Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe

by Robert B. Parker

  I asked him about Hap Delaney and he laughed. “Easy,” he said. “Out of the slammer about six months and busy as a birddog with a new seam. Knowing Delaney, it’s got to be illegal, but nobody’s got anything on him yet. He’s got an office over on Highland, but he’s hardly ever in it. He’s been touring up and down the coast, interviewing talent. Calls himself an agent, specializing in kid actors. Between you and me, I think he’s buying and selling. I don’t know who’s in the market, but there’ve been a few rumors surfacing about parties where young kids provide the entertainment. And I don’t mean ring-around-the-rosy. You got something going with him?”

  “I don’t know yet, Benny. But as soon as I do, it’s yours. Thanks.”

  On the way back to Hollywood, with Charlie McCarthy propped up on the seat beside me, I tried to get a little conversation going. “Now tell me this, my wooden-headed friend. If the Gold Dust Twins have been doing business with Hap Delaney, and if Walter knows about it, then why doesn’t he blow the whistle on the deal?”

  The dummy answered, “Don’t be stupid, shamus. Walter wants to keep the money and the kid.”

  “What money?” I asked.

  “The money the three of them got paid for the merchandise. Or maybe just the two of them.”

  “Which two?”

  “You figure it out. You’re the detective.”

  I wasn’t much of a ventriloquist. The dummy’s answers only raised more questions.

  It was late afternoon when I finally parked on Highland Avenue across the street from the building where Information had told me The Delaney Agency was located. The elevator operator was a rosy-cheeked lad who looked ready to burst into song and dance. Delaney’s office on the ninth floor had a candy-striped door and a sweet-faced granny type sitting at a candy-striped desk behind it.

  “Hello,” she cooed at me. There was a fishbowl full of gumdrops on the desk. A rocking horse stood in one corner and a dollhouse in another. “How may we help you?”

  “We can tell me if Hap Delaney is in.” I helped myself to a green gumdrop and dropped one of my cards on the desk.

  The coo turned into a caw as she read my name out loud. “We’re closed for the day. I was just leaving.” She reached for a flowered straw hat and plopped it cockeyed on top of her gray topknot.

  “He wouldn’t be on his way to Santa Rosa, would he?” I asked.

  “Santa where?” she muttered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She got up from her chair and looked wildly at a slightly open door on the other side of the reception room.

  “Because if he is, he doesn’t have to go so far. The merchandise that was stolen from him hasn’t left town.” I spoke right up, loud enough so that whoever was on the other side of the door could hear what I was saying.

  The door opened and the sweet old granny sat back down. The man in the doorway looked a bit like a youthful Santa Claus—round pink cheeks, round button nose, a crown of curly red hair, and a smile as broad as Topanga Canyon. He was everybody’s favorite uncle.

  “It’s all right, Bessie,” he said. “You go on home now. I’ll take care of this.”

  She scuttled out the door and Hap Delaney ushered me into his office. The candy-stripe decor ran riot. A soda fountain with three stools occupied one side of the room. There were dolls and teddy bears everywhere, including a couple of Charlie McCarthys. “So you’re Philip Marlowe,” he said. “I’ve heard about you. Sit down, sit down. I’d offer you a drink, but the bar runs strictly to sarsaparilla. What can I do for you?”

  I sat down on a couch between a Shirley Temple.doll and a Dionne quint. “I’m looking for a girl. Baby Grace Watson. A little bird told me I should look here.”

  He laughed jovially. “Do you know how many Baby Thises and Baby Thatses I see in a week? They all tap-dance. They all sing. They all look alike. What I’m looking for is the one who stands out in a crowd.”

  “What happens to the ones who don’t?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “How do I know? They go home, grow up, and marry the boy next door. If their mothers let them, that is.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to steer them into some other line of work, would you?”

  “Such as what?” He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “Oh, I don’t know. What other kind of work is there for a five-year-old girl?”

