"They thought they could scare me off. A murder attracts too much attention."
"So why didn't somebody give Carmen back? You say you think Simpson's got her," Mars said.
"Hard to figure that," I said. "It may have something to do with Simpson being such a twisted gee. He's so rich he may not think like you and me, Eddie."
"And he's wired," Mars said.
"Very," I said. "His protection has got protection. I think he thinks he can do anything he wants without consequences."
"He can't beat up my girl," Mars said.
There wasn't anything there for me to talk about. I let it slide.
"Thing that doesn't fit is the murder. And maybe it doesn't fit, maybe it's just a random thing that's not connected to the rest."
"The hack murder?"
"Yeah. The Sternwood phone number was on a matchbook in her purse."
"I read about it," Mars said. "Didn't mention any names in the paper."
"Sternwoods got a little juice themselves," I said.
"You figure it was Carmen gave her the number?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything about the murder. I wish it weren't in here at all, it muddies everything up."
"A sweet deal like that," Mars said. "They're not going to let you push them off it."
"True."
"There's maybe fifty, maybe a hundred million dollars you could make in that kind of a deal."
"Yeah."
"They'll kill you if they have to," Mars said. "I would."
"It's been tried," I said. "One of yours tried."
Mars nodded thoughtfully.
"I don't care about you, soldier," he said. "But to take them off Vivian's back, we're going to have to bust this deal for them, I think."
"I think so," I said. "And we're going to have to find Carmen."
"Little Miss Hotpants," Mars said and shook his head. "You'd do her sister a favor if you buried her."
"Wasn't hired to do that," I said.
"Maybe you could be hired to forget it," Mars said.
"You know better, Eddie," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "You're not smart, soldier. But I'll give you that you're stubborn. So we find Carmen too."
I nodded. Me and Eddie Mars. Partners. A couple of pals. Two smart boys side by side. Mars and Marlowe. Marlowe and Mars. Had a nice ring to it. I felt like I ought to go home and gargle. Which I did.
CHAPTER 25
I was in my office, with my coat off and my tie down, drinking a shot of rye from a water glass and thinking about whether to have another one or go to dinner, when Bernie Ohls came in.
"Cocktail hour?" he said.
"Sure," I said. "I settle in, drink a couple of these, and tell myself about my day. It's very convivial."
"Want to come to the morgue and look at a body?"
"What could be nicer," I said.
Ohls had the siren on all the way downtown through the rush-hour traffic.
"Corpse in a hurry?" I said.
"What's the point of being a cop if you can't use the siren?" Ohls said. "It's the only fringe benefit."
The L. A. County morgue was cool and dim and pleasant on a hot day. Our footsteps were loud as we followed the attendant along the stacked rows of pull-out storage drawers, like filing cabinets for the dead. The body the morgue attendant pulled out was an old woman, with white hair, and her head twisted at an odd angle. It was an old woman I knew. Maybe she could see her house now.
"Mrs. Swayze," I said.
"She fit your description," Ohls said.
"Broken neck?"
"ME hasn't seen her yet," Ohls said. "But that's what it looks like."
"Where'd you find her?"
"Off the coast highway," Ohls said.
"Figure she was killed elsewhere and dumped?" I said.
"We don't know she was killed," Ohls said. "She could have fallen."
"Come on, Bernie," I said, "you been a cop too long to believe that. She's a patient at Resthaven, a witness in Carmen Sternwood's disappearance, when we want to question her she's gone. Now she turns up dead, the second person with a Sternwood connection to do so."
"Sure," Ohls said. "But I also been a cop long enough to wait for the coroner to tell me what he knows."
"And what about the sanitarium?"
"What about it? We got not one piece of evidence that Bonsentir's not clean as toothpaste. Two people he claims he discharged turn out to be problems-maybe. Can we close him down because of that?"
"He's dirty as hell," I said.
"Sure," Ohls said. "You know it and I know it. Can you convince a DA? A judge? A jury? You know the answer to that, Marlowe."
