The Thin Man

22

Business was good at the Pigiron Club. The place was 'full of people, noise, and smoke. Studsy came from behind the cash register to greet us. “I was hoping you'd come in.” He shook my hand and Nora's and grinned broadly at Dorothy.

“Anything special?” I asked.

He made a bow. “Everything's special with ladies like these.”

I introduced him to Dorothy.

He bowed to her and said something elaborate about any friend of Nick's and stopped a waiter. “Pete, put a table up here for Mr Charles.”

“Pack them in like this every night?” I asked.

“I got no kick,” he said. “They come once, they come back again. Maybe I ain't got no black marble cuspidors, but you don't have to spit out what you buy here. Want to lean against the bar whilst they're putting up that table?”

We said we did and ordered drinks.

“Hear about Nunheim?” I asked.

He looked at me for a moment before making up his mind to say: “Uh-huh, I heard. His girl's down there”—he moved his head to indicate the other end of the room—“celebrating, I guess.”

I looked past Studsy down the room and presently picked out big red-haired Miriam sitting at a table with half a dozen men and women. “Hear who did it?” I asked.

“She says the police done it—he knew too much.”

“That's a laugh,” I said.

“That's a laugh,” he agreed. “There's your table. Set right down. I'll be back in a minute.”

We carried our glasses over to a table that had been squeezed in between two tables which had occupied a space large enough for one and made ourselves as nearly comfortable as we could.

Nora tasted her drink and shuddered. “Do you suppose this could be the 'bitter vetch' they used to put in cross-word puzzles?”

Dorothy said: “Oh, look.”

We looked and saw Shep Morelli coming towards us. His face had attracted Dorothy's attention. Where it was not dented it was swollen and its coloring ranged from deep purple around one eye to the pale pink of a piece of court-plaster on his chin.

He came to our table and leaned over a little to put both fists on it. “Listen,” he said, “Studsy says I ought to apologize.”

Nora murmured, “Old Emily Post Studsy,” while I asked, “Well?” Morelli shook his battered head. “I don't apologize for what I do— people've got to take it or leave it—but I don't mind telling you I'm sorry I lost my noodle and cracked down on you and I hope it ain't bothering you much and if there's anything I can do to square it I—”

“Forget it. Sit down and have a drink. This is Mr. Morelli, Miss Wynant.”

Dorothy's eyes became wide and interested.

Morelli found a chair and sat down. “I hope you won't hold it against me, neither,” he told Nora.

She said: “It was fun.”

He looked at her suspiciously.

“Out on bail?” I asked.

“Uh-huh, this afternoon.” He felt his face gingerly with one hand. “That's where the new ones come from. They had me resisting some more arrest just for good measure before they turned me loose.”

Nora said indignantly: “That's horrible. You mean they really—”

I patted her hand.

Morelli said: “You got to expect it.” His swollen lower lip moved in what was meant for a scornful smile. “It's all right as long as it takes two or three of 'em to do it.”

Nora turned to me. “Did you do things like that?”

“Who? Me?”

Studsy came over to us carrying a chair. “They lifted his face, huh?” he said, nodding at Morelli. We made room for him and he sat down. He grinned complacently at Nora's drink and at Nora. “I guess you don't get no better than that in your fancy Park Avenue joints—and you pay four bits a slug for it here.”

Nora's smile was weak, but it was a smile. She put her foot on mine under the table.

I asked Morelli: “Did you know Julia Wolf in Cleveland?”

He looked sidewise at Studsy, who was leaning back in his chair, gazing around the room, watching his profits mount.

“When she was Rhoda Stewart,” I added.

He looked at Dorothy.

I said: “You don't have to be cagey. She's Clyde Wynant's daughter.”

Studsy stopped gazing around the room and beamed on Dorothy. “So you are? And how is your pappy?”

“But I haven't seen him since I was a little girl,” she said.

Morelli wet the end of a cigarette and put it between his swollen lips. “I come from Cleveland.” He struck a match. His eyes were dull— he was trying to keep them dull. “She wasn't Rhoda Stewart except once—Nancy Kane.” He looked at Dorothy again. “Your father knows it.”

“Do you know my father?”

“We had some words once.”

“What about?” I asked.

“Her.” The match in his hand had burned down to his fingers. He dropped it, struck another, and lit his cigarette. He raised his eyebrows at me, wrinkling his forehead. “Is this 0. K.?”

“Sure. There's nobody here you can't talk in front of.”

“0. K. He was jealous as hell. I wanted to take a poke at him, but she wouldn't let me. That was all right: he was her bank-roll.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Six months, eight months.”

“Have you seen him since she got knocked off?”

He shook his head. “I never seen him but a couple of times, and this time I'm telling you about is the last.”

“Was she gypping him?”

“She don't say she is. I figure she is.”

“Why?”

