into little pieces and sprinkled it on top of my bowl of Wheaties. Then sugar and milk. Top with a cup of Hill’s or Chase and Sanborn, and you have the Peters gourmet breakfast, which is just what I had that Monday morning while I read the newspaper. The previous tenant hadn’t cancelled his subscription, and once in a while I got up early enough to grab the paper before a neighbor stole it. Today was such a day. I put my back to the wall of my little alcove kitchen, placed my. 38 on the table in front of me, and read while I ate.
An eight-column headline said the presidential election would be the closest since 1916. I tried to figure out who had run in 1916. It was too late for Lincoln and too early for Hoover. Gallup indicated that the Willkie trend was running strong.
With a fresh shirt on my back, a relatively clean tie around my neck, memories of Cassie James in my mind, another day’s pay coming from M.G.M., a back free from pain, and hope in my future, I stepped out of my door and into a puddle of mud. I fell on my ass. I had slept through a late season rain during the night.
A change of clothes put a new suit on my back and a wary look in my eye when I stepped out of the same door ten minutes later. The gods had warned me not to be such a smart ass about the future, and I read the warning.
John Franklin Peese’s address on Main near Jefferson was a long walk from my place, but it could be walked. I drove and made it in less than ten minutes. It was one of those typically dingy neighborhoods that surround most downtown areas of big cities. I knew the area well; my office was a few blocks away. I parked in a garage on Broadway and walked back. Normally, I would have parked on the street, but with no windows that was asking for a stripped or missing car in this neighborhood.
Main was a busy downtown street, one of the busiest, with fat buildings and restaurants. In this area there were nickel hot dog stands and flop houses.
I stopped in front of 134 Main. It was a flop. The sign read: BEDS 15 CENTS, ROOMS 35 CENTS, HOT AND COLDWATER. Next door to the flop was a nickel movie house which boasted all seats for five cents. “Big Show. Little Price.” One sign said there were five pictures. Another sign said there were six. A poster showed Tom Tyler with a gun in his right hand and a girl in his left looking up at him. Tom was all in black and the picture was The Feud of the Trail. The nickel show also promised the first chapter of a Ken Maynard Western, Mystery Moun tain. A guy in a milkman’s suit with a thin jacket over it tilted his white cap back and studied the posters. I stood next to him wondering who it would hurt if I spent the day in the dark.
The milkman went in, but I didn’t follow him. I went into the flop house. It took about thirty seconds to adjust from the light to the dusty darkness of a lobby of forty-watt bulbs.
The forty-watters were a good idea. They saved the management money, and they made it hard to see the lobby. The lobby was small and decorated in early 20th century junk. It was the kind of place in which Shelly Minck picked up most of his trade, and his trade picked up most of its diseases.
When my eyes adjusted to the dim yellow light, I went to the desk. I passed a guy sitting in one of the two lounge chairs in the lobby. I didn’t give him a second look, but I held him in mind. He was too damn well-dressed to be sitting around in the morning in a place like this. It was a warm day, and the parks were free. On a day like this even a bum knew enough to hike the few blocks to Exposition Park.
The guy behind the desk was wearing a ratty sweater and a jacket. His nose was running. He had a cold, and I didn’t want to get too near him. It might not be a cold. He was bald with big freckles on his scalp. His chest was caved in as if he had taken one big cough and had never recovered. His belly flowed out and he could have been any age for 25 to 50.
“My name’s Peters,” I said quietly and seriously. “I’m involved in an investigation, and I’d like to have some information on one of your tenants.”
He blew his nose on a dirty handkerchief, pushed the handkerchief into his trouser pocket, and looked at me with moist eyes.
“Mr…?” I tried again.
“Valentine,” he said. “I only use one name.”
“Like Garbo,” I said.
“She’s got another name,” he said. “I only use the one.”
“You in show business?” I said.
“No,” he sneered. “Who you want to know about?”
“Peese,” I said. “John Franklin Peese.”
“Don’t recall him,” said Valentine, retrieving his handkerchief.
“You can’t miss him,” I said softly, overcoming my repulsion and leaning toward him. “He’s only about three feet tall.”
Valentine gave a good blow and seemed to be thinking about people three feet tall.
“Who’s the night man?” I asked.
“I am,” he said. “I don’t leave here. Sleep back there.” He pointed to a door behind him.
“Look in your book,” I said wearily.
