The High Window (7 page)

TWELVE

It was a quarter to seven when I let myself into the office and clicked the light on and picked a piece of paper off the floor. It was a notice from the Green Feather Messenger Service saying that a package was held awaiting my call and would be delivered upon request at any hour of the day or night. I put it on the desk, peeled my coat off and opened the windows. I got a half bottle of Old Taylor out of the deep drawer of the desk and drank a short drink, rolling it around on my tongue. Then I sat there holding the neck of the cool bottle and wondering how it would feel to be a homicide dick and find bodies lying around and not mind at all, not have to sneak out wiping doorknobs, not have to ponder how much I could tell without hurting a client and how little I could tell without too badly hurting myself. I decided I wouldn’t like it.

I pulled the phone over and looked at the number on the slip and called it. They said my package could be sent right over. I said I would wait for it.

It was getting dark outside now. The rushing sound of the traffic had died a little and the air from the open window, not yet cool from the night, had that tired end-of-the-day smell of dust, automobile exhaust, sunlight rising from hot walls and sidewalks, the remote smell of food in a thousand restaurants, and perhaps, drifting down from the residential hills above Hollywood—if you had a nose like a hunting dog—a touch of that peculiar tomcat smell that eucalyptus trees give off in warm weather.

I sat there smoking. Ten minutes later the door was knocked on and I opened it to a boy in a uniform cap who took my signature and gave me a small square package, not more than two and a half inches wide, if that. I gave the boy a dime and listened to him whistling his way back to the elevators.

The label had my name and address printed on it in ink, in a quite fair imitation of typed letters, larger and thinner than pica. I cut the string that tied the label to the box and unwound the thin brown paper. Inside was a thin cheap cardboard box pasted over with brown paper and stamped
Made in Japan
with a rubber stamp. It would be the kind of box you would get in a Jap store to hold some small carved animal or a small piece of jade. The lid fitted down all the way and tightly. I pulled it off and saw tissue paper and cotton wool.

Separating these I was looking at a gold coin about the size of a half dollar, bright and shining as if it had just come from the mint.

The side facing me showed a spread eagle with a shield for a breast and the initials E.B. punched into the left wing. Around these was a circle of beading, between the beading and the smooth unmilled edge of the coin, the legend
E PLURIBUS UNUM
. At the bottom was the date 1787.

I turned the coin over on my palm. It was heavy and cold and my palm felt moist under it. The other side showed a sun rising or setting behind a sharp peak of mountain, then a double circle of what looked like oak leaves, then more Latin,
NOVA EBORACA COLUMBIA EXCELSIOR
. At the bottom of this side, in smaller capitals, the name
BRASHER
.

I was looking at the Brasher Doubloon.

There was nothing else in the box or in the paper, nothing on the paper. The handwritten printing meant nothing to me. I didn’t know anybody who used it.

I filled an empty tobacco pouch half full, wrapped the coin up in tissue paper, snapped a rubber band around it and tucked it into the tobacco in the pouch and put more in on top. I closed the zipper and put the pouch in my pocket. I locked the paper and string and box and label up in a filing cabinet, sat down again and dialed Elisha Morningstar’s number on the phone. The bell rang eight times at the other end of the line. It was not answered. I hardly expected that. I hung up again, looked Elisha Morningstar up in the book and saw that he had no listing for a residence phone in Los Angeles or the outlying towns that were in the phone book.

I got a shoulder holster out of the desk and strapped it on and slipped a Colt .38 automatic into it, put on hat and coat, shut the windows again, put the whiskey away, clicked the lights off and had the office door unlatched when the phone rang.

The ringing bell had a sinister sound, for no reason of itself, but because of the ears to which it rang. I stood there braced and tense, lips tightly drawn back in a half grin. Beyond the closed window the neon lights glowed. The dead air didn’t move. Outside the corridor was still. The bell rang in darkness, steady and strong.

I went back and leaned on the desk and answered. There was a click and a droning on the wire and beyond that nothing. I depressed the connection and stood there in the dark, leaning over, holding the phone with one hand and holding the flat riser on the pedestal down with the other. I didn’t know what I was waiting for.

