Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe

by Robert B. Parker

  Two phone calls later I was talking to a woman named Ethel Murray at the Baker Weekly Dispatch. Ethel didn’t sound young, but she did sound impressed by a long-distance call from California.

  “Ethel,” I said, “your editor, Mister Stanfield said you might be able to help me. Sometime back in May or June nineteen twenty-one a woman named Louise Hlushka probably got married in Baker. I’d like to know who she married and where . . . ”

  “Alton Cash,” she broke in. “Married by Reverend Sawyer at the First Methodist.”

  “I’m impressed,” I said.

  “Needn’t be,” said Ethel. “I’d like to string you along, tell you I have one of those photographic memories like the boy in American Weekly, but it’s not in me. I was Louise’s bridesmaid. Not a big wedding, but I stood up and so did Alton’s brother Jess.”

  “Where are Louise and Alton?”

  “California,” she said.

  “Big state,” I said, tucking the phone under my chin and reaching for the morning mail.

  “I’ll narrow it some,” she said. “Alton said he had relatives in some place called Bay City. You heard of it?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” I said, opening a phone bill and shoving it in the lower right-hand drawer of my desk. “You have a picture of the happy couple or Louise alone? That’s my final request and I’ll send you five dollars for your time and effort.”

  “I’ll take a look,” she said, “Mister . . . ?”

  “Marlowe,” I supplied.

  “Why are you looking for Louise after all these years? If it’s about the Taylor girl, believe me it was an accident. I knew Louise. She had a temper, yes, but under it. . . . It was the rumors, the talk, that drove them off, not any fancy job. Alton was doing just fine in Baker.”

  “What did Alton do?”

  “He was chief of police,” Ethel said.

  “Ethel, put together whatever you have on the accident and on Chief Cash. I’m sending you a check for ten dollars. You can cash it before you send whatever you find. Louise’s brother is looking for her, just wants to make contact, and I’m helping him out.”

  There was a long pause, a sigh, and Ethel said, “I thought Warren was dead by now. I’ll see what I can find for you and get it in the noon mail tomorrow. No charge. Just if you see Louise, tell her Ethel Murray said God bless.”

  I told her that if I had the chance I’d give Louise Cash her message.

  I thanked her, gave her my address, and hung up. It could have been easy from this point on. Bay City was less than thirty miles from where I was sitting. I’d had some run-ins with the police there, but that was a few years back. It could have been easy, but it didn’t work out that way.

  The second of my three morning letters was an ad for the latest in sidearms. I junked it. The last letter I didn’t open. I recognized Terry’s handwriting from the address. I junked it and pulled a Bay City telephone book from the same drawer I’d put the phone bill in.

  There were five Cashes. No Alton. No Louise. I tried all five. Two were Negroes. Two were surly and said they didn’t have any relatives named Alton or Louise. The fifth was a lonely old man who didn’t want to lose this lucky contact with a fellow human. He said he thought he had a cousin Louise from the East but she had never come to Bay City. He suggested I come see him. He would make lunch and we could talk it over. I thanked him and said I’d get to him if I needed more help.

  Warren Hlushka came by just before noon as I was leaving the office for lunch. He played with his sleeve, looked at me in wonder, and asked if I had found anything yet. I gave him what I had from Ethel and the phone book.

  “There was some trouble back in Baker,” I told him. “Something to do with a girl named Taylor. You know anything about it?”

  “Me?” asked Warren.

  “Unless Eisenhower just walked in behind you, yes,” I said.

  “I don’t know anything about anything,” he said.

  “Your sister and her husband probably left because of the Taylor business,” I explained. “Probably changed their name, that is if they even moved to Bay City. I’m waiting for some information from Baker. It’ll take a few days to get here. No charge till it does.”

  “You favoring me, Mister Marlowe?” he asked. “Or is that the way of it? You’re not trying to give me no free ride?”

  “It’s the way of it, Warren,” I assured him and went out for lunch.