“You ain’t a cop,” he said, turning away.
“Three bucks,” I said.
“Five,” he said.
“Good-bye,” I said.
“Wait,” he said.
We both knew how the conversation would go, but the rules of conduct made us ride out the race. I’d played it dozens of times, and I knew it wasn’t over. I counted out three bucks
and he said, “Room 31.”
I started to turn and he added, “But he’s not there anymore. Moved out about five months ago. Glad to see him go. He was a mean little fart.”
“You got an address for him,” I said, keeping my back to the counter. The well-dressed man in the lobby was pretending to read a book, but I knew he could hear what we said.
“He didn’t leave one,” said Valentine, purring.
“You have some idea of where I can find him?” I said.
He took too long to answer “no,” so I knew he had something, maybe just a badly congested nose, but I took a chance. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t horse around here all day playing games. I turned slowly, pulled two bucks out of my wallet and reached over the counter grabbing Valentine by the sweater. Part of it came off in my hands. I grabbed again and pulled him into the counter. Our faces were inches apart. He smelled like Friday’s garbage on Monday morning. I thought both of us were about to throw up. Him in fear; me in disgust.
“I heard he was someplace downtown,” he squeaked.
“Where?” I asked with a forced smile.
“I don’t know, one of the big hotels,” Valentine said, gasping for air. “One of the guys who flops here saw him. He said Peese looked like he’d made the big time. Big cigar. The works. Peese wouldn’t give him the price of a small flop. He’s a bastard, that little one, a bastard.”
I let him down gently. His sweater was bunched up on his bird chest, and he was panting. I must have looked to him like my brother looks to me.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “This’ll buy you another sweater and a last name.” I dropped five more on the counter. He could get ten sweaters for less than that within a block.
“I don’t want a last name,” he said, putting the five under the counter. “What good’s a last name done anybody?”
He had a point.
I walked into the sun, and my eyes closed. I waited until I was out of sight of the door before I wiped my hands of Valentine’s grime. I knew a shortcut back to Broadway through an alley. I’d chased a kid through it once when I was doing a month as a bouncer at the Broadway Bar in ’37. Since most of the customers were bar flies and winos, I’d built up a good win-loss record. But the two or three good losses were enough to make me go back to my private investigating, Depression or no Depression. One of the losses had left me with my scalp split like a car seat that spent too much time in the desert.
The happy memory faded as I stepped into the alley and realized two things. First, I had to look forward to a day of looking for a midget in downtown hotels. He might not even be in a downtown hotel. Valentine might have got the word wrong, or the bum who passed it might have messed it up or dreamed it, but I had to give it a try. Most of my investigating involved following leads that lead nowhere. The cops did the same thing, but there were lots of cops.
The second thing I realized was that someone was following me. I didn’t want to turn back. If it was the dragon with the bad shot, he might shoot sooner than he planned if I turned. I kept walking through the alley around garbage cans, looking for an open door and expecting a bullet in the back. I had taken one there not too long ago. I didn’t want to press my luck. Even the bat who was trying to do me in would have the odds going for him eventually.
He didn’t know how to tail, and I could see his long shadow out of the corner of my eye as it hit the brick wall. He was hurrying now to keep up, but I didn’t want to break. My armpits were damp, and Broadway was just a dozen yards or so ahead. I made up my mind, reached for my gun as I walked and took a sudden turn into a doorway.
The guy behind me stumbled forward, and I moved out with my. 38 under his nose and grabbed a hunk of his jacket. It was the well-dressed guy in the flop house lobby. I pulled him into the doorway and pushed him into shadow. He looked surprised, but only a little and not at all scared. I felt him for a weapon the way the Glendale cops had taught me a tenth of a century earlier. He came away clean, and I looked at him. He wore a light grey suit with a white tie and shirt. He wasn’t dressed for tailing. He stood out like a snowball in a coal pile.
He was in his fifties. His face was round, and his mouth was small and a little weak. His nose was straight, and he wore round tortoise glasses. His hairline was falling back and his hair was thin, but he had it combed forward on the left to battle the receding glacier of time.
“O.K.,” I said. “Who are you, and why are you following me?”
He took out a pipe and lit it. His hands weren’t shaking and his voice was a little high, but perfectly calm.
“My name’s Chandler, Raymond Chandler,” he said, getting the pipe going. “I’m a writer. I write detective stories and novels.”
