I dialed Langrishe Lodge. It was Clare who answered. “This is Marlowe,” I said. “Tell him I want to see him.”
I heard her catch her breath. “Who?”
“You know damned well who. Tell him to catch a plane, the next one out. It’ll get him here by tonight. Phone me when he’s in.”
She began to say something more, but I hung up.
I went back to the table, and the waitress came over. She smiled at me, in her weary way, and gathered up the two cups. “You didn’t drink your coffee,” she said.
“It’s all right. My doctor tells me I drink too much of the stuff anyway.” I gave her a five-dollar bill and told her to keep the change. She stared at me, her smile growing uncertain.
“Buy yourself a hat,” I said.
23
I should know how to wait, given the way I chose to make my living—if I did choose, and didn’t just fall into it, like you’d fall down an open manhole—but I haven’t got the right frame of mind. I can waste time, no problem. I can sit in the office for hours, in my swivel chair, gazing out my window at that secretary across the way, bent over her dictation machine, not even seeing her, half the time. I can dawdle over a King’s Gambit until the pieces grow blurry and the checkerboard pattern sends my brain into a slow spin. I can sit nursing a beer in some musty saloon while the bartender tells me how dumb his wife is and how his kids have no respect for him, and not even yawn. A natural time-waster, that’s me. But give me some specific thing that I have to wait for and within five minutes I begin to twitch.
That day I had an early lunch at Rudy’s Bar-B-Q on La Cienega: spareribs glistening all over with what looked like dark red varnish—it tasted pretty much like varnish, too. I drank a Mexican beer; it seemed appropriate, in a gruesome sort of way. Mexico had been the theme tune all along, if only I’d been smart enough to hear it. Then I went back to the office for a while, hoping a client might drift in. I’d even have been glad to see the old dame whose neighbor was trying to poison her cat. But an hour passed, an hour that felt like three, and still I was on my own. I sneaked a nip or two from the office bottle. I smoked yet another cigarette. Miss Remington over the way had switched off the recorder and was putting the cover on her typewriter. Next thing she’d take out her compact and powder her nose, peering into the little mirror and puckering her lips, then run a comb through her hair, snap her purse shut, and go home. Yes, I’d gotten to know her habits pretty well.
I checked the movie listings. They were showing a revival of Horse Feathers at the Roxie. That sounded like just the thing—Groucho and the boys would pass a happy hour or two for me. So I strolled over and bought a ticket for the balcony and the usherette showed me to a seat. She was a redhead with bangs and a cute mouth and friendly eyes. Down in the stalls there was another nice-looking girl, posing in front of the screen with a tray of ice cream and candy and cigarettes. She wore a sort of chambermaid’s outfit, with a short black skirt and a collar of white lace and a little white hat like an upturned paper boat. There weren’t more than a dozen customers in the place, solitary souls like me, sitting as far apart from each other as they could get.
The crimson curtains swished open and the lights went down and on came a trailer for Bride of the Gorilla, starring Lon Chaney and Barbara Payton, with Raymond Burr as the manager of a plantation deep in the jungles of South America who is cursed by a native witch and every night turns into a you-know-what and causes beautiful women to scream and grown men to cower. There followed some advertisements, for Philip Morris and Clorox and things like that, and then the curtains were drawn shut again and a spotlight shone on the ice cream girl down in the stalls. She did her pose, flexing one knee and tilting her head and showing us her teeth in a come-hither smile, but all the same there were no takers, and after a minute the spotlight went off with a discouraged click, the curtains opened, and the movie came on.
I sat there waiting for the bouncing brothers to work their magic on me, but it was no good. I didn’t laugh; nor did anyone else. Funny movies are funny only in a full house. When the place is nearly empty, you notice how after every joke there’s a deliberate pause in the action to allow for a wave of laughter from the audience, and since this evening no one was laughing, the whole thing began to seem sad. Halfway through I got up and left. Outside the swing door, the redheaded usherette was sitting on a chair buffing her nails with an emery board. She asked if I was feeling unwell and I said no, I just wanted to get some air. She smiled her sweet smile, but that only made everything seem sadder still.
