1After a while Breeze got tired of looking at me and dug a cigar out of his pocket. He slit the cellophane band with a knife and trimmed the end of the cigar and lit it carefully, turning it around in the flame, and holding the burning match away from it while he stared thoughtfully at nothing and drew on the cigar and made sure it was burning the way he wanted it to burn.

2Then he shook the match out very slowly and reached over to lay it on the sill of the open window. Then he looked at me some more.

3"You and me," he said, "are going to get along."

4"That's fine," I said.

5"You don't think so," he said. "But we are. But not because I took any sudden fancy to you. It's the way I work. Everything in the clear. Everything sensible. Everything quiet. Not like that dame. That's the kind of dame that spends her life looking for trouble and when she finds it, it's the fault of the first guy she can get her fingernails into."

6"He gave her a couple of shiners," I said. "That wouldn't make her love him too much."

7"I can see," Breeze said, "that you know a lot about dames."

8"Not knowing a lot about them has helped me in my business," I said. "I'm open-minded."

9He nodded and examined the end of his cigar. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and read from it. "Delmar B. Hench, 45, bartender, unemployed. Maybelle Masters, 26, dancer. That's all I know about them. I've got a hunch there ain't a lot more to know."

10"You don't think he shot Anson?" I asked.

11Breeze looked at me without pleasure. "Brother, I just got here." He took a card out of his pocket and read from that. "James B. Pollock, Reliance Indemnity Company, Field Agent. What's the idea?"

12"In a neighborhood like this it's bad form to use your own name," I said. "Anson didn't either."

13"What's the matter with the neighborhood?"

14"Practically everything," I said.

15"What I would like to know," Breeze said, "is what you know about the dead guy?"

16"I told you already."

17"Tell me again. People tell me so much stuff I get it all mixed up."

18"I know what it says on his card, that his name is George Anson Phillips, that he claimed to be a private detective. He was outside my office when I went to lunch. He followed me downtown, into the lobby of the Hotel Metropole. I led him there. I spoke to him and he admitted he had been following me and said it was because he wanted to find out if I was smart enough to do business with. That's a lot of baloney, of course. He probably hadn't quite made up his mind what to do and was waiting for something to decide him. He was on a job—he said—he had got leery of and he wanted to join up with somebody, perhaps somebody with a little more experience than he had, if he had any at all. He didn't act as if he had."

19Breeze said: "And the only reason he picked on you is that six years ago you worked on a case in Ventura while he was a deputy up there."

20I said, "That's my story."

21"But you don't have to get stuck with it," Breeze said calmly. "You can always give us a better one."

22"It's good enough," I said. "I mean it's good enough in the sense that it's bad enough to be true."

23He nodded his big slow head.

24"What's your idea of all this?" he asked.

25"Have you investigated Phillips' office address?"

26He shook his head, no.

27"My idea is you will find out he was hired because he was simple. He was hired to take this apartment here under a wrong name, and to do something that turned out to be not what he liked. He was scared. He wanted a friend, he wanted help. The fact that he picked me after so long a time and such little knowledge of me showed he didn't know many people in the detective business."

28Breeze got his handkerchief out and mopped his head and face again. "But it don't begin to show why he had to follow you around like a lost pup instead of walking right up to your office door and in."

29"No," I said, "it doesn't."

30"Can you explain that?"

31"No. Not really."

32"Well, how would you try to explain it?"

33"I've already explained it in the only way I know how. He was undecided whether to speak to me or not. He was waiting for something to decide him. I decided by speaking to him."

34Breeze said: "That is a very simple explanation. It is so simple it stinks."

35"You may be right," I said.

36"And as the result of this little hotel lobby conversation this guy, a total stranger to you, asks you to his apartment and hands you his key. Because he wants to talk to you."

37I said, "Yes."

38"Why couldn't he talk to you then?"

39"I had an appointment," I said.

40"Business?"

41I nodded.

42"I see. What you working on?"

43I shook my head and didn't answer.

44"This is murder," Breeze said. "You're going to have to tell me."

45I shook my head again. He flushed a little.

46"Look," he said tightly, "you got to."

47"I'm sorry, Breeze," I said. "But so far as things have gone, I'm not convinced of that."

48"Of course you know I can throw you in the can as a material witness," he said casually.

49"On what grounds?"

50"On the grounds that you are the one who found the body, that you gave a false name to the manager here, and that you don't give a satisfactory account of your relations with the dead guy."

51I said: "Are you going to do it?"

52He smiled bleakly. "You got a lawyer?"

53"I know several lawyers. I don't have a lawyer on a retainer basis."

54"How many of the commissioners do you know personally?"

55"None. That is, I've spoken to three of them, but they might not remember me."

56"But you have good contacts, in the mayor's office and so on?"

57"Tell me about them," I said. "I'd like to know."

58"Look, buddy," he said earnestly, "you must got some friends somewhere. Surely."

59"I've got a good friend in the Sheriff's office, but I'd rather leave him out of it."

60He lifted his eyebrows. "Why? Maybe you're going to need friends. A good word from a cop we know to be right might go a long way."

61"He's just a personal friend," I said. "I don't ride around on his back. If I get in trouble, it won't do him any good."

62"How about the homicide bureau?"

63"There's Randall," I said. "If he's still working out of Central Homicide. I had a little time with him on a case once. But he doesn't like me too well."

64Breeze sighed and moved his feet on the floor, rustling the newspapers he had pushed down out of the chair.

65"Is all this on the level—or are you just being smart? I mean about all the important guys you don't know?"

66"It's on the level," I said. "But the way I am using it is smart."

67"It ain't smart to say so right out."

68"I think it is."

69He put a big freckled hand over the whole lower part of his face and squeezed. When he took the hand away there were round red marks on his cheeks from the pressure of thumb and fingers. I watched the marks fade.

70"Why don't you go on home and let a man work?" he asked crossly.

71I got up and nodded and went towards the door. Breeze said to my back: "Gimme your home address."

72I gave it to him. He wrote it down. "So long," he said drearily: "Don't leave town. We'll want a statement—maybe tonight."

73I went out. There were two uniformed cops outside on the landing. The door across the way was open and a fingerprint man was still working inside. Downstairs I met two more cops in the hallway, one at each end of it. I didn't see the carroty manager. I went out the front door. There was an ambulance pulling away from the curb. A knot of people hung around on both sides of the street, not as many as would accumulate in some neighborhoods.

74I pushed along the sidewalk. A man grabbed me by the arm and said: "What's the damage, Jack?"

75I shook his arm off without speaking or looking at his face and went on down the street to where my car was.