No Questions Asked

15

When we got back to the Riverside motel at five I told Guerriero that although I probably wouldn’t be needing him that night, I would like a phone number where I could reach him. He wrote one down and gave it to me.

“What time tomorrow?” he said.

“About ten, I guess.”

“Are we making any progress?”

“With what?”

“With whatever it is that we’re doing.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

“But we’re going to be doing more of the same tomorrow, whatever it is?”

“Probably.”

“You know what’s wrong with you?”

“What?” I said.

He grinned. “You talk too much.”

After Guerriero drove off I went into the motel office and checked with the tired-looking man to see whether I had had any calls. I hadn’t. On the way back to my room I stopped by the ice machine and scooped up a bucketful. Inside my room I got the Scotch out and mixed a drink. Armed with that I moved over to the phone and dialed Myron Greene’s home number in Darien, Connecticut. It rang three times before Deborah answered. Deborah was four and we had a nice talk, perhaps four dollars’ worth, about her new rabbit, Jimmy, and about Jimmy’s funny pink eyes.

Finally Myron Greene came on and I said, “I thought I’d let you know where to reach me.”

He told me to hold on while he got something to write it down on. When he came back I gave him the name of the motel and its phone number and the number of the room I was in.

“What if somebody else wants to reach you?” he said.

I thought about it for a moment. “I think you’d better give it to them.”

“Anybody at all?”

“That’s right. Anybody at all.”

“Are you making any progress?”

“I’m asking a lot of questions. I’m not sure whether the answers I’m getting could be called progress though.”

“How long do you think it might take?”

“I’m giving it a week. That’s all.”

“Anything I can do?”

“If you happen to run across a nicely appointed one-bedroom apartment with a view of the river for two hundred bucks a month, you might tell them I’ll take it.”

“I’ll put Joan to work on it. She’s good at such stuff.” Joan was Myron Greene’s secretary. “But I don’t think she can find anything like that for two hundred a month.”

“I was only kidding, Myron. I’ll go a lot higher.”

“You know how literal I am when it comes to money.”

“Sorry. I forgot. If anything happens out here, I’ll let you know.”

“All right,” he said and after we said good-bye, I hung up. It was still too early to eat so I sipped my drink for a while and finished reading the morning’s Los Angeles Times. At seven I turned on the television set and looked at the network news and marveled, as I always did, at how much money was spent on bringing so little news to so many.

At seven-thirty I switched off the set and walked down the courtyard toward the motel office. The tired-looking man was watching a game show in which the contestants jumped up and down and screamed and hugged the master of ceremonies every few minutes. He seemed to be interested in the show so I didn’t say anything until a commercial came on.

“If I get any calls, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said. “I’m just going out to eat. Can you recommend something?”

“Well, you don’t wanta try that place across the street.”

“I already did. This morning.”

“You haven’t got a car, have you?”

“No.”

“If you don’t mind a little walk, there’s a rib joint about half a mile down La Brea. You like ribs?”

“Ribs sound good.”

“Well, they got pretty good ribs down there. Straight down La Brea on your left. It’s called Hank’s Rib Joint. You can’t miss it, like people always tell me when I ask directions, but, by God, I do. Miss it, I mean.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“You don’t mind the walk, huh?”

“No. I don’t mind it.”

“People in this town don’t walk anywhere. I mean, they need a pack of cigarettes and the drugstore’s a block away, but you think they walk? Hell, no. They drive. Goddamnedest thing you ever saw.”

I thanked the tired-looking man for the directions and for sharing his thoughts with me and left. It was pleasantly cool out and there didn’t seem to be much smog and I had the broad sidewalk virtually to myself all the way to Hank’s Rib Joint, where the pork spare-ribs that I ordered turned out to be every bit as good as the tired-looking man had promised.

Back at the motel I sat in the chair that was covered in lime green plastic and smoked cigarettes and waited for something to happen. A little after nine, something did happen. The phone rang. I picked it up and the hard, chipper voice on the other end said, “What the hell you doing in L.A., St. Ives?”

“Looking for you, among other things.”

“Yeah, I got your message. What’s all this crap about a book?”

“I think we’d better talk about it, Doc.”

“Whaddya think we’re doing?”

“The phone’s not much good for something like this.”

“I’m a busy man, St. Ives.”

“You know about Jack Marsh, don’t you?” I said.

“I know he’s dead.”

“The cops know that, too. I don’t think they know about you and Jack. Not yet.”

“But you’re gonna tell ’em?”

“Not necessarily. Not if I can ask you some questions and I like your answers.”

