32

You go in through double swing doors. Inside the double doors there is a combination PBX and information desk at which sits one of those ageless women you see around municipal offices everywhere in the world. They were never young and will never be old. They have no beauty, no charm, no style. They don’t have to please anybody. They are safe. They are civil without ever quite being polite and intelligent and knowledgeable without any real interest in anything. They are what human beings turn into when they trade life for existence and ambition for security.

Beyond this desk there is a row of glassed-in cubicles stretching along one side of a very long room. On the other side is the waiting room, a row of hard chairs all facing one way, towards the cubicles.

About half of the chairs were filled with people waiting and the look of long waiting on their faces and the expectation of still longer waiting to come. Most of them were shabby. One was from the jail, in denim, with a guard. A white-faced kid built like a tackle, with sick, empty eyes.

At the back of the line of cubicles a door was lettered SEWELL ENDICOTT DISTRICT ATTORNEY. I knocked and went on into a big airy corner room. A nice enough room, old-fashioned with padded black leather chairs and pictures of former D.A.’s and governors on the walls. Breeze fluttered the net curtains at four windows. A fan on a high shelf purred and swung slowly in a languid arc.

Sewell Endicott sat behind a flat dark desk and watched me come. He pointed to a chair across from him. I sat down. He was tall, thin and dark with loose black hair and long delicate fingers.

“You’re Marlowe?” he said in a voice that had a touch of the soft South.

I didn’t think he really needed an answer to that. I just waited.

“You’re in a bad spot, Marlowe. You don’t look good at all. You’ve been caught suppressing evidence helpful to the solution of a murder. That is obstructing justice. You could go up for it.”

“Suppressing what evidence?” I asked.

He picked a photo off his desk and frowned at it. I looked across at the other two people in the room. They sat in chairs side by side. One of them was Mavis Weld. She wore the dark glasses with the wide white bows. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I thought she was looking at me. She didn’t smile. She sat very still.

By her side sat a man in an angelic pale-gray flannel suit with a carnation the size of a dahlia in his lapel. He was smoking a monogrammed cigarette and flicking the ashes on the floor, ignoring the smoking stand at his elbow. I knew him by pictures I had seen in the papers. Lee Farrell, one of the hottest trouble-shooting lawyers in the country. His hair was white but his eyes were bright and young. He had a deep outdoor tan. He looked as if it would cost a thousand dollars to shake hands with him.

Endicott leaned back and tapped the arm of his chair with his long fingers. He turned with polite deference to Mavis Weld.

“And how well did you know Steelgrave, Miss Weld?”

“Intimately. He was very charming in some ways. I can hardly believe—” She broke off and shrugged.

“And you are prepared to take the stand and swear as to the time and place when this photograph was taken?” He turned the photograph over and showed it to her.

Farrell said indifferently, “Just a moment. Is that that the evidence Mr. Marlowe is supposed to have suppressed?

“I ask the questions,” Endicott said sharply.

Farrell smiled. “Well, in case the answer is yes, that photo isn’t evidence of anything.”

Endicott said softly: “Will you answer my question, Miss Weld?”

She said quietly and easily: “No, Mr. Endicott, I couldn’t swear when that picture was taken or where. I didn’t know it was being taken.”

“All you have to do is look at it,” Endicott suggested.

“And all I know is what I get from looking at it,” she told him.

I grinned. Farrell looked at me with a twinkle. Endicott caught the grin out of the corner of his eye. “Something you find amusing?” he snapped at me.

“I’ve been up all night. My face keeps slipping,” I said.

He gave me a stern look and turned to Mavis Weld again.

“Will you amplify that, Miss Weld?”

“I’ve had a lot of photos taken of me, Mr. Endicott. In a lot of different places and with a lot of different people. I have had lunch and dinner at The Dancers with Mr. Steelgrave and with various other men. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Farrell put in smoothly, “If I understand your point, you would like Miss Weld to be your witness to connect this photo up. In what kind of proceeding?”

“That’s my business,” Endicott said shortly. “Somebody shot Steelgrave to death last night. It could have been a woman. It could even have been Miss Weld. I’m sorry to say that, but it seems to be in the cards.”

Mavis Weld looked down at her hands. She twisted a white glove between her fingers.

