A touch racket, brother.
Riding the scout car with a gun in your lap and a wad on your hip that would choke a coal chute.
Plenty of times we paid off four sets of law before we hit Beverly Hills.
A tough racket."
"Terrible," I said.
He leaned back and blew smoke at the ceiling from the small tight corner of his small tight mouth.
"Maybe you don't believe me," he said.
"Maybe I don't," I said. "And maybe I do.
And then again maybe I haven't bothered to make my mind up.
Just what is the build-up supposed to do to me?"
"Nothing," he said tartly.
"You've been following me around for a couple, of days," I said.
"Like a fellow trying to pick up a girl and lacking the last inch of nerve.
Maybe you're selling insurance.
Maybe you knew a fellow called Joe Brody.
That's a lot of maybes, but I have a lot on hand in my business."
His eyes bulged and his lower lip almost fell in his lap.
"Christ, how'd you know that?" he snapped.
"I'm psychic. Shake your business up and pour it.
I haven't got all day."
The brightness of his eyes almost disappeared between the suddenly narrowed lids.
There was silence.
The rain pounded down on the flat tarred roof over the Mansion House lobby below my windows.
His eyes opened a little, shined again, and his voice was full of thought.
"I was trying to get a line on you, sure," he said.
"I've got something to sell — cheap, for a couple of C notes.
How'd you tie me to Joe?"
I opened a letter and read it.
It offered me a six months' correspondence course in fingerprinting at a special professional discount.
I chopped it into the waste basket and looked at the little man again.
"Don't mind me. I was just guessing.
You're not a cop.
You don't belong to Eddie Mars' outfit.
I asked him last night.
I couldn't think of anybody else but Joe Brody's friends who would be that much interested in me."
"Jesus," he said and licked his lower lip.
His face had turned white as paper when I mentioned Eddie Mars.
His mouth drooped open and his cigarette hung to the corner of it by some magic, as if it had grown there. "Aw, you're kidding me," he said at last, with the sort of smile the operating room sees.
"All right. I'm kidding you." I opened another letter.
This one wanted to send me a daily newsletter from Washington, all inside stuff, straight from the cookhouse. "I suppose Agnes is loose," I added.
"Yeah.
She sent me.
You interested?"
"Well — she's a blonde."
"Nuts.
You made a crack when you were up there that night — the night Joe got squibbed off.
Something about Brody must have known something good about the Sternwoods or he wouldn't have taken the chance on that picture he sent them."
"Uh-huh.
So he had?
What was it?"