“That doesn’t explain why you were in the lobby of that bedbug palace and why you followed me,” I whispered through my teeth. It was my best shot at menace, but he looked interested and amused.
“I often sit around hotel lobbies picking up characters and dialogue,” he explained. “That is a little lower than the places I usually sit around in, but it was worth it. I found you. You’re the first real private investigator I’ve seen at work.”
I couldn’t tell if he was putting on an act or if he was what he said. His story sounded dumb.
“What books have you written?” I said. I put my gun back in my holster, but I didn’t lean back.
“Well,” he said. “I did one called The Big Sleep and a few months ago another one of mine, Farewell, My Lovely, came out.”
I’d never heard of him or them, and I said so.
“The number of mystery novels that have had even minimal success in the past five years can be counted on one hand of a two-toed sloth,” he sighed.
It sounded like writer talk.
“You don’t look dangerous to me,” I admitted, “but…”
“I’m a pretty dangerous man with a wet towel,” he grinned. “But my favorite weapon is a twenty-dollar bill when I have one, which is seldom. Look, you can check on me easily enough. My publisher is Knopf. I’ll give you a number to call, or you can look it up yourself. I live at 449 San Vincente Boulevard in Santa Monica with my wife Cissy. You can call her up.”
I told him I’d do just that and guided him onto Broadway and into a tavern. The phone was on the wall, and I had Chandler stand where I could see him. I had the impression that he was usually a sad man with a world-weary look, but something had awakened him, and he was smiling as he smoked.
I called an L.A. number Chandler gave me. It was a literary agency. I checked it in the phone book as I talked. I asked the guy if he had heard of Chandler, and he said he had. I asked for a description, and he gave me a pretty good one. I hung up.
“You’re a careful man, Mr…”
“Peters,” I said. “Toby Peters. I make up in caution what I lack in brains.”
“Can I buy you lunch or a beer, Mr. Peters?” Chandler said.
In ten minutes, I had pushed around a warped desk clerk and a well-meaning solid citizen. I had worked up an appetite. We found a place on the block where steak sandwiches could be had with beer and I could sit with my back to the wall watching the door. Chandler might not be the only one following me. I told Chandler my tale, and he listened. I think for a minute he decided I was nuts, but I offered to let him call Warren Hoff at Metro. He declined.
“I probably make up in brains what I lack in caution,” he said. “Peters. I have an offer for you. I heard what happened at that flop house. You’re going to start looking for that midget, right?”
I said I was.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll help you if you like. It’ll be good background material, and it will help make up for my giving you a scare.”
It would also cheer up a man who needed cheering, and I meant Chandler, not me. I could use the help even if he didn’t give me much, and he was good company.
“Fine,” I said. “Pay the bill, and let’s get going.”
We drove the few blocks to my office, and Chandler turned his head to soak in the smell of Lysol and the atmosphere. I introduced him to Shelly, who was working on a regular customer, a kid who looked like Alfalfa in Our Gang. Shelly was trying to straighten the kid’s teeth or kill him in the attempt.
I told Shelly that Chandler wrote detective stories, but Shelly had never heard of him.
“You got an overbite problem there, Ray,” Shelly said, pointing his cigar at Chandler and looking over the top of his thick glasses. “I’ll take a look when I finish with my friend here.”
“Some other time,” said Chandler with a smile.
“Suit yourself,” shrugged Shelly, making it clear the loss was Chandler’s. The kid in the chair was sitting with his mouth wide open. I motioned to him to close it. Shelly breathed on his mirror and wiped it clear on his dirty coat before turning to the kid, whose mouth flew open as if it were hinged.
“Landlord’s a writer,” said Shelly probing the kid’s mouth. “Writes poetry. You should meet him. He used to be a wrestler.”
“I used to think I was a poet,” said Chandler. The sad look started to cloud his face, and I hustled him into my office.
I picked up the phone and asked the operator if there was a directory listing for John Franklin Peese. She said there wasn’t which didn’t surprise me. There were a few ways to try to track down Peese. I could try theatrical agents in the hope that he was in entertainment, but it was a longshot. I could also ask my brother to see if Cash, the dead midget, had an address or number for Peese in his effects. If they knew each other, it was possible. But I doubted if Phil would give me the information.
