So I went to a picture show and it had to have Mavis Weld in it. One of those glass-and-chromium deals where everybody smiled too much and talked too much and knew it. The women were always going up a long curving staircase to change their clothes. The men were always taking monogrammed cigarettes out of expensive cases and snapping expensive lighters at each other. And the help was round-shouldered from carrying trays with drinks across the terrace to a swimming pool about the size of Lake Huron but a lot neater.
The leading man was an amiable ham with a lot of charm, some of it turning a little yellow at the edges. The star was a bad-tempered brunette with contemptuous eyes and a couple of bad close-ups that showed her pushing forty-five backwards almost hard enough to break a wrist. Mavis Weld played second lead and she played it with wraps on. She was good, but she could have been ten times better. But if she had been ten times better half her scenes would have been yanked out to protect the star. It was as neat a bit of tightrope walking as I ever saw. Well it wouldn’t be a tightrope she’d be walking from now on. It would be a piano wire. It would be very high. And there wouldn’t be any net under it.
14
I had a reason for going back to the office. A special delivery letter with an orange claim check ought to have arrived there by now. Most of the windows were dark in the building, but not all. People work nights in other businesses than mine. The elevator man said “Howdy” from the depths of his throat and trundled me up. The corridor had lighted open doors where the scrubwomen were still cleaning up the debris of the wasted hours. I turned a corner past the slobbery hum of a vacuum cleaner, let myself into my dark office and opened the windows. I sat there at the desk doing nothing, not even thinking. No special-delivery letter. All the noise of the building, except the vacuum cleaner, seemed to have flowed out into the street and lost itself among the turning wheels of innumerable cars. Then somewhere along the hall outside a man started whistling “Lili Marlene” with elegance and virtuosity. I knew who that was. The night man checking office doors. I switched the desk lamp on and he passed without trying mine. His steps went away, then came back with a different sound, more of a shuffle. The buzzer sounded in the other office which was still unlocked. That would be special delivery. I went out to get it, only it wasn’t.
A fat man in sky-blue pants was closing the door with that beautiful leisure only fat men ever achieve. He wasn’t alone, but I looked at him first. He was a large man and wide. Not young nor handsome, but he looked durable. Above the sky-blue gabardine slacks he wore a two-tone leisure jacket which would have been revolting on a zebra. The neck of his canary-yellow shirt was open wide, which it had to be if his neck was going to get out. He was hatless and his large head was decorated with a reasonable amount of pale salmon-colored hair. His nose had been broken but well set and it hadn’t been a collector’s item in the first place.
The creature with him was a weedy number with red eyes and sniffles. Age about twenty, five feet nine, thin as a broom straw. His nose twitched and his mouth twitched and his hands twitched and he looked very unhappy.
The big man smiled genially. “Mr. Marlowe, no doubt?”
I said: “Who else?”
“It’s a little late for a business call,” the big man said and hid half the office by spreading out his hands. “I hope you don’t mind. Or do you already have all the business you can handle?”
“Don’t kid me. My nerves are frayed,” I said. “Who’s the junky?”
“Come along, Alfred,” the big man said to his companion. “And stop acting girlish.”
“In a pig’s valise,” Alfred told him.
The big man turned to me placidly. “Why do all these punks keep saying that? It isn’t funny. It isn’t witty. It doesn’t mean anything. Quite a problem, this Alfred. I got him off the stuff, you know, temporarily at least. Say ‘how do you do’ to Mr. Marlowe, Alfred.”
“Screw him,” Alfred said.
The big man sighed. “My name’s Toad,” he said. “Joseph P. Toad.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Go ahead and laugh,” the big man said. “I’m used to it. Had the name all my life.” He came towards me with his hand out. I took it. The big man smiled pleasantly into my eyes. “O.K. Alfred,” he said without looking back.
Alfred made what seemed to be a very slight and unimportant movement at the end of which a heavy automatic was pointing at me.
“Careful, Alfred,” the big man said, holding my hand with a grip that would have bent a girder. “Not yet.”
“In a pig’s valise,” Alfred said. The gun pointed at my chest. His finger tightened around the trigger. I watched it tighten. I knew at precisely what moment that tightening would release the hammer. It didn’t seem to make any difference. This was happening somewhere else in a cheesy program picture. It wasn’t happening to me.
The hammer of the automatic clicked dryly on nothing. Alfred lowered the gun with a grunt of annoyance and it disappeared whence it had come. He started to twitch again. There was nothing nervous about his movements with the gun. I wondered just what junk he was off of.
The big man let go of my hand, the genial smile still over his large healthy face.
He patted a pocket. “I got the magazine,” he said. “Alfred ain’t reliable lately. The little bastard might have shot you.”
Alfred sat down in a chair and tilted it against the wall and breathed through his mouth.
I let my heels down on the floor again.
“I bet he scared you,” Joseph P. Toad said.
I tasted salt on my tongue.
“You ain’t so tough,” Toad said, poking me in the stomach with a fat finger.
I stepped away from the finger and watched his eyes.
“What does it cost?” he asked almost gently.
“Let’s go into my parlor,” I said.
