“Thanks,” I said, and gave him the dollar. The subject’s baggage was still on the train, which was all I wanted to know.
I went back to the coffee shop and looked in through the glass wall.
Subject was reading her magazine and toying with coffee and a snail. I moved over to a phone booth and called a garage I knew well and asked them to send somebody for my car if I didn’t call again by noon. They’d done this often enough to have a spare key on hand. I went out to the car and got my overnight bag out of it and into a two- bit locker. In the enormous waiting room, I bought a round trip to San Diego and trotted back to the coffee shop once again.
Subject was in place, but no longer alone. A guy was across the table from her smiling and talking, and one look was enough to show that she knew him and regretted it. He was California from the tips of his port wine loafers to the buttoned and tieless brown and yellow checked shirt inside his rough cream sports jacket. He was about six feet one, slender, with a thin conceited face and too many teeth. He was twisting a piece of paper in his hand.
The yellow handkerchief in his outside breast pocket sprayed out like a small bunch of daffodils. And one thing was as clear as distilled water. The girl didn’t want him there.
He went on talking and twitching the paper. Finally he shrugged and got up from his chair. He reached over and ran a fingertip down her cheek. She jerked back. Then he opened the twisted paper and laid it carefully down in front of her. He waited, smiling.
Her eyes went down to it very, very slowly. Her eyes held on it. Her hand moved to take it, but his was quicker. He put it away in his pocket, still smiling. Then he took out one of those pocket notebooks with perforated pages, and wrote something with a clip pen and tore the sheet out and put that down in front of her. That she could have. She took it, read it, put it in her purse. At last she looked at him. And at last she smiled at him. My guess was that it took quite an effort. He reached across to pat her hand, then walked away from the table and out.
He shut himself in a phone booth, dialed, and talked for quite a while. He came out, found himself a redcap and went with the redcap to a locker. Out came a light oyster-white suitcase and a matching overnight case. The redcap carried them through the doors to the parking lot and followed him to a sleek two-toned Buick Roadmaster, the solid top convertible type that isn’t convertible. The redcap put the stuff in behind the tipped seat, took his money, went away. The guy in the sports coat and yellow handkerchief got in and backed his car out and then stopped long enough to put on dark glasses and light a cigarette. After that he was gone. I wrote down the license number and went back into the station.
The next hour was three hours long. The girl left the coffee shop and read her magazine in the waiting room. Her mind wasn’t on it. She kept turning back to see what she had read. Part of the time she didn’t read at all, just held the magazine and looked at nothing. I had an early morning edition of the evening paper and behind it I watched her and added up what I had in my head. None of it was solid fact. It just helped to pass the time.
The guy who had sat at the table with her had come off the train, since he had baggage. It could have been her train and he could have been the passenger that got off her car. Her attitude made it pretty clear that she didn’t want him around, and his that that was too bad but if she would glance at his piece of paper she would change her mind. And apparently she did. Since this happened after they got off the train when it could have happened more quietly before, then it followed that he didn’t have his piece of paper on the train.
At this point the girl got up abruptly and went to the newsstand and came back with a pack of cigarettes. She tore it open and lit one. She smoked awkwardly as if she wasn’t used to it, and while she smoked her attitude seemed to change, to become more flashy and hard, as if she was deliberately vulgarizing herself for some purpose. I looked at the wall clock: 10:47. I went on with my thinking.
The twist of paper had looked like a newspaper clipping. She had tried to grab it, he hadn’t let her. Then he had written some words on a piece of blank paper and given them to her and she had looked at him and smiled. Conclusion: the dreamboat had something on her and she had to pretend to like it.
Next point was that earlier on he had left the station and gone somewhere, perhaps to get his car, perhaps to get the clipping, perhaps anything you like. That meant he wasn’t afraid that she would run out on him, and that reinforced the idea that he hadn’t at that time disclosed everything he was holding up his sleeve but had disclosed some of it. Could be he wasn’t sure himself. Had to check. But now having shown her his hole card he had gone off in a Buick with his baggage. Therefore he was no longer afraid of losing her. Whatever held them together was strong enough to keep on holding them.
At 11.05 I tossed all this out of the window and started with a fresh premise. I got nowhere. At 11:10 the public address system said Number Seventy-Four on Track Eleven was now ready to receive passengers for Santa Ana, Oceanside, Del Mar and San Diego. A bunch of people left the waiting room, including the girl. Another bunch was already going through the gate. I watched her through and went back to the phone booths. I dropped my dime and dialed the number of Clyde Umney’s office.
Miss Vermilyea answered by giving the phone number only.
“This is Marlowe. Mr. Umney in?”
Her voice was formal saying: “I’m sorry, Mr. Umney is in court. May I take a message?”
“Am in contact and leaving by train for San Diego, or some intermediate stop. Can’t tell which yet.”
“Thank you. Anything else?”
“Yeah, the sun’s shining and our friend is no more on the lam than you are. She ate breakfast In the coffee shop which has a glass wall towards the concourse. She sat in the waiting room with a hundred and fifty other people. And she could have stayed on the train out of sight.”
“I have all that, thank you. I’ll get it to Mr. Umney as soon as possible. You have no firm opinion then?”
“I have one firm opinion. That you’re holding out on me.”
Her voice changed abruptly. Somebody must have left the office. “Listen, chum, you were hired to do a job. Better do it and do it right. Clyde Umney draws a lot of water in this town.”
“Who wants water, beautiful? I take mine straight with a beer chaser. I might make sweeter music if I was encouraged.”
“You’ll get paid, shamus—if you do a job. Not otherwise. Is that clear?”
“That’s the nicest thing you ever said to me, sweetheart. Goodbye now.”