I pulled out a phone book, sat Chandler at my desk, and told him to start at the A’s and call downtown hotels. I’d go back from the Z’s. When we hit the M’s, if we did before we got a lead, we’d talk it over. I told him we’d consider Downtown as a rectangle bordered by Alpine, Seventh, Figueroa, and Alameda. If we didn’t hit anything in that square we’d consider spreading it out or giving up on the idea.
“If they ask, say you’re the police,” I said. “If they want your name, make one up, but remember what it is. If they say they have no one named Peese, then say you’re a cop even if they don’t ask and find out if they have any midgets registered.”
He nodded and plunged eagerly into the book while I went out. I could hear him saying, “Alexandria Hotel?” when I closed the door. It might turn out to be one hell of a phone bill, but M.G.M. would pay it if I had to itemize every hotel called. There was a pay phone in the hall, and I left Shelly humming when I went to it with a pocketful of nickels.
Two of the first five hotels I called thought I was pulling some midget gag.
About fifteen minutes later, when I was about to give the operator the number of the Natick Hotel, Chandler hurried into the hall, looking both ways.
“Got it!” he yelled. I hung up and moved to his side.
The hotel was a big one downtown. Peese was registered under his own name and was in his room. Chandler had not asked to speak to him. He had thought fast and said he wanted to mail something to Peese and was confirming his address.
We got in the Buick, cut across the Figueroa, and went the few blocks downtown. While we drove, I told him about a case I’d been on in which I’d spent two weeks looking for a runaway husband who turned out to be hiding in a crawlspace in his own basement. Chandler smoked, listened and said more to himself than me, “Funny thing, civilization. It promises so much, and what it delivers is mass production of shoddy merchandise and shoddy people.”
There wasn’t time for much more conversation, and I had the feeling that a full day’s talk with Chandler in his present mood would send me running for the night watchman’s job my brother wanted me to take.
I found a space on the street, and we walked to the hotel. It had a doorman who recognized Chandler as a potential customer and accepted me as a character. I told Chandler to let me do the talking, and we crossed to the desk. There were two clerks, and one stepped forward with a slight smile.
“Yes?” he said.
“John Franklin Peese,” I said. “His room, please.”
The clerk looked at me and Chandler.
“I’ll announce you,” he said, and I put up a hand to stop him.
“Mr. Peese is my brother,” I said. “I haven’t seen him in years. I’d like to surprise him.”
The clerk looked suspicious and Chandler said, “Mr. Peese’s condition is not hereditary. He is the only one of four brothers who is a midget.”
The clerk waivered, but hesitated. We had him on the brink, and I didn’t want Peese to duck on us.
“I don’t know,” he said. He had a little mustache that looked painted on. He played with it. “Mr. Peese has…”
“A temper,” I finished, faking anger, “and that is inherited in our family.”
I had purposely raised my voice and Chandler took the cue. He stepped forward and pretended to calm me.
“All right,” said the clerk recognizing the familial temperament if not the face and body. “He’s in 909.”
“Thank you,” Chandler said while I stalked toward the elevators.
“Wait down here,” I whispered to Chandler. “Go back and apologize to the clerk for my shouting. Keep him from calling Peese as long as you can.” Chandler nodded and hurried back to the desk clerk, who was watching me. I glared at him while I waited for the elevator. When it came, Chandler was nodding in sympathy to something the clerk had said.
On the elevator, I had a few seconds to consider my approach to Peese. I could make up a story, say I was an agent or theater owner or producer and get him talking, but it might be awkward to work the conversation around to the murder. I could pretend I was a cop or at least give the impression, but if Peese was the kind of character Wherthman and Valentine said he was, he might complain and get my license pulled.
When the elevator groaned to a stop at nine, I decided to hit him with something close to the truth. He might just get mad enough to say something. I couldn’t picture myself muscling a midget, but I might be able to do it. Maybe I could push him to get me mad enough.
I trotted down the hall to 909. Chandler seemed to be doing the job I gave him, but I didn’t know how long he could hold the clerk. I was knocking loud at 909 when I heard the phone ring inside.
“Who is it?” asked a high, petulant voice.
“My name’s Peters,” I said. “I’m a private detective, and I want to talk to you.”
The phone kept ringing.
“About what?” said the voice.
My name didn’t seem to mean anything to him, which implied that he didn’t know anything about who was trying to kill me, and that he probably wasn’t the one who made the call to Shelly about my address.
“Murder,” I said. “The murder of a little man named Cash.”
