who he is.”
The pug slipped a hand into my breast pocket and drew out my wallet. He flipped it open and studied the contents. “Name’s Philip Marlowe, Eddie. Lives at the Hobart Arms on Franklin. Private license, deputy’s badge and all. A shamus.” He slipped the wallet back in my pocket, slapped my face lightly and turned away.
“Beat it,” Eddie Mars said.
The two gunmen went out again and closed the door. There was the sound of them getting back into the car. They started its motor and kept it idling once more.
“All right. Talk,” Eddie Mars snapped. The peaks of his eyebrows made sharp angles against his forehead.
“I’m not ready to give out. Killing Geiger to grab his racket would be a dumb trick and I’m not sure it happened that way, assuming he has been killed. But I’m sure that whoever got the books knows what’s what, and I’m sure that the blonde lady down at his store is scared batty about something or other. And I have a guess who got the books.”
“Who?”
“That’s the part I’m not ready to give out. I’ve got a client, you know.”
He wrinkled his nose. “That—” he chopped it off quickly.
“I expected you would know the girl,” I said.
“Who got the books, soldier?”
“Not ready to talk, Eddie. Why should I?”
He put the Luger down on the desk and slapped it with his open palm. “This,” he said. “And I might make it worth your while.”
“That’s the spirit. Leave the gun out of it. I can always hear the sound of money. How much are you clinking at me?”
“For doing what?”
“What did you want done?”
He slammed the desk hard. “Listen, soldier. I ask you a question and you ask me another. We’re not getting anywhere. I want to know where Geiger is, for my own personal reasons. I didn’t like his racket and I didn’t protect him. I happen to own this house. I’m not so crazy about that right now. I can believe that whatever you know about all this is under glass, or there would be a flock of johns squeaking sole leather around this dump. You haven’t got anything to sell. My guess is you need a little protection yourself. So cough up.”
It was a good guess, but I wasn’t going to let him know it. I lit a cigarette and blew the match out and flicked it at the glass eye of the totem pole. “You’re right,” I said. “If anything has happened to Geiger, I’ll have to give what I have to the law. Which puts it in the public domain and doesn’t leave me anything to sell. So with your permission I’ll just drift.”
His face whitened under the tan. He looked mean, fast and tough for a moment. He made a movement to lift the gun. I added casually: “By the way, how is Mrs. Mars these days?”
I thought for a moment I had kidded him a little too far. His hand jerked at the gun, shaking. His face was stretched out by hard muscles. “Beat it,” he said quite softly. “I don’t give a damn where you go or what you do when you get there. Only take a word of advice, soldier. Leave me out of your plans or you’ll wish your name was Murphy and you lived in Limerick.”
“Well, that’s not so far from Clonmel,” I said. “I hear you had a pal came from there.”
He leaned down on the desk, frozen-eyed, unmoving. I went over to the door and opened it and looked back at him. His eyes had followed me, but his lean gray body had not moved. There was hate in his eyes. I went out and through the hedge and up the hill to my car and got into it. I turned it around and drove up over the crest. Nobody shot at me. After a few blocks I turned off, cut the motor and sat for a few moments. Nobody followed me either. I drove back into Hollywood.
FOURTEEN
It was ten minutes to five when I parked near the lobby entrance of the apartment house on Randall Place. A few windows were lit and radios were bleating at the dusk. I rode the automatic elevator up to the fourth floor and went along a wide hall carpeted in green and paneled in ivory. A