I pulled the pint from the glove compartment and swallowed a mouthful just on principle, a farewell salute to Dominick. He hadn’t been a bad guy, he just had a lousy job.
I half expected to find Miss Naomi Felstein, if that was who she was, not just what I could call her, planted in my waiting room like a well-kept jacaranda. I expected her because I wanted her to be there. I wanted to see if I could shake a little fire into those cool dark eyes and get her to tell me why she’d come to me after finding Dominick’s dead body lying in front of his kitchen door this morning.
She wasn’t there, though. I wondered if she ever had been there, if perhaps she was just an Easter vision, in red the way these visions always appear, leaving the faintest whiff of Chanel behind to undercut the tobacco fumes. I had a drink from the office bottle and the Chanel disappeared.
I didn’t have much hope for the number the mirage had left, and my hope began to dwindle after fifteen rings. But I didn’t have anything else to do so I sat at my desk with the phone in my ear looking at the front page of the paper, trying again to figure out which of the stories had caught my phantom’s attention.
I finished the details of Errol Flynn’s cruelty to his wife and why she had to get his entire estate as a settlement and started on why the army thought Ichuro Kimura was an enemy spy. I’d gotten to the part where he’d thrown empty sake bottles at the soldiers who came to arrest him for not reporting for deportation at Union Station last Wednesday when I realized someone was talking to me.
It was a querulous old man who repeated that he was the Boylston Ranch and who was I calling. Without much interest I asked for Miss Felstein.
“No one here by that name. No women here at all.” His tone demanded congratulations for having rid Eden of all temptresses.
“Five feet tall, lots of glossy black hair, dark eyes that could bring a guy back from the grave if she wanted them to.”
He hung up on me. Just like that. I stuck the bottle of rye neatly in the middle of the drawer and stared at nothing for a while. Then I got up and locked the office behind me. Oh, yes, Marlowe’s a very methodical guy. Very orderly. He always tidies up his whiskey bottle when he’s been drinking and locks up behind himself. You can tell he came from a good home.
The army had a roadblock set up just outside Lebec. I guess they were trying to make sure no one was smuggling empty sake bottles in for Ichuro Kimura. They made me get out of my car while they looked under the seats and in the trunk. Then they checked my I.D. and made me tell them I was looking for a runaway girl and that I had a hot tip she was hiding out on the Boylston place. That made them about as happy as a housewife seeing her cat drag a dead bird into the kitchen. They started putting me through my paces until the sergeant who was running the block came over and told them to let me through. He was bored: he wanted to be killing Japs at Milne Bay instead of looking for old men in Lebec.
The sun had had all it could take of Kern County by the time I got to the turnoff for the Boylston Ranch. It was easing itself down behind the Sierra Madres, striking lightning bolts from the dashboard that made it hard for me to see. I was craning my neck forward, shielding my eyes with my left hand, when I realized I was about to go nose to nose with a pickup.
I pulled over to the side to let the truck go by, but it stopped and a lean, dusty man jumped down. He had on a cowboy hat and leather leggings, in case the gearshift chafed his legs, and his face was young and angry, with a jutting upper lip trying to dominate the uncertain jaw beneath it.
“Private property here, mister. You got any reason to be here?”
“Yup,” I said.
“Then let’s have it.”
I got out of the Chrysler to be on eye level with him, just in case being alone with the cows all day made him punch happy.
“You got any special reason for asking, son? Other than just nosiness, I mean?”
His fists clenched reflexively and he took half a step nearer. “I’m Jay Boylston. That good enough for you?”
“You own this spread?”
“My old man does, but I’m in charge of the range. So spill it, and make it fast. Time is money here and I don’t have much to waste of either.”
“An original sentiment. Maybe you could get it engraved on your tombstone. If your old man owns the place I’d better talk to him. It’s kind of a delicate matter. Involves a lady’s reputation, you might say.”
At that he did try to swing at me. I grabbed his arm. It was a little tougher than his face but not much.
“What’s going on here?”