“Screw off,” he screeched. The phone kept ringing.
“Right,” I said. “I’ll just go the lobby and call the cops. I work for M.G.M., and my job is to keep things quiet, but if you want noise, you’ll find out what noise is when the cops get here and start asking things like where were you Friday morning? How well did you know Cash? What business were the two of you in? Why have so many people talked about the fights you had with him?”
The phone stopped ringing. He had answered it. I put my ear to the door and heard venom spit from his mouth as he said, “Thanks, you mental cripple. He’s here now. Yes, he’s my brother, but how about calling me when they’re down there so I can decide if I want to see them or not. That’s what I pay for.” He hung up.
I pulled away from the door as small footsteps moved toward it. The door opened, and I saw the smallest human I’d ever seen. Wherthman would have stood a head taller if they were side by side. I noticed that, like Wherthman, he was well proportioned. He didn’t look deformed in any way, but he sounded it.
He let out a stream of “fucks” and “assholes” and some colorful additional things about sex and bowel movement. It was a small education.
Peese wore a fancy white embroidered shirt and a soft sweater. I would have spent more time looking at him, but I noticed something else as we stepped into a large room. All of the furniture was scaled down to his size. A door was opened in the wall and I could see into the bedroom. It, too, was scaled down.
He turned and sat in a small dark armchair. His face was childlike, but there was ancient anger on it. He was one of the small, bitter people of the world. Some of them are six feet tall, but their palms sweat; they keep their heads low and turn them only briefly upward as they pass you with the sneer of the cornered animal unsure of whether to bite or cry. He lit a cigar and said, “Sit down.”
I wasn’t sure where to sit. The couch was too small and the little table in the room too fragile looking. He watched my awkward search for a perch and smiled viciously. He puffed at the full size cigar and leaned back.
“You don’t get many full size visitors?” I asked, deciding to sit on the floor. The carpet was dark green and soft enough.
“I get them all sizes,” he said.
“I get it,” I went on, placing my hat on the floor and my back against the wall. “You like full-sized people to feel awkward and clumsy in here.”
“You’re a smart man, Penis,” he said with a grin.
“The name’s Peters, John Franklin. Remember it and I’ll remember not to step on you,” I said, returning the grin. Wherthman had told me that my brother Phil had used that line on him. It had done wonders to ruin Wherthman’s disposition. I wished the same on Peese, but I didn’t get it.
“Well,” he said puffing away, “I feel awkward most of the time in your houses, your buildings. I enjoy having people like you feel foolish.”
He had a point, but I wasn’t going to start giving him points.
“I do keep a few bloated chairs for friends,” he said. Since he didn’t run to a closet to fetch a chair, I assumed I wasn’t in the elite company of his friends. But, after all, we had just met.
“It’s been pleasant getting acquainted with you, John Franklin, and I hate to cut off this stimulating conversation, but I have a few questions.”
“I don’t have any answers,” he puffed. The room was getting smokey and smelled like leftover cow’s breath. I wanted to get out as fast as I could.
“Let’s try,” I said, shifting my weight on the floor. “Why did you kill Cash?”
A cloud of smoke cleared, and I could see his eyes. I wondered if I could defend myself against a knife attack from him while seated on the floor. No knife came out.
“I didn’t kill him,” said Peese. “Didn’t know he was dead. Sorry to hear it.”
“You sound like you’ll never recover from the shock.”
“I’ll get over it,” he answered.
We made a fair act, but I wasn’t sure which of us was Bergen and which was Charlie McCarthy.
“What business were you in with Cash?” I tried.
“We weren’t. I knew him.”
“What business are you in?” I pushed on. He didn’t answer. I wanted to go flat on my back, but that would have made me too vulnerable. “This is a pretty nice place. You live in a fancy hotel, bring in your own furniture, smoke big cigars, wear fancy clothes. A few months ago you were cadging nickels to make the rent in a Main Street flop. Moving up in the world, ain’t you, Rico?”
His face turned red, but it wasn’t going to be that easy to get him. He was still talking, which meant maybe that he knew something. He might be my man or one of them.
“I do some acting,” he said, leaning back and blowing a cloud in my direction.
“Pays real nice, doesn’t it? What’ve you been acting in? Oz finished shooting over a year ago, and that didn’t make you rich.”
He squirmed a little, but not much.
“I don’t have to give you a list of credits,” he said. “You got better questions?”
