“That’s happened to me,” I said, and it was my voice, but somebody had been using my tongue for sandpaper.
“I called the police and told them I had heard shots,” she said. “They came and one of them got into the house through a window. And then he let the other one in. And after a while they let me in. And then they wouldn’t let me go. I had to tell them all about it, who he was, and that I had lied about the shots, but I was afraid something had happened to Orrin. And I had to tell them about you too.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’d have told them myself as soon as I could get a chance to tell you.”
“It’s kind of awkward for you, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Will they arrest you or something?”
“They could.”
“You left him lying there on the floor. Dead. You had to, I guess.”
“I had my reasons,” I said. “They won’t sound too good, but I had them. It made no difference to him.”
“Oh you’d have your reasons all right,” she said. “You’re very smart. You’d always have reasons for things. Well, I guess you’ll have to tell the police your reasons too.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Oh yes, you will,” the voice said, and there was a ring of pleasure in it I couldn’t account for. “You certainly will. They’ll make you.”
“We won’t argue about that,” I said. “In my business a fellow does what he can to protect a client. Sometimes he goes a little too far. That’s what I did. I’ve put myself where they can hurt me. But not entirely for you.”
“You left him lying on the floor, dead,” she said. “And I don’t care what they do to you. If they put you in prison, I think I would like that. I bet you’ll be awfully brave about it.”
“Sure,” I said. “Always a gay smile. Do you see what he had in his hand?”
“He didn’t have anything in his hand.”
“Well, lying near his hand.”
“There wasn’t anything. There wasn’t anything at all. What sort of thing?”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’m glad of that. Well, goodbye. I’m going down to headquarters now. They want to see me. Good luck, if I don’t see you again.”
“You’d better keep your good luck,” she said. “You might need it. And I wouldn’t want it.”
“I did my best for you,” I said. “Perhaps if you’d given me a little more information in the beginning—”
She hung up while I was saying it.
I put the phone down in its cradle as gently as if it was a baby. I got out a handkerchief and wiped the palms of my hands. I went over to the washbasin and washed my hands and face. I sloshed cold water on my face and dried off hard with the towel and looked at it in the mirror.
“You drove off a cliff all right,” I said to the face.
24
The center of the room was a long yellow oak table. Its edges were unevenly grooved with cigarette burns. Behind it was a window with wire over the stippled glass. Also behind it with a mess of papers spread out untidily in front of him was Detective-Lieutenant Fred Beifus. At the end of the table leaning back on two legs of an armchair was a big burly man whose face had for me the vague familiarity of a face previously seen in a halftone on newsprint. He had a jaw like a park bench. He had the butt end of a carpenter’s pencil between his teeth. He seemed to be awake and breathing, but apart from that he just sat.
There were two roll top desks at the other side of the table and there was another window. One of the roll top desks was backed to the window. A woman with orange-colored hair was typing out a report on a typewriter stand beside the desk. At the other desk, which was endways to the window, Christy French sat in a tilted-back swivel chair with his feet on the corner of the desk. He was looking out of the window, which was open and afforded a magnificent view of the police parking lot and the back of a billboard.
“Sit down there,” Beifus said, pointing.
I sat down across from him in a straight oak chair without arms. It was far from new and when new had not been beautiful.
“This is Lieutenant Moses Maglashan of the Bay City police,” Beifus said. “He don’t like you any better than we do.”
Lieutenant Moses Maglashan took the carpenter’s pencil out of his mouth and looked at the teeth marks in the fat octagonal pencil butt. Then he looked at me. His eyes went over me slowly exploring me, noting me, cataloging me. He said nothing. He put the pencil back in his mouth.
Beifus said: “Maybe I’m a queer, but for me you don’t have no more sex appeal than a turtle.” He half turned to the typing woman in the corner. “Millie.”
She swung around from the typewriter to a shorthand notebook. “Name’s Philip Marlowe,” Beifus said. “With an ‘e’ on the end, if you’re fussy. License number?”
He looked back at me. I told him. The orange queen wrote without looking up. To say she had a face that would have stopped a clock would have been to insult her. It would have stopped a runaway horse.
“Now if you’re in the mood,” Beifus told me, “you could start in at the beginning and give us all the stuff you left out yesterday. Don’t try to sort it out. Just let it flow natural. We got enough stuff to check you as you go along.”