The newcomer had ridden up behind us on horseback. The horse stopped in its tracks at a short command and the rider jumped down. He was an older, stockier edition of Jay. His face held the kind of arrogance men acquire when they own a big piece of land and think it means they own all the people around them as well.
“Man’s trespassing and he’s giving kind of smart answers when I ask him to explain himself,” Jay said sullenly.
“Mr. Boylston?” I asked. The older man nodded fractionally, too canny to give anything to a stranger, even the movement of his head.
“Philip Marlowe. I’m a private detective from Los Angeles and I’m up here on a case.”
“A case involving my ranch is something I would know about,” Boylston said. His manner was genial but his eyes were cold.
“I didn’t say it involved your ranch. Except as a hiding place for a runaway. Big place, lot of places to hide. Am I right?”
“The army’s been all through here in the last week looking for a runaway Jap,” Boylston said. “I don’t think there’s too much those boys missed. You’re a long way from L.A. if you hope to sleep in your own bed tonight.”
“This is a recent case,” I said doggedly, Marlowe the intrepid, fighting on where others would have turned tail and run. “This is a woman who’s only recently disappeared. And she’s attractive enough that someone might be persuaded to hide her from the army.”
Boylston had headed back to his horse, but at the end of my speech he turned back to me. He exchanged a glance with his son. When Jay shook his head the father said, “Who’s the girl?”
“I don’t have a name. But she’s five feet tall, glossy black hair, probably a lot of it but she wears it in kind of a roll or chignon or whatever they’re calling them this year. Very well dressed—lots of money in the background someplace.”
“If you don’t know her name how do you know she’s missing or even what she looks like?”
I smiled a little. “I can’t tell you all my secrets, Mr. Boylston. But I will tell you she’s wanted for questioning about a murder down in L.A.”
Boylston swung himself back onto his horse. “I haven’t seen anyone like that. I can account for all the women around here: my two daughters, and three of the hands are married, and none of ’em has black hair. But if you want to look around, be my guest. There’s an abandoned farmhouse on up the road about five miles. We just acquired the land so we only have one hand living out there so far; he can’t keep an eye on the house and cover the range, too. That’d be the only place I know of. If you don’t see her there you’d best get off my land. Now move your truck, Jay, and let Mr. Marlowe get by.”
Jay got into the truck and moved it with an ill will that knocked little pebbles into the side of the Chrysler. I climbed back in and headed on up the track. In the rearview mirror I could see Boylston on his horse watching me, standing so still he might have been a knight on a chessboard.
The road petered out for a while into a couple of tire marks in the grass, but after four miles it turned into a regular road again. Not too long after that I came to the house.
It was a single-story, trim ranch, built like a U with short arms. It was made of wood and painted white, fresh as the snow on the Sierras, with green trim like pine trees. Whoever used to live here had loved the place and kept it up. Or the hand who was watchdogging was a homebody who kept the shrubs trimmed and weeded the begonias.
I rang the bell set into the front door, waited a few minutes, and rang again. It was sunset, not too unreasonable to think the man was done with his chores for the day. But he might be in the shower and not able to hear me ringing. I tried the door and found it unlocked. I pushed it open and went on in with a cloud of virtue wrapped around my shoulders. After all, I wasn’t even housebreaking—I had Boylston’s permission to search the place.
The hall floor was tiled in brown ceramic with a couple of knotted rugs floating on it. The tiles were covered with a film of dust—the hand who lived there didn’t have time for the finer points of housekeeping. Opposite the front door, sliding glass doors led to a garden, a place which the previous owner had tended with care. I stared through the glass at the trim miniature shrubs and flowering bushes. There even seemed to be a pond in the middle.
I turned left and found myself in the kitchen wing. No one was hiding in the stove or under the sink. The other wing held the bedrooms. In one you could see the cowboy’s obvious presence, several pairs of jeans, a change of boots, another of regular shoes. The other two bedrooms had been stripped of their furnishings. No one was in the closets or hiding in the two bathtubs.
