Perchance to Dream
Page 16
Ohls took a puff on his toy cigar and took it out of his mouth and looked at it for a moment.
"For this he gets paid… how much you getting for this, Marlowe?"
"A dollar, and expenses."
"Tank of gas, maybe?"
"And two bullets," I said.
Ohls crossed his arms and stared at Rackley.
"You think when it comes time to testify we ain't going to find him?"
"The lieutenant has a point there," I said to Rackley.
"You think nobody helped him get on and off that yacht?" Rackley said. "Coast Guard found twenty-eight bullet holes in the hull and superstructure."
"I reload fast," I said.
"Nobody in Long Beach probably knows this," Ohls said. "But most good cops know when to press and when to leave alone. I like this thing just the way Marlowe told it."
Rackley got up.
"Hell," he said. "Like you said there's no Long Beach jurisdiction here."
He walked past me and Ohls and went out of the room and closed the door hard, but not too hard, behind him.
"You got any problems, Commander?" Ohls said.
"Let them walk," Fenton said.
"The way I figure there won't be a trial anyway," I said. "Simpson's mushier than an old apple, and his lawyers will plead him insane and it will stick."
We were on our feet now. I shook hands with Fenton.
***
"Where we going?" Carmen said. "I'm very sleepy."
"Home," I said. "Your maid will put you to bed."
"Not you?" she said and her tongue showed between her lips and she gave me the slow vamp, looking at me with her head turned, from the corners of her eyes.
"I'm sleepy too," I said. "I'll let the maid do it."
My car was in the parking lot, next to the black one that belonged to the county, that Ohls drove.
"Thanks, Bernie," I said.
Ohls nodded and opened his car door and paused with one foot in, leaning on the top.
"She's got to go away someplace too," he said.
"I know."
"One of us will see to it," he said. "I'd just as soon it be you. But one of us will have to."
"I'll do it," I said.
I opened my door and Carmen got in. I closed it after her and went around to the driver's side. Ohls was still halfway in his car, still leaning on the roof.
"Bonsentir's going to come for you," Ohls said.
"Yeah," I said.
"Sooner or later," Ohls said.
"Good," I said. "He'll think he went headfirst into a Mixmaster."
Ohls nodded slowly and got in his car and started up and drove away. I watched him go. Then I got in beside Carmen, and cranked the engine, and started out toward Hollywood, with my eyes heavier than sorrow. And the rest of me no better.
CHAPTER 36
"So you did it," Vivian Regan said.
I was sitting in her enormous living room in the middle of the morning with my feet up on a hassock. I put my head back against the big leather wing chair I was sitting in and let my eyes close. My clothes had dried on me and I looked like something that had washed up in a storm drain. I felt worse.
"I was sure they'd kill you," Vivian said.
"Wrong," I said.
"Yes, I was. And I'm awfully glad I was."
"Yeah."
The stillness in the house seemed essential, part of the substance of the house, integrated with the floor joists and ceiling rafters, impregnating the plaster. Vivian sat with her legs tucked up under her on the vast overstuffed lavender silk couch across from me. She had on some sort of black silk lounging pajamas and a string of pearls, the kind you keep in the vault, and wear paste.
"Will you help me with Carmen?" she said.
"I'll find her a place and see that she is admitted and that she stays," I said.
"Will she have to go to trial?"
"I don't think so. I doubt there'll be a trial. I think this will all be discreetly arranged and she and Simpson will both be judged insane and put into custodial care."
Vivian shivered and hugged herself.
"Insane," she said. "It's such an awful word."
I didn't say anything. Vivian stood and walked over and stood behind me and massaged my neck and shoulders.
"What about us, Marlowe? We had something the other night."
I nodded.
"There'd be room here for you, you know."
"For a while," I said.
"You don't think it would last?"
"You're scared now. You're alone. You've got Carmen to worry over again. You don't know where Bonsentir is. Someone like me looks pretty good now. But how would I look next year? How would I look at the polo matches? Do I get my own monogrammed blazer? Do I take elocution lessons so I can sound like a phony Englishman and fit in with the clubhouse crowd at Del Mar?"
"You simply are a bastard, aren't you, Marlowe."
"I'm a detective, lady. I told you that before. I don't play at it. I work at it. I belong where I am, in a lousy apartment on Franklin, in a crummy office on Cahuenga. I pay my own way, and do what I will do, and don't accept insults. It isn't much. But it's mine. Whatever brains and guts and muscle I was dealt, it belongs to me, and I use it in my work. And what money I have I earned."
She was crying. I felt a little like crying myself.
She said, "Do you want to kiss me goodbye?"
I said, "I want to kiss you goodbye," and dragged myself to my feet and put my arms around her and she pressed against me and opened her mouth and we kissed for a long time.
Then we broke and she said, "Don't come back. I couldn't stand it again," and turned and left the room fast. I stood and tried to get my breathing calm.
While I was doing that, Norris came into the room.
"Mrs. Regan asked me to show you out, sir."
"On my way," I said.
"I'm very grateful, sir, that Miss Carmen is back."
"We'll see to a proper place for her, Norris."
"Yes, sir, the General would approve of that, sir."
I said, "Norris, do you have champagne?"
"Yes, sir."
"Chilled?" I said.
"Of course, sir."
"Bring it with some brandy," I said, "and two glasses, to the greenhouse, please."
Norris smiled. "Yes, sir," he said.
The greenhouse was as I remembered it. Stifling, thick with moisture, overgrown with thick fleshy plants. In the center, just as it had been, was the wheelchair on the red Turkish rug on the flagstones under the domed roof. The lap robe was folded and hung over the back. There were two wicker chairs set near the wheelchair. Drops of water fell from the glass roof and splattered occasionally on the hexagonal flagstones. I sat in one of the wicker chairs and took out a cigarette and lit it and exhaled slowly. Norris came through the jungle pushing a tea wagon with a bottle of French champagne in a silver ice bucket, which was already densely beaded, and a bottle of fine French brandy.
"The champagne as cold as Valley Forge," I said to Norris, "and about a third of a glass of brandy beneath it."
Norris didn't speak, but he mixed two glasses of champagne and brandy and handed me one. We drank in silence. The forest dripped, the smell of the orchids was like the smell of dying beauty, the rotten sweetness of a prostitute, General Sternwood had said. We finished our drink without a word. Norris standing, me sitting in the wicker chair where I had sat the first time Fd met the General.
"He had the soldier's eye, Norris," I said. "Like yours."
"If I may say so, sir," Norris said, "not unlike yours."
Then we put our glasses down on the tea wagon and I shook Norris's hand and walked away from there. On the way out I saw Eddie Mars get out of his car and stroll to the front door. He didn't see me. I walked out to the street past the slow sweep of the lawn sprinkler and got in my car and drove away and didn't look back.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
/> CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
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