"Okay I put her away?" the morgue attendant said.
Ohls nodded. The drawer slid silently shut on an oiled track.
Ohls and I left her there and headed back outside where life was on going and the sun was the color of old brass in the late afternoon sky.
The traffic had thinned by then and Ohls left the siren off and let the car cruise with the traffic flow back toward Hollywood.
"Got something else for you to chew on, Marlowe," Ohls said.
I had my hat tilted forward over my eyes to keep the setting sun out, and was leaning back against the seat feeling older than Mount Rainier.
"Yeah?"
"Lola Monforte," Ohls said. "The dismembered stiff in the canyon."
"Yeah."
"Told you she used to be an actress, we turned up a guy used to be her agent. Says she was trouble, a boozer and a nympho."
"Something else?" I said.
"Said she spent some time at Resthaven, getting a few of the kinks straightened out."
I stayed perfectly still under my hat brim. Ohls and I were both silent. Ohls bore left at the V where Hollywood runs off of Sunset.
"We figure that's the Sternwood connection," Ohls said. "Pals, a little girl talk about their mutual hobby, 'call me, honey, when you get out,' she writes the number in a matchbook."
"I suppose she was cured and discharged too," I said.
"Surprise, surprise," Ohls said.
"And you're not going to close him down?" I said.
"We're kind of hoping you'll find us something, Marlowe, help us do that."
I felt something icy move in the pit of my stomach. Where was Carmen?
"Sure," I said from under my hat brim. "Glad to."
CHAPTER 26
My building was empty and my office was dark. I sat alone in it nursing a drink, staring out the open window at the hot California night. Below me on the boulevard fast cars roared up and down The Strip, double-clutching sometimes to make the engines roar. The neon splashed its bright colors upward and across my office, making bright shifting patterns in the unlit room. Some of the patterns were bright red like blood splattering on my walls.
Everywhere I looked in this case there was Dr. Bonsentir, and lurking behind him, getting more sinister each time his shadow fell, was Randolph Simpson. Randolph Simpson, the man with the money, the man with the power, the man with the twisted sexual appetites. Carmen was supposed to be with him and I was supposed to get her back. After that it got tricky.
Simpson had to be involved in the water rights swindle. It was a swindle that took big money. It was a swindle that required a lot of people to be bought off, or scared off, or both. And it required a guy to run it that didn't worry about eight or ten thousand people up in the Neville Valley whose lives would dry up and blow away as a result of the swindle.
The smell of gasoline exhaust drifted up through my open window, and of food being fried. More faintly came the hint of hibiscus, and bougainvillea, and the acrid perfume of eucalyptus. And barely discernible, almost obliterated by the gasoline fumes and cooking smells, was the scent of the ocean to the west as it came lumbering in from Asia. I felt old and tired and gritty, as if I'd been wrestling in a gravel pit.
I thought about dinner. It had no appeal. I thought about Vivian with her face bruised and her soul tangled in th
e dark tragedy of her family, and about the way her lips had felt, and the way her body had arched so strongly toward me that night in her bedroom. And I thought about Rusty Regan, whom I'd never met and who had gone a long ways quite a while ago to the place where Lola Monforte had gone, and Mrs. Swayze. Was it a peaceful sleep, I wondered, or did they dream? And if they did, what dreams? Nightmares? And when I went to sleep the Big Sleep would I have nightmares too? If I did, one of them would be the day Carmen asked me to teach her to shoot the little gun I'd taken from her when she tried to send Joe Brody over.
I went back around the sump and set the can up in the middle of the bull wheel It made a swell target If she missed the can, which she was certain to do, she would probably hit the wheel That would stop a small slug completely. However, she wasn't even going to hit that I went back toward her around the sump. When I was about ten feet from her, at the edge of the sump, she showed me all her sharp little teeth and brought the gun up and started to hiss.
I stopped dead, the sump water stagnant and stinking at my back.
"Stand there, you son of a bitch," she said.
