Джеймс Чейз - You’re Lonely When You’re Dead

I didn’t blame her for cursing me. It couldn’t have been much fun to do what she was doing, and the man who could give her a job not even to look at her. Maybe she had been years getting her body to tie itself up the way she was tying it up now. Maybe she was hungry. Maybe she couldn’t pay her rent. I guessed she was afraid to curse the man with the crinkly hair. He might have kicked her in the teeth. There was something about him that made me think he would kick her in the teeth if he had half a chance. I waited until she had run through all the words she knew, smiled at her to show her I hadn’t taken offence, and went over to the far door the man which the crinkly hair had indicated and knocked.

The inner office was very much like the outer office, only it was a little larger, and there were two desks instead of one and four metal filing cabinets instead of two and a lot more glossy photographs on the walls.

At the desk near the door sat an elderly woman with sad, dark-ringed eyes and a thin, yellowish face that might have been beautiful years ago, but was no more than plain in a nice way now. She was doing things with a book of theatre tickets. I wasn’t interested enough to see just what.

At the far end of the room was the other desk. A man sat behind it, but I couldn’t see anything of him except his thick fingers. He was hiding behind a newspaper he held before him. He had a big diamond ring on his little finger. The diamond was as yellow as a banana. I guessed someone had given it to him as a settlement of a debt, or maybe he had found it. It wasn’t the kind of diamond you would buy: not if you were in your right senses.

The woman looked at me with a timid smile. Her dentures were as phoney as a chorus girl’s eyelashes, and not half so attractive, but I didn’t take any interest in them either. She had to eat with them; I didn’t.

‘Mr. Nedick,’ I said, and tipped my hat. ‘The name’s Malloy. I’d like a word with him.’

‘Well, I don’t know.’ She looked timidly across the room at the spread of newspaper. ‘Mr. Nedick is busy right now. I don’t know really.’

‘Then don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘Mr. Nedick and I will get along fine without you worrying. Won’t we, Mr. Nedick?’ and I went over to his desk and sat on the edge of it.

A round ball of a face appeared from over the top of the newspaper. Small, humorous eyes looked me over. The newspaper was cast to the floor.

‘We might, young man, we might at that,’ Nedick said. ‘Just so long as you don’t want to sell me anything.’

I could see at a glance that the trouble with him was that someone, sometime, had told him he looked like Sydney Greenstreet. All right, he did look like Sydney Greenstreet; but not only did he look like him, he now dressed and talked like him too, and that was a shade too much.

‘The guy outside with the typewriter said for me to come in,’ I explained. ‘I hope that’s all right.’

The fat man chuckled the way Sydney Greenstreet chuckles. He seemed pleased with the effect.

‘That’s all right. And what can I do for you, Mr. Malloy?’

I gave him my card: the one with the Universal Services crest in the comer.

‘Orchid City, huh?’ He tapped the desk with the edge of the card and smiled at the elderly woman who was hanging on his every word. ‘Millionaire’s country, Mr. Malloy. You live there?’

‘I work there,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to get some information about a young woman. I believe you know her: Anita Gay.’

Nedick closed his eyes and his round face registered thought.

‘What sort of information, Mr. Malloy?’ he asked after an appreciable silence.

‘Anything,’ I said, took out my cigarette-case and offered it. ‘I’m not fussy. I’m trying to reconstruct a picture of her background. I’d like to listen to you talk about her. Anything you say may be useful.’

He took the cigarette doubtfully. I lit it for him and lit my own.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m a little busy right now. I don’t think I could spare the time.’

‘I would pay for it,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to give me your time for nothing.’

He let loose another chuckle: it wasn’t so convincing as the first.

‘Well, that’s business, Mr. Malloy. I appreciate a businessman when he’s as straightforward as you.’ He looked at the thin woman. ‘I think you could go to the bank now, Miss Fenducker. Tell Julius I’m tied up for the next half-hour as you go out.’

There was a short silence while Miss Fenducker hastily grabbed up her hat and coat and left the room. She was the type who never could do anything without getting into a panic about it. By the way she rushed out of the office you would have thought the place was on fire.

As she opened the door I caught a glimpse of the girl contortionist. She was still turning somersaults. Julius had stopped typing and was reading what he had written, his feet on the desk. Then the door closed, shutting out the scene and I was alone with Nedick.

‘What sort of fee had you in mind. Mr. Malloy?’ Nedick asked, his small eyes still.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘How about fifty bucks? It depends on what you can tell me.’

‘I could tell you a lot for fifty bucks. I don’t want to appear inquisitive, but is she in trouble?’

‘Not exactly in trouble,’ I said, thinking of the way she had looked the last time I saw her. ‘Anyway, not now. She has been in trouble. My client wants an accurate picture of her background if I can get it without causing too much commotion.’

He pushed back his chair, crossed one fat leg over the other and hooked a thick thumb in the buttonhole of his vest.

‘And the fifty bucks?’

I took out my wallet and laid five tens on the desk. He reached out a fat hand, scooped them up and stowed them away in his trousers pocket.

‘I’m always telling Julius you never know what’s coming into this office,’ he said, and chuckled again. ‘Always see everyone, I tell him. You never know what you’ve missed if you turn people away. Time and again I’ve proved myself right.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, flicking ash on the floor. ‘When was Anita Gay with you?’

‘She was with us for two years. I can give you the exact date if it interests you.’ He raked around in a drawer full of papers and odd junk, and finally produced a leather-bound memo book. He flicked through the pages until he came to the entry he was looking for and laid the book on the desk. ‘That’s another thing I’m always telling Julius. Always make a note of everything that happens in the office. Make it so you can find it again quickly. You never know when you may need it. Now here,’ his hand slapped the open page of the book. ‘It’s all here. She came to the office on 3rd June, two years ago. She said her name was Anita Broda. She wanted a job. She had been a stripper, working the nightclubs in Hollywood, but she’d got herself in bad with the Vice Squad, and her agent had turned sour on her. Roy Fletcher had advised her to come to see me. Fletcher handles legitimate stars. He hadn’t anything for her, and didn’t want her anyway. So he sent her to me.’ He looked at me and grinned. ‘You’ve seen her, Mr. Malloy’

I said, yes, I had seen her.

‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘She stood over there,’ he pointed to the window, ‘and did her act. Even Julius was impressed, and he’s a very hard man to impress: the hardest man in this racket. After the first week she moved from the middle to the top of the bill. After the second week we had her name in lights across the front of the house.’

‘Why isn’t she here now?’

His face darkened.

‘She got married. It’s always the same, Mr. Malloy. Get a good girl who draws in the money, and she gets married. Marriage is the biggest menace there is to this racket.’