“You and me,” he said, “are going to get along.”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“You don’t think so,” he said. “But we are. But not because I took any sudden fancy to you. It’s the way I work. Everything in the clear. Everything sensible. Everything quiet. Not like that dame. That’s the kind of dame that spends her life looking for trouble and when she finds it, it’s the fault of the first guy she can get her fingernails into.”
“He gave her a couple of shiners,” I said. “That wouldn’t make her love him too much.”
“I can see,” Breeze said, “that you know a lot about dames.”
“Not knowing a lot about them has helped me in my business,” I said. “I’m open-minded.”
He nodded and examined the end of his cigar. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and read from it. “Delmar B. Hench, 45, bartender, unemployed. Maybelle Masters, 26, dancer. That’s all I know about them. I’ve got a hunch there ain’t a lot more to know.”
“You don’t think he shot Anson?” I asked.
Breeze looked at me without pleasure. “Brother, I just got here.” He took a card out of his pocket and read from that. “James B. Pollock, Reliance Indemnity Company, Field Agent. What’s the idea?”
“In a neighborhood like this it’s bad form to use your own name,” I said. “Anson didn’t either.”
“What’s the matter with the neighborhood?”
“Practically everything,” I said.
“What I would like to know,” Breeze said, “is what you know about the dead guy?”
“I told you already.”
“Tell me again. People tell me so much stuff I get it all mixed up.”
“I know what it says on his card, that his name is George Anson Phillips, that he claimed to be a private detective. He was outside my office when I went to lunch. He followed me downtown, into the lobby of the Hotel Metropole. I led him there. I spoke to him and he admitted he had been following me and said it was because he wanted to find out if I was smart enough to do business with. That’s a lot of baloney, of course. He probably hadn’t quite made up his mind what to do and was waiting for something to decide him. He was on a job—he said—he had got leery of and he wanted to join up with somebody, perhaps somebody with a little more experience than he had, if he had any at all. He didn’t act as if he had.”
Breeze said: “And the only reason he picked on you is that six years ago you worked on a case in Ventura while he was a deputy up there.”
I said, “That’s my story.”
“But you don’t have to get stuck with it,” Breeze said calmly. “You can always give us a better one.”
“It’s good enough,” I said. “I mean it’s good enough in the sense that it’s bad enough to be true.”
He nodded his big slow head.
“What’s your idea of all this?” he asked.
“Have you investigated Phillips’ office address?”
He shook his head, no.
“My idea is you will find out he was hired because he was simple. He was hired to take this apartment here under a wrong name, and to do something that turned out to be not what he liked. He was scared. He wanted a friend, he wanted help. The fact that he picked me after so long a time and such little knowledge of me showed he didn’t know many people in the detective business.”
Breeze got his handkerchief out and mopped his head and face again. “But it don’t begin to show why he had to follow you around like a lost pup instead of walking right up to your office door and in.”
“No,” I said, “it doesn’t.”
“Can you explain that?”
“No. Not really.”
“Well, how would you try to explain it?”
“I’ve already explained it in the only way I know how. He was undecided whether to speak to me or not. He was waiting for something to decide him. I decided by speaking to him.”
Breeze said: “That is a very simple explanation. It is so simple it stinks.”
“You may be right,” I said.
“And as the result of this little hotel lobby conversation this guy, a total stranger to you, asks you to his apartment and hands you his key. Because he wants to talk to you.”
I said, “Yes.”
“Why couldn’t he talk to you then?”
“I had an appointment,” I said.
“Business?”
I nodded.
“I see. What you working on?”
