He held a cigarette between the strong, precise fingers of one hand. He put the other hand flat on the white tablecloth, and said:
“The letters will cost you ten grand, Miss Farr. That’s not too much.”
He looked at the girl opposite him very briefly; then he looked across empty tables towards the heart-shaped space of floor where the dancers prowled under shifting colored lights.
They crowded the customers around the dance-floor so closely that the perspiring waiters had to balance themselves like tightrope walkers to get between the tables. But near where Mallory sat were only four people.
A slim, dark woman was drinking a highball across the table from a man whose fat red neck glistened with damp bristles. The woman stared into her glass morosely, and fiddled with a big silver flask in her lap. Farther along two bored, frowning men smoked long thin cigars, without speaking to each other.
Mallory said thoughtfully: “Ten grand does it nicely, Miss Farr.”
Rhonda Farr was very beautiful. She was wearing, for this occasion, all black, except a collar of white fur, light as thistledown, on her evening wrap. Except also a white wig which, meant to disguise her, made her look very girlish. Her eyes were cornflower blue, and she had the sort of skin an old rake dreams of.
She said nastily, without raising her head: “That’s ridiculous.”
“Why is it ridiculous?” Mallory asked, looking mildly surprised and rather annoyed.
Rhonda Farr lifted her face and gave him a look as hard as marble. Then she picked a cigarette out of a silver case that lay open on the table, and fitted it into a long slim holder, also black. She went on:
“The love letters of a screen star? Not so much anymore. The public has stopped being a sweet old lady in long lace panties.”
A light danced contemptuously in her purplish-blue eyes. Mallory gave her a hard look.
“But you came here to talk about them quick enough,” he said, “with a man you never heard of.”
She waved the cigarette holder, and said:” I must have been nuts.”
Mallory smiled with his eyes, without moving his lips. “No, Miss Farr. You had a damn good reason. Want me to tell you what it is?”
Rhonda Farr looked at him angrily. Then she looked away, almost appeared to forget him. She held up her hand, the one with the cigarette holder, looked at it, posing. It was a beautiful hand, without a ring. Beautiful hands are as rare as jacaranda-trees in bloom, in a city where pretty faces are as common as runs in dollar stockings.
She turned her head and glanced at the stiff eyed woman, beyond her towards the mob around the dance-floor. The orchestra went on being saccharine and monotonous.
“I loathe these dives,” she said thinly. “They look as if they only existed after dark, like ghouls. The people are dissipated without grace, sinful without irony.” She lowered her hand to the white cloth.” Oh yes, the letters, what makes them so dangerous, blackmailer?”
Mallory laughed. He had a ringing laugh with a hard quality in it, a grating sound. “You’re good,” he said. “The letters are not so much perhaps. Just sexy tripe. The memoirs of a schoolgirl who’s been seduced and can’t stop talking about it.”
“That’s lousy,” Rhonda Farr said in a voice like iced velvet.
“It’s the man they’re written to that makes them important,” Mallory said coldly. “A racketeer, a gambler, a fast-money boy. And all that goes with it. A guy you couldn’t be seen talking to—and stay in the cream.”
“I don’t talk to him, blackmailer. I haven’t talked to him in years. Landrey was a pretty nice boy when I knew him. Most of us have something behind us we’d rather not go into. In my case it is behind.”
“Oh yes? Make mine strawberry,” Mallory said with a sudden sneer. “You just got through asking him to help you get your letters back.”
Her head jerked. Her face seemed to come apart, to become merely a set of features without control. Her eyes looked like the prelude to a scream but only for a second.
Almost instantly she got her self-control back. Her eyes were drained of color, almost as gray as his own. She put the black cigarette holder down with exaggerated care, laced her fingers together. The knuckles looked white.
“You know Landrey that well?” she said bitterly.
“Maybe I just get around, find things out…Do we deal, or do we just go on snarling at each other?”
“Where did you get the letters?” Her voice was still rough and bitter.
Mallory shrugged. “We don’t tell things like that in our business.”