The gun pointed at my chest. Her hand seemed to be quite steady. The hissing sound grew louder and her face had the scraped bone look. Aged, deteriorated, become animal, and not a nice animal I laughed at her. I started to walk toward her. I saw her small finger tighten on the trigger and grow white at the tip. I was about six feet away from her when she started to shoot.
The sound of the gun made a sharp slap, without body, a brittle crack in the sunlight. I didn't see any smoke. I stopped again and grinned at her.
She fired twice more, very quickly. I don't think any of the shots would have missed.
There were five in the little gun. She had fired four. I rushed her.
I didn't want the last one in my face, so I swerved to one side. She gave it to me quite carefully, not worried at all. I think I felt the hot breath of the powder blast a little.
I straightened up. "My, but you're cute," I said.
Her hand holding the empty gun began to shake violently. The gun fell out of it. Her mouth began to shake violently. Her whole face went to pieces. Then her head screwed up toward her left ear and froth showed on her lips. Her breath made a whining sound. She swayed.
I caught her as she fell. She was already unconscious. I pried her teeth open with both hands and stuffed a wadded handkerchief in between them. It took all my strength to do it. I lifted her and got her into the car, then went back for the gun and dropped it in my pocket. I climbed in under the wheel, backed the car, and drove back the way we had come along the rutted road, out of the gateway, back up the hill and so home.
Carmen lay crumpled in the corner of the car, without motion. I was halfway up the drive to the house before she stirred. Then her eyes suddenly opened wide and wild. She sat up.
"What happened?" she gasped.
"Nothing. Why?"
"Oh, yes it did," she giggled. "I wet myself."
"They always do," I said.
I got up and poured the rest of my drink down the sink and rinsed the glass. I turned back my cuffs and splashed cold water on my face and toweled dry. I went to the window and shut it and turned and left the office and went home to the Hobart Arms to try and sleep.
If I dreamed I don't remember.
CHAPTER 27
When I got to my office in the morning, my phone was ringing. When I answered, it was Pauline Snow.
"Marlowe," she said. "I don't know if it means anything but there's a desert rat out here, says he's found a murder site near Randolph Simpson's place. The old fool's drunk most of the time, and I'm not sure but what he sees things."
"What makes him think it's a murder site?" I said.
"He says there's blood all over the place."
"Hang up and look out the window," I said. "You'll see me parking my car."
***
When I got there, Pauline Snow had made a pitcher of iced tea and we sat in the newspaper office and had some while she talked.
"I started looking into the Rancho Springs Development Corporation, and into Randolph Simpson, since you seemed to think he was involved somehow."
The tea had a wedge of lemon in it, and a lot of ice. I added some sugar and waited for it to dissolve and for the tea to become clear again. The desert heat was like a substance that pervaded everything.
"So I asked around, just casual, you know. Anybody know anything about the Rancho Springs company? Anybody know anything unusual about Randolph Simpson? I have a lot of contacts in this town, ought to, been here half my damned life, and the word spread. First thing happened was Cecil came around. Cecil Coleman's the chief of police here. He wanted to know why I was asking questions, and I told him it was because I was in the newspaper business and that's what you did in the newspaper business. And he said he thought I better not ask any more questions. And I said I was thinking about doing an editorial about how the local police don't seem to arrest anybody except occasional speeders passing through. And he said I better not do that either. And we sort of jawed at each other for a while and then he left and said Fd be hearing from him."
"He's a bad enemy," I said.
"Marlowe, at my age, even an enemy is better than boredom."
"How about the murder site?" I said.
"Well, Shorty, that's the desert rat, he heard from somebody I was interested and he came in here and said he could tell me a story to put in the paper. So I gave him a shot of whiskey and he sat and told me that he was nosing around in an old deserted mineshaft-lot of desert rats do that, see if there might be a little dust left that got overlooked-and he found a sort of room a little ways in, really just a widening of the shaft, probably, that was splashed all over, he says, with blood. According to Shorty the whole room was covered with dried blood. So I thought I better let you know. As I say, it may be nothing…"
"Shorty talk to the cops?" I said.
