Harry Turtledove - The Maltese Elephant

Illustration by George H. Krauter

Miles Bowman was a man built of rectangular blocks. His head was one, squared off with short-cut graying hair at the top and a sharp jaw at the bottom. His chest and shoulders made a big brick, his belly below them a slightly smaller one. His arms and legs were thick, muscular pillars. He trimmed his nails straight across at the end of his fingers.

His partner Tom Trencher, that smiling devil, was dead. In the hallway outside the office, a sign painter was using a razor blade to scrape BOWMAN & TRENCHER off the frosted glass. When he was done, he would paint Bowman’s name there by itself in gilt. Centered.

The phone rang. His secretary answered it. Hester Prine was a tall, skinny, brown-haired girl. She wore good clothes as if they were sacks. But when she spoke, any man who heard her had hungry dreams for days.

She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s your wife.”

Bowman shook his head. “I don’t want to talk to Eva.”

“She wants to talk to you about Tom.”

“I figured she did. What else would she call me about here? I don’t want want to talk to her, I told you. Tell her I’m out on a case. I’ll see her tonight. She can talk to me then.”

His secretary’s mouth twisted, but she took her hand away and said what Bowman had told her to say. She had to say it three times before she could hang up. Then she rose and walked over to Bowman’s desk in the inner office. She looked down at him. “You’re a louse, Miles.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said comfortably. His arm slid around her waist. He pulled her closer to him.

“Louse,” she said again, in a different tone of voice. She hesitated. “Miles, she wants to talk to you because—” She ran down like a phonograph that needs winding.

“Because she thinks I killed Tom.” His hand tightened on her hip. He smiled. His teeth were not very good. “Why would she think a thing like that?”

“Because you know she and—” Hester Prine ran down again. “You’re hurting me.”

“Am I?” He did not let go. “I know lots of things. But I didn’t kill Tom. Eva won’t pin that one on me. The cops won’t, either.”

Soft footsteps came down the hall. They paused in front of the office. The sign painter stopped scraping. Hester Prine twisted away from Bowman. This time he did not try to stop her.

The door opened. By then Bowman’s secretary was back at her desk. A woman walked into the office. The sign painter stared at her until the door closed and cut off his view. Then, with reluctant razor, he went back to work.

The woman was small and swarthy and perfect, with a heart-shaped face and enormous black eyes that could smile or sob or blaze or do all three at once, in the space of a couple of heartbeats. Her crow’s-wing hair fell almost to her shoulders in a straight bob. It was not what they were wearing this year, but on her it was right. So was her orange crepe silk frock with a flared peplum skirt.

She strode past Hester Prine as if the secretary did not exist and went into Bowman’s inner office. He got up from in back of his desk. “Miss Lenoir,” he said. He shut the door behind her.

“Your partner,” Claire Lenoir said in a broken voice. “It’s my fault.” Tears glistened in her eyes, but did not fall.

“Not all of it,” he answered. “Tom knew what he was doing, and you told him the guy he was tailing—the guy who’s been tailing you—was one rough customer. You don’t get into this business if you think everything is going to be easy all the time. Or you better not.”

Her hands fluttered. She wore two rings, of gold and emeralds. They glowed against her dark skin. “But—” she said.

Bowman waved dismissively. “You mean that story you told us before? That didn’t have anything to do with anything. If Tom and I had believed it, it might have, but we didn’t. So don’t worry about that. But you’re going to have to level sooner or later, if you want me to do whatever you really want me to do.”

The outer door opened. Hester Prine talked with someone—a man—for a few seconds. The phone on Bowman’s desk jangled. He picked it up. “A Mr. Nicholas Alexandria wants to see you right now,” his secretary said. “He says it’s worth two hundred dollars.”

“Have you seen the money?” Bowman asked.

“He’s got it,” she answered.

Bowman mouthed the name “Nicholas Alexandria” to Claire Lenoir. She started violently. The blood drained from her face, leaving her skin the color of old newspaper. She shook her head so her hair, for a moment, flew across her face. One strand stuck at the comer of her red-painted mouth. She brushed it away with an angry gesture.

“Send him in, sweetheart,” Bowman said placidly. He hung up the telephone.

The man who came through the door might have been born in the city that gave him his name. He was darker than Claire Lenoir. His nose curved like a saber blade. His mouth, a Cupid’s bow, was red but not painted. He stank of patchouli.

His eyes, hard and shiny and black as obsidian, flicked to Claire Lenoir and widened slightly. Then they returned to Bowman. “Your secretary did not say you had—this woman here,” he said in a fussy, precise voice.

“Did you ask her?” Bowman asked. Nicholas Alexandria’s eyes widened again. He shook his head, a single, tightly controlled gesture. Bowman said, “Then you’ve got no cause for complaint. I hear you’re two hundred dollars interested in talking to me.” He held out his hand, palm up.

Nicholas Alexandria’s finely manicured hand drew from the pocket of his velvet jacket a wallet of tanned snakeskin. He removed from it four bills bearing the image of Ulysses S. Grant, held them out to Miles Bowman.

Bowman took them, studied them, put them into his own wallet, and stuck it back in his hip pocket. “All right,” he said. He waved to a chair. “Sit. Talk.”

Alexandria sat. His red mouth contracted petulantly. “I might have known Miss Tellini would be here, when I wished to discuss with you matters pertaining to the Maltese Elephant.”

Bowman’s head turned on its thick neck. “Miss Tellini?” he asked Claire Lenoir.

“Gina Tellini,” Nicholas Alexandria said with a certain cold relish. “Why? Under what name do you know her?”

“It’s not important,” Bowman answered. He smiled at the girl. “Got any others?”

Her skin darkened. She looked away from him. Nicholas Alexandria said, “That is the appellation with which she was bom in the district of New York known as, I believe, Hell’s Kitchen, any representations to the contrary notwithstanding.” Gina Tellini spat something in Italian. Nicholas Alexandria answered in the same language, his diction precise. Her mouth fell open. His smile was frigid. In English, he said, “You see, I can get down in the gutter, too.”

Miles Bowman held up a meaty hand. “Enough, already,” he said. He waved to Alexandria. “You wanted to talk about the Maltese Elephant. Go ahead and talk.”

“You are already familiar with this famous and fabulous creature?” Nicholas Alexandria inquired.

“Never heard of it,” Bowman said politely.

Nicholas Alexandria gave another of his tightly machined head shakes. “I am afraid I cannot believe you, Mr. Bowman,” he said. He reached inside his jacket once more. His hand returned to sight with a snub-nosed chromed automatic. He pointed it at Miles Bowman’s chest. “Place both your hands wide apart on the desk immediately.”