  “Listen, Marlowe,” he said. “This is a legitimate business. It may not be a nice business, but it’s all legal and aboveboard. I don’t know who told you to come to me, but there’s nothing in it. I haven’t seen your Baby Whatsit.”

  “Mind looking at a picture of her?” I pulled the photo out of my pocket and handed it to him.

  He barely glanced at it. “Like I said, they all look alike. And all the mothers think they’re gonna get rich off their kids. Some of the fathers, too. But if a plain little girl with freckles and pigtails should walk in that door, her I could do something with. She’d be different. You know what I mean?” He handed me back the snapshot. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Well, if she should show up, you could give me a call. She’d be with her father. I left my card with Bessie.”

  Downstairs in the long shadows, I hunkered down in my car and watched the front of the building. It took him about twenty minutes to hustle through the revolving door. There was a cab waiting for him right at the curb. I watched it head down toward Melrose and then made a U-turn and moseyed after it. Something told me I knew where Delaney was going, so I took a chance and stopped to make a phone call. Ralph, the studio cop, told me all about where the hired help stayed when they had to work late. A few more nickels and Lucille had given me chapter and verse and Deuteronomy for good measure. I gave her a time and a place, and she said, “We’ll see about that.”

  There was a coffee shop on the ground floor of the hotel where the twins were staying. Through the plate glass window, I saw a platinum blonde head and a bright red one bent toward each other across a small table. I parked in a no parking zone right outside and went into the hotel lobby. I rang the twins’ room on the house phone. A muzzy voice answered.

  “Get down to the lobby right away,” I said.

  “Wh-a-a-t?”

  “Do you want Baby Grace back or not?”

  “But I’m not even dressed,” she wailed.

  “Get dressed and get sober and get down here. I’ll be waiting for you.” I hung up on her before she could think of another reason why she couldn’t. Then I went to stand by the lobby entrance to the coffee shop where I could keep an eye on June and Hap Delaney.

  Delaney didn’t look like everybody’s favorite uncle anymore. He was yapping away at June and she was taking it with her head bent. Then she raised her head and started yapping away at him. This went on for about ten minutes. They took a break while the waitress refilled their coffee cups.

  January hove to alongside of me, huffing and sleepy-eyed.

  “Look at that man,” I told her. “Ever seen him before?”

  “Why, sure,” she said. “He’s the one who said he could get Baby Grace into the movies. He came to Santa Rosa looking for talent and said she was the greatest thing he’d ever seen.”

  “He just came right up to the door and said that?” I asked.

  “Well, not exactly,” said January coyly. “There was an ad in the paper about auditions for talented children. So I took Baby Grace. That’s how it happened. He even came out to the house to meet Walter and June just to prove everything was on the up-and-up. Then we were all going to come down here to find a place to live while Baby Grace was getting started on her career. But Walter skipped out with her before we could do that. What’s he doing talking to June?” Her pudgy hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, my goodness!” she gasped.

  “What is it?”

  “The contract! Walter and I signed a contract. Do you suppose Mr. Delaney could sue us?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told her.

  “But I want Baby Grace to be a movie star,” she
wailed. “She could do it. She’s cute enough.”

  “Sure she is. She’s cute enough for Walter and June to go behind your back and sell her to Hap Delaney, so he could turn around and sell her to some baby lover for nursery games.”

  She blinked at me, making a strange kind of keening way back in her throat. “That’s dirty,” she whispered finally. “That’s the dirtiest thing I ever heard of. Even Walter wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “You sure of that?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know what I’m sure of anymore,” she moaned.

  I liked her better when she was tearing off a piece of my hide. “Well, let’s go in,” I said. “Nothing like finding things out firsthand.”

  I opened the coffee shop door and led the way. January lumbered behind me like a mother elephant in search of her lost calf. June saw us first and half rose out of her chair. She pasted a smile on her face and fluttered her hands at the waitress. “Two more chairs,” she called out. “It looks like we’re turning into a party.”