It was early twilight by now and the air was smoky and hot, like the air in a subway station. I strolled along the boulevard thinking of nothing much. I was in that state of suspension you get into when you’re waiting to undergo a medical operation. What would come would come, what would happen would happen. Anyway, what the night would bring was going to feel for me pretty much like the aftermath to something that had already taken place. I thought there wasn’t much more damage that could be done to me that hadn’t already been done. You get hardened by life knocking away at you since you were old enough to feel heartsore, but then comes a knock that’s bigger than anything you’ve experienced so far, and you realize just how soft you are, how soft you’ll always be.
I stopped by a mailbox and checked the collection times and saw that it had just been emptied. I took an envelope from the inside breast pocket of my jacket and slid it into the slot and heard it fall to the floor inside.
The Cahuenga Building was empty except for the night watchman in his glass booth beside the elevator, and the janitor, a very tall Negro named Rufus. Rufus always had a friendly word for me. I gave him tips sometimes for the horses, but I don’t know that he ever placed a bet. When I stepped out of the elevator he was there in the corridor, dragging a wet mop back and forth over the floor in his pensive way. He must have been at least six and a half feet tall, with a big handsome African head.
“You working late tonight, Mr. Marlowe?” he asked.
“There’s a phone call I’m expecting,” I said. “You all right, Rufus?”
He flashed a big smile. “You know me, Mr. Marlowe. Old Rufe is always right as rain.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “Sure thing.”
In the office I didn’t switch any lamps on. I sat down in the shadows and swiveled my chair so I could look out the window at the lights of the city and the moon suspended above the blue hills beyond. I got the bottle out of the drawer but put it away again. The last thing I needed tonight was a fuzzy head.
I phoned Bernie Ohls. He wasn’t at the office, and I looked in my dog-eared address book and found his home number. He didn’t like being called at home, but I didn’t care. His missus answered, and when I said my name I thought she was going to hang up on me, but she didn’t. I heard her calling to Bernie, and, more faintly, I heard Bernie bawling back at her, and then there was the noise of him coming down from upstairs. “It’s your pal Marlowe,” I heard Mrs. Ohls saying sourly, and then Bernie came on.
“What do you want, Marlowe?” he growled.
“Hello, Bernie. Hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“Let’s dispense with the small talk. What is it?”
I told him I’d seen Peterson. I could almost hear his ears pricking up.
“You saw him? Where?”
“Union Station. He phoned me and told me to come there. He chose the station because he had a suitcase with him and didn’t want to look conspicuous.”
There was a pause. “What sort of suitcase?”
“Just a suitcase. English-made, pigskin, gold fittings.”
“And what’s in it?”
“A gazillion bucks’ worth of heroin. Property of a certain Mr. Menendez. You remember our old friend Mendy, now in residence south of the border?”
Again Bernie paused. I had the impression of a man screwing down the lid of a pressure cooker. Bernie’s temper had been getting shorter and shorter with the years; I thought he really should d
o something about it. “All right, Marlowe,” he said, in a voice as tight as Jack Benny’s wallet, “start explaining.”
I did. He listened in silence, except for an occasional snort of surprise or disgust. When I was done he took a deep breath. This caused him to start in with the coughing. I held the receiver away from my ear until he’d finished. “So let me get this straight,” he said, gasping a bit. “Peterson was muling Menendez’s dope up from Mexico and delivering it to Lou Hendricks, until he got the bright idea of keeping a shipment for himself and selling it to some gentlemen of Italian descent. But the deal got queered, and then the bodies started piling up, and Peterson lost his nerve and hired you—”
“Tried to hire me.”
“—to deliver the suitcase to Hendricks.”
“Yes, that’s about it.” There were some fumbling sounds on the line and then the scratch of a match. “Bernie, are you lighting a cigarette?” I asked. “Haven’t you coughed enough?”
I heard him inhale, then exhale. “So where’s the suitcase now?”
