9

The deputy on the early night shift was a big blond guy with meaty shoulders and a friendly grin. He was miclclle-aged and had long since outlived both pity and anger. He wanted to put in eight easy hours and he looked as if almost anything would be easy down his street. He unlocked my door.

“Company for you. Guy from the D.A.’s office. No sleep, huh?”

“It's a little early for me. What time is it?”

“Ten-fourteen.” He stood in the doorway and looked over the cell.One blanket was spread on the lower bunk, one was folded for a pillow.There were a couple of used paper towels in the trash bucket and a small wad of toilet paper on the edge of the washbasin. He nodded approval.“Anything personal in here?”

“Just me.”

He left the cell door open. We walked along a quiet corridor to the elevator and rode down to the booking desk. A fat man in a gray suit stood by the desk smoking a corncob. His fingernails were dirty and he smelled.

“I'm Spranklin from the D.A.’s office,” he told me in a tough voice.“Mr. Grenz wants you upstairs.” He reached behind his hip and came up with a pair of bracelets. “Let's try these for size.”

The jail deputy and the booking derk grinned at him with deep enjoyment. “What's the matter, Sprank? Afraid he'll mug you in the elevator?”

“I don't want no trouble,” he growled. “Had a guy break from me once. They ate my ass off. Let's go, boy.”

The booking clerk pushed a form at him and he signed it with a flourish. “I never take no unnecessary chances,” he said. “Man never knows what he's up against in this town.”

A prowl car cop brought in a drunk with a bloody ear. We went towards the elevator. “You're in trouble, boy,” Spranklin told me in the elevator. “Heap bad trouble.” It seemed to give him a vague satisfaction. “A guy can get hisself in a lot of trouble in this town.”

The elevator man turned his head and winked at me. I grinned.

“Don't try no thing, boy,” Spranklin told me severely. “I shot a man once. Tried to break. They ate my ass off.”

“You get it coming and going, don't you?”

He thought it over. “Yeah,” he said. “Either way they eat your ass off. It's a tough town. No respect.”

We got out and went in through the double doors of the D.A.’s office.The switchboard was dead, with lines plugged in for the night. There was nobody in the waiting chairs. Lights were on in a couple of offices.Spranklin opened the door of a small lighted room which contained a desk, a filing case, a hard chair or two, and a thick-set man with a hard chin and stupid eyes. His face was red and he was just pushing something into the drawer of his desk.

“You could knock,” he barked at Spranklin.

“Sorry, Mr. Grenz,” Spranklin bumbled. “I was thinkin’ about the prisoner.”

He pushed me into the office. “Should I take the cuffs off, Mr.Grenz?”

“I don't know what the hell you put them on for,” Grenz said sourly.He watched Spranklin unlock the cuffs on my wrist. He had the key on a bunch the size of a grapefruit and it troubled him to find it.

“Okay, scram,” Grenz said. “Wait outside to take him back.”

“I'm kind of off duty, Mr. Grenz.”

“You're off duty when I say you're off duty.”

Spranklin flushed and edged his fat bottom out through the door.Grenz looked after him savagely, then when the door closed he moved the same look to me. I pulled a chair over and sat down.

“I didn't tell you to sit down,” Grenz barked.

I got a loose cigarette out of my pocket and stuck it in my mouth. “And I didn't say you could smoke,” Grenz roared.

“I'm allowed to smoke in the cell block. Why not here?”

“Because this is my office. I make the rules here.” A raw smell of whiskey floated across the desk.

“Take another quick one,” I said. “It'll calm you down. You got kind of interrupted when we came in.”

His back hit the back of the chair hard. His face went dark red. I struck a match and lit my cigarette.

After a long minute Grenz said softly. “Okay, tough boy. Quite a man, aren't you? You know something? They're all sizes and shapes when they come in here, but they all go out the same size—small. And the same shape—bent.”

“What did you want to see me about, Mr. Grenz? And don't mind me if you feel like hitting that bottle. I'm a fellow that will take a snort myself, if I'm tired and nervous and overworked.”

“You don't seem much impressed by the jam you're in.”

“I don't figure I'm in any jam.”

“We'll see about that. Meantime I want a very full statement from you.” He flicked a finger at a recording set on a stand beside his desk. “We'll take it now and have it transcribed tomorrow. If the Chief Deputy is satisfied with your statement, he may release you on your own undertaking not to leave town. Let's go.” He switched on the recorder.His voice was cold, decisive, and as nasty as he knew how to make it. But his right hand kept edging towards the desk drawer. He was too young to have veins in his nose, but he had them, and the whites of his eyes were a bad color.

