I called that. And I got him. He remembered me well enough. “You’ve been a pretty busy guy, I heard.”
“I’ve got something for you, if you want it. I don’t think you want it.”
“Yeah? Such as?”
“A photostat of a confession to two murders.”
“Where are you?”
I told him. He wanted more information. I wouldn’t give him any over the phone. He said he wasn’t on a crime beat. I said he was still a newspaperman and on the only independent paper in the city. He still wanted to argue.
“Where did you get this whatever it is? How do I know it’s worth my time?”
“The D.A.’s office has the original. They won’t release it. It breaks open a couple of things they hid behind the icebox.”
“I’ll call you. I have to check with the brass.”
We hung up. I went to the drugstore and ate a chicken salad sandwich and drank some coffee. The coffee was overstrained and the sandwich was as full of rich flavor as a piece torn off an old shirt. Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides, preferably a little wilted.
At three-thirty or so Lonnie Morgan came in to see me. He was the same long thin wiry piece of tired and expressionless humanity as he had been the night he drove me home from the jailhouse. He shook hands listlessly and rooted in a crumpled pack of cigarettes.
“Mr. Sherman—that’s the M.E.—said I could look you up and see what you have.”
“It’s off the record unless you agree to my terms.” I unlocked the desk and handed him the photostat. He read the four pages rapidly and then again more slowly. He looked very excited—about as excited as a mortician at a cheap funeral.
“Gimme the phone.”
I pushed it across the desk. He dialed, waited, and said:
“This is Morgan. Let me talk to Mr. Sherman.” He waited and got some other female and then got his party and asked him to ring back on another line. He hung up and sat holding the telephone in his lap with the forefinger pressing the button down. It rang again and he lifted the receiver to his ear.
“Here it is, Mr. Sherman.”
He read slowly and distinctly. At the end there was a pause. Then, “One moment, sir.” He lowered the phone and glanced across the desk. “He wants to know how you got hold of this.”
I reached across the desk and took the photostat away from him. “Tell him it’s none of his goddamn business how I got hold of it. Where is something else. The stamp on the back of the pages show that.”
“Mr. Sherman, it’s apparently an official document of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s office. I guess we could check its authenticity easy enough. Also there’s a price.”
He listened some more and then said, “Yes, sir. Right here.” He pushed the phone across the desk. “Wants to talk to you.”
It was a brusque authoritative voice., “Mr. Marlowe, what are your terms? And remember the Journal is the only paper in Los Angeles which would even consider touching this matter.”
“You didn’t do much on the Lennox case, Mr. Sherman.”
“I realize that. But at that time it was purely a question of scandal for scandal’s sake. There was no question of who was guilty. What we have now, if your document is genuine, is something quite different. What are your terms?”
“You print the confession in full in the form of a photographic reproduction. Or you don’t print it at all. ”
“It will be verified. You understand that?”
“I don’t see how, Mr. Sherman. If you ask the D.A. he will either deny it or give it to every paper in town. He’d have to. if you ask the Sheriff’s office they will put it up to the D.A.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mr. Marlowe. We have ways. How about your terms?”
“I just told you.”
“Oh. You don’t expect to be paid?”
“Not with money.”
“Well, you know your own business, I suppose. May I have Morgan again?”
I gave the phone back to Lonnie Morgan.
He spoke briefly and hung up. “He agrees,” he said. “I take that photostat and he checks it. He’ll do what you say. Reduced to half size it will take about half of page lA.”
I gave him back the photostat. He held it and pulled at the tip of his long nose. “Mind my saying I think you’re a damn fool?”
“I agree with you.”
“You can still change your mind.”
“Nope. Remember that night you drove me home from the City Bastille? You said I had a friend to say goodbye to. I’ve never really said goodbye to him. If you publish this photostat, that will be it. It’s been a long time—a long,