  I didn’t quite forget about Warren and the Cashes for the next two days but I did manage to push them into some dark space while I helped out on an insurance stakeout for the World Detective Agency. It was an around-the-clock surveillance on a trio of ex-cons who’d probably taken down a Brink’s truck in Encino the month before. World called in freelancers like me to fill in while the regulars were out beating the bushes. After two days, somebody at World decided we had the wrong men or it was costing too much. I was given a check for fifty bucks and the offer to join the staff. I took the check and turned down the job.

  The package from Ethel Murray of Baker, Kansas, was under my door the next morning. It helped. There were newspaper clippings of the Cash-Hlushka wedding. Alton had gotten married in his chiefs uniform. He looked lean, trim, and proud and his smile showed a small gap between his top front teeth. Louise had been married in a white dress. Her hair was short, her face pretty and clean, and her body full but not quite plump. There were no other pictures of Louise but there were several of Alton over the next year and a half after the wedding. He’d aged quickly. The Taylor case, on which there were four clippings, probably helped age him. Sharon Rose Taylor, twenty-four, had fallen or been pushed out of a window of the Equity Building, the tallest building in Baker, which meant that she had fallen about six floors at most. Alton and Louise had been with her at the time. Their tale was full of holes, but Cash was the chief of police and he’d said Sharon Rose had gone inexplicably mad and leapt out the window. Sharon Rose’s father, according to the clippings, was incredulous in spite of the fact that his daughter had spent a few weeks in the state mental hospital earlier that year. The county coroner’s inquiry accepted Alton and Louise Cash’s story. The town of Baker might have had more trouble with the tale than the county coroner. Three months after Sharon Rose Taylor’s death, according to a small clipping, Alton resigned as chief and announced that he had been offered a big job in California.

  That was it. Not much, but something. I drove to Bay City with the windows open, half dreaming in the heat, not thinking about the drive. The smells of Los Angeles guided me. Each neighborhood has its own smell and look: the dry summer dust of the string of flatland towns; the suburban grass and steep hills as you head west; the smell of salt and the craggy coast as you hit the ocean and the coast highway. I drove south down the western end of the continent. This was as far as you could go, as far as your dreams would carry you in the United States.

  Bay City was full of people who had run as far as they could go. It had been taken over more than thirty years earlier by men with dollars and guns who made a profit from the dreamers and high rollers. Bay City was known as the place where you could buy anything if you looked right and kept your mouth shut. I’d had a run-in with a Bay city cop named Degarmo some years back. Degarmo had been one of the dreamers. He was dead now, but Bay City was still alive, though the high rollers weren’t rolling quite as high as they once had.

  I drove straight to the police station, a freshly cleaned stone three-story at the end of a park. The lobby was empty and the polished stone floors recently scrubbed. The rubber soles of my shoes squeaked as I went through the door marked Inquiries/Detective.

  The place had been through some remodeling since I had been there last. A counter ran from wall to wall protecting the police from the public. The desks beyond the counter were steel and small, with a few cops and robbers strewn around the place. Behind the counter facing me was an old cop whose face I remembered but whose name I couldn’t place. He was overweight and uncomfortable in his stretched and
starched uniform complete with tie.

  He looked me over, didn’t show any sign of recognition, which was fine with me, and decided I wasn’t high priority.

  “You got a problem?” he asked.

  “Looking for a guy,” I said leaning on the counter to face him. He was my height, about six feet, but I had the feeling he had once been taller. I pulled out a clipping of Alton Cash and shoved it toward him. The old cop looked down at the clipping and then looked up at me.

  “Old picture,” he said.

  “Very old,” I agreed. “But he has the kind of weathered face that probably doesn’t change much and that space between his teeth wouldn’t go away.”

  The old cop scratched his head and looked at Alton’s picture again.

  “What’s your angle?” he asked.

  “I’m a friend of his brother-in-law,” I said. “Brother-in-law is sick, very sick, probably dying back in an L.A. hospital. Hasn’t been in touch with his sister for more than twenty years and suddenly got a line on her in Bay City. This friend wants to see his sister before he dies.”