The only thing that gave me hope was the telephone. It sat next to the kitchen stove, and pasted to it, in neat printing, not my mirage’s bold script, was the number I had called. The number where the querulous man had hung up on me after I’d described her.
When I’d finished with the bedrooms I went back to the sliding doors leading into the small garden. Sure enough, a pool stood in the middle, bigger than it had appeared from inside the house. I climbed onto a bridge that crossed it and looked down. Immediately a trio of giant goldfish popped to the surface. They practically stood on their tails begging for bread.
“Go work for a living like the regular fish,” I admonished them. “There’s a war on. No one has time to pamper goldfish.”
The fish swam under the bridge. I turned and looked down at them. They’d taken my words to heart—they were hard at work on the face and hands of a man who was staring up at me in the shallow water. In the fading light I couldn’t make out his features, but he still had all of them, so he couldn’t have been in the water long. His dark hair waved like silken seaweed in the little eddies the carp stirred up.
What a detective that Marlowe is. Someone strews bodies all over Southern California and Marlowe finds them with the ease and derring-do of a bloodhound. I wanted a flashlight so I could get a closer look at the face. I wanted a drink and a cigarette, and I was beginning to think I shouldn’t stray too far from my gun. All these useful items were in the Chrysler’s glove compartment. I headed back through the house, skating on the lily ponds on the tile floor, and climbed into the passenger seat. I had just unscrewed the bottle cap when I detected something else—a grand display of pyrotechnics exploding in my retinas. I didn’t even feel the blow, just saw the red stabbing lights riding on a wave of nausea before I fell into deep blackness.
My head was a seventy-eight on a turntable that had automatic reset. Every time I thought I’d come to the end of the song and could stop spinning around someone would push the button and start me turning again. Someone had tied a couple of logs behind my back but when I reached around to cut them loose I discovered they were my arms bound behind me. I reeked of gasoline.
The time had come to open my eyes. Come on, Marlowe, you can get your eyelids up, it’s only a little less horrible than the old bamboo shoots under the fingernails trick.
I was in the driver’s seat of the Chrysler. Someone had moved me over, but otherwise the scene was just the way I’d left it. The glove compartment was open. I could see my gun and the bottle of rye and I wanted both of them in the kind of detached fashion a man lost in the desert wants an oasis, but I couldn’t see my way clear to getting them.
Footsteps scrabbled on the gravel behind me. “You can’t set fire to him here,” someone said impatiently. “You may own the valley, but the U.S. Army is camped on the road and they will certainly investigate a big gasoline fire up here.”
I knew that voice. It was husky, with a hint of a lisp behind it. I’d heard it a century or so ago in my office.
“Well, you’re such a damned know-it-all, what do you suggest? That we leave him here until morning when the hands will find him?” The sulky tones of the kid, Jay Boylston.
“No,” the woman said coolly, “I think you should let me drive him into the mountains. He can go over a ravine there and no one will be surprised.”
“Kitty’s right,” Boylston senior said authoritatively.
Kitty? She was a kitty all right, the kind that you usually like a good solid set of iron bars around before you toss raw meat to her twice a day. There was a bit more backchat about who would do the driving, but they agreed in the end that the kitten could do it so that no one would wonder where Jay and his daddy were.
“You fired his gun?” Daddy asked.
“Yes,” Jay said sulkily. “I shot Richard twice with it. When they find him they’ll think Marlowe did it.”
“Right. Kitty, just see that his gun falls clear of the car before you set it off. We want to make sure the law doesn’t have any loose ends to tie up.”
So she did have a brother named Richard. Or had had. That wavy black hair in the goldfish pond, that was what her dark leopard tresses would look like if she undid that bun.
“Sure, Kurt,” the husky voice drawled.
Kurt and Jay shoved me roughly back into the passenger seat and Miss Kitty took my spot behind the wheel. I tried to sniff the Chanel, but the gasoline fumes were too strong. She drove rapidly up the track, bouncing the Chrysler’s tire from rock to rock as though she was driving a mountain goat.