“I get so tired of it,” I said.

“Tired of what?” he snapped.

“Hard little men in hard little offices talking hard little words that don't mean a goddam thing. I've had fifty-six hours in the felony block.Nobody pushed me around, nobody tried to prove he was tough. They didn't have to. They had it on ice for when they needed it. And why was I in there? I was booked on suspicion. What the hell kind of legal system lets a man be shoved in a felony tank because some cop didn't get an answer to some questions? What evidence did he have? A telephone number on a pad. And what was he trying to prove by locking me up? Not a damn thing except that he had the power to do it. Now you're on the same pitch—trying to make me feel what a lot of power you generate in this cigar box you call your office. You send this scared baby-sitter over late at night to bring me in here. You think maybe sitting alone with my thoughts for fifty-six hours has made gruel out of my brains? You think I'm going to cry in your lap and ask you to stroke my head because I'm so awful goddam lonely in the great big jail? Come off it, Grenz. Take your drink and get human; I'm willing to assume you are just doing your job.But take the brass knuckles off before you start. If you're big enough you don't need them, and if you need them you're not big enough to push me around.”

He sat there and listened and looked at me. Then he grinned sourly.“Nice speech,” he said. “Now you've got the crap out of your system,let's get that statement. You want to answer specific questions or just tell it your own way?”

“I was talking to the birds,” I said. “Just to hear the breeze blow. I'm not making any statement. You're a lawyer and you know I don't have to.”

“That's right,” he said coolly. “I know the law. I know police work. I'm offering you a chance to clear yourself. If you don't want it, that's jake with me too. I can arraign you tomorrow morning at ten A.M and have you set for a preliminary hearing. You may get bail, although I'll fight it, but if you do, it will be stiff. It'll cost you plenty. That's one way we can do it.”

He looked down at a paper on his desk, read it, and turned it face down.

“On what charge?” I asked him.

“Section thirty-two. Accessory after the fact. A felony. It rates up to a five-spot in Quentin.”

“Better catch Lennox first,” I said carefully. Grenz had something and I sensed it in his manner. I didn't know how much, but he had something all right.

He leaned back in his chair and picked up a pen and twirled it slowly between his palms. Then he smiled. He was enjoying himself.

“Lennox is a hard man to hide, Marlowe. With most people you need a photo and a good clear photo. Not with a guy that has scars all over one side of his face. Not to mention white hair, and not over thirty-five years old. We got four witnesses, maybe more.”

“Witnesses to what?” I was tasting something bitter in my mouth,like the bile I had tasted after Captain Gregorius slugged me. That reminded me that my neck was still sore and swollen. I rubbed it gently.

“Don't be a chump, Marlowe. A San Diego superior court judge and his wife happened to be seeing their son and daughter-in-law off on that plane. All four saw Lennox and the judge's wife saw the car he came in and who came with him. You don't have a prayer.”

“That's nice,” I said. “How did you get to them?”

“Special bulletin on radio and TV. A full description was all it took.The judge called in.”

“Sounds good,” I said judicially. “But it takes a little more than that,Grenz. You have to catch him and prove he committed a murder. Then you have to prove I knew it.”

He snapped a finger at the back of the telegram. “I think I will take that drink,” he said. “Been working nights too much.” He opened the drawer and put a bottle and a shot glass on the desk. He poured it full to the brim and knocked it back in a lump. “Better,” he said. “Much better.Sorry I can't offer you one while you're in custody.” He corked the bottle and pushed it away from him, but not out of reach. “Oh yeah, we got to prove something, you said. Well, it could be we already got a confession,chum. Too bad, huh?”

A small but very cold finger moved the whole length of my spine,like an icy insect crawling.

“So why do you need a statement from me?”

He grinned. “We like a tidy record. Lennox will be brought back and tried. We need everything we can get. It's not so much what we want from you as what we might be willing to let you get away with—if you co operate.”

I stared at him. He did a little paper-fiddling. He moved around in his chair, looked at his bottle, and had to use up a lot of will power not grabbing for it. “Maybe you'd like the whole libretto,” he said suddenly with an off-key leer. “Well, smart guy, just to show you I'm not kidding,here it is.”

I leaned across his desk and he thought I was reaching for his bottle.He grabbed it away and put it back in the drawer. I just wanted to drop a stub in his ash tray. I leaned back again and lit another pill. He spoke rapidly.