  “Simple as that?” he asked pushing the clipping back at me. I took it and returned it to my pocket.

  “Simple as that,” I said.

  He looked around to see if anyone was watching and then whispered, “New chief here. Cleaning up. New image. I’d retire now if I had the years in. Collar’s killing me. Can’t afford to retire without the pension.”

  “Can I contribute to the pension fund?” I asked.

  “Don’t see why not,” he said. “Private donation. Say, fifteen dollars.”

  “Say ten,” I said, pulling out a ten and letting him see me palm it in my right hand.

  “Ten,” he said. “Name’s not Cash like it says under that picture. Calls himself Dyson. He was on the force here. Quit some time back. You’re lucky you ran into me. Most of the young vets around here wouldn’t know him.”

  “How do I find him?” I asked.

  He looked around again, held up a finger to show I should wait, and then slouched around the corner. I watched the neatly dressed cops at their desks talking quietly on their phones for about three minutes till the old cop came back. He leaned toward me.

  “Four-four-six Oleander Drive. Go back to Central and then right almost to the docks. You’ll see Oleander on the right about the same time you see the Pacific. That’s his last address. Your guess is as good as mine if he’s still there.”

  I reached over, shook his hand, and felt him take in the ten dollar bill with the skill of an expert. There was nothing more to say. I went back outside and headed down Central.

  Oleander wasn’t hard to find. It was one of those run-down side streets on which some developer had thrown up one-story white-frame houses back in the 1920’s for the first wave of newcomers working in the Bay City shipyard. Ten years after they were built the flimsy one-stories were ready for the wrecker. Twenty years later they were occupied by Negro families where the breadwinners were women who cleaned house for the grifters in the estates higher up in the hills. Thirty years later the houses of Oleander Street were sagging and dying. A few of them had been shorn up and coaxed like punch-drunk pugs into standing up for one more round. Four-four-six Oleander didn’t look as if it could take another punch. The porch sagged and the paint flecked. The screen door had been patched so many times that it looked like modem art, and the dirt lawn with only a barren lemon tree on it had long ago given up the hope of grass.

  I parked on the curb of the cracked concrete street and looked over at the two Negro kids about six who had been tossing a tin can back and forth till I got out of the car. The boy crinkled his nose at me and the girl squinted. As I hit the steps of four-four-six, I heard the girl say, “He gonna see the witch.”

  I knocked at the peeling frame of the screen door. The door shook and threatened to come loose. Nothing. I knocked again.

  “Keep knockin’, mister,” called the girl across the street. “They home. They always home.”

  I kept knocking and eventually I heard a shuffle inside. It stopped. I knocked again and the shuffle moved toward the door and then the door opened, but just a crack.

  “What?” came the man’s voice.

  I couldn’t see the face in the shadows through the thick mesh.

  “Mr. Dyson?” I asked.

  “So?” he asked.

  “My name’s Marlowe. I’d like to talk to you for a minute. I just came from police headquarters in Bay City.”

  He hesitated, started to close the door.

  “It’s about your wife,” I threw in.

  The door stopped closing.

  “My wife isn’t well,” he said.

  “I’ve got a message for her,” I said.

  “No,” the man said, slamming the door.

  “Mr. Dyson,” I called through the closed door. “I think you’re going to have to deal with me, either now or tomorrow or the next day. I can keep coming back and draw a lot of attention to you, or you can let me in and get it over with.”

  If he hadn’t opened the door, I would have left and gone back to Warren with my report. But he didn’t call my bluff.

  “That’s tellin’ him, mister,” the girl across the street called.

  The door opened and I went through the screen door into a darkened hall. I could see the thin outline of a man in front of me. He backed away and I followed. When we stepped into a small living room, there was enough light coming through the drawn shades to see that the man was dressed in a badly faded blue shirt and equally faded blue pants. His mouth was partly open and his teeth were bad but they were all there and there was a gap. In his right hand he held a Smith and Wesson .38 with a six-inch barrel, a favorite with cops.

