The Complete Cases of Max Latin

Watch Me Kill You!-2

“I hate to do myself out of a job,” Latin said, “but this seems pretty silly to me. All your wife has to do is to buy one of Craig’s pictures from some other collector or dealer or museum. With her money, that shouldn’t be very difficult to accomplish.”

“Please, Mr. Latin!” Hastings snapped. “Do you think my wife is such a fool she didn’t think of that long ago? Craig won’t permit anyone to sell her one of his pictures.”

“After he once sells a picture to someone, the picture belongs to the buyer. The buyer can resell it to whom he pleases. Craig couldn’t prevent that.”

“Oh, yes he can!” Hastings said angrily. “You don’t know how maliciously clever he is. He claims that he has a reversionary creative interest in every picture he paints.”

“A what?” Latin asked.

“A reversionary creative interest. There is no such thing. I think he just made it up himself. But he says that the mere thought of one of his pictures being in my wife’s possession would be such a mental torture to him that he couldn’t paint any more and that he would sue her for a million dollars on the grounds that she was robbing him of his talent and means of livelihood.”

“He wouldn’t get very far.”

Hastings tapped the linoleum tabletop. “Far enough, Mr. Latin! Far enough! He couldn’t win any such fantastic suit, of course. But he certainly would file it. He’s just the type. And if he did file it, the newspapers would get hold of it and put it all over the front pages. Can you think of the dreadful humiliation that would mean for my wife? The whole country would laugh at her!”

“Oh,” said Latin.

“So,” Hastings said earnestly, “Winston Wentworth Craig must consent to sell her some of his pictures! Her reputation as an art patron and her peace of mind are at stake! And she must obtain those pictures at once! At once!”

“Why?” Latin asked.

“Because she is having an exhibition of her collection at the Keever Art Gallery in just three days. That exhibition would not be complete without some of Craig’s pictures. All of her enemies will laugh at her if she doesn’t have some of her own cousin’s paintings in her collection. If she doesn’t, they’ll know why. Craig has seen to that.”

“I see,” said Latin.

Hastings said impressively: “My wife is willing to pay up to five thousand dollars for each Craig picture you can get him to consent to sell her.”

Latin sat very still. “I thought you said five thousand dollars per picture.”

“I did. They are selling currently for about a thousand dollars apiece.”

“One thousand,” Latin said dreamily. “Five thousand. Mr. Hastings, you’ve made yourself a deal. I’ll get Craig’s consent to sell her some pictures if I have to kill him doing it.”

“Oh, no!” Hastings said, horrified. “Mr. Latin! Please! Nothing like that!”

“Half kill him, then,” Latin compromised.

Hastings looked very doubtful. “Mr.—ah—Guiterrez said you had just gotten out of jail. He was—ah—joking, no doubt?”

“He never jokes. I did just get out.”

“Oh,” said Hastings uneasily. “And—ah—what were you charged with?”

“Compounding a felony.”

“I’m not familiar with legal terms—”

Latin said: “I was charged with paying some gentlemen to return some jewelry they stole from a client of mine and forgetting to ask the gentlemen what their names were or where the police could find them.”

“Did you—ah—do that?”

“Certainly not,” said Latin. “I merely paid a reward for the return of some jewelry that had been inadvertently lost.”

“Lost.” Hastings repeated vaguely. “Stolen. Reward. Buying back. It doesn’t seem to me there is very much difference….”

Latin smiled. “Just the difference between sitting here and sitting in the county jail, cell three, north tier, that’s all.”

“Oh,” said Hastings. “Well—please look into this matter at once, Mr. Latin. Time is of the very essence. I can’t overemphasize the importance—”

“I’ll get right on my horse.”

“Winston Wentworth Craig lives at 345 B, Greene Street. You’d best go there now. He works at night, and he’s never there in the daytime. I haven’t mentioned it, but he has an—ah—unpleasant disposition. He can be most insulting—”

“So can I.”

“Then I’ll leave you—”

“Not without paying for that brandy, you won’t,” said Guiterrez, suddenly appearing beside the booth. “And I know how much you drank, too, because I marked the bottle. It’ll cost you just three bucks.”

“Three dollars!” Hastings exclaimed. “But I only had one very small—”

“So you want an argument, do you?” said Guiterrez. He called to one of the waiters: “d**k, go out in the kitchen and get me my cleaver. The sharp one.”

Hastings swallowed. “Well, on the other hand, rather than make an issue—”

“Three bucks,” said Guiterrez. “Count it out on the table and no back-chat.”

Chapter Two MURDER FOR ART’S SAKEGreene Street had once been a cowpath, and the city fathers had never taken the time or trouble to straighten it out and brush it off and make a modern thoroughfare out of it. Now, as it always had, it wandered in draggling loops between the river and the sullenly massive factories of the industrial section, crossing more conventional streets at any old careless angle, making blocks as weirdly shaped as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It was old and lazy and tattered and nobody cared, least of all the people who lived on it.

