I turned my back on him and walked through the door into the other office. It was hard work but I made it. I sweated all the way. I went around behind the desk and stood there waiting. Mr. Toad followed me in placidly. The junky came twitching in behind him.
“You don’t have a comic book around, do you?” Toad asked. “Keeps him quiet.”
“Sit down,” I said. “I’ll look.”
He reached for the chair arms. I jerked a drawer open and got my hand around the butt of a Luger. I brought it up slowly, looking at Alfred. Alfred didn’t even look at me. He was studying the corner of the ceiling and trying to keep his mouth out of his eye.
“This is as comic as I get,” I said.
“You won’t need that,” the big man said, genially.
“That’s fine,” I said, like somebody else talking, far away behind a wall. I could just barely hear the words. “But if I do, here it is. And this one’s loaded. Want me to prove it to you?”
The big man looked as near worried as he would ever look. “I’m sorry you take it like that,” he said. “I’m so used to Alfred I hardly notice him. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I ought to do something about him.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Do it this afternoon before you come up here. It’s too late now.”
“Now wait a minute, Mr. Marlowe.” He put his hand out. I slashed at it with the Luger. He was fast, but not fast enough. I cut the back of his hand open with the sight on the gun. He grabbed at it and sucked at the cut. “Hey, please! Alfred’s my nephew. My sister’s kid. I kind of look after him. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, really.”
“Next time you come up I’ll have one for him not to hurt,” I said.
“Now don’t be like that, mister. Please don’t be like that. I’ve got quite a nice little proposition—”
“Shut up,” I said. I sat down very slowly. My face burned. I had difficulty speaking clearly at all. I felt a little drunk. I said, slowly and thickly: “A friend of mine told me about a fellow that had something like this pulled on him. He was at a desk the way I am. He had a gun, just the way I have. There were two men on the other side of the desk, like you and Alfred. The man on my side began to get mad. He couldn’t help himself. He began to shake. He couldn’t speak a word. He just had this gun in his hand. So without a word he shot twice under the desk, right where your belly is.”
The big man turned a sallow green color and started to get up. But he changed his mind. He got a violent- looking handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face. “You seen that in a picture,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said. “But the man who made the picture told me where he got the idea. That wasn’t in any picture.” I put the Luger down on the desk in front of me and said in a more natural voice: “You’ve got to be careful about firearms, Mr. Toad. You never know but what it may upset a man to have an Army .45 snapped in his face— especially when he doesn’t know it’s not loaded. It made me kind of nervous for a minute. I haven’t had a shot of morphine since lunch time.”
Toad studied me carefully with narrow eyes. The junky got up and went to another chair and kicked it around and sat down and tilted his greasy head against the wall. But his nose and hands kept on twitching.
“I heard you were kind of hard-boiled,” Toad said slowly, his eyes cool and watchful.
“You heard wrong. I’m a very sensitive guy. I go all to pieces over nothing.”
“Yeah. I understand.” He stared at me a long time without speaking. “Maybe we played this wrong. Mind if I put my hand in my pocket? I don’t wear a gun.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “It would give me the greatest possible pleasure to see you try to pull a gun.”
He frowned, then very slowly got out a flat pigskin wallet and drew out a crisp new one-hundred-dollar bill. He laid it on the edge of the glass top, drew out another just like it, then one by one three more. He laid them carefully in a row along the desk, end to end. Alfred let his chair settle to the floor and stared at the money with his mouth quivering.
“Five C’s,” the big man said. He folded his wallet and put it away. I watched every movement he made. “For nothing at all but keeping the nose clean. Check?”
I just looked at him.
“You ain’t looking for nobody,” the big man said. “You couldn’t find nobody. You don’t have time to work for nobody. You didn’t hear a thing or see a thing. You’re clean. Five C’s clean. Okay?”
There was no sound in the office but Alfred’s sniffling. The big man half turned his head. “Quiet, Alfred. I’ll give you a shot when we leave,” the big man told him. “Try to act nice.” He sucked again at the cut on the back of his hand.
“With you for a model that ought to be easy,” I said.
“Screw you,” Alfred said.
“Limited vocabulary,” the big man told me. “Very limited. Get the idea, chum?” He indicated the money. I fingered the butt of the Luger. He leaned forward a little. “Relax, can’t you. It’s simple. This is a retainer. You don’t do a thing for it. Nothing is what you do. If you keep on doing nothing for a reasonable length of time you get the same amount later on. That’s simple, isn’t it?”
“And who am I doing this nothing for?” I asked.
“Me. Joseph P. Toad.”
“What’s your racket?”
“Business representative, you might call me.”
“What else could I call you? Besides what I could think up myself?”
“You could call me a guy that wants to help out a guy that don’t want to make trouble for a guy.”