  The most striking thing about Alton Cash was that I knew he couldn’t be more than fifty, but he looked at least twenty years older. His hair was white, his shoulders bent, and his eyes a vacant, faded blue.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Name is Marlowe, just the way I told you.”

  There were chairs to sit in, even a sofa, but they were old with a washed out, ghostly pattern and I was sure that dust would rise from them if I sat. He didn’t ask me to sit and I didn’t want to.

  “He sent you, didn’t he?” Cash asked, pistol leveled at my stomach. “He sent you to find us.”

  “He?”

  “Her brother,” he said.

  “I want to talk to your wife,” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  Something stirred in the doorway and I turned to the sound of sagging wooden floors. My eyes met the deepest, darkest and most melancholy brown eyes I had ever seen. The eyes were set in a soft balloon of a face resting on a huge, neckless, round body. Louise Hlushka Cash walked with a cane to support her mass. Her breathing was pained and labored.

  “He’s from Warren,” Alton said.

  Her eyes opened wide in fear.

  “He wants to talk to you,” I said.

  “We know what he wants with her,” Alton said.

  “Alton,” Louise croaked.

  “We’ve spent our lives hiding from him, Louise,” Alton said with almost a sob in his voice. “I’m beginning to think our lives aren’t worth that damned much anymore.”

  With that he gave me his full attention.

  “How much he paying you to kill us?” he asked.

  “Kill you?” I asked. “He doesn’t want to kill you. He wants to see his sister.”

  “His sister is dead,” Louise Cash said, sagging into a nearby chair that groaned under her weight.

  “Dead?”

  “Her name was Sharon Rose Taylor,” Louise said. “My parents adopted Warren. The Taylors adopted Sharon Rose when their mother abandoned them.”

  “Whole family was a little mad,” said Alton. “Sharon Rose thought I was in love with her. She said I’d promised to marry her. Louise and I went to see her where she worked in the Equity Building in Baker. We told her we were getting married, that she had
to stop bothering me. And then . . . ”

  “She acted crazy, threatened,” said Louise, her eyes looking beyond me into the past. “I lost my temper . . . I said things . . . and she . . . ”

  “Went out the window,” I finished. “That’s . . . ”

  “Crazy?” Alton said. “Damned right. She’d written to Warren telling him lies about me, about Louise, and when Sharon Rose died he blamed us for it.”

  “And he was right,” said Louise softly.

  “He wasn’t,” wailed Alton. “We didn’t know she was that crazy.”

  “We should have been more gentle with her,” said Louise to no one.

  “We’ve been over it and over it,” cried Alton.

  “You want to die now? You want this man to shoot you?”

  “I don’t care anymore, Alton,” she said. “We ran from him when he came for us in nineteen twenty-nine or thirty, and we ran from the other man he sent when the war started, and . . . ”

  “I’m not here to shoot anybody,” I said, but the Cashes weren’t listening to me. They were off in a conversation they must have had a thousand times on a thousand nights and afternoons.

  “No more, Alton,” she said. “No more.”

  Alton’s hand dropped slowly as he spoke and the gun pointed toward the floor. I wanted to tell them to forget the whole thing, that I would just go back to Los Angeles, return what I had of Warren’s money, and tell him it was over. And that’s what I would have done if Alton had given me a chance to explain. What he did instead was lift his .38 and take aim at me. I recognized the look in his eyes. I’d seen it before. It was a look that said, “I’ve got nothing to do with what’s going to happen next. I’m somewhere else. When it’s over, I’ll come back and I won’t even know what I’ve done.”

  The look gave me a fraction of a second to throw myself to the floor before he fired. I rolled further into the room when the second shot came and I heard a wheezing groan, a groan that sounded like a punctured tire. I was on the dusty floor against the wall waiting for Alton to take a third shot at me when I heard his pistol clatter to the floor.