“You got better answers? What about the fights you had with Cash?” I stood up. I’d lost the battle to try to appear comfortable. He could have that one.
“Who says we fought?” Peese shouted. “We were pals. We didn’t fight.”
“You don’t seem all broken up over the death of your pal,” I said, hovering over him. He looked up, but he didn’t look scared, just mad.
“Who said I fought with Cash?” he insisted.
“Wherthman. Gunther Wherthman,” I said.
He laughed and pointed his cigar at me.
“What would you expect him to say? He’s trying to put the murder rap on someone else and picked me. He didn’t like Cash, and he doesn’t like me.”
It was my turn to smile.
“Why would Wherthman want to put the rap on you?” I asked innocently, just oozing with curiosity.
“Because the cops know he did it,” said Peese through his teeth.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“You told me when you were out in the fucking hall.”
I said no, and he tried again.
“I must have heard it on the radio or read it in the papers.”
I said no again.
“That’s all I’ve got to say,” Peese said, standing. “Now get out and don’t come back, and if you tell the cops anything about what I said, I’ll swear you made it up.”
I started toward the door and tried one more trick.
“Someone else saw you arguing with Cash,” I said. “Saw you Friday morning at Metro just before Cash was killed. Identified you.”
“Who?” he demanded, grabbing my sleeve. I looked down with my best serious face.
“A guy named Grundy, a photographer,” I said. “Identified you right down to your angelic voice.”
Peese exploded and stamped on the floor. He reminded me of a childhood picture of Rumpelstilskin. I thought he was going to put his foot into the ceiling of Apartment 809.
“That double-crossing bastard!” he shouted. “That muscle freak is lying.”
“Be seeing you,” I said, opening the door. He rushed at me and threw a punch at my groin as I turned to wave to him. The punch hit me in the stomach, and I tumbled back into the hall on my back. He slammed the door. There wasn’t much I could do about it. I’d come up with some information, but I’d paid for it by being laid out by a midget.
My wind came back slowly after three or four good gasps. Then I went to the door to listen. I could hear Peese asking the telephone operator for a number. I couldn’t make out the number he asked for. We both waited for what must have been a dozen rings. Peese hung up with a bang, and I pulled my ear from the door and limped to the elevator.
By the time I dropped to the sixth floor and a lady with purple hair got on with a purple dog in her arms, I knew a few things. Grundy was probably the guy who had taken the shots at me. He was the only one of the three witnesses who had heard the two midgets arguing on Friday morning. He had identified one of them as having an accent and being called Gunther. Gable’s testimony about the size of the two midgets might put a small hole in that. How many German accented midgets named Gunther could there be in L.A.? But I wasn’t sure it was enough. If Grundy and Peese were in on something together, as soon as Peese talked to Grundy, he’d be calmed down again. With his temper, though, I doubted if Peese could go through an hour with my brother without giving everything away.
All I had to do was dump the information in my brother’s lap and hope he’d pull in Grundy and Peese and put them in different rooms. I had no idea of which one of them had actually killed Cash or why, but I didn’t much care, either. Phil could worry about that.
When we got to the lobby, the purple dog snapped at me, and the purple lady gave me a dirty look. The desk clerk picked up the look, and I picked up Chandler, who was calmly leaning against a wall watching the people walk in and picking up the atmosphere.
“Get any good dialogue?” I asked.
“Fair,” he said, putting his pipe away. “What about you?”
As we headed out to the street and under the hotel canopy, I told Chandler that Peese looked like the man I wanted, and that a muscle-heavy photographer seemed to be in it with him.
“And you’re going to turn it over to the police?” he asked. “You’re not going to try to find out why Cash was murdered, or why they tried to kill you and Judy Garland?”
“They tried to kill me because I was putting the pieces together to prove Wherthman didn’t do it,” I explained. “They figured my next step was to Peese, and they were right. My curiosity ends there.”
It wasn’t exactly the truth, and something still gnawed at me. Chandler’s detectives were probably full of germs of curiosity and covered with the poison ivy of responsibility. Those diseases could get you killed in my business. It was still a mess, and I wasn’t sure Phil would or could pull it off with what I had; but short of trying to force a confession out of Grundy, I was finished. If a forty-five-pound midget could flatten me with a single punch, what would Grundy do to me? He might not be able to shoot straight, but there was nothing wrong with his hands.
