about is the circus they can make of the trial. The murder of Mr. Harlan Potter’s daughter is headline material all over the country. A crowd-pleaser like Springer could ride himself right into Attorney General on that show, and from there into the governor’s chair and from there—”I stopped talking and let the rest of it float in the air.
Endicott smiled a slow derisive smile. “I don’t think you know very much about Mr. Harlan Potter,” he said.
“And if they don’t get Lennox, they won’t want to know how he got away, Mr. Endicott. They’ll just want to forget the whole thing fast.”
“Got it all figured out, haven’t you, Marlowe?”
“I’ve had the time. All I know about Mr. Harlan Potter is that he is supposed to be worth a hundred million bucks, and that he owns nine or ten newspapers. How’s the publicity going?”
“The publicity?” His voice was ice cold saying it.
“Yeah. Nobody’s interviewed me from the press. I expected to make a big noise in the papers out of this. Get lots of business. Private eye goes to jail rather than split on a pal. ”
He walked to the door and turned with his hand on the knob. “You amuse me, Marlowe. You’re childish in some ways, True, a hundred million dollars can buy a great deal of publicity. It can also, my friend, if shrewdly employed, buy a great deal of silence.”
He opened the door and went out. Then a deputy came in and took me back to Cell No. 3 in the felony block.
“Guess you won’t be with us long, if you’ve got Endicott,” he said pleasantly as he locked me in. I said I hoped he was right.
9
The deputy on the early night shift was a big blond guy with meaty shoulders and a friendly grin. He was middle-aged and had long since outlived both pity and anger. He wanted to put in eight easy hours and he looked as if almost anything would he easy down his street. He unlocked my door.
“Company for you. Guy from the D.A.’s office. No sleep, huh?”
“It’s a little early for me. What time is it?”
“Ten-fourteen.” He stood in the doorway and looked over the cell. One blanket was spread on the lower bunk, one was folded for a pillow. There were a couple of used paper towels in the trash bucket and a small wad of toilet paper on the edge of the washbasin. He nodded approval. “Anything personal in here?”
“Just me.”
He left the cell door open. We walked along a quiet corridor to the elevator and rode down to the booking desk. A fat man in a gray suit stood by the desk smoking a corncob. His fingernails were dirty and he smelled.
“I’m Spranklin from the D.A.’s office,” he told me in a tough voice. “Mr. Grenz wants you upstairs.” He reached behind his hip and came up with a pair of bracelets. “Let’s try these for size.”
The jail deputy and the booking clerk grinned at him with deep enjoyment. “What’s the matter, Sprank? Afraid he’ll mug you in the elevator?”
“I don’t want no trouble,” he growled. “Had a guy break from me once. They ate my ass off. Let’s go, boy.”
The booking clerk pushed a form at him and he signed it with a flourish. “I never take no unnecessary chances,” he said. “Man never knows what he’s up against in this town.”
A prowl car cop brought in a drunk with a bloody ear and went towards the elevator. “You’re in trouble, boy,” Spranklin told me in the elevator. “Heap bad trouble.” It seemed to give him a vague satisfaction. “A guy can get hisself in a lot of trouble in this town.”
The elevator man turned his head and winked at me. I grinned.
“Don’t try no thing, boy,” Spranklin told me severely. “I shot a man once. Tried to break. They ate my ass off.”
“You get it coming and going, don’t you?”
He thought it over. “Yeah,” he said. “Either way they eat your ass off. It’s a tough town. No respect.”
We got out and went in through the double doors of the D.A.’s office. The switchboard was dead, with lines plugged in for the night. There was nobody in the waiting chairs. Lights were on in a couple of offices. Spranklin opened the door of a small lighted room which contained a desk, a filing case, a hard chair or two, and a thick-set man with a hard chin and stupid eyes. His face was red and he was just pushing something into the drawer of his desk.
“You could knock,” he barked at Spranklin.
“Sorry, Mr. Grenz,” Spranklin bumbled. “I was thinkin’ about the prisoner.”
He pushed me into the office. “Should I take the cuffs off, Mr. Grenz?”
“I don’t know what the hell you put them on for,” Grenz said sourly. He watched Spranklin unlock the cuffs on my wrist. He had the key on a bunch the size of a grapefruit and it troubled him to find it.
“Okay, scram,” Grenz said. “Wait outside to take him back.”
“I’m kind of off duty, Mr. Grenz.”
“You’re off duty when I say you’re off duty.”
Spranklin flushed and edged his fat bottom out through the door. Grenz looked after him savagely, then when the door closed he moved the same look to me. I pulled a chair over and sat down.
“I didn’t tell you to sit down,” Grenz barked.