“She's a wise head—plenty smart. She was getting dough somewheres. Once I wanted five grand.” He snapped his fingers. “Cash.”

I decided against asking if he had paid her back. “Maybe he gave it to her.”

“Sure—maybe.”

“Did you tell any of this to the police?” I asked.

He laughed once, contemptuously. “They thought they could smack it out of me. Ask 'em what they think now. You're a right guy, I don't—” He broke off, took the cigarette from between his lips. “The earysipelas kid,” he said and put out a hand to touch the ear of a man who, sitting at one of the tables we had been squeezed in between, had been leaning further and further back towards us.

The man jumped and turned a startled pale pinched face around over his shoulder at Morelli.

Morelli said: “Pull in that lug—it's getting in our drinks.”

The man stammered, “I d-didn't mean nothing, Shep,” and rammed his belly into his table trying to get as far as possible from us, which still did not take him out of ear-shot.

Morelli said, “You won't ever mean nothing, but that don't keep you from trying,” and returned his attention to me. “I'm willing to go all the way with you—the kid's dead, it's not going to hurt her any—but Mulrooney ain't got a wrecking crew that can get it out of me.”

“Swell,” I said. “Tell me about her, where you first ran into her, what she did before she tied up with Wynant, where he found her.”

“I ought to have a drink.” He twisted himself around in his chair and called: “Hey, garsong—you with the boy on your back!”

The somewhat hunchbacked waiter Studsy had called Pete pushed through people to our table and grinned affectionately down at Morelli. “What'll it be?” He sucked a tooth noisily.

We gave our orders and the waiter went away.

Morelli said: “Me and Nancy lived in the same block. Old man Kane had a candy store on the corner. She used to pinch cigarettes for me.” He laughed. “Her old man kicked hell out of me once for showing her how to get nickels out of the telephone with a piece of wire. You know, the old style ones. Jesus, we couldn't've been more than in the third grade.” He laughed again, low in his throat. “I wanted to glaum some fixtures from a row of houses they were building around the corner and plant 'em in his cellar and tell Schultz, the cop on the beat, to pay him back, but she wouldn't let nie.”

Nora said: “You must've been a little darling.”

“I was that,” he said fondly. “Listen. Once when I was no more'n five or—”

A feminine voice said: “I thought that was you.”

I looked up and saw it was red-haired Miriam speaking to me. I said: “Hello.”

She put her hands on her hips and stared somberly at me. “So he knew too much for you.”

“Maybe, but he took it on the lam down the fire-escape with his shoes in his hand before he told us any of it.”

“Balls!”

“All right. What do you think he knew that was too much for us?”

“Where Wynant is,” she said.

“So? Where is he?”

“I don't know. Art knew.”

“I wish he'd told us. We—”

“Balls!” she said again. “You know and the police know. Who do you think you're kidding?”

“I'm not kidding. I don't know where Wynant is.”

“You're working for him and the police are working with you. Don't kid me. Art thought knowing was going to get him a lot of money, poor sap. He didn't know what it was going to get him.”

“Did he tell you he knew?” I asked.

“I'm not as dumb as you think. He told me he knew something that was going to get him big dough and I've seen how it worked out. I guess I can put two and two together.”

“Sometimes the answer's four,” I said, “and sometimes it's twentytwo. I'm not working for Wynant. Now don't say, 'Balls,' again. Do you want to help—”

“No. He was a rat and he held out on the people he was ratting for. He asked for what he got, only don't expect me to forget that I left him with you and Guild, and the next time anybody saw him he was dead.”

“I don't want you to forget anything. I'd like you to remember whether—”

“I've got to go to the can,” she said and walked away. Her carriage was remarkably graceful.

“I don't know as I'd want to be mixed up with that dame,” Studsy said thoughtfully. “She's mean medicine.”

Morelli winked at me.

Dorothy touched my arm. “I don't understand, Nick.”

I told her that was all right and addressed Morelli: “You were telling us about Julia Wolf.”

“Uh-huh. Well, old man Kane booted her out when she was fifteen or sixteen and got in some kind of a jam with a high-school teacher and she took up with a guy called Face Peppler, a smart kid if he didn't talk too much. I remember once me and Face were—” He broke off and cleared his throat. “Anyways, Face and her stuck together—what the hell—it must be five, six years, thowing out the time he was in the army and she was living with some guy that I can't remember his name—a cousin of Dick O'Brien's, a skinny dark-headed guy that liked his liquor. But she went back to Face when he come out of the army, and they stuck together till they got nailed trying to shake down some bird from Toronto. Face took it and got her off with six months—they give him the business. Last I heard he was still in. I saw her when she came out—she touched me for a couple hundred to blow town. I hear from her once, when she sends it back to me and tells me Julia Wolf's her name now and she likes the big city fine, but I know Face is hearing from her right along. So when I move here in '28, I look her up. She's—”

Miriam came back and stood with her hands on her hips as before. “I've been thinking over what you said. You must think I'm pretty dumb.”

