Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

There was a man sitting in the leatherette chair on the customer’s side of my desk. A beefy man with a broad placid face, and eyes without expression. Wearing a cheap blue suit and a blue shirt with a brown tie. Wearing a tough expression he’d seen somewhere. A private operative we’re not too proud to have in the trade, a gent named Moose Lundgren.

“What’s cooking, Jonesy?” he wanted to know.

“Nothing much.” I went over to sit in my mahogany swivel chair. “Murder or two, couple of bank robberies — you know how it is.”

He smiled genially. “And hotel skippers and jealous husbands or wives and labor trouble — that’s how it is, huh?”

“Not labor trouble,” I said. “I leave that alone.”

He shrugged his bulky shoulders. “Maybe you can afford to be particular.”

I lit a cigarette out of the new pack, and offered him one, which he refused. I asked: “Something on your mind, Moose?”

He expelled his breath through his flabby mouth. “Well, that Harlin dame—”

I tensed, waiting. He seemed to be hesitating I said: “What’s about her?”

He smiled. “I saw you leave her apartment. I was watching it, at the time, and I wondered—” Again, he stopped, in his hesitant way. “What you got on her, Jonesy? What’s the angle?”

“What’s yours?” I countered. “You were watching her apartment? Why?”

He smiled expansively. “Why? Why would I be? For pay, of course. A party hired me to do it.”

“How long ago?” I asked him. “When did you start watching it?”

He froze up. That stubborn look came to his pig eyes, and he shook his head. “You ask too many questions.”

“You started it,” I told him. “I’ve got more questions than answers — I guarantee you that.”

He pulled a cheap cigar out of his breast pocket and took some time biting off the end. He lighted it slowly.

I thought, he’s going to get pompous now. He’s going to sound important.

He said: “This guy I’m working for is a pretty big operator, Jonesy. Kind of short-tempered, too. You and I would work better together.”

I laughed. I said: “I’ll decide that. Don’t try to scare me.”

He shrugged, a la Greenstreet. He studied his cigar. Then his muddy eyes met mine. “Val Every,” he said, and nothing more.

I was supposed to be impressed. Val Every had grown big with prohibition, and grown no smaller in the years since. I didn’t believe he’d need to hire a third rate shamus like Lundgren. He had enough guns of his own.

“He a friend of Miss Harlin’s?” I inquired pleasantly.

Moose nodded. “He’d like to be more than that. She worked for him, sang at the Pheasant. He wanted to marry her, Jonesy.”

“Marry?” I said, doubtfully. “He wasn’t a marrying man, the last I heard. Though he always did all right with the ladies, for a man his age.”

“He’s only forty-five,” Moose said. “I’m telling you, Jones, for this Flame Harlin, he’ll go all the way. He’s been a sick man since she left. He’s nothing to fool with, right now.”

“Since she left?” I said. “And when was that, Moose?”

He looked at me quietly a moment. “Week ago. Those papers up in front of her door are eight days old.”

“Well,” I said, “you know more about it than I do, probably. Or at least as much. What do you want from me?”

“Just who you’re working for.”

“A client,” I told him. “A client who prefers to remain anonymous for the moment.”

He rose slowly, and stood regarding his hat. “Are you sure that’s what you want me to tell Val. Jonesy?”

“You can tell him anything you want,” I said. “He’s your client.”

Again that shrug, and Moose was walking toward the door. About halfway there, he turned to look at me. He opened his mouth to say something, and then evidently decided against it. I heard his big feet going down the stairs.

The mail wasn’t much, just some bills. I put them carefully with the others, and went over to Mac’s.

I had a beer, first, a small one. I drank it slowly, thinking all the while.

Deep and cold and all alone, I thought, bury them, bury...

I didn’t realize I was thinking aloud until I saw Mac staring at me.

“Bury who?” Mac said.

“The Dodgers,” I said. “Why not?”

“Like hell,” Mac said. “Bury the rest of them, instead.”

“You got a small steak?” I asked.

He nodded. “Stringy and small, and I don’t think it’ll have much flavor, but you could call it a steak.”

“Cut-rate, no doubt, if it’s that bad.”

“The standard price.”

“Fry it,” I told him, “in your inimitable way. Garnish it with onions, and serve it deftly. Then chat with me while I eat it.”

“Sure,” he said, “I got nothing else to do. I can make a living off you, alone. My other customers don’t matter, only to me.”

I yawned, and sipped my beer.

When he brought it over, he brought another small beer along. There was only one other customer in the place, and he was nursing a Tom Collins.

“You know Val Every, don’t you?” I asked Mac.

“I guess everybody knows him.”

“Sure,” I said. “But you know him pretty well, don’t you? Didn’t you buy beer from him, during prohibition?”

“During prohibition,” Mac said stiffly, “I sold roofing.”