CHAPTER EIGHT
DESPITE WHAT I’D SAID to Rose Suffolk I hadn’t any ambition to get into further trouble that night. One murder and one shooting, both with me present, were enough to constitute a fair evening’s work where I come from. So I was feeling bushed when I pulled up at Parkside Towers. I looked at the gleaming structure without love. If the place didn’t slap such a high rental on me, I could be taking fewer risks in the curious calling I like to describe as my trade. Still, I reflected, that was just the bile in my system showing through. Every now and then I tell myself all this pushing around I get is solely for the benefit of the owners of the Towers. But it isn’t true. I stay there because I like the place, because it shows people how far I’ve come since the early days of a one-room flop in Crane Street. And besides, if a man has to collect a bruise now and then, he may as well nurture it in comfortable surroundings.
“Preston.”
My mental soliloquy was disturbed by a jarring rusty voice, I swivelled towards a short thick man in a panama hat. It looked ridiculous on him, but that was all about him that was at all ridiculous. He looked like a guy with no sense of humor, and he hadn’t got his hand in a right pocket because of the cold night air. He was a stranger.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“It doesn’t matter. Mr. Martello wants to see you.”
I looked at his face to see if he was kidding, knowing it to be a waste of time. This one never kidded anybody in his whole life.
“I don’t get it. Call back tomorrow,” I suggested.
“Not tomorrow. Now.”
He moved his hand significantly inside the pocket.
“Look,” I said, “Whatever it is you want, I don’t buy it. And if you think I’m going anywhere with you, you’re crazy. And you can stop pushing that thing at me. That suit cost you two hundred bucks at least. You’re not going to shoot holes through the pocket. And by the time you take the gun out, I’ll have smeared you all over the sidewalk. So it’s a stand-off. Run away.”
The slate eyes glinted, and he seemed almost amused.
“Smart, ain’t you? But Mr. Martello knows how to look after the smart ones. You better come.”
Wearily, I said:
“Look, buddy boy, don’t give me that Martello come-on. Jake is over in the General Hospital. He’s been shot and he isn’t calling for anybody. And if he wanted me, he’d know there’s no need for any muscle. So why don’t you go away before I start slapping you around?”
He nodded.
“So that’s it. A misunderstanding. We start again. I’m from the other Mr. Martello, Mr. Charlie Martello. Does it make a difference?”
“Well of course it does. You just stop waving the howitzer, and tell me where I find him.”
The change of tone made him uncertain. Reluctantly he took a thick hand from his pocket. The hand was empty.
“Gee, I don’t know,” he muttered. “Boss said you might give me an argument.’
“Bosses make mistakes,” I assured him. “Which way?”
“I’m in the blue Ford,” he pointed. “You want to follow me?”
“Why not?”
He drove slowly, uncertain at intersections, like someone who was a stranger to the city. After a few minutes he pulled in outside one of the new hotels down near the beach. I got out and walked up to him.
“After you,” I waved.
He shook his head, mumbling something under his breath. I had a feeling he was disappointed at the way I was making everything so easy for him. I guess if you’re a muscle-man and nobody will let you use your muscles, it could induce a Freudian experience.
We went up to the third floor and he took off the panama, rapping on a door. It was opened from inside and we went in. Charlie Martello was standing by the window, and as the door closed behind me I turned to see another stranger who’d forgotten how to smile. Clyde Hamilton sat easily in an armchair looking at me steadily.
“So you came.”
Charlie spoke the words half over his shoulder. The voice was almost entirely devoid of expression.
“Sure. You asked me,” I replied.
“That’s right, I asked you,” he confirmed. “Why do you suppose I did that? I mean I ain’t throwing no tea-party or nothing?”
“I imagine you want to talk about Jake.”
Now he turned, quite slowly and impressively. I could imagine there were people in San Francisco who had reason not to feel too good when Charlie Martello turned in their direction like that.
“Right again. It’s good the way you get so many things right,” he nodded. “I want to talk about Jake. I want to talk about how come you pulled Jake out of a safe place into a nice firing range and somebody put a hole in him. I want to talk about why he’s down at the hospital and you’re still walking around. As of this minute,” he added, as an afterthought.
I could have managed without the afterthought.
“There’s nothing I can tell you,” I assured him. “We stepped out there, this gun went off, a car drove away.”
“Just like that.”
He spaced the words out evenly and emphatically.
“That’s how it happened.”
He nodded and eyed me carefully from head to toe. None of the others moved.
“Now hear this,” he continued, stabbing a thick forefinger at me. “That’s my brother they got down there. I want to hear more from you, a whole lot more. And if you don’t talk pretty, we’ll see how a little shoe leather around the mouth works out.”
I didn’t like the feel of things at all. There were four of them, and big hero as I sometimes think I am, I would have about an even rating with a snowball on a hot fire.
“I don’t
