“Who’s talking?”
“Me? Why, your old pal. From the old home town. Buster Buffin.”
“Just call me Watson. How’d you find me?”
“Easy.… I got somepin for you, Watson.”
“All right. I’m listening.”
“It gives for cash. And I’m afraid fifty bucks won’t even buy you a seat.”
“What kind of figures do you think I’ll talk in?”
“For what I have—plenty, brother, plenty!”
“I’ll save you some trouble, Buster. If you’re going to tell me where I’ll find Peg Bleeker, you’re wasting your time.”
He laughed. Not a nasty laugh; there was merriment in it, and a thin edge of hysteria.
He said: “Where she is I don’t know, and I care less. If you’re smart you’ll come down here. And be ready to talk cold turkey.”
I tried to sound casual, like a man going out to look at an orange grove. “Where’ll I find you in case I decide to listen?”
“You’ll listen. You’ll find me right where you left me: Buffin’s Buffet.” He hung up. I could hear his thin laughter before the little click came and left me sitting there alone.
I TOOK Santa Monica Boulevard down to the beach and kept one eye on the rear-view mirror all the way. Nobody followed me down there. I parked in the Paragon Ballroom’s lot across from Buffin’s.
There was a sign on the door that said the place was closed and would open at 11:30 A.M. I tried the door. It wasn’t locked.
There was nobody inside. No customers, no little man with cold turkey to sell. I looked around in the kitchen. It was dirty, with a cold odor of rancid fat. There was no one there.
I sat down on one of the counter stools and waited. Hard waves were pummeling the breakwater with a distant roar that made the silence of the little shack palpable and menacing. I got up and walked around. I yelled, “Oh, Buster!” and the echoes joined and jarred against me. And then the silence settled down again like a cold wet sheet. It was broken abruptly, sharply by a tight clap of sound from overhead, followed by another, and then again. I was half way up the stairs when the third shot sounded and something hit the floor, hard.
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