He went back to his file and fingernails. “You got told wrong, sweetie. The bank owns the place. They done foreclosed it or it’s in escrow or something. I forget the details.”
He looked up at me with the expression of a man to whom details mean nothing. I got out of the Olds and leaned against the hot door, then I moved away from that to where there was some air.
“Which bank would that be?”
“You don’t know, you don’t come from there. You don’t come from there, you don’t have any business here. Hit the trail, sweetie. Buzz off but fast.”
“I have to find Dr. Verringer.”
“The joint’s not operating, sweetie. Like it says on the sign, this is a private road. Some gopher forgot to lock the gate.”
“You the caretaker?”
“Sort of. Don’t ask any more questions, sweetie. My temper’s not reliable.”
“What do you do when you get mad—dance a tango with a ground squirrel?”
He stood up suddenly and gracefully. He smiled a minute, an empty smile. “Looks like I got to toss you back in your little old convertible,” he said.
“Later. Where would I find Dr. Verringer about now?”
He pocketed his file in his shirt and something else took its place in his right hand. A brief motion and he had a fist with shining brass knuckles on it. The skin over his cheekbones was tighter and there was a flame deep in his large smoky eyes.
He strolled towards me. I stepped back to get more room. He went on whistling but the whistle was high and shrill.
“We don’t have to fight,” I told him. “We don’t have anything to fight about. And you might split those lovely britches.”
He was as quick as a flash. He came at me with a smooth leap and his left hand snaked out very fast. I expected a jab and moved my head well enough but what he wanted was my right wrist and he got it. He had a grip too. He jerked me off balance and the hand with the brass knucks came, around in a looping bolo punch. A crack on the back of the head with those and I would be a sick man. If I pulled he would catch me on the side of the face or on the upper arm below the point of the shoulder it would have been a dead arm or a dead face; whichever it happened to be. In a spot like that there is only one thing to do.
I went with the pull. In passing I blocked his left foot from behind, grabbed his shirt and heard it tear. Some thing hit me on the back of the neck, but it wasn’t the metal. I spun to the left and he went over sideways and landed catlike and was on his feet again before I had any kind of balance. He was grinning now. He was delighted with everything. He loved his work. He came for me fast.
A strong beefy voice yelled from somewhere: “Earl! Stop that at once! At once, do you hear me?”
The gaucho boy stopped. There was a sort of sick grin on his face. He made a quick motion and the brass knucks disappeared into the wide sash around the top of his pants.
I turned and looked at a solid chunk of man in a Hawaiian shirt hurrying towards us down one of the paths waving his arms. He came up breathing a little fast
“Are you crazy, Earl?”
“Don’t ever say that, Doc,” Earl said softly. Then he smiled, turned away, and went to sit on the steps of the house. He took off the flat-crowned hat, produced a comb, and began to comb his thick dark hair with an absent expression. In a second or two he started to whistle softly.
The heavy man in the loud shirt stood and looked at me. I stood and looked at him.
“What’s going on here?” he growled. “Who are you, sir?”
“Name’s Marlowe. I was asking for Dr. Verringer. The lad you call Earl wanted to play games. I figure it’s too hot.”
“I am Dr. Verringer,” he said with dignity. He turned his head. “Go in the house, Earl. ”
Earl stood up slowly. He gave Dr. Verringer a thoughtful studying look, his large smoky eyes blank of expression. Then he went up the steps and pulled the screen door open. A cloud of flies buzzed angrily and then settled on the screen again as the door closed.
“Marlowe?” Dr. Verringer gave me his attention again, “And what can I do for you, Mr. Marlowe?”
“Earl says you are out of business here.”
“That is correct. I am just waiting for certain legal formalities before moving out. Earl and I are alone here.”
“I’m disappointed,” I said, looking disappointed. “I thought you had a man named Wade staying with you.”
He hoisted a couple of eyebrows that would have interested a Fuller Brush man. “Wade? I might possibly know somebody of that name—it’s a common enough name—but why should he be staying with me?”
“Taking the cure.”
He frowned. When a guy has eyebrows like that he can really do you a frown, “I am a medical man, sir, but no longer in practice. What sort of cure did you have in mind?”
“The guy’s a wino. He goes off his rocker from time to time and disappears. Sometimes he comes home under his own power, sometimes he gets brought home, and sometimes he takes a bit of finding.” I got a business card out and handed it to him.
He read it with no pleasure.
