Free The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler

atmosphere.”
    “All right,” French said. “Whoever knocked him off could come and go without any questions asked. All he had to know was his room number. And that’s about all we know. Okay, Fred?”
    Beifus nodded.
    I said: “Not quite all. It’s a nice toupee, but it’s still a toupee.”
    French and Beifus both swung around quickly. French reached, carefully removed the dead man’s hair, and whistled. “I wondered what that damn intern was grinning at,” he said. “The bastard didn’t even mention it. See what I see, Fred?”
    “All I see is a guy without no hair,” Beifus answered.
    “Maybe you never knew him at that. Mileaway Marston. Used to be a runner for Ace Devore.”
    “Why sure enough,” Beifus chuckled. He leaned over and patted the dead bald head gently. “How you been all this time, Mileaway? I didn’t see you in so long I forgot. But you know me, pal. Once a softy always a softy.”
    The man on the bed looked old and hard and shrunken without his toupee. The yellow mask of death was beginning to set his face into rigid lines.
    French said calmly: “Well, that takes a load off my mind. This punk ain’t going to be no twenty-four-hour-a-day job. The hell with him.” He replaced the toupee over one eye and stood up off the bed. “That’s all for you two,” he said to Flack and me.
    Flack stood up.
    “Thanks for the murder, honey,” Beifus told him. “You get any more in your nice hotel, don’t forget our service. Even when it ain’t good, it’s quick.”
    Flack went down the short hall and yanked the door open. I followed him out. On the way to the elevator we didn’t speak. Nor on the way down. I walked with him along to his little office, followed him in and shut the door. He seemed surprised.
    He sat down at his desk and reached for his telephone. “I got to make a report to the Assistant Manager,” he said. “Something you want?”
    I rolled a cigarette around on my fingers, put a match to it and blew smoke softly across the desk. “One hundred and fifty dollars,” I said.
    Flack’s small, intent eyes became round holes in a face washed clean of expression. “Don’t get funny in the wrong place,” he said.
    “After those two comedians upstairs, you could hardly blame me if I did. But I’m not being funny.” I beat a tattoo on the edge of the desk and waited.
    Tiny beads of sweat showed on Flack’s lip above his little mustache. “I got business to attend to,” he said, more throatily this time. “Beat it and keep going.”
    “Such a tough little man,” I said. “Dr. Hambleton had $164 currency in his wallet when I searched him. He promised me a hundred as retainer, remember? Now, in the same wallet, he has fourteen dollars. And I did leave the door of his room unlocked. And somebody else locked it. You locked it, Flack.”
    Flack took hold of the arms of his chair and squeezed. His voice came from the bottom of a well saying: “You can’t prove a damn thing.”
    “Do I have to try?”
    He took the gun out of his waistband and laid it on the desk in front of him. He stared down at it. It didn’t have any message for him. He looked up at me again. “Fifty-fifty, huh?” he said brokenly.
    There was a moment of silence between us. He got his old shabby wallet out and rooted in it. He came up with a handful of currency and spread bills out on the desk, sorted them into two piles and pushed one pile my way.
    I said: “I want the whole hundred and fifty.”
    He hunched down in his chair and stared at a corner of the desk. After a long time, he sighed. He put the two piles together and pushed them over—to my side of the desk.
    “It wasn’t doing him any good,” Flack said. “Take the dough and breeze. I’ll remember you, buddy. All you guys make me sick to my stomach. How do I know you didn’t take half a grand off him.”
    “I’d take it all. So would the killer. Why leave fourteen dollars?”
    “So why did I leave fourteen dollars?” Flack