“Well, let’s assume a proceeding,” Farrell said. “One in which that photo is part of your evidence—if you can get it in. But you can’t get it in. Miss Weld won’t get it in for you. All she knows about the photo is what she sees by looking at it. What anybody can see. You’d have to connect it up with a witness who could swear as to when, how and where it was taken. Otherwise I’d object—if I happened to be on the other side. I could even introduce experts to swear the photo was faked.”

“I’m sure you could,” Endicott said dryly.

“The only man who could connect it up for you is the man who took it,” Farrell went on without haste or heat. “I understand he’s dead. I suspect that was why he was killed.”

Endicott said: “This photo is clear evidence of itself that at a certain time and place Steelgrave was not in jail and therefore had no alibi for the killing of Stein.”

Farrell said: “It’s evidence when and if you get it introduced in evidence, Endicott. For Pete’s sake, I’m not trying to tell you the law. You know it. Forget that picture. It proves nothing whatsoever. No paper would dare print it. No judge would admit it in evidence, because no competent witness can connect it up. And if that’s the evidence Marlowe suppressed, then he didn’t in a legal sense suppress evidence at all.”

“I wasn’t thinking of trying Steelgrave for murder,” Endicott said dryly. “But I am a little interested in who killed him. The police department, fantastically enough, also has an interest in that. I hope our interest doesn’t offend you.”

Farrell said: “Nothing offends me. That’s why I’m where I am. Are you sure Steelgrave was murdered?”

Endicott just stared at him. Farrell said easily: “I understand two guns were found, both the property of Steelgrave.”

“Who told you?” Endicott asked sharply. He leaned forward frowning.

Farrell dropped his cigarette into the smoking stand and shrugged. “Hell, these things come out. One of these guns had killed Quest and also Stein. The other had killed Steelgrave. Fired at close quarters too. I admit those boys don’t as a rule take that way out. But it could happen.”

Endicott said gravely: “No doubt. Thanks for the suggestion. It happens to be wrong.”

Farrell smiled a little and was silent. Endicott turned slowly to Mavis Weld.

“Miss Weld, this office—or the present incumbent of it at least—doesn’t believe in seeking publicity at the expense of people to whom a certain kind of publicity might be fatal. It is my duty to determine whether any one should be brought to trial for any of these murders and to prosecute them, if the evidence warrants it. It is not my duty to ruin your career by exploiting the fact that you had the bad luck or bad judgment to be the friend of a man who, although never convicted or even indicted for any crime, was undoubtedly a member of a criminal mob at one time. I don’t think you have been quite candid with me about this photograph, but I won’t press the matter now. There is not much point in my asking you whether you shot Steelgrave. But I do ask you whether you have any knowledge that would point to who may have or might have killed him.”

Farrell said quickly: “Knowledge, Miss Weld—not mere suspicion.”

She faced Endicott squarely. “No.”

He stood up and bowed. “That will be all for now then. Thanks for coming in.”

Farrell and Mavis Weld stood up. I didn’t move. Farrell said: “Are you calling a press conference?”

“I think I’ll leave that to you, Mr. Farrell. You have always been very skillful in handling the press.”

Farrell nodded and went to open the door. They went out. She didn’t seem to look at me when she went out, but something touched the back of my neck lightly. Probably accidental. Her sleeve.

Endicott watched the door close. He looked across the desk at me. “Is Farrell representing you? I forgot to ask him.”

“I can’t afford him. So I’m vulnerable.”

He smiled thinly. “I let them take all the tricks and then salve my dignity by working out on you, eh?”

“I couldn’t stop you.”

“You’re not exactly proud of the way you have handled things, are you, Marlowe?”

“I got off on the wrong foot. After that I just had to take my lumps.”

“Don’t you think you owe a certain obligation to the law?”

“I would—if the law was like you.”

He ran his long pale fingers through his tousled black hair.

“I could make a lot of answers to that,” he said. They’d all sound about the same. The citizen is the law. In this country we haven’t got around to understanding that. We think of the law as an enemy. We’re a nation of cop-haters.”

“It’ll take a lot to change that,” I said. “On both sides.

He leaned forward and pressed a buzzer. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It will. But somebody has to make a beginning. Thanks for coming in.”

As I went out a secretary came in at another door with a fat file in her hand.