Breeze said: “The usual thing in our business. Murder. Have a chair. Relax. I thought I heard voices in here. Maybe it was the next apartment.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“You always have a gun lying around on your desk?”
“Except when it’s under my pillow,” I said. “Or under my arm. Or in the drawer of the desk. Or somewhere I can’t just remember where I happened to put it. That help you any?”
“We didn’t come here to get tough, Marlowe.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “So you prowl my apartment and handle my property without asking my permission. What do you do when you get tough—knock me down and kick me in the face?”
“Aw hell,” he said and grinned. I grinned back. We all grinned. Then Breeze said: “Use your phone?”
I pointed to it. He dialed a number and talked to someone named Morrison, saying: “Breeze at—” He looked down at the base of the phone and read the number off—”Anytime now. Marlowe is the name that goes with it. Sure. Five or ten minutes is okay.”
He hung up and went back to the davenport. “I bet you can’t guess why we’re here.”
“I’m always expecting the brothers to drop in,” I said.
“Murder ain’t funny, Marlowe.”
“Who said it was?”
“Don’t you kind of act as if it was?”
“I wasn’t aware of it.”
He looked at Spangler and shrugged. Then he looked at the floor. Then he lifted his eyes slowly, as if they were heavy, and looked at me again. I was sitting down by the chess table now.
“You play a lot of chess?” he asked, looking at the chessmen.
“Not a lot. Once in a while I fool around with a game here, thinking things out.”
“Don’t it take two guys to play chess?”
“I play over tournament games that have been recorded and published. There’s a whole literature about chess. Once in a while I work out problems. They’re not chess, properly speaking. What are we talking about chess for? Drink?”
“Not right now,” Breeze said. “I talked to Randall about you. He remembers you very well, in connection with a case down at the beach.” He moved his feet on the carpet, as if they were very tired. His solid old face was lined and gray with fatigue. “He said you wouldn’t murder anybody. He says you are a nice guy, on the level.”
“That was friendly of him,” I said.
“He says you make good coffee and you get up kind of late in the mornings and are apt to run to a very bright line of chatter and that we should believe anything you say, provided we can check it by five independent witnesses.”
“To hell with him,” I said.
Breeze nodded exactly as though I had said just what he wanted me to say. He wasn’t smiling and he wasn’t tough, just a big solid man working at his job. Spangler had his head back on the chair and his eyes half closed and was watching the smoke from his cigarette.
“Randall says we should look out for you. He says you are not as smart as you think you are, but that you are a guy things happen to, and a guy like that could be a lot more trouble than a very smart guy. That’s what he says, you understand. You look all right to me. I like everything in the clear. That’s why I’m telling you.”
I said it was nice of him.
The phone rang. I looked at Breeze, but he didn’t move, so I reached for it and answered it. It was a girl’s voice. I thought it was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“Is this Mr. Philip Marlowe?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Marlowe. I’m in trouble, very great trouble. I want to see you very badly. When can I see you?”
I said: “You mean tonight? Who am I talking to?”
“My name is Gladys Crane. I live at the Hotel Normandy on Rampart. When can you—”
“You mean you want me to come over there tonight?” I asked, thinking about the voice, trying to place it.
“I—” The phone clicked and the line was dead. I sat there holding it, frowning at it, looking across it at Breeze. His face was quietly empty of interest.
“Some girl says she’s in trouble,” I said. “Connection broken.” I held the plunger down on the base of the phone waiting for it to ring again. The two cops were completely silent and motionless. Too silent, too motionless.
The bell rang again and I let the plunger up and said: “You want to talk to Breeze, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” It was a man’s voice and it sounded a little surprised.
“Go on, be tricky,” I said, and got up from the chair and went out to the kitchen. I heard Breeze talking very briefly then the sound of the phone being returned to the cradle.
I got a bottle of Four Roses out of the kitchen closet and three glasses. I got ice and ginger ale from the icebox and mixed three highballs and carried them in on a tray and sat the tray down on the cocktail table in front of the