“I had a reason for asking. Some other people have been trying to sell me these same damned letters. That’s why I’m here. It made me curious. But I guess you’re just one of them trying to scare me into action by stepping the price.”
Mallory said: “No; I’m on my own.”
She nodded. Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “That makes it nice. Perhaps some bright mind thought of having a private edition of my letters made. Photostats…Well, I’m not paying. It wouldn’t get me anywhere. I don’t deal, blackmailer. So far as I’m concerned you can go out some dark night and jump off the dock with your lousy letters!”
Mallory wrinkled his nose, squinted down it with an air of deep concentration. “Nicely put, Miss Farr. But it doesn’t get us anywhere.”
She said deliberately: “It wasn’t meant to. I could put it better. And if I’d thought to bring my little pearl-handled gun I could say it with slugs and get away with it! But I’m not looking for that kind of publicity.”
Mallory held up two lean fingers and examined them critically. He looked amused, almost pleased. Rhonda Farr put her slim hand up to her white wig, held it there a moment, and dropped it.
A man sitting at a table some way off got up at once and came towards them.
He came quickly, walking with a light, lithe step and swinging a soft black hat against his thigh. He was sleek in dinner clothes.
While he was coming Rhonda Farr said: “You didn’t expect me to walk in here alone, did you? Me, I don’t go to night-clubs alone.”
Mallory grinned. “You shouldn’t ought to have to, baby,” he said dryly.
The man came up to the table. He was small, neatly put together, dark. He had a little black mustache, shiny like satin, and the clear pallor that Latins prize above rubies.
With a smooth gesture, a hint of drama, he leaned across the table and took one of Mallory’s cigarettes out of the silver case. He lit it with a flourish.
Rhonda Farr put her hand to her lips and yawned. She said, “This is Erno, my bodyguard. He takes care of me. Nice, isn’t it?”
She stood up slowly. Erno helped her with her wrap. Then he spread his lips in a mirthless smile, looked at Mallory, said:
“Hello, baby.”
He had dark, almost opaque eyes with hot lights in them.
Rhonda Farr gathered her wrap about her, nodded slightly, sketched a brief sarcastic smile with her delicate lips, and turned off along the aisle between the tables. She went with her head up and proud, her face a little tense and wary, like a queen in jeopardy. Not fearless, but disdaining to show fear. It was nicely done.
The two bored men gave her an interested eye. The dark woman brooded glumly over the task of mixing herself a highball that would have floored a horse. The man with the fat sweaty neck seemed to have gone to sleep.
Rhonda Farr went up the five crimson-carpeted steps to the lobby, past a bowing head waiter. She went through looped-back gold curtains, and disappeared.
Mallory watched her out of sight, then he looked at Erno. He said: “Well, punk, what’s on your mind?”
He said it insultingly, with a cold smile. Erno stiffened. His gloved left hand jerked the cigarette that was in it so that some ash fell off.
“Kiddin’ yourself, baby?” he inquired swiftly.
“About what, punk?”
Red spots came into Erno’s pale cheeks. His eyes narrowed to black slits. He moved his u
ngloved right hand a little, curled the fingers so that the small pink nails glittered. He said thinly:
“About some letters, baby. Forget it! It’s out, baby, out!”
Mallory looked at him with elaborate, cynical interest, ran his fingers through his crisp black hair. He said slowly:
“Perhaps I don’t know what you mean, little one.”
Erno laughed. A metallic sound, a strained deadly sound. Mallory knew that kind of laugh; the prelude to gun-music in some places. He watched Erno’s quick little right hand. He spoke raspingly.
“On your way, red hot. I might take a notion to slap that fuzz off your lip.”
Erno’s face twisted. The red patches showed startlingly in his cheeks. He lifted the hand that held his cigarette, lifted it slowly, and snapped the burning cigarette straight at Mallory’s face. Mallory moved his head a little, and the white tube arched over his shoulder.
There was no expression on his lean, cold face. Distantly, dimly, as though another voice spoke, he said:
“Careful, punk. People get hurt for things like that.”