The phone rang again. I made a sound in my throat and put it to my ear again, not saying anything at all.

So we were there silent, both of us, miles apart maybe, each one holding a telephone and breathing and listening and hearing nothing, not even the breathing.

Then after what seemed a very long time there was the quiet remote whisper of a voice saying dimly, without any tone:

“Too bad for you, Marlowe.”

Then the click again and the droning on the wire and I hung up and went back across the office and out.

THIRTEEN

I drove west on Sunset, fiddled around a few blocks without making up my mind whether anyone was trying to follow me, then parked near a drugstore and went into its phone booth. I dropped my nickel and asked the O-operator for a Pasadena number. She told me how much money to put in.

The voice which answered the phone was angular and cold. “Mrs. Murdock’s residence.”

“Philip Marlowe here. Mrs. Murdock, please.” I was told to wait. A soft but very clear voice said: “Mr. Marlowe? Mrs. Murdock is resting now. Can you tell me what it is?”

“You oughtn’t to have told him.”

“I—who—?”

“That loopy guy whose handkerchief you cry into.”

“How dare you?”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Now let me talk to Mrs. Murdock. I have to.”

“Very well. I’ll try.” The soft clear voice went away and I waited a long wait. They would have to lift her up on the pillows and drag the port bottle out of her hard gray paw and feed her the telephone. A throat was cleared suddenly over the wire. It sounded like a freight train going through a tunnel.

“This is Mrs. Murdock.”

“Could you identify the property we were talking about this morning, Mrs. Murdock? I mean could you pick it out from others just like it?”

“Well—are there others just like it?”

“There must be. Dozens, hundreds for all I know. Anyhow dozens. Of course I don’t know where they are.”

She coughed. “I don’t really know much about it. I suppose I couldn’t identify it then. But in the circumstances—”

“That’s what I’m getting at, Mrs. Murdock. The identification would seem to depend on tracing the history of the article back to you. At least to be convincing.”

“Yes. I suppose it would. Why? Do you know where it is?”

“Morningstar claims to have seen it. He says it was offered to him for sale—just as you suspected. He wouldn’t buy. The seller was not a woman, he says. That doesn’t mean a thing, because he gave me a detailed description of the party which was either made up or was a description of somebody he knew more than casually. So the seller may have been a woman.”

“I see. It’s not important now.”

“Not important?”

“No. Have you anything else to report?”

“Another question to ask. Do you know a youngish blond fellow named George Anson Phillips? Rather heavy set, wearing a brown suit and a dark pork pie hat with a gay band. Wearing that today. Claimed to be a private detective. ”

“I do not. Why should I?”

“I don’t know. He enters the picture somewhere. I think he was the one who tried to sell the article. Morningstar tried to call him up after I left. I snuck back into his office and overheard.”

“You what?”

“I snuck.”

“Please do not be witty, Mr. Marlowe. Anything else?”

“Yes, I agreed to pay Morningstar one thousand dollars for the return of the—the article. He said he could get it for eight hundred . . .”

“And where were you going to get the money, may I ask?”

“Well, I was just talking. This Morningstar is a downy bird. That’s the kind of language he understands. And then again you might have wanted to pay it. I wouldn’t want to persuade you. You could always go to the police. But if for any reason you didn’t want to go to the police, it might be the only way you could get it back—buying it back.”

I would probably have gone on like that for a long time, not knowing just what I was trying to say, if she hadn’t stopped me with a noise like a seal barking.

“This is all very unnecessary now, Mr. Marlowe. I have decided to drop the matter. The coin has been returned to me.”

“Hold the wire a minute,” I said.

I put the phone down on the shelf and opened the booth door and stuck my head out, filling my chest with what they were using for air in the drugstore. Nobody was paying any attention to me. Up front the druggist, in a pale blue smock, was chatting across the cigar counter. The counter boy was polishing glasses at the fountain. Two girls in slacks were playing the pinball machine. A tall narrow party in a black shirt and a pale yellow scarf was fumbling magazines at the rack. He didn’t look like a gunman.

I pulled the booth shut and picked up the phone and said: “A rat was gnawing my foot. It’s all right now. You got it back, you said. Just like that. How?”

