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said, with the water running down his face. “Drop in any time, Mr. Cross.”
    The Pacific Inn was a low, rambling building with sweeping tropical eaves and a deep veranda screened with split bamboo. Diagonally across from the railway stationand in full sight of the newsstand, its various wings and bungalows occupied half a city block. As buildings went in Southern California, the Inn was an antique. Oldtimers at the courthouse remembered when it had been an international watering-resort, crowded in season with dubious European aristocrats and genuine movie stars. That was before the great earthquake of the twenties cracked its plaster, before the economic earthquake a few years later cut off its clientele.
    Since then the prosperous center of town had shifted uphill, away from the harbor and the railroad tracks. The Inn hung on, sinking gradually from second-rate to disreputable. It became the scene of weekend parties from Long Beach and Los Angeles, haunt of race-track touts, brief resting-place for touring stock-companies and itinerant salesmen. My work had taken me to it more than once.
    Its atmosphere of depression surrounded me as I climbed the steps. A couple of old men, permanent residents of the bungalows, were propped on cane chairs against the wall like living souvenirs of the past. Their tortoise gaze followed me across the veranda. The lobby inside was dark-beamed and dusty. It hadn’t changed in ten years. From one wall a grizzly’s head snarled through the murk at an elk’s head on the opposite wall. There were no humans.
    I rang the handbell at the abandoned desk. From the dark bowels of the building, a little man in a faded blue uniform came trotting. His tight round stomach poked out gnomishly under the tunic.
    “Desk-clerk’s gone to lunch. You want a room?” Under the pillbox hat, the hair was sparse and faded brown, the color of drought-killed grass.
    “Your name Sandy?”
    “That’s what they call me.”
    He looked me over, trying to place me, and I returnedthe look. I guessed that he was a jockey grown too heavy to ride. He had the bantam cockiness, the knowing eyes, the sharp, strained youthfulness that had never dared to let itself mature. Money would talk to him. Probably nothing else would.
    “What’s your business, mister? You got to talk to the manager if you’re selling. He’s not here.”
    “I’m looking for a friend of mine. He carries a small black suitcase.”
    Boredom glazed his eyes. “Lots of people carry small black suitcases. The woods is full of them.”
    “This particular one was left at the station newsstand this morning. You picked it up about eleven o’clock.”
    “
I
picked it up? Not me.” Leaning on the desk, he crossed his stubby legs and looked up at the ceiling.
    “Joe Trentino recognized you.”
    “He’s seeing better lately? Nuts.”
    I didn’t have money to use on him. Fear would have to do. “Listen to me, Sandy. That suitcase was hot. The longer you won’t talk, the deeper you’re in.”
    “Who you kidding?” But his gaze came down from the ceiling, met mine, and sank below it. “You a cop?”
    “Close enough. That suitcase contained evidence of a felony. Right now you’re an accomplice after the fact.”
    I watched fear grow in him like a sudden chill pinching his mouth and nostrils. “I handle a lot of suitcases. How do I know what’s in them? You can’t pin nothing on me.” His mouth stayed open, showing broken teeth.
    “You’re either an accomplice or a witness.”
    “You can’t bum-rap me,” his fear chattered.
    “Nobody’s trying to, Sandy. I don’t want your blood. I want your information. Is my friend staying here?”
    “No,” he said. “No, sir. You mean that one that sent me for the black suitcase?”
    “That’s the one. Did he pay you to keep quiet about it?”
    “No, sir. He overtipped me, that’s all. I figured there was something out of line. I don’t mean
illegal
, nothing like a felony. It’s just most