Erno laughed the same metallic, strained laugh. “Blackmailers don’t shoot, baby,” he snarled. “Do they?”
“Beat it, you dirty little wop!”
The words, the cold sneering tone, stung Erno to fury. His right hand shot up like a striking snake. A gun whisked into it from a shoulder-holster. Then he stood motionless, glaring. Mallory bent forward a little, his hands on the edge of the table, his fingers curled below the edge. The corners of his mouth sketched a dim smile.
There was a dull screech, not loud, from the dark woman. The color drained from Erno’s cheeks, leaving them pallid, sunk in. In a voice that whistled with fury he said:
“Okay, baby. We’ll go outside. March, you—!”
One of the bored men three tables away made a sudden movement of no significance. Slight as it was it caught Erno’s eye. His glance flickered. Then the table rose into his stomach, knocked him sprawling.
It was a light table, and Mallory was not a lightweight. There was a complicated thudding sound. A few dishes clattered, some silver. Erno was spread on the floor with the table across his thighs. His gun settled a foot from his clawing hand. His face was convulsed.
For a poised instant of time it was as though the scene were imprisoned in glass, and would never change. Then the dark woman screeched again, louder. Everything became a swirl of movement. People on all sides came to their feet. Two waiters put their arms straight up in the air and began to spout violent Neapolitan. A moist, overdriven bus-boy charged up, more afraid of the head waiter than of sudden death. A plump, reddish man with corn-colored hair hurried down steps, waving a bunch of menus.
Erno jerked his legs clear, weaved to his knees, snatched up his gun. He swiveled, spitting curses. Mallory, alone, indifferent in the center of the babel, leaned down and cracked a hard fist against Erno’s flimsy jaw
Consciousness evaporated from Erno’s eyes. He collapsed like a half-filled sack of sand.
Mallory observed him carefully for a couple of seconds. Then he picked his cigarette case up off the floor. There were still two cigarettes in it. He put one of them between his lips, put the case away. He took some bills out of his trouser pocket, folded one lengthwise and poked it at a waiter.
He walked away without haste, towards the five crimson-carpeted steps and the entrance.
The man with the fat neck opened a cautious and fishy eye. The drunken woman staggered to her feet with a cackle of inspiration, picked up a bowl of ice cubes in her thin jeweled hands, and dumped it on Erno’s stomach, with fair accuracy.
2
Mallory came out from under the canopy with his soft hat under his arm. The doorman looked at him inquiringly. He shook his head and walked a little way down the curving pavement that bordered the semi-circular private driveway. He stood at the edge of the curbing, in the darkness, thinking hard. After a little while an Isotta-Fraschini went by him slowly.
It was an open phaeton, huge even for the calculated swank of Hollywood. It glittered like a Ziegfeld chorus as it passed the entrance lights, then it was dull gray and silver. A liveried chauffeur sat behind the wheel as stiff as a poker, with a peaked cap cocked rakishly over one eye. Rhonda Farr sat in the back seat, under the half-deck, with the rigid stillness of a wax figure.
The car slid soundlessly down the driveway, passed between a couple of squat stone pillars and was lost among the lights of the boulevard. Mallory put on his hat absently.
Something stirred in the darkness behind him, between tall Italian cypresses. He swung around, looked at faint light on a gun barrel.
The man who held the gun was very big and broad. He had a shapeless felt hat on the back of his head, and an indistinct overcoat hung away from his stomach. Dim light from a high-up, narrow window outlined bushy eyebrows, a hooked nose. There was another man behind him.
He said: “This is a gun, buddy. It goes boom-boom, and guys fall down. Want to try it?”
Mallory looked at him emptily, and said: “Grow up, flattie! What’s the act?”
The big man laughed. His laughter had a dull sound, like the sea breaking on rocks in a fog. He said with heavy sarcasm:
“Bright boy has us spotted, Jim. One of us must look like a cop.” He eyed Mallory, and added: “Saw you pull a rod on a little guy inside. Was that nice?”