“It’s in a locker at the railroad station. And the key to the locker is in an envelope in a mailbox on South Broadway. You’ll have it by second delivery tomorrow. And before you ask, I did it because I promised Peterson I’d give him time to make himself scarce.”
“And where is he?”
“He’s gone on a cruise to South America.”
“Very funny.”
“He’s not worth chasing, Bernie,” I said. “Don’t waste your energy and make yourself even more annoyed than you are.”
“What about Hendricks?”
“What about him?”
“I should bring him in for a little chat.”
“And what will you get him on? The dope wasn’t delivered—you have it instead, or you will have, when that locker key drops on your doormat tomorrow noon. There’s nothing to connect Hendricks to any of this.”
Bernie took another deep drag on his cigarette. Nobody enjoys a cigarette like a man who’s supposed to have given them up. “You realize,” he said, “after all this thing, with—what is it?—four people dead, including Canning’s enforcer, by the way—what’s his name?”
“Bartlett.”
“Including him—he died this afternoon.”
“Too bad,” I said, as if I might mean it.
“Anyway, after all that murder and mayhem, I haven’t brought a single charge or got even one suspect in the slammer.”
“You could do me for plugging Bartlett,” I said, “if that would make you happy. Wouldn’t be much of a case, though.”
Bernie sighed. He was a weary man. I thought of suggesting that he start considering retirement, but didn’t. After a pause he asked, “You watch the fights, Marlowe?”
“On television, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Sometimes I do.”
“I was upstairs watching one tonight. When you called, Sugar Ray was wiping the floor with Joey Maxim. I just heard, just now, from up there in my hideaway, where I have my own set, the sound of a bell and a big cheer. That probably means Joey’s on the floor, dribbling blood and broken teeth on the canvas. I’d like to have seen him go down for the last time. I’ve got nothing against big Joey—he’s a handsome guy and a plucky fighter. And I bet he put on quite a show before the lights went out for him. It’s just a pity I didn’t get to see the end of the fight. You know what I mean?”
“I’m sorry, Bernie,” I said. “I wouldn’t have kept you from your pleasure for the world, only I thought you might want to know about Peterson and the rest of it.”
“You’re right, Marlowe. I’m grateful to you for filling me in on what was going on, I really am. Only you know what you can do now? You want to know what you can do?”
“Not really, but I’m guessing you’re going to tell me anyway.”
I was right. He did. His suggestions were loud and graphic and for the most part anatomically impracticable.
When he’d finished, I said a polite good night and hung up the receiver. He’s not a bad fellow, Bernie. Like I said, he has a short fuse, and it’s getting shorter all the time.
* * *
I put my feet up on the desk. I could still see out the window. Why do the lights of the city, seen from a distance, appear to twinkle? When you look at them up close, they have a steady shine. It must have something to with the intervening air, with the millions of minute specks of dust swirling in it, maybe. Everything looks fixed, but it’s not; it’s moving. The desk I was resting my feet on, for instance, wasn’t solid at all but a swarm of particles so small that no human eye will ever be able to see one. The world, when you come down to it, is a scary place. And that’s not even counting the people.
I used to think Clare Cavendish could break my heart. I didn’t realize it was already broken. Live and learn, Marlowe, live and learn.
24
It was a shade after ten o’clock when she phoned. I had weakened and got out the bottle again from its deep lair in the desk drawer and poured myself a modest two fingers of bourbon. Somehow liquor doesn’t seem so serious a thing when you drink it from a paper cup. The whiskey stung my mouth, which was already raw from all the cigarettes I’d smoked in the course of this long day. I certainly wasn’t the one to be telling Bernie Ohls he should kick the habit.
I knew the phone was going to ring a second before it rang. Her voice was hushed, almost a whisper. “He’s here,” she said. “Come by the usual way, through the conservatory. And don’t forget to turn off your headlights.”
I can’t remember what I said in reply. Maybe I said nothing. I was still in that strangely dreamy state of suspension, seeming to float outside myself, watching my own actions but somehow not taking part in them. I suppose it was the effect of all the waiting and the time wasting.