“I hope you are not too disappointed,” she said in her uncompromising baritone. “The circumstances are a little difficult. I may decide to explain and I may not. You may call at the house tomorrow morning. Since I do not wish to proceed with the investigation, you will keep the retainer as payment in full.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You actually got the coin back—not a promise of it, merely?”

“Certainly not. And I’m getting tired. So, if you—”

“One moment, Mrs. Murdock. It isn’t going to be as simple as all that. Things have happened.”

“In the morning you may tell me about them,” she said sharply, and hung up.

I pushed out of the booth and lit a cigarette with thick awkward fingers. I went back along the store. The druggist was alone now. He was sharpening a pencil with a small knife, very intent, frowning.

“That’s a nice sharp pencil you have there,” I told him.

He looked up, surprised. The girls at the pinball machine looked at me, surprised. I went over and looked at myself in the mirror behind the counter. I looked surprised.

I sat down on one of the stools and said: “A double Scotch, straight.”

The counter man looked surprised. “Sorry, this isn’t a bar, sir. You can buy a bottle at the liquor counter.”

“So it is,” I said. “I mean, so it isn’t. I’ve had a shock. I’m a little dazed. Give me a cup of coffee, weak, and a very thin ham sandwich on stale bread. No, I better not eat yet either. Good-by.”

I got down off the stool and walked to the door in a silence that was as loud as a ton of coal going down a chute. The man in the black shirt and yellow scarf was sneering at me over the New Republic.

“You ought to lay off that fluff and get your teeth into something solid, like a pulp magazine,” I told him, just to be friendly.

I went on out. Behind me somebody said: “Hollywood’s full of them.”

FOURTEEN

The wind had risen and had a dry taut feeling, tossing the tops of trees, and making the swung arc light up the side street cast shadows like crawling lava. I turned the car and drove east again.

The hock shop was on Santa Monica, near Wilcox, a quiet old-fashioned little place, washed gently by the lapping waves of time. In the front window there was everything you could think of, from a set of trout flies in a thin wooden box to a portable organ, from a folding baby carriage to a portrait camera with a four-inch lens, from a mother-of-pearl lorgnette in a faded plush case to a Single Action Frontier Colt, .44 caliber, the model they still make for Western peace officers whose grandfathers taught them how to file the trigger and shoot by fanning the hammer back.

I went into the shop and a bell jangled over my head and somebody shuffled and blew his nose far at the back and steps came. An old Jew in a tall black skull cap came along behind the counter, smiling at me over cut out glasses.

I got my tobacco pouch out, got the Brasher Doubloon out of that and laid it on the counter. The window in front was clear glass and I felt naked. No paneled cubicles with handcarved spittoons and doors that locked themselves as you closed them.

The Jew took the coin and lifted it on his hand. “Gold, is it? A gold hoarder you are maybe,” he said, twinkling.

“Twenty-five dollars,” I said. “The wife and the kiddies are hungry.”

“Oi, that is terrible. Gold, it feels, by the weight. Only gold and maybe platinum it could be.” He weighed it casually on a pair of small scales. “Gold it is,” he said. “So ten dollars you are wanting?”

“Twenty-five dollars. ”

“For twenty-five dollars what would I do with it? Sell it, maybe? For fifteen dollars worth of gold is maybe in it. Okay. Fifteen dollars.”

“You got a good safe?”

“Mister, in this business are the best safes money can buy. Nothing to worry about here. It is fifteen dollars, is it?”

“Make out the ticket.”

He wrote it out partly with his pen and partly with his tongue. I gave my true name and address. Bristol Apartments, 1634 North Bristol Avenue, Hollywood.

“You are living in that district and you are borrowing fifteen dollars,” the Jew said sadly, and tore off my half of the ticket and counted out the money.

I walked down to the corner drugstore and bought an envelope and borrowed a pen and mailed the pawnticket to myself.

I was hungry and hollow inside. I went over to Vine to eat, and after that I drove downtown again. The wind was still rising and it was drier than ever. The steering wheel had a gritty feeling under my fingers and the inside of my nostrils felt tight and drawn.