Things looked bad for Marlowe. I wondered if it was worth trying any of my winsome charms, or if I should just roll over on top of her and force both of us flaming into a ditch. It was worth a try. At least it would change the situation—give those cool black eyes something to look surprised about. I was getting ready to roll when she stopped the car.
Her next move took me utterly by surprise: she reached behind me and hacked my arms loose with an efficient woodsman’s knife.
“You’re kind of pushing your luck, Kitty.” I moved my arms cautiously in front of me. They felt like someone had just forced the Grand Coulee’s overflow through them. “I’ve been concussed before. I’m not feeling so sorry for myself that I couldn’t take that knife from you and get myself out of here. You’d have to explain it to Kurt and Jay as best you can.”
“Yes,” the husky voice agreed coolly. “I’ll tell them something if I have to—if I ever see them again, that is. But I need your help.”
“Right, Miss Kitty. You lure me to Dominick Bognavich’s body. You bring me into the mountains and set the sweetest sucker trap I’ve ever seen, including planting bullets from my gun in what I assume is your brother’s body, and now you want my help. You want me to drive my car over a cliff for you so you don’t have to chip those bright red nails of yours?”
She drew a sharp breath. “No. No. I didn’t know they were going to knock you out. And I didn’t know they had killed Richard until I got here. He—he was the weak link. He always was, but I never thought he would betray me.”
The quiver of emotion in her voice played on my heart like a thousand violin strings. “The gambler. I know. He gambled away your mother’s whoosis and so you had Kurt Boylston drown him in the goldfish pond.”
“It didn’t happen quite like that. But I don’t blame you for being angry.”
“Gee, sister. That’s real swell of you. I’m not angry, though—I love being hit on the head. I came up from L.A. just to get knocked out. And then have gasoline poured on me so I couldn’t miss the cars.”
“That was never supposed to happen,” she said quickly. “I was trying to get to Grandfather—to the ranch—before Jay did but I couldn’t—there were reasons. . . .” Her voice trailed away.
“Maybe you could tel
l me what was supposed to happen. If it wouldn’t strain your brain to much to tell the truth. Maybe you could even start with who you really are.”
In the dark I couldn’t tell if she was blushing or not. “My real name is Kathleen Moloney. Kathleen Akiko Moloney. My mother married an Irishman, but her father was Ichuro Kimura. I know I look Jewish to many people, and in this climate today it is helpful to let them think so. Dominick—Dominick is the one who suggested it. He suggested the name Felstein. And when I pretended to lose the title to my grandfather’s land to him, he kept it under the name of Felstein.” Her voice trailed away. “I needed help and I was so afraid you wouldn’t help me . . . ”
“If I knew you were Nisei.” I finished for her. “And what makes you so sure I will help you now?”
“I don’t know.” She leaned close to me and I could smell her perfume again, mixed with the gasoline and a faint tinge of ladylike sweat. “I saved your life, but that wouldn’t count with you, would it, if you thought it was your duty to turn me in and force me to go to Manzanar.”
“You’re not in any danger. A girl like you knows how to fight her way out of trouble.”
“Yes. I have to use the gifts I have, just as you do, Mr. Marlowe. But we can argue about that later. Let me finish because we must move quickly. If you agree to help me, I mean.”
In the moonlight all I could see was her shape. She’d shed the hat and the suit and was wearing trousers and cowboy boots. I couldn’t see her features to tell if she was spinning me another long yarn into which she had somehow appropriated the tale of Ichuro Kimura from the morning paper. I shook a large portion of rye into me to give my brain a fighting edge.
“Don’t drink,” she said sharply to me. “It’s the worst thing for a man in your condition.”
“On the contrary,” I said, tilting the bottle a second time. The first swallow had settled the nausea in my stomach and sharpened the pain in my head, but the second one went clear to the base of my spine and worked its way into the brain. “I think I can stand to hear your tale of woe now. Tell me about Richard, the weakling.”
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe Page 16