  January bore down on her like the Bonus Army marching on Washington. “I want my baby. Where’s my baby? How could you do this to me, June?”

  “Shut up,” said June. “You’re drunk again. What kind of mother are you? Can’t you see that Mr. Delaney’s here? He wants to find her just as much as we do.”

  “No!” said January. “Not him. Where’s the money, June? I didn’t see any money. How much did he pay you for my baby?”

  The waitress brought over two chairs and tried to edge them around us. “Please sit down,” she whispered. “The manager’s looking at you.”

  January kicked one chair over and raised the other one to chest level as if she were a lion tamer in a one-ring circus.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said June. “Why don’t you have a drink? Let’s go out to the bar.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” said January. “Who is it who’s always buying me bottles of gin? I think I’m just beginning to understand something.”

  Hap Delaney rose wearily to his feet, but his smile was back in place for my benefit. “Family squabbles,” he said. “I hate to get in the middle of them. Don’t you?”

  I put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him back into his chair. I’d seen something on the other side of the plate glass window—an eagle-nosed man with a little girl on his shoulders. And a pair of shot-glass lenses lurking just behind him. I put my other hand on January’s arm and helped her lower the chair to the floor. She was trembling.

  “Let’s all take a deep breath,” I said. I picked up the chair that January had kicked over and sat on it. January sat on the edge of her chair. The waitress relaxed and the manager went back to whatever managers of hotel coffee shops do when they’re not anticipating riots.

  And then the street door opened.

  January was off the edge of her chair and halfway across the room before anyone could say a word. She lifted Baby Grace off Walter’s shoulders and came back and sat down with the little girl on her lap.

  “Okay,” said Hap Delaney. “Let’s call the whole thing off. Give me back the three grand and I’ll forget I ever saw you folks.”

  “I don’t have it,” said June. “I gave it to Walter.”

  Walter said, “Not three thousand, you didn’t. More like three hundred. I wouldn’t sell my Baby Grace for a measly three hundred.”

  “Did they do anything to you, baby?” January whispered into Grace’s tousled curls. “You can tell Mommy.”

  Grace burrowed her face into her mother’s green and white ruffles and burst into tears.

  Walter shuffled over to the table and put his hands on January’s shoulders. “I’m sorry about all this, Jan,” he said. “But I tried to tell you it was no good. You never would listen to me. It was always June you listened to, and believe me, she’s the one behind it all. She handed Grace over to him three days ago. When I found out, I came down here and got Lucille to help me find her. It wasn’t hard. She knows where all the dirt is in this town.”

  “That Bessie Prince,” Lucille muttered. “Running a regular baby ranch out in the Valley. Everybody knows about it, but I never thought I’d see my own niece there.”

  “Is that so?” June barked. “Blame it all on me, why don’t you? But you two wanted it just as much as I did. Only you’re just too feeble to admit it.”

  “All I wanted was for my baby to be a movie star,” January whispered.

  “That’s what they all say,” Delaney confided to me. “But I’m clean. Nobody can pin a thing on me.”

  “That may be, Mr. Delaney. But I don’t think you should be doing what you do to anybody else’s little girls.” She sat there with Baby Grace on her lap and the little gun in her hand. “Don’t you move, Mr. Marlowe,” she said. “I know I really shouldn’t be doing this, but I just can’t help it. Walter, you’ll use the money to get me a really good lawyer, and then we’ll go home.”

  And I didn’t move. It was a pleasure to watch Delaney try to crawl under the table. She shot him right through the breast pocket of his bright plaid jacket. Then she turned the gun on June. “Give Walter the rest of the money,” she commanded.

  “No!” said June. “It’s mine. It’s my ticket out of Santa Rosa.”

  “What’s wrong with Santa Rosa?” said January. “It’ll be just fine without you.” And she shot June twice, just to make sure.

  Lucille picked up June’s white pocketbook, just slightly spattered with blood, and faded away to the lobby entrance.