Rufus had gone home, and the floor he had been mopping had long since dried, though the soles of my shoes squeaked on it as if it were still wet. The night outside was cool now, and the day’s smoke had cleared from the air at last. I had parked the car on Vine, under a streetlamp. It looked like a big dark animal, crouching there at the sidewalk, and the headlights seemed to be giving me a baleful glare. It took a while to start, too, coughing and sputtering before it rattled into life. It was probably due for an oil change, or something like that.
I drove slowly, but all the same it wasn’t long before I came in sight of the sea. I turned right along the highway, with the waves a ghostly, turbulent white line out in the darkness on my left. I flicked on the radio. It was a thing I rarely did, and in fact I forgot for long periods that it was there. The station it was tuned to was playing an old number by the Paul Whiteman band, hot music made safely cool for the masses. It beats me how a guy with the name Whiteman ever got up the nerve to play jazz.
A jackrabbit ran across the road in front of me, its tail unnaturally aglow in the headlights. There was some comparison I could have made between the animal and me, but I felt too detached to bother.
When I came to the gate I killed the lights and took my foot off the gas and let the car drift to a stop. The moon had gone in and there was blackness everywhere. Trees loomed like great blind brutes nosing their way out of the night. I sat there for a while, listening to the engine ticking. I felt like a traveler come to the end of a long and weary journey. I wanted to rest, but I knew I couldn’t, not yet.
I got out of the car and stood beside it for a minute, sniffing the air. There was a scorched smell from the engine, but beyond that the night was fragrant with the scent of grass and roses and other things I didn’t know the names of. I set off walking across the lawn. The house at the front was dark except for a few lighted windows on the first floor. I came to the gravel sweep below the front door and veered off to the left. The smell of roses was intense here, cloying and almost overpowering.
There was a flurry somewhere close by and I halted, but could see nothing in the darkness. Then I caught a flash of blue, a deep, shiny blue, and there was a swishi
ng sound that quickly faded. It must have been the peacock. I hoped it wouldn’t do its scream, my nerves couldn’t have borne it.
As I rounded the corner of the house and approached the conservatory, I heard the sound of a piano and stopped to listen. Chopin, I guessed, but I was probably wrong—to me everything on the piano sounds like Chopin. The music, tiny from this distance, seemed heartrendingly lovely, and, well, just heartrending. Imagine, I thought to myself, imagine being able to make a noise like that on a big black box made out of wood and ivory and stretched wires.
The French doors leading into the conservatory were locked, but I got that trusty gadget on my key ring into operation, and after a few seconds I was inside.
I followed the sound of the music. In the dimness I crossed what I remembered as the living room and walked along a short, carpeted corridor, at the end of which was a closed door to what I figured must be the music room. I crept forward, trying not to make a sound, but I was still a good five yards from the door when the music broke off in the middle of a phrase. I stopped too, and stood listening, but heard nothing, except a steady, low buzzing from a faulty bulb in a tall lamp beside me. What was I waiting for? Did I expect the door to burst open and a crowd of music lovers to come surging out and usher me inside and sit me down in the front row?
I didn’t knock, just turned the knob and pushed open the door and stepped through.
Clare was seated at the piano. As I came in, she was closing the lid and turning sideways on the stool to look at me. She must have heard me in the corridor. Her face was expressionless; she didn’t even seem surprised at my unannounced appearance. She was wearing a floor-length, midnight-blue gown with a high collar. Her hair was pinned up, and she had on earrings and a necklace of small white diamonds. She looked as if she had dressed for a concert. Where was her audience?
“Hello, Clare,” I said. “Don’t let me interrupt the music.”
The drapes were drawn in front of the two tall windows in the wall behind the piano. The only light in the room came from a big brass lamp that stood on the piano lid. It had a globe of white glass, and its base was molded in the shape of a lion’s claw. It was the kind of thing Clare’s mother would think was the last word in style. Around it were arranged a couple of dozen photographs in silver frames of varying sizes. In one of them I recognized Clare as a young girl, wearing a tiara of flowers in her short blond hair.
The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel Page 24