money, you can always find someone to make you anything you want," she said. She talked like a woman who knew.
"So your little brother did all right for himself, and pretty fast, too. The pair of you couldn't have been in this country much longer than me."
"We came over in '38."
I whistled, low and long. "That is fast for someone to make good; especially for a johnny-come-lately punk like your brother. I'm impressed. What's his racket?"
"I don't know. He never told me."
I got up and went for the office door. I threw it open and told her: "Get out."
She didn't move a muscle. "It's the truth. The one time I asked, he gave me the brushoff. Said something about being in public relations."
"The kind the cops run you in for when they catch you trying it in Griffith Park?" I would've laughed, but I sort of forgot how.
She stood up. "You said you'd listen. I said I'd tell the truth. So far I'm keeping up my end of the deal."
If she was waiting for an apology, she was going to be twice as gray and wrinkled as me before she got it. Still, I closed the office door. "All right, sweets, you made your point. I'll listen."
She gave me a look like ex-wives give their husbands when the bastards swear the check is in the mail. "Like I said, my brother and I have always been very close, but that doesn't mean we're all over each other's business. Ever since our mother died, we looked out for one another. Daddy never had time for us; he had to earn a living, put food in our mouths. Being a woodchopper's no ball."
"Can the sob story and cut to the chase," I told her.
"I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself."
She had me there. Last time our paths crossed, she almost took care of me. Permanently. I went back to my desk and motioned for her to go on.
"Like I said, he calls me a lot, so when I didn't hear from him for two weeks straight, I got worried. I went over to his place, the Chez Moderne apartments."
The Chez Moderne . . . Ritzy name for what was basically a rundown old hotel so far downtown that the cockroaches had to take the streetcar. Not the address I'd expect of the man who owns his own powder blue Packard. I shot her a searching look but it bounced right off. If she'd ever wondered about why her brother drove that but lived there, she didn't let on.
"I had the extra key, so when no one answered my knock, I let myself in." She shuddered, remembering. "The place looked like an earthquake hit it. Someone had been there before me and they tore it up, top to bottom."
"You sure? Maybe your brother just wasn't a very good housekeeper." Her eyes poured me a double dose of arsenic, straight up, so I stopped trying to pass for one of the Marx Brothers.
"Everything was ruined. Whoever'd done it even sliced up the mattress and ripped the lining out of the drapes. The bathroom floor was wall-to-wall pills, all the empty bottles smashed in the bathtub."
I didn't like to bring up what could be a pretty ugly possibility, but I had to ask: "Any blood?"
She shook her head. "I was thankful for that much. My first instinct was to go to the cops, but when I got home, there was a letter waiting for me. It was from my brother."
I held out my hand, waiting for her to cough it up. I kept on waiting.
"I burned it," she explained.
"How convenient."
"You don't understand: I had to!"
"Why?"
"Because he told me to. He didn't want me getting involved. It was too dangerous. If they got their hands on that letter—"
"Not so fast. Who's 'they'?"
"He didn't name names. The same creeps who wrecked his place, I suppose."
"Tough call. What else did the letter say?"
"It said that he was going away for a few weeks, maybe a few months, on business. He didn't come right out and say so, but he hinted that this was it, the big score, something that was going to put the two of us on Easy Street for the rest of our lives. He said he'd be in touch, and for me to sit tight until I heard from him again."