  When the police arrived, January was still sitting in the chair with Baby Grace asleep on her lap. She’d handed the gun over to me, and I handed it over to them.

  They were pretty decent with her. They let her keep the kid with her, at least for a while. They didn’t even give me a hard time, for a change. I guess they were glad that somebody’d put Hap Delaney out of business for good.

  Walter cried a little and apologized for bashing me over the head. “I thought you were working for June,” he said. “She kept telling us that you were her high-school sweetheart. I never had a high-school sweetheart. I never had anybody until I met Jan. She’s a fine woman, you know. Just a little hot tempered sometimes. When this is over, I’m taking her and Grace back home with me. I’ll make it all up to both of them.”

  After they’d all cleared out and I was wondering what to do with the rest of the evening, the waitress presented me with a bill for two coffees and an apple pie à la mode. I had to give her an I.O.U.—an evening at the Trocadero so she could be seen by the right people and get started in the movies. I didn’t ask her if she could tap-dance.

  When you grow up a movie-loving, library-haunting brat, it would be pretty hard to miss out on Raymond Chandler. And a whole lot of other writing people.

  Of my two loves, I much preferred the library. Honestly. I could have spent my whole life there. But we were all shipped off in a slovenly clump on Saturday afternoons to the movies. I didn’t mind, and I never minded what was playing. I got to see a lot of good stuff. Some of it was Chandler, but I didn’t know that then. My dazzled childish eye saw only the Bogarts and the Bacalls. It was only later that I started looking for the writer, of the screenplay and of the book behind the movie.

  I made a wonderful discovery in those days. The movies I liked best were often based on books, and that simple fact sent me back to the library where I would rather have been in the first place. Sad news. The libraries I went to weren’t large on Chandler. Dickens, yes. Steinbeck, yes. L. Frank Baum and Jack London and Oscar Wilde. So I read all those people and many, many others whose books were or weren’t made into movies before I got around to Chandler.

  Did Chandler influence my work? Damned if I know. I’d like it if he had because he was a fine, honest, painstaking craftsman. I read and reread everything I could find of his, and everything I could find about him, while I was working on “Saving Grace.” You can be sure he influenced that story. And it was fun. Both the writing and the reading.
I like to think of all of us who contributed to this book immersing ourselves in Chandler the man and Chandler the writer. May the experience make us all better writers than we ever thought we could be.

  Joyce Harrington

  MALIBU TAG TEAM

  * * *

  * * *

  JONATHAN VALIN

  1939

  HE WAS ABOUT six feet two, no wider than a beer truck, maybe forty, forty-five years old, with a gray felt hat crushed down around his ears, a checked sportcoat holding him in like a whalebone corset, and a cigar the size of a rolling pin wedged between the first two fingers of his right hand. His face, what I could see of it under the hat brim, was set in a scowl, somewhere between the casual contempt a really big man has for ordinary mortals and the kind of slit-eyed mean that’s truly dangerous, the kind that doesn’t give a damn about cops or damages or little toylike things such as the electric chair. I might have been wrong, but I thought he looked like trouble.

  The huge man stared at the dingy office, then squinted with his whole face, like the view hurt his eyes.

  “What’s a guy like you charge?” he growled in a solidly contemptuous voice.

  “Why’s a guy like you want to know?”

  “I got a job for you. Deliver a package. Take a few hours.”

  “I don’t work by the hour. And I don’t run a delivery service.”

  “Cute,” he said softly. “That’s very cute.”

  He put the cigar down on the corner of the desk and picked up my penset, pretending to study it for a moment like it was a ship in a bottle. With a tight-lipped grin, he held the thing out in front of his face and casually broke it in two. Still smiling, he dropped the pieces back on the desk.

  “I’m cute, too,” he said.

  “I can tell that about you.”

  The man picked up the cigar and flicked ashes on the carpet, which was all it was good for anyway. And I’d been meaning to break the penset since January. Still there was something about him I didn’t like.