Private Dick Casefile 01 - Lily White Rose Red

guy.”
    Apparently Artie was no longer in a talkative mood. “Okay. See you later, Artie.”
    I returned to my chair to give him time to get clear. I really should have cleaned up the office, but I had stuff left to do tonight. And probably a tail to lose. The office would have to wait till tomorrow. I got up and locked the door with me on the inside so no one else could stroll in and surprise me. Damn Big Billy anyway. When this case was over, I was going to shoot him, and then I was going to send him the bill for having a tailor sew all my shirt buttons back on even though I knew how to do it myself.
    Now all I had to do was hide the photos of the crime scene that Reggie had given me. I looked them over carefully. There were five photos: one of Margie propped at the end of the alley, showing her and all her belongings; two were close-ups of her face and neck, from different angles; one of her hand on her handbag; and the last one was a close shot of her shoe. It was black and white, but you could see some kind of gunk dried on the heel.
    The sixth photo was the one of Jazz and Marguerite that I’d kept hidden from Lily. He was playing piano, and she was singing, looking straight at him with that dreamy look on her face. I guess a big, buffed up colored guy was about the most dangerous man she’d run across yet, at least in her mind. He never saw her. Jazz was looking right into the camera with a similar expression. It made me hope that maybe he was looking at Reggie with that sappy look. If Reggie couldn’t see it, well, Lily White, Rose Red: Grey Randall, Private Dick Casefile #1
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    he was torturing himself worrying that Jazz wasn’t into him when maybe that wasn’t the case. They say love is blind.
    I stuffed the shots back into the envelope. Considering the lack of interest Captain Woods had shown in searching my file cabinet, I could just as well have put them in the L through O drawer in a folder labeled Marguerite Saint-Ville, crime scene photos , but instead I took my weights out of the bottom drawer where they were filed under “W” and moved the entire cabinet.
    I took the envelope that Reggie had given me and taped it to the floor. Then I moved the cabinet back and returned the weights to the bottom drawer. I tried to rock it, but it was heavy enough to be discouraging to a casual searcher. Besides, usually people don’t think of moving the heavy furniture. It seems permanent.

    WHEN I made it out of the building, it was still just light enough outside to make it easy to spot Sgt. Bert Guthrie, Captain Woods’s loyal and ferrety sidekick. I’d wondered why he hadn’t attended the party upstairs; it wasn’t often you saw Big Billy tooling around without him. It made me glad I’d hidden the envelope upstairs instead of taking it out to mail to myself, which had been my other idea. If he’d seen me with it in my hand, I’m sure he would have taken it from me even if he had to shoot me to get it.
    Guthrie was casually propped in a doorway, stiffly holding a newspaper in front of his face, as if he actually knew how to read. I’d never noticed how outsized his hands were for his body before. I went over and batted the paper down.
    “You taking the first shift?”
    “You owe me a nickel, you dick!” He seemed upset that I’d ripped his paper, shaking the pages at me.
    “I’ll go slow, just in case. First I’m going home to change into something decent.” I flipped the edge of my shirt, but he wasn’t interested in the fact that I’d lost all my buttons. “Then I’m off to the 134

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    Flamingo for a night on the town. Going to meet Bugsy Siegel for a drink.”
    “He’s dead, peeper,” Sergeant Guthrie said.
    “Damn! So that’s why he hasn’t been returning my calls.” I shook my head.
    “I heard you thought you were a comedian.”
    “I try to live up to my reputation,” I said modestly.
    “Try harder. Maybe I should run you in and you can be tonight’s entertainment for the boys down at the station.”
    “You know, you would have been right at home in Hitler’s Germany,” I said. I watched his face as the meaning sunk in. “You’d have to work on your moustache a little, but—”
    “I should take you in!” He dropped the paper and pulled out his gun, aiming it at me with no attempt to hide it.
    “Did Big Billy tell you to shoot me in the middle of the street with people watching?” I smirked at him. Annoyingly. And it worked.
    He was annoyed, but