The Petite Client
Samuel Spade, leaning back in his swivel-chair, studied the modest pine tree that might have sprouted tinsel-trimmed from where his late partner’s desk had till lately stood.
Less than two weeks ago, that partner, Miles Archer, was shot and killed. A recent client of the Spade & Archer detective agency, a woman calling herself Brigid O’Shaughnessy among other names, currently resided in a cell in San Francisco County Jail #1, charged with Archer’s murder. Spade had put her there.
The private detective’s vaguely satanic face—with its V’s of heavy dark eyebrows over horizontal yellow-grey eyes, beaky hawk nose, and pointed chin—appeared at repose. Only a crease between those eyebrows bore any suggestion he might be mulling something.
His crisp brown suit with brown-and-yellow tie complemented dark blond hair, if fitting the slightly irregular six-foot frame less well due to wide sloping shoulders, narrow waist and long dancer’s legs. He and his office looked moderately successful though the amber desktop was spare, home only to a small clock, a brass ashtray, a spiral pad with #2 pencil, and a leather-framed green blotter. Morning sun passing through the window cast SPADE upon the floor, only hints of the ARCHER remaining on the glass, tidbits not quite razored off.
Effie Perine, his secretary, came in from the outer office, boyishly pretty and sunburned despite temperatures in the forties this time of year. Her notebook and pencil were in hand. The lanky, tawny-haired girl was twenty-three and he was ten years older.
She said: “I hope you don’t mind the tree, Sam.”
“It fills the space for now.”
The secretary’s low heels clacked toward him over the linoleum flooring; her thin tan woolen dress clung to her. “I can add some decorations if you like,” she said. “Just tinsel looks sad somehow.”
“No, it’s festive enough.” He looked at her. “Anything on the docket today?”
“You hate it.”
She was still on the subject of the tree.
“It’s fine. What’s on the docket?”
Effie Perine sighed and sat in the client’s chair, legs crossed primly. Her habit was to perch on the edge of his desk, but she hadn’t done that lately. Right now the entire desk was between them. Among other things.
“A Miss Smith called and made an appointment,” she said stiffly. “No referral.”
He said: “You’re sure it wasn’t Miss Jones?”
She drew in a breath. “With the bad publicity we’ve had lately, I didn’t feel I could be too particular about what clients we took.”
“Ah.” His tone was light. “Your name is on the door now, is it?” He gestured over his shoulder. “Plenty of room for it on the window, now that Miles is gone.”
The young woman’s chin came up. “That’s not fair, Sam. The Call made you look very bad last week and you know it. That nasty Lt. Dundy and pompous District Attorney gave out some most unflattering quotes.”
“Remind me to bust out crying.” He shrugged the slope of his shoulders. “Anyway, that kind of thing only builds business.”
Something like a pout formed on pretty, lightly rouged lips. “From people named Smith or Jones, perhaps.”
From his suitcoat pocket he took a sack of Bull Durham tobacco. A packet of brown rolling papers already waited on the desk.
“Look, precious, if you’re fed up with me, and you want me to write you a letter of recommendation to prospective employers, just say so.”
She dodged this suggestion with a question. “How is Mr. Archer’s widow holding up? This time of year can be difficult. After a tragedy and all.”
His expression was soft with hard eyes in it. “I’m not seeing Iva socially any longer. We had what you might call a falling out.”
The secretary brightened, momentarily, then said, “I may be out of line saying, Sam, but I think that’s for the best. You were a suspect in her husband’s murder, after all.”
“You’re right,” he said with a smile, “you are out of line.”
She swallowed, closed her notepad, stood and swished out in a flurry of silk stockings and thin fabric, shutting the inner office door with not quite a slam. Soon the sound of her typing came through, louder than the norm.
Spade chuckled to himself as his thick fingers carefully dropped tan flakes down into a curve of rolling paper until each end appeared equal, with slightly less between them. His thumbs rolled the paper’s inner edge down, then up and under the outer edge where his forefingers could press it over, thumbs and fingers guiding the cylinder of paper at either end. He licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb pinching one end while the right forefinger and thumb smoothed a damp seam and twisted that end before settling one tip of the roll-your-own cigarette between Spade’s lips.
This ritual, which he repeated numerous times in any given day, he appeared to find soothing. It may have aided his thinking, or helped him avoid thinking at all. With his pigskin-and-nickel lighter, he set fire to the far tip.
Effie Perine poked her head in. “She’s here. You’ll probably like her.”
“Oh?”
“She’s young and she’s female. It’s Miss Smith, by the way. Not Jones.”
The secretary ducked back out and, before disappearing into the outer office, gave a perfunctory nod to the blonde in a tan cloche hat who slipped in. Barely out of her teens if that, Miss Smith was pale and petite though she filled out her attire admirably; her white-collared brown tunic-style blouse and below-the-knee skirt went well with bright golden-brown eyes almost too big for the heart-shaped face. Her small hands were in off-white calfskin wrist-hugging gloves with which she hugged a modest matching purse.
For a moment Spade stared at her. Then he said: “Rhea Gutman. I didn’t know you at first.”
She acknowledged that with a small smile and smaller nod, while Spade—after depositing his cigarette smoldering in the ashtray—came around to guide her into the oaken client’s chair opposite his desk.
Rhea Gutman said, with what seemed to be genuine embarrassment, “I was rather a fright when you saw me last.”
“If you’ll forgive my bluntness,” Spade said pleasantly, “that was a ruse.”
“My late father’s doing,” she said. “But he did give me a mild dose of whatever that stuff was to help me mimic a drug-induced stupor. You were actually a gentleman, helping me walk it off.”
“I didn’t exactly believe the stupor, but felt it best to let it play out.”
“Yes. To keep you busy while your office, and then your apartment, were searched. My father and his associates hoped to find a…certain item…and avoid having to deal with you further.”
“I had that ‘item’ salted safely away, not that it mattered in the end.” Spade tossed the words carelessly aside. “After all, that supposedly priceless Maltese falcon was a phony.”
She seemed about to reply but then didn’t.
Spade filled the silence emotionlessly. “My condolences on the death of your father.”
“Thank you.”
specimen. He raised you?”
She shook her head, blonde arcs slipping past her hat to shimmer in morning sun filtering through the buff-curtained window behind him. “No, my mother did. In New York… Manhattan. They divorced when I was a child. We saw him from time to time, and he was an avuncular if only occasional presence. Mother said he was handsome and slender when they met. She’d been a waitress at the time…she still was when she passed, having worked her way to assistant manager in a nice restaurant in the theater district. She died of tuberculosis a year and a half ago, my mother.”
Spade seemed to have exhausted his capacity for condolences. He said, “And your father came back into your life at that point?”
One gloved hand removed a handkerchief from the purse. “Yes. I was sixteen then. I’ve only recently turned eighteen. I didn’t finish high school, but I certainly got an advanced education, traveling with my father. In the Orient, mostly. He said he valued me.”
“I’m sure he did,” Spade said ambiguously.
“He liked to show me off. Would comment on my…” She blushed, her cheeks reddening like a china doll’s. “…comeliness. Introduced me to various men with whom he was doing business.”
The vertical crease between Spade’s brows deepened. “Was he your father or your procurer?”
Rhea Gutman swallowed and her eyes went to the handkerchief she was torturing in her lap. “I deserve that, after…the way I fooled you.”
“Tried to fool me,” he corrected.
She made herself look at him. The big golden-brown eyes begged for understanding. “My father was many things, Mr. ...
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