“What if you don’t like ’em?”

“I’ve always liked your answers, Doc. They’re colorful — even vivid.”

“You sure you haven’t got something tricky going?”

“Like what?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“That’s just your conscience bothering you. All I want is about fifteen minutes of your time. Maybe twenty.”

There was a brief pause while Doc Amber thought it over. After he made up his mind he was brisk and businesslike.

“I’ll come by and pick you up at your place in fifteen minutes. We’ll ride around. If you got some questions, you can ask ’em. Maybe I’ll answer ’em. Then again, maybe I won’t.”

“That’s fair enough.”

“Fifteen minutes,” he said. “Outside.” Then he hung up.

If it hadn’t been for the thick pillow that he sat on, Doc Amber wouldn’t have been able to see over the steering wheel of the white Lincoln Continental. As it was he still had to tip his head back and stretch his. legs a little to reach the pedals, even with the front seat pulled as far forward as it would go.

He was exactly on time. When I got into the big car he didn’t offer to shake hands. All he said was, “You’re getting older, St. Ives.”

“We all are,” I said.

Amber turned left or right at every corner until we reached Wilshire Boulevard. Then he turned west. We were still going west when he said, “Well, at least there ain’t no tail.”

“Did you think there would be?”

“I got a paranoiac nature,” he said. “In my business I got to.”

“Business seems to be pretty good,” I said. “The car, the suit, the Gucci’s. They are Gucci’s, aren’t they?”

“They just look like Gucci’s. If you wanta know something, they’re a hell of a lot better than Gucci’s. I have ’em made over in England special on account of I got such small feet.”

Almost everything about Doc Amber was small and neat and compact except his hands. They were a jockey’s hands — hard and lean with long, strong-looking fingers. He was wearing a double-breasted flannel suit of pale grey with a vest, which you don’t much see anymore, and I had the feeling that it, like his shoes, had been made in England. His shirt was a rich cream color adorned with a neat maroon bow tie. He didn’t wear a hat. A hat might have mussed his hair, which went back from his forehead in thick, careful waves. At his temples it had turned a silver grey, just as though he had planned it that way.

At fifty or a little past, Doc Amber was still a remarkably handsome man with a profile that should have been on a coin, with its high forehead, strong lean nose, chiseled lips, and a chin that jutted just right. Only his eyes gave any clue to what really went on inside that handsome head. They were a dark grey, almost black, and they moved around so much that some might have called them restless. I called them shifty because that’s what they were.

“Well,” I said as we stopped at a light. “It’s been a while.”

“Is that what you wanta talk about, old times?”

“Just curious. The last time I heard you were still working the widow lathes down in Miami.”

“I decided to move.”

“L.A.’s your territory now?”

“L.A., Vegas, La Costa — Acapulco now and then.”

“How’d you get together with Jack Marsh?”

He turned to look at me. “That’s it, huh? You wanta tie me in with him.”

“You’re already tied in with him. I just want to know how it happened.”

Amber shrugged. “There was this old broad that I was working down in La Costa. She said she was fifty-five, but Christ, she was sixty-three at least. I thought she was really gone on me, you know how they are, so I moved in for a fast close. I was using the Mexican silver mine.”

“Jesus,” I said, “I didn’t think anybody used that anymore.”

“You’d be surprised. Well, you know how it goes. For a hundred thousand I’d let her in on it although I really shouldn’t because I’d have to cut the Mexican general out.”

“It wheezes,” I said.

“I know. Well, she was all hot for it but she tips it to her brother. The brother hires Jack Marsh and that’s how me and Jack met.”

“He put the chill on, huh?”

“Fast,” Amber said. “I’d never been chilled off anything so quick in my life. That Jack. He was one mean son of a bitch.”

“Then what?”

“Well, I come back to L.A. and I’m sitting around the Polo Lounge with this mark that I’m thinking of trying to work the spud on — you know, the stolen twenty-dollar bill plates.”

“The green goods racket,” I said. “Sweet Christ, that’s got whiskers, too.”

“They all do,” Amber said. “But with a little variation they’re fresh as new paint. Anyway, I’m sitting in the Polo Lounge with this mark and who should waltz in but Jack Marsh. Well, I brush the mark off quick and then Jack comes over and it turns out that he was looking for me on account of he wants to do a little business.”

“What kind?” I said.

Amber turned and looked at me coldly. “That’s where my story ends, St. Ives. Until I hear yours.”

