I got to my feet, nodded to the blonde and went out after him. He walked spinwards, swinging his cane in a small tight arc just above his right shoe. He was easy to follow. He was wearing a coat resembling a rather loud piece of tartan, with shoulders so wide that his neck stuck up out of it like a celery stalk and his head wobbled on it as he walked. We went a block and a half. At the next junction I pulled up beside him and let him see me. He gave me a casual, then a suddenly sharpened side glance, and quickly turned away. We crossed the street and made another block. He stretched his long legs and had twenty metres on me at the corner. He turned right. Fifty metres up the hill he stopped and hooked his cane over his arm and fumbled a leather cigarette case out of some hidden pocket. He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it, looking back. He saw me watching him from the corner, and straightened up as if somebody had booted him from behind. He almost raised dust going up the block, walking with long gawky strides and jabbing his cane into the pavement. He turned left again. He had at least half a block on me when I reached the place where he had turned. He had me wheezing. This was a narrow tree-lined street with a retaining wall on one side and three bungalow courts on the other.
He was gone. I loafed along the block peering this way and that. At the second bungalow court I saw something. It was called 'The La Baba', a quiet dim place with a double row of tree-shaded bungalows. The central walk was lined with Venusian cypresses trimmed short and chunky, something the shape of the oil jars in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Behind the third jar a loud-patterned edge moved.
I leaned against a tree in the parkway and waited. The thunder in the dome supports was rumbling again. The glare of lightening was reflected on piled-up black clouds off to anti-spinward. A few tentative raindrops splashed down on the pavement and made spots as large as antique pennies. The air was as still as the air in General Sternwood's icehouse.
The sleeve behind the tree showed again, then a big nose and one eye and some sandy hair. The eye stared at me. It disappeared. Its mate reappeared like a woodpecker on the other side of the tree. Five minutes passed by. It got him. His type are half nerves. I heard a cigarette lighter and then whistling started. Then a dim shadow slipped along the grass to the next tree. Then he was out on the walk coming straight towards me, swinging the cane and whistling. A sour whistle with jitters in it. I stared vaguely up at the dark sky. He passed within five metres of me and didn't give me a glance. He was safe now. He had ditched it.
I watched him out of sight and went up the central walk of 'The La Baba' and parted the branches of the third cypress. I drew out a wrapped parcel and put it under my arm and went away. Nobody yelled at me.
Part 2