Mallory tossed his cigarette away, watched it arc through the darkness. He said carefully:
“Would twenty bucks make you see it some other way?”
“Not tonight, mister. Most any other night, but not tonight.”
“A C note?”
“Not even that, mister.”
“That,” Mallory said gravely, “must be damn tough.”
The big man laughed again, came a little closer. The man behind him lurched out of the shadows and planted a soft fattish hand on Mallory’s shoulder. Mallory slid sideways without moving his feet. The hand fell off. He said:
“Keep your paws off me, gumshoe!”
The other man made a snarling sound. Something swished through the air. Something hit Mallory very hard behind his left ear. He went to his knees. He kneeled swaying for a moment, shaking his head violently. His eyes cleared. He could see the lozenge design in the pavement. He got to his feet again rather slowly.
He looked at the man who had blackjacked him and cursed him in a thick dull voice, with a concentration of ferocity that set the man back on his heels with his slack mouth working like melting rubber.
The big man said: “Damn your soul, Jim! What in hell’d you do that for?”
The man called Jim put his soft fat hand to his mouth and gnawed at it. He shuffled the blackjack into the side pocket of his coat.
“Forget it!” he said. “Let’s take the——and get on with it. I need a drink.”
He plunged down the walk. Mallory turned slowly, followed him with his eyes, rubbing the side of his head. The big man moved his gun in a businesslike way and said:
“Walk, buddy. We’re takin’ a little ride in the moonlight.”
Mallory walked. The big man fell in beside him. The man called Jim fell in on the other side. He hit himself hard in the pit of the stomach, said:
“I need a drink, Mac. I’ve got the jumps.”
The big man said peacefully: “Who don’t, you poor egg?”
They came to a touring car that was double-parked near the squat pillars at the edge of the boulevard. The man who had hit Mallory got in behind the wheel. The big man prodded Mallory into the back seat and got in beside him. He held his gun across his big thigh, tilted his hat a little further back, and got out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He lit one carefully, with his left hand.
The car went out into the sea of lights, rolled east a short way, then turned south down the long slope. The lights of the city were an endless glittering sheet. Neon signs glowed and flashed. The languid ray of a searchlight prodded about among high faint clouds.
“I
t’s like this,” the big man said, blowing smoke from his wide nostrils. “We got you spotted. You were tryin’ to peddle some phony letters to this Farr twist.”
Mallory laughed shortly, mirthlessly. He said: “You flatties give me an ache.”
The big man appeared to think it over, staring in front of him. Passing electroliers threw quick waves of light across his broad face. After a while he said:
“You’re the guy all right. We got to know these things in our business.”
Mallory’s eyes narrowed in the darkness. His lips smiled. He said: “What business, copper?”
The big man opened his mouth wide, shut it with a click. He said:
“Maybe you better talk, bright boy. Now would be a hell of a good time. Jim and me ain’t tough to get on with, but we got friends who ain’t so dainty.”
Mallory said: “What would I talk about, Lieutenant?”
The big man shook with silent laughter, made no answer. The car went past the oil well that stands in the middle of La Cienega Boulevard, then turned off on to a quiet street fringed with palm trees. It stopped half-way down the block, in front of an empty lot. Jim cut the motor and the lights. Then he got a flat bottle out of the door-pocket and held it to his mouth, sighed deeply, passed the bottle over his shoulder.
The big man took a drink, waved the bottle, said:
“We got to wait here for a friend. Let’s talk. My name’s Macdonald—detective bureau. You was tryin’ to shake the Farr girl down. Then her protection stepped in front of her. You bopped him. That was nice routine and we liked it. But we didn’t like the other part.”
Jim reached back for the whiskey bottle, took another drink, sniffed at the neck, said: “We was stashed out for you. But we don’t figure your play out in the open like that. It don’t listen.”
Mallory leaned an arm on the side of the car, and looked out and up at the calm, blue, star-spattered sky. He said:
“You know too much, copper. And you didn’t get your dope from Miss Farr. No screen star would go to the police on a matter of blackmail.”