“Lennox got off the plane at Mazatlán, an airline junction point and a town of about thirty-five thousand. He disappeared for two or three hours.Then a tall man with black hair and a dark skin and what might have been a lot of knife scars booked to Torreón under the name of Silvano Rodriguez. His Spanish was good but not good enough for a man of his name. He was too tall for a Mexican with such dark skin. The pilot turned in a report on him. The cops were too slow at Torreón. Mex cops are no balls of fire. What they do best is shoot people. By the time they got going the man had chartered a plane and gone on to a little mountain town called Otatoclán, a small time summer resort with a lake. The pilot of the charter plane had trained as a combat pilot in Texas. He spoke good English.Lennox pretended not to catch what he said.”

“If it was Lennox,” I put in.

“Wait a while, chum. It was Lennox all right. Okay, he gets off at Otatoclán and registers at the hotel there, this time as Mario de Cerva.He was wearing a gun, a Mauser 7.65, which doesn't mean too much in Mexico, of course. But the charter pilot thought the guy didn't seem kosher, so he had a word with the local law. They put Lennox under surveillance. They did some checking with Mexico City and then they moved in.”

Grenz picked up a ruler and sighted along it, a meaningless gesture which kept him from looking at me.

I said, “Uh-huh. Smart boy, your charter pilot, and nice to his customers. The story stinks.”

He looked up at me suddenly. “What we want,” he said dryly, “is a quick trial, a plea of second degree which we will accept. There are some angles we'd rather not go into. After all, the family is pretty influential.”

“Meaning Harlan Potter.”

He nodded briefly. “For my money the whole idea is all wet.Springer could have a field day with it. It's got everything. Sex, scandal,money, beautiful unfaithful wife, wounded war hero husband—I suppose that's where he got the scars—hell, it would be front-page stuff for weeks.Every rag in the country would eat it up. So we shuffle it off to a fast fade.” He shrugged. “Okay, if the chief wants it that way, it's up to him.Do I get that statement?” He turned to the recording machine which had been humming away softly all this time, with the light showing in front.

“Turn it off,” I said.

He swung around and gave me a vicious look. “You like it in jail?”

“It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to? Be reasonable, Grenz. You're trying to make a fink out of me.Maybe I'm obstinate, or even sentimental, but I'm practical too. Suppose you had to hire a private eye—yeah, yeah, I know how you would hate the idea—but just suppose you were where it was your only out. Would you want one that finked on his friends?”

He stared at me with hate.

“A couple more points. Doesn't it strike you that Lennox's evasion tactics were just a little too transparent? If he wanted to be caught, he didn't have to go to all that trouble. If he didn't want to be caught, he had brains enough not to disguise himself as a Mexican in Mexico.”

“Meaning what?” Grenz was snarling at me now.

“Meaning you could just be filling me up with a lot of hooey you made up, that there wasn't any Rodriguez with dyed hair and there wasn't any Mario de Cerva at Otatoclán, and you don't know any more about where Lennox is than where Black Beard the Pirate buried his treasure.”

He got his bottle out again. He poured himself a shot and drank it down quickly, as before. He relaxed slowly. He turned in his chair and switched off the recording machine.

“I'd like to have tried you,” he said gratingly. “You're the kind of wise guy I like to work over. This rap will be hanging over you for a long long time, cutie. You'll walk with it and eat with it and sleep with it. And next time you step out of line we'll murder you with it. Right now I got to do something that turns my guts inside out.”

He pawed on his desk and pulled the face-down paper to him, turned it over and signed it. You can always tell when a man is writing his own name. He has a special way of moving. Then he stood up and marched around the desk and threw the door of his shoe box open and yelled for Spranklin.

The fat man came in with his B.O. Grenz gave him the paper.

“I've just signed your release order,” he said. “I'm a public servant and sometimes I have unpleasant duties. Would you care to know why I signed it?”

I stood up. “If you want to tell me.”

“The Lennox case is closed, mister. There ain't any Lennox case.He wrote out a full confession this afternoon in his hotel room and shot himself. In Otatoclán, just like I said.”

I stood there looking at nothing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Grenz back away slowly as if he thought I might be going to slug him. I must have looked pretty nasty for a moment. Then he was behind his desk again and Spranklin had grabbed onto my arm.

“Come on, move,” he said in a whining kind of voice. “Man likes to get to home nights once in a while.”

I went out with him and closed the door. I closed it quietly as if on a room where someone had just died.