"He says no, and I believe him. People like Shorty get pretty short shrift from Cecil."
"And Vern," I said.
"You've met them?"
"Yeah. Where is this mineshaft?"
"Southeast of town," Pauline said. "I'll drive you."
"You don't need to," I said.
"I used to be a crime reporter, Marlowe. I've seen blood. It doesn't scare me."
"Scares me," I said.
***
She had a Ford pickup and she drove it far too fast for the roads. Or maybe it was right for the roads and too fast for me. I decided it didn't matter. We went southeast out of town through the flat hot land. There was tumbleweed, and occasionally a saguaro cactus looking somehow regal in the still desert air. The road was unpaved and soon became merely two wheel ruts as the pickup jounced and rattled along.
The mineshaft went horizontally into a low rise about two hundred yards off the road. The entrance was shored with timbers and the rubble of mine dross fanned out from the entrance for maybe fifty yards. There were the faint indentations of wagon wheels leading from the mine entrance toward the road, and the only sound I heard as we walked toward the mine was the desert wind that swept almost unimpeded over hundreds of miles and scattered the grit around the entrance, and pushed the tumbleweed along. Inside the mine entrance the sound of the wind turned into a hollow tone a little like a train whistle, but nowhere near as loud. Pauline Snow turned on the big battery lantern she'd brought and we walked, our feet crunching, through the litter of the shaft floor for maybe twenty feet where it turned a little and widened before it started to descend. The walls and gravel floor were crusted with blackened blood. I could smell it, no longer rich as it must have been when it was fresh, but still the lingering unmistakable scent of it. Blood had splashed on the walls, and ran in thick puddles on the floor where it had coagulated around the small scatter of stones. I heard Pauline's breath go in.
"Maybe you should stay with the truck," I said.
"No."
The light moved slowly as she panned the room
. On one wall at about shoulder height a bloody handprint stood in black outline to the reddish stone of the shaft. There were drip lines where blood had spattered and run slowly down the walls.
I squatted on my haunches and looked closely at the dried pools, the surface faintly glossy in the lantern light. I was always amazed at the amount of blood there was in a human body. Among some rocks the size of footballs something metallic gleamed.
"Over there," I said, and Pauline flashed the light where I pointed. I went over and picked up a surgical saw. I handled it carefully, although the chance of useful fingerprints was about equal to the chance of a genie popping out of the mineshaft and telling us what happened. I moved slowly over the floor of the room. Among some other rocks, further back in the shaft, I found a scalpel. I was careful with it, too. There was nothing else to find in the murder room, we went a little further down the shaft and saw no sign of anything having been before us. We went back to the blood room.
"What do you think?" Pauline Snow said.
"I think I know where Lola Monforte was cut up," I said.
"The dismemberment murder in L. A.?"
"Yeah."
"You think it happened here?"
"Yeah. Where's Simpson's place from here?"
We were walking back out of the shaft. I carried the surgical saw and scalpel.
In the daylight I could see the manufacturer's name engraved on the blade near the handle, where the blood hadn't covered it. Williamson Surgery it said. I took a deep breath of hot desert air trying to get the faint smell of old blood out of my lungs.
"We may be on Simpson's place," Pauline said. "He owns two thirds of everything out here."
"Can we take a look?" I said. "At some of the more settled parts?"
"Sure."
We walked back to the truck. I put the saw and the scalpel behind the front seat and we went back out to the wagon ruts and headed east. In maybe twenty minutes we came to a paved highway.
"It's Simpson's," Pauline said. "Runs up and connects to the interstate. He had it built for him."
"Anyone would," I said.
We drove south on the highway for another fifteen minutes and there ahead of us rising from the desert was something from Scheherazade. Three stories with turret, made of stucco, surrounded by a high stone wall off of which the sun glittered.
Perchance to Dream Page 12