The cement blocks that made up the narrow sidewalk had risen in some places and sunk in others, and Latin had the impression of climbing up and down a flatly elongated stairway. The dusk hid the soot streaks, and the houses were all the same depressed gray color, squatting close together and silent, down a little from the street level.

Latin found 345 by the process of counting from the corner. It was a thin starved-looking building with brilliantly artificial light gleaming through the tall windows on its second floor. There were no lights downstairs, and Latin groped his way down three cement steps and along a narrow brick walk to the front porch.

A cigarette tip made a sudden bright red dot in the black shadow of the front door, and a woman’s hoarsely pleasant voice said: “What do you want, sonny?”

Latin tapped the brim of his hat politely. “Looking for Winston Wentworth Craig.”

“He doesn’t live here.”

“I’m still looking for him.”

A light switch snapped, and a bulb in the porch ceiling glowed with weary brilliance, revealing the woman who was standing in the doorway. She had brown hair that was cropped carelessly short and tousled like a boy’s. There were blue shadows under her eyes, and her lips were twisted into a cynical half smile. Her cigarette was in a long ivory holder, and her long fingernails were stained a dark bloodred. She was wearing a cotton hostess coat and open-toed sandals. She regarded Latin with a detached, disinterested air.

“Shall I advance three paces and give the password?” he asked.

“Try it, and I’ll stick this cigarette right in your eye.”

“Which eye?” Latin asked curiously.

“The left one, I think.”

“That’s O.K., then. The left one’s my glass eye.”

Latin came up the steps and on the porch. The woman was lounging against the edge of the door, and she didn’t move, but she did smile a little.

“Hello,” said Latin.

She nodded her cropped head. “Hello. What’s your name?”

“Max Latin.”

“Latin,” she repeated thoughtfully. “There was a Latin in the papers the other day—also in jail.”

“I’m that one.”

“I thought so. Private detective on the shady side, eh?”

“Not shady,” Latin denied. “Black as night. Got any minor crimes you’d like committed? I’m cutting prices these days because I owe my lawyer some money.”

“I’ll think it over. Why do you want to see Craig?”

“Who’s asking?”

The woman smiled more broadly. “Nan Carter. You can call me Nan if you want to be formal. The reason I’m curious is that I’m holding off process servers and bill collectors and such vermin until I can pry some back rent out of my distinguished tenant, Mr. Winston Wentworth Craig.”

“You wrong me,” Latin told her. “I’m an earnest student of the arts, and I am here to purchase paintings in large quantities.”

“Who sent you?”

“Remind me to tell you all about it sometime when I’m not busy.”

Nan Carter blew a long plume of smoke at him. “In other words, Patricia Wentworth Craig.”

“That would be about it.”

Nan Carter said: “Craig won’t sell her any of his pictures nor let her buy any. Don’t you know the setup? He’s a genius, or so he claims. Temperamental and like that. He wouldn’t touch any of her money. He scorns it. He’d rather borrow from all his friends and forget to pay them back or let me put his rent on the cuff for six months straight.”

“I’ll change his mind for him.”

“How?” she asked.

“I’ve got a wonderfully persuasive personality and also a pretty fair left hook.”

Nan Carter watched him thoughtfully. “Rough stuff, huh? I sort of figured you for that sort of a gent.”

“If people get between me and a nice juicy fee, is it my fault if they get trampled in the rush?” Latin asked reasonably.

“No,” Nan Carter admitted, “and I think perhaps our dough-heavy friend has finally figured the right way to approach her dear cousin. He’s nasty, but he’s yellow as a daisy. The stairs are right there. There’s no lock on the studio door. Don’t bother to knock. Just go in and make yourself at home.”

Latin went through the door and along the short length of hall and up the steep, shadowy slant of the narrow stairway. At the top there was another and shorter hall with the black well of back stairs at the far end of it. There was a door midway along the hall, and Latin went to it, turned the knob quietly and pushed it open.

The bright light from inside the studio jumped at him, blinding him momentarily, and then he caught the whole scene in one flashing split second and stepped quietly into the studio and pushed the door shut behind him.

The partitions had been knocked out and the whole upper story of the house was one enormous room with its ceiling the high, peaked slant of the roof. There was an easel against the far wall with powerful daylight floor lamps set in front of it, their reflectors focused so there would be no slightest shadow on the canvas it held.

The man was lying in front of the easel, crumpled up there, with his blue painter’s smock making a bright pile of color against the dull black of the floor. His face was turned toward Latin, and his eyes were wide and bulging and glassy. There was no blood, but the man was dead.