Big cops in slickers that shone like gun barrels had a lot of fun carrying giggling girls across the bad places.
The rain drummed hard on the roof of the car and the burbank top began to leak.
A pool of water formed on the floorboards for me to keep my feet in.
It was too early in the fall for that kind of rain.
I struggled into a trench coat and made a dash for the nearest drugstore and bought myself a pint of whiskey.
Back in the car I used enough of it to keep warm and interested.
I was long overparked, but the cops were too busy carrying girls and blowing whistles to bother about that.
In spite of the rain, or perhaps even because of it, there was business down at Geiger's.
Very nice cars stopped in front and very nice-looking people went in and out with wrapped parcels.
They were not all men.
He showed about four o'clock.
A cream-colored coupe stopped in front of the store and I caught a glimpse of the fat face and the Charlie Chan moustache as he dodged out of it and into the store.
He was hatless and wore a belted green leather raincoat.
I couldn't see his glass eye at that distance.
A tall and very good-looking kid in a jerkin came out of the store and rode the coupe off around the corner and came back walking, his glistening black hair plastered with rain.
Another hour went by.
It got dark and the rain-clouded lights of the stores were soaked up by the black street.
Street-car bells jangled crossly.
At around five-fifteen the tall boy in the jerkin came out of Geiger's with an umbrella and went after the cream colored coupe.
When he had it in front Geiger came out and the tall boy held the umbrella over Geiger's bare head.
He folded it, shook it off and handed it into the car.
He dashed back into the store.
I started my motor.
The coupe went west on the boulevard, which forced me to make a left turn and a lot of enemies, including a motorman who stuck his head out into the rain to bawl me out.
I was two blocks behind the coupe before I got in the groove.
I hoped Geiger was on his way home.
I caught sight of him two or three times and then made him turning north into Laurel Canyon Drive. Halfway up the grade he turned left and took a curving ribbon of wet concrete which was called Laverne Terrace.
It was a narrow street with a high bank on one side and a scattering of cabin-like houses built down the slope on the other side, so that their roofs were not very much above road level.
Their front windows were masked by hedges and shrubs.
Sodden trees dripped all over the landscape.
Geiger had his lights on and I hadn't. I speeded up and passed him on a curve, picked a number off a house as I went by and turned at the end of the block.
He had already stopped.
His car lights were tilted in at the garage of a small house with a square box hedge so arranged that it masked the front door completely.
I watched him come out of the garage with his umbrella up and go in through the hedge.
He didn't act as if he expected anybody to be tailing him.
Light went on in the house.
I drifted down to the next house above it, which seemed empty but had no signs out.
I parked, aired out the convertible, had a drink from my bottle, and sat.
I didn't know what I was waiting for, but something told me to wait.
Another army of sluggish minutes dragged by.
Two cars came up the hill and went over the crest.
It seemed to be a very quiet street.
At a little after six more bright lights bobbed through the driving rain.
It was pitch black by then. A car dragged to a stop in front of Geiger's house.
The filaments of its lights glowed dimly and died.
The door opened and a woman got out.
A small slim woman in a vagabond hat and a transparent raincoat.
She went in through the box maze.
A bell rang faintly, light through the rain, a closing door, silence.
I reached a flask out of my car pocket and went downgrade and looked at the car.