Red Wind by Raymond Chandler Read Free Book Online Page B

a white Russian I met in Shanghai. She’s safe as a vault and she looks as if she would cut your throat for a nickel. That’s what I like about her. You get the glamor without the risk.”
    “You talk damn foolish,” the girl spat at him.
    “You look O.K. to me,” the big man went on ignoring her. “That is, for a keyhole peeper. Is there an out?”
    “Yeah. But it will cost a little money.”
    “I expected that. How much?”
    “Say another five hundred.”
    “Goddam, thees hot wind make me dry like the ashes of love,” the Russian girl said bitterly.
    “Five hundred might do,” the blond man said. “What do I get for it?”
    “If I swing it—you get left out of the story. If I don’t—you don’t pay.”
    He thought it over. His face looked lined and tired now. The small beads of sweat twinkled in his short blond hair.
    “This murder will make you talk,” he grumbled. “The second one, I mean. And I don’t have what I was going to buy. And if it’s a hush, I’d rather buy it direct.”
    “Who was the little brown man?” I asked.
    “Name’s Leon Valesanos, a Uruguayan. Another of my importations. I’m in a business that takes me a lot of places. He was working in the Spezzia Club in Chiseltown—you know, the strip of Sunset next to Beverly Hills. Working on roulette, I think. I gave him the five hundred to go down to this—this Waldo—and buy back some bills for stuff Miss Kolchenko had charged to my account and delivered here. That wasn’t bright, was it? I had them in my brief case and this Waldo got a chance to steal them. What’s your hunch about what happened?”
    I sipped my drink and looked at him down my nose. “Your Uruguayan pal probably talked cut and Waldo didn’t listen good . Then the little guy thought maybe that Mauser might help his argument—and Waldo was too quick for him. I wouldn’t say Waldo was a killer—not by intention. A blackmailer seldom is. Maybe he lost his temper and maybe he just held on to the little guy’s neck too long. Then he had to take it on the lam. But he had another date, with more money coming up. And he worked the neighborhood looking for the party. And accidentally he ran into a pal who was hostile enough and drunk enough to blow him down.”
    “There’s a hell of a lot of coincidence in all this business,” the big man said.
    “It’s the hot wind,” I grinned. “Everybody’s screwy tonight.”
    “For the five hundred you guarantee nothing? If I don’t get my cover-up, you don’t get your dough. Is that it?”
    “That’s it,” I said, smiling at him.
    “Screwy is right,” he said, and drained his highball. “I’m taking you up on it.”
    “There are just two things,” I said softly, leaning forward in my chair. “Waldo had a getaway car parked outside the cocktail bar where he was killed, unlocked with the motor running. The killer took it. There’s always the chance of a kickback from that direction. You see, all Waldo’s stuff must have been in that car.”
    “Including my bills and your letters.”
    “Yeah. But the police are reasonable about things like that—unless you’re good for a lot of publicity. If you’re not, I think I can eat some stale dog downtown and get by. If you are—that’s the second thing. What did you say your name was?”
    The answer was a long time coming. When it came I didn’t get as much kick out of it as I thought I would. All at once it was too logical.
    “Frank C. Barsaly,” he said.
    After a while the Russian girl called me a taxi. When I left the party across the street was still doing all that a party could do. I noticed the walls of the house were still standing. That seemed a pity.

VI
     
    WHEN I unlocked the glass entrance door of the Berglund I smelled policeman. I looked at my wrist watch. It was nearly 3 A.M. In the dark corner of the lobby a man dozed in a chair with a newspaper over his face. Large feet stretched out before him. A corner of the paper lifted an inch,