“No,” I said, not very truthfully.

“It's a cinch I'm not dumb enough to fall for that song and dance you tried to give me. I can see things when they're right in front of me.”

“All right.”

“It's not all right. You killed Art and—”

“Not so loud, girlie.” Studsy rose and took her arm. His voice was soothing. “Come along. I want to talk to you.” He led her towards the bar.

Morelli winked again. “He likes that. Well, I was saying I looked her up when I moved here, and she told me she had this job with Wynant and he was nuts about her and she was sitting pretty. It seems they learned her shorthand in Ohio when she was doing her six months and she figures maybe it'll be an in to something—you know, maybe she can get a job somewheres where they'll go out and leave the safe open. A agency had sent her over to do a couple days' work for Wynant and she figured maybe he'd be worth more for a long pull than for a quick tap and a getaway, so she give him the business and wound up with a steady connection. She was smart enough to tell him she had a record and was trying to go straight now and all that, so's not to have the racket spoiled if he found out anyhow, because she said his lawyer was a little leery of her and might have her looked up. I don't know just what she was doing, you understand, because it's her game and she don't need my help, and even if we are pals in a way, there's no sense in telling me anything I might want to go to her boss with. Understand. she wasn't my girl or anything—we was just a couple old friends, been kids playing together. Well, I used to see her ever once in a while—we used to come here a lot—till he kicked up too much of a fuss and then she said she was going to cut it out, she wasn't going to lose a soft bed over a few drinks with me. So that was that. That was October, I guess, and she stuck to it. I haven't seen her since.”

“Who else did she run around with?” I asked.

Morelli shook his head. “I don't know. She don't do much talking about people.”

“She was wearing a diamond engagement ring. Know anything about it?”

“Nothing except she didn't get it from me. She wasn't wearing it when I see her.”

“Do you think she meant to throw in with Pepplcr again when he got out?”

“Maybe. She didn't seem to worry much about him being in, but she liked to work with him all right and I guess thev'd've teamed up again.”

“And how about the cousin of Dick O'Brien, the skinny dark-headed lush? What became of him?”

Morelli looked at me in surprise. “Search me.”

Studsy returned alone. “Maybe I'm wrong,” he said as he sat down, “but I think somebody could do something with that cluck if they took hold of her right.”

Morelli said: “By the throat.”

Studsy grinned good-naturedly. “No. She's trying to get somewhere. She works hard at her singing lessons and—”

Morelli looked at his empty glass and said: “This tiger milk of yours must be doing her pipes a lot of good.” He turned his head to yell at Pete: “Hey, you with the knapsack, some more of the same. We got to sing in the choir tomorrow.”

Pete said: “Coming up, Sheppy.” His lined gray face lost its dull apathy when Morelli spoke to him.

An immensely fat blond man—so blond he was nearly albino—who had been sitting at Miriam's table came over and said to me in a thin, tremulous, effeminate voice: “So you're the party who put it to little Art Nunhei—”

Morelli hit the fat man in his fat belly, as hard as he could without getting up. Studsy, suddenly on his feet, leaned over Morelli and smashed a big fist into the fat man's face. I noticed, foolishly, that he still led with his right. Hunchbacked Pete came up behind the fat man and banged his empty tray down with full force on the fat man's head. The fat man fell back, upsetting three people and a table. Both bar-tenders were with us by then. One of them hit the fat man with a blackjack as he tried to get up, knocking him forward on hands and knees, the other put a hand down inside the fat man's collar in back, twisting the collar to choke him. With Morelli's help they got the fat man to his feet and hustled him out.

Pete looked after them and sucked a tooth. “That God-damned Sparrow,” he explained to me, “you can't take no chances on him when he's drinking.”

Studsy was at the next table, the one that had been upset, helping people pick up themselves and their possessions. “That's bad,” he was saying, “bad for business, but where you going to draw the line? I ain't running a dive, but I ain't trying to run a young ladies' seminary neither.”

Dorothy was pale, frightened; Nora wide-eyed and amazed. “It's a madhouse,” she said. “What'd they do that for?”

“You know as much about it as I do,” I told her.

Morelli and the bar-tenders came in again, looking pretty pleased with themselves. Morelli and Studsy returned to their seats at our table.

“You boys are impulsive,” I said.

Studsy repeated, “Impulsive,” and laughed, “Ha-ha-ha.”

Morelli was serious. “Any time that guy starts anything, you got to start it first. It's too late when he gets going. We seen him like that before, ain't we, Studsy?”

“Like what?” I asked. “He hadn't done anything.”

“He hadn't, all right,” Morelli said slowly, “but it's a kind of feeling you get about him sometimes. Ain't that right, Studsy?”

Studsy said: “Uh-huh, he's hysterical.”