Previously in “The Maltese Sparrow…
Intrepid PI Sam Marlowe’s secretary, Eva, had to stop typing — interrupting an important letter home to her Mom. When Eva resumes her letter, she has lost her original train of thought and the paragraph comes out somewhat choppy. Also, Sam meets Penny Bouvier and she steals a chair or something. Who can be bothered?
And now, The Maltese Sparrow: Part Deux…
As the door closed behind the departing Penny Bouvier — chair and stapler in hand — I sat staring at the bare spot on my floor. Already the feng shui of the room was completely out of whack. I called Eva in and we spent about ten minutes moving the desk a foot to the right and installing a ceiling fan. The flow of the room was now all wrong, but things were as good as they were likely to get.
I picked up my hat and told Eva I was stepping out for a moment as Ms. Bouvier and I had some unfinished business to attend to. “Eva, I’m picking up my hat and I’m stepping out for a moment as Ms. Bouvier and I have some unfinished business to attend to.”
I headed outside into the busy street. My office was in a crumbling brick building in the Northeast part of town. It was a rough area. There was a shooting every night – sometimes a big time Hollywood shoot, sometimes something by one of them small-time independent film kids. Locals now were so desensitized to it, they would sometimes just walk by the lights and the cameras and not even glance at them. Whatever the case, it wasn’t he kind of place a dame like Penny Bouvier marched into unless she was in trouble… or looking for it? Ms. Bouvier’s cool display with the chair told me she might be just the kind of customer who’d come to stir things up in my neighborhood – like the plastic dome on her pop-o-matic bubble.
I found her sitting in my office chair on the corner. She was idly stapling some paper together with my shiny new Swingline. I strolled up to her and she didn’t look up. The only other sound besides the sounds of the city was the steely rasp of the stapler. She finally broke the silence between us. “You took your time.”
“I got plenty of it, sweetheart.”
“I need your help, Mr. Marlowe,” she said as she looked up at me with those sparkling eyes.
I regarded her coolly. Did she need my help or was this part of the act? Something didn’t quite ring true about Ms. Penny Bouvier. She produced a cigarette case and extracted a cigarette. I flourished my lighter and she nodded as she took a few puffs. She offered me a cigarette but I refused, producing my pipe and slowly loading it with bubble soap. I’d gotten into bubbles during the war. Sometimes they sting the eyes, but it’s the price of the habit.
“I’ve helped dames like you before, Ms. Bouvier. Sometimes it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”
She held my gaze for a moment before digging into her purse. She produced an envelope and tossed it at my feet. I bent down to pick it up, bubble soap spilling out of my pipe onto the hot sidewalk. Within was a wad of hundred dollar bills – I counted $2000 worth. “This is a lotta dough to be walking around with in this neighborhood.”
She regarded me with an icy stare. “I used to drive a Wonder Bread truck in this neighborhood, Mr. Marlowe. I’m used to hauling around a lot of dough.”
Was that a pun or did she mean it? You never knew with this one. “Alright, what’s the game, Ms. Bouvier?”
“Someone’s trying to kill me, Mr. Marlowe.”
“Who?”
Suddenly, I felt the unmistakeable jab of a pistol in my back. A gruff voice from behind me whispered in my ear, “I am, Mr. Marlowe.”
In the next The Maltese Sparrow…
Something happens with this gun guy. Also, more dialogue.