The lights were on here and there in the tall buildings. The green and chromium clothier’s store on the corner of Ninth and Hill was a blaze of it. In the Belfont Building a few windows glowed here and there, but not many. The same old plowhorse sat in the elevator on his piece of folded burlap, looking straight in front of him, blankeyed, almost gathered to history.

I said: “I don’t suppose you know where I can get in touch with the building superintendent?”

He turned his head slowly and looked past my shoulder. “I hear how in Noo York they got elevators that just whiz. Go thirty floors at a time. High speed. That’s in Noo York.”

“The hell with New York,” I said. “I like it here.”

“Must take a good man to run them fast babies.”

“Don’t kid yourself, dad. All those cuties do is push buttons, say ‘Good Morning, Mr. Whoosis,’ and look at their beauty spots in the car mirror. Now you take a Model T job like this—it takes a man to run it. Satisfied?”

“I work twelve hours a day,” he said. “And glad to get it.”

“Don’t let the union hear you.”

“You know what the union can do?” I shook my head. He told me. Then he lowered his eyes until they almost looked at me. “Didn’t I see you before somewhere?”

“About the building super,” I said gently.

“Year ago he broke his glasses,” the old man said. “I could of laughed. Almost did.”

“Yes. Where could I get in touch with him this time of the evening?”

He looked at me a little more directly.

“Oh, the building super? He’s home, ain’t he?”

“Sure. Probably. Or gone to the pictures. But where is home? What’s his name?”

“You want something?”

“Yes.” I squeezed a fist in my pocket and tried to keep from yelling. “I want the address of one of the tenants. The tenant I want the address of isn’t in the phone book—at his home. I mean where he lives when he’s not in his office. You know, home.” I took my hands out and made a shape in the air, writing the letters slowly, h o m e.

The old man said: “Which one?” It was so direct that it jarred me.

“Mr. Morningstar.”

“He ain’t home. Still in his office.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. I don’t notice people much. But he’s old like me and I notice him. He ain’t been down yet.”

I got into the car and said: “Eight.”

He wrestled the doors shut and we ground our way up. He didn’t look at me anymore. When the car stopped and I got out he didn’t speak or look at me again. He just sat there blank-eyed, hunched on the burlap and the wooden stool. As I turned the angle of the corridor he was still sitting there. And the vague expression was back on his face.

At the end of the corridor two doors were alight. They were the only two in sight that were. I stopped outside to light a cigarette and listen, but I didn’t hear any sound of activity. I opened the door marked Entrance and stepped into the narrow office with the small closed typewriter desk. The wooden door was still ajar. I walked along to it and knocked on the wood and said: “Mr. Morningstar.”

No answer. Silence. Not even a sound of breathing. The hairs moved on the back of my neck. I stepped around the door. The ceiling light glowed down on the glass cover of the jeweller’s scales, on the old polished wood around the leather desk top, down the side of the desk, on a square-toed, elastic-sided black shoe, with a white cotton sock above it.

The shoe was at the wrong angle, pointing to the corner of the ceiling. The rest of the leg was behind the corner of the big safe. I seemed to be wading through mud as I went on into the room.

He lay crumpled on his back. Very lonely, very dead.

The safe door was wide open and keys hung in the lock of the inner compartment. A metal drawer was pulled out. It was empty now. There may have been money in it once.

Nothing else in the room seemed to be different.

The old man’s pockets had been pulled out, but I didn’t touch him except to bend over and put the back of my hand against his livid, violet-colored face. It was like touching a frog’s belly. Blood had oozed from the side of his forehead where he had been hit. But there was no powder smell on the air this time, and the violet color of his skin showed that he had died of a heart stoppage, due to shock and fear, probably. That didn’t make it any less murder.

I left the lights burning, wiped the doorknobs, and walked down the fire stairs to the sixth floor. I read the names on the doors going along, for no reason at all.
H. R. Teager Dental Laboratories, L. Pridview, Public Accountant, Dalton and Rees Typewriting Service, Dr. E. J. Blaskowitz,
and underneath the name in small letters:
Chiropractic Physician.

The elevator came growling up and the old man didn’t look at me. His face was as empty as my brain.

I called the Receiving Hospital from the corner, giving no name.