I was facing out toward the street when I saw the woman. There were a lot of people walking in both directions, but she had stopped and was looking up. She had a big brown paper bag in her arms and a look on her face I’d never seen. Her hand went to her mouth and the package fell. She had just been to a Chinese carry-out place. The little white cartons exploded on the sidewalk. Shrapnels of rice and egg roll flecked the unwary. I stepped out from under the canopy and looked up. Someone seemed to be hanging out of a window in the hotel. Someone else was not helping him get back in. It was hard to look up into the sun, but the lady and I saw that much. Other people were looking up now, too.
About fifty people saw the hanging man fall. He tumbled over in five or six circles without a sound before he hit the top of a passing Sunshine Cab and bounced off onto the sidewalk about fifteen feet from me. The body almost hit the purple lady with the purple poodle. I don’t know what Chandler did, but I stepped forward a foot or two to be sure the body was Peese’s. It was, though he’d be hard to identify by anything but his size and the clothes he was wearing. His face had hit the Sunshine Cab on the way down.
I turned to Chandler, who looked grim but controlled, as if he had always expected to see something like this, and life had proved him right.
“That’s Peese,” I said, and ran back into the hotel.
People were pushing past me to get out and see what had happened. Someone asked me. I pushed and ran for the door markedSTAIRWAY. I pulled out my. 38 and started to run up the stairs two or three at a time, listening for footsteps above me. The killer might take the elevator, or he might take the stairs. I didn’t know how many stairways there were in the hotel. I doubted if he would risk attracting attention by going down the fire escape. I also gambled that he wouldn’t want to cut off his options by using the elevator.
Somewhere I guessed wrong. No one came down the stairs. By the ninth floor I was winded, but my handball hours and running kept me up, and my back didn’t scream. No one was in the hall. It would take a few minutes for someone to figure out what floor Peese had flown from. The desk clerk would identify him, and the cops would be coming. Peese’s door was open. I stepped in, not expecting to find anything or anyone; I was right. The window was open and I had no intention of looking out. I put my gun away and looked around the place quickly, not worrying about prints. I had visited the place earlier and there were witnesses to it. There was also a witness to my being on the sidewalk when Peese went flying. Chandler’s testimony would probably be good enough even for my brother, but I didn’t wait to be tied up explaining things. I hurried through the place and found a closet. It was open, and a little chair stood inside. I stood on the chair and looked where someone had apparently looked a few minutes before. Standing on the chair, I was eye level with a shelf. I turned on the closet light. The shelf was empty but the dust showed the outline of a circle the size of a big plate.
I got down trying to figure what might be shaped like that. I kept figuring as I left the apartment and headed for the elevator. When it opened, the desk clerk I had talked to in the lobby was on it. So was a uniformed cop complete with cap, dark tie, long sleeves, and a serious look on his freckled young face. They stepped off, and I stepped on.
The doors were closing when I heard the clerk say, “That’s him. The man who was with Mr. Peese.”
The young cop turned to me too late. The elevator doors closed. He had a few choices. He could run down the stairs and stand a good chance of heading me off if the elevator made any stops. He could call the lobby and have someone try to stop me. If he were really stupid, he’d wait for another elevator. I counted on him taking about fifteen seconds to make up his mind unless he was really a sharp rookie. He didn’t look all that sharp. I put my luck on the elevator instead of getting out and running down.
My luck held. No one got on the elevator, and I hit the lobby in about fifteen seconds. The lobby was almost empty, except for a few people looking out of the windows at the body. Everyone else was already outside. Chandler spotted me hurrying through the door and stepped over to me.
“I think I saw your man,” he said. He described Grundy right down to the biceps and bleached hair.
“Was he carrying anything?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Chandler. “A can, a big tin can. Looked something like a giant nickel.”
“About two feet across?” I asked, looking back over my shoulder for the cop.
“Yes,” he said. “What was it?”
“Film,” I said. “Movies. Whoever killed Peese took the film from the apartment.”
Chandler scratched his head and pushed his glasses back to keep them from falling.
“What’s on the film?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I know who to ask.”
I took his hand, shook it, and thanked him for his help. I also told him that I might be needing his help with the police. The crowd around Peese’s body had reached riot size.
“Of course,” he said. “You’re going after the killer?”
I shrugged, and he looked pleased. I was doing what private detectives are supposed to do. I was walking the mean streets. I was acting like a damn fool.