“Mine’s simple,” I said. “A rare old book was stolen in Washington and I signed on as go-between to ransom it back. It didn’t work out that way and I got hit on the head by Jack Marsh and he got killed and whoever was in on it with Marsh made off with the two hundred and fifty thousand bucks plus the old book and the insurance company would sort of like to get them both back, the money and the book.”

This time Amber looked at me with a frown that carved a deep V into his forehead. “Me, huh? You figure it was me who went in with Marsh?”

“You were in on part of it,” I said.

Amber stopped at another light on Wilshire. “Let’s go get a drink,” he said, “and maybe I’ll tell you the rest of it. Providing, of course.”

“Providing what?”

“No cops.”

“All right,” I said. “Providing you didn’t kill too many people, no cops.”

They knew Doc Amber at El Padrino bar in the Beverly-Wilshire where we decided to get a drink. The waiter addressed him by name, solicitously inquired about his health, made sure that we got a good table, and saw to it that the peanuts were fresh. He even got us a couple of drinks, a stinger for Amber and a gin and tonic for me.

“I thought you hung out at the Happy Pelican,” I said.

“The Pelican’s home. This is where I work. Here and the Polo Lounge and a couple of other places.”

“You were all set to tell me what Jack Marsh wanted you for.”

“He wanted a tin mittens to tighten up a mark for a mill’s lock he had set out in Malibu.” Amber grinned and I saw that his teeth were still his own and nicely cared for. “We used to talk like that, you know.”

“Nobody ever talked like that,” I said.

“You’d be surprised. You want me to translate?”

“Marsh wanted you to pose as an outside authority to do some additional convincing on a sure scam that he was working on a mark out in Malibu. Close?”

“Perfect.”

“The mark was Maude Goodwater, right?”

“Right.”

“What was your job?”

“I was the representative of the prospective buyer of that book of hers, the Pliny.”

“How much was your cut?”

“The book was to go for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. My cut was to be a finder’s fee of two percent, fifteen thousand.”

“What kind of spiel did you use?”

“I talked English, careful English, like I’d learned it just last week — you know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“Then on top of that I used a lot of jargon that I picked up in a hurry.”

“Where?”

“Where else? The library.”

“So there wasn’t any buyer?”

“Just the one I made up. I made him up to be a funny old bird, a recluse, even an eccentric who couldn’t stand any publicity.”

“And she bought it?”

Doc Amber almost looked hurt, as though I had questioned his professional integrity, which, in a sense, I suppose I had. “Whaddya mean did she buy it?” he said. “She woulda put up the finder’s fee in advance, if it hadn’t been for Jack Marsh. Hell, I could’ve walked out of there with fifteen thou in my pocket and no questions asked.”

“Sorry, Doc,” I said. “I forgot how good you are.”

“I sure didn’t get no fifteen thou, I’ll tell you.”

“How much did you get?”

“Outa Marsh? Well, good old Jack Marsh was gonna pay me a grand for my afternoon’s performance. The only trouble was that Jack couldn’t come up with the whole grand until his own scam peeled out for him.”

“So how much did you squeeze out of him?”

Doc Amber looked around the room to make sure that nobody was listening. Nobody was. He leaned toward me and whispered fiercely, “Now, goddamn it, St. Ives, you gotta swear you’ll never tell nobody this.”

I crossed my heart. “I swear.”

“Two hundred bucks,” he said bitterly and shook his head. “Two hundred lousy bucks. Can you believe it?”

“What I find hard to believe, Doc, is that you didn’t try to cut yourself in somehow on the big score that Marsh was setting up. You must have known it was big.”

“Did you know him? I mean did you ever do a deal with Marsh or have him come down hard on you?”

“We only met once and briefly. He just had time to half cave in the side of my head.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what I mean. You don’t fuck with people like Jack Marsh. Not if you want to keep on walking around and talking with all your teeth. He was one mean son of a bitch.”

“So he didn’t tell you what he was up to?”

“Why should he?”

“And you didn’t ask?”

“I knew better than that.”

“So what did you guess? As I recall, you’re a pretty good guesser, Doc.”

“Well, there’s one thing I didn’t have to guess. I just knew. I mean, if you’ve been doing what I do for as long as I’ve been doing it, then you can almost smell how bad people need money. I said need, not want. Jack Marsh needed money bad. Real bad.”

“You got any idea about what he needed it for?”

Amber shook his head. “I got no idea. But I am pretty sure of one other thing.”

“What?”

“You say Jack Marsh was teamed up with somebody else on this book thing?”

“That’s right.”

“Then it’s a cinch bet that whoever it was needed money just as bad as Marsh did.”

“Maybe even worse,” I said.

“That’s right,” Doc Amber said. “Maybe even worse.”