swung around in his chair and picked up a couple of bank pens and threw one at the cushion.
“Look at it this way,” Breeze said. “What was the effect of that stunt? Look how Hench did it. He was drunk, but he was smart. He found that gun and showed it before Phillips was found dead. First we get the idea that a gun is under Hench’s pillow that killed a guy—been fired anyway—and then we get the stiff. We believed Hench’s story. It seemed reasonable. Why would we think any man would be such a sap as to do what Hench did? It doesn’t make any sense. So we believed somebody put the gun under Hench’s pillow and took Hench’s gun away and ditched it. And suppose Hench ditched the death gun instead of his own, would he have been any better off? Things being what they were we would be bound to suspect him. And that way he wouldn’t have started our minds thinking any particular way about him. The way he did he got us thinking he was a harmless drunk that went out and left his door open and somebody ditched a gun on him.”
He waited, with his mouth a little open and the cigar in front of it, held up by a hard freckled hand and his pale blue eyes full of dim satisfaction.
“Well,” I said, “if he was going to confess anyway, it wouldn’t have made very much difference. Will he cop a plea?”
“Sure. I think so. I figure Palermo could get him off with manslaughter. Naturally I’m not sure.”
“Why would Palermo want to get him off with anything?”
“He kind of likes Hench. And Palermo is a guy we can’t push around.”
I said: “I see.” I stood up. Spangler looked at me sideways along glistening eyes. “What about the girl?”
“Won’t say a word. She’s smart. We can’t do anything to her. Nice neat little job all around. You wouldn’t kick, would you? Whatever your business is, it’s still your business. Get me?”
“And the girl is a tall blond,” I said. “Not of the freshest but still a tall blond. Although only one. Maybe Palermo doesn’t mind.”
“Hell, I never thought of that,” Breeze said. He thought about it and shook it off. “Nothing in that, Marlowe. Not enough class.”
“Cleaned up and sober, you never can tell,” I said. “Class is a thing that has a way of dissolving rapidly in alcohol. That all you want with me?”
“Guess so.” He slanted the cigar up and aimed it at my eye. “Not that I wouldn’t like to hear your story. But I don’t figure I have an absolute right to insist on it the way things are.
“That’s white of you, Breeze,” I said. “And you too, Spangler. A lot of the good things in life to both of you.”
They watched me go out, both with their mouths a little open.
I rode down to the big marble lobby and went and got my car out of the official parking lot.
24
Mr. Pietro Palermo was sitting in a room which, except for a mahogany roll-top desk, a sacred triptych in gilt frames and a large ebony and ivory crucifixion, looked exactly like a Victorian parlor. It contained a horseshoe sofa and chairs with carved mahogany frames and antimacassars of fine lace. There was an ormolu clock on the gray green marble mantel, a grandfather clock ticking lazily in the corner, and some wax flowers under a glass dome on an oval table with a marble top and curved elegant legs. The carpet was thick and full of gentle sprays of flowers. There was even a cabinet for bric-a-brac and there was plenty of bric-a-brac in it, little cups in fine china, little figurines in glass and porcelain odds and ends of ivory and dark rosewood, painted saucers, an early American set of swan salt cellars, stuff like that.
Long lace curtains hung across the windows, but the room faced south and there was plenty of light. Across the street I could see the windows of the apartment where George Anson Phillips had been killed. The street between was sunny and silent.
The tall Italian with the dark skin and the handsome head of iron gray hair read my card and said:
“I got business in twelve minutes. What you want, Meester Marlowe?”
“I’m the man that found the dead man across the street yesterday. He was a friend of mine.”
His cold black eyes looked me over silently. “That’sa not what you tell Luke.”
“Luke?”
“He manage the joint for me.”
“I don’t talk much to strangers, Mr. Palermo.”
“That’sa good. You talk to me, huh?”
“You’re a man of standing, an important man. I can talk to you. You saw me yesterday. You described me to the police. Very accurately, they said.”
“Si. I see much,” he said without emotion.
“You saw a tall blond woman come out of there yesterday.”
He studied me. “Not yesterday. Wasa two three days ago I tell the coppers yesterday.” He snapped his long dark fingers. “The coppers, bah!”
“Did you see any strangers yesterday, Mr. Palermo?”
“Is back way in and out,” he said. “Is stair from second floor also.” He looked at his wrist watch.
“Nothing there then,” I said. “This morning you saw Hench.”
He lifted his eyes and ran them lazily over my face. “The coppers tell you that, huh?”
“They told me you got Hench to confess. They said he was a friend of yours. How good a friend they didn’t know, of course.”
