I looked in the nearest window and there was Frank Barris. He was sitting in a wooden chair with his hands tied behind his back to the chair’s rear legs. Leo Pinella and the pug with the pushed-in face were standing in front of him, Pinella gesturing with the mile-long cigar. There was a black guy standing beside Frank. The black guy was short and shirtless and slicked with sweat from the work he had been doing.
Leo lifted Frank’s head and jiggled his chin and said, “Where’s my fuckin’ money?”
Barris mumbled something. His eyes were puffy and rolling around in different directions and his lips were split.
Leo looked disgusted and let Barris’s head drop. He said something to the pug that I couldn’t hear and the pug took out a Nazi Luger and put the muzzle in Frank Barris’s mouth. Leo grabbed a handful of hair on the top of Frank’s head and shook him. “That ain’t no lollipop in your mouth, bubbe. I wanna know where my goddamn money is.”
Frank mumbled something around the Luger.
“What?”
More mumbles.
The black guy said, “Lou Mardo.”
Leo smiled like that was a real kick. “What a dumb shit you are, a guy like Lou Mardo.” He put the cigar back in his mouth and made a little gesture to the pug. “Blow this bastard’s head off.”
I leaned through the window and showed them the .38. “Forget it.”
The pug with the Luger jumped, but the black guy didn’t and neither did Leo Pinella. He rolled lizard eyes toward me and took the cigar out of his mouth. Frank Barris saw me and strained against the ropes. Pinella said, “Who in hell are you?”
“Arthur Godfrey’s talent scout. We’re looking for people to enter the greasy hair contest.” I pointed the gun at the black guy. “Cut him loose.”
Pinella said, “Like hell. This fuckin’ weasel stole twenty-two thousand bucks from me.”
“He got in a tight place, Leo. He got desperate and he did something dumb. You’ll get it back.” I cocked the gun. “Untie him and we’ll get out of here and he’ll get the money back to you.”
Leo Pinella said, “My ass,” took the Luger from the pug, and shot Frank Barris once in the chest.
I shot Leo Pinella in the body as I went in through the window. He dropped the gun and tumbled back into the pug, and the black guy came for me, throwing a handful of something gritty in my face and swinging a piece of pipe. I fired blind, pumping out shots until the black man fell, then dragging Frank Barris and his chair behind some crates. The pug pulled Leo Pinella out the front door, Leo screaming, “You fuck! You fuck!” while his pants grew dark with blood. Then the Cadillac ground to life and sprayed gravel and Frank Barris and I were alone, the only two left alive in the grove.
I untied his hands and packed a burlap shipping bag tight into his chest and told him he was an asshole. I said, “You’ve got a kid, you dumb shit. You’ve got a kid, and you go and get mixed up in something like this.”
Frank Barris looked at his chest and tried to see the hole and opened and closed his mouth like a fish. I got him up and went out of the little house and down the long straight dusty road to my car. I ran with him in my arms. I ran as fast as a man can run like that, but by the time we got to the car he was gone.
I drove back to the little adobe house and put Frank Barris in the spot where Leo Pinella had shot him. While I was doing that I found some papers in Barris’s outside coat pocket. Deposit slips to his checking account in the amount of thirteen hundred and fifty dollars. I kept them. I brought the Luger that Leo Pinella had used to kill Frank Barris outside and hung it safely within the tight branches of a Valencia orange tree. If Pinella’s people came, they wouldn’t be able to find it. The cops would, though, because I was going to tell them. They would find Frank and the black man and the Luger and it would be hard as hell for Leo Pinella to beat the charge.
When I finished with all of that I put on my jacket to cover the blood on my shirt and I drove to the Eagle station. I washed my face and hands with water from the little hose the attendant uses to fill your radiator and brushed off as much of the dust as I could. Then I made a couple of calls and got a line on Lou Mardo and that’s where I went.
Mardo was sitting in the bar at Musso’s Grill in Hollywood, sipping neat scotch and craning his head around to watch Donna Reed across the room, smiling at a couple of studio executives. He was wearing a brandnew dark blue herringbone suit and a pair of black loafers shinier than a set of chrome hubcaps and an immaculate snow white brushed felt fedora with a brim like a broken back. Ah, sudden wealth.
When I climbed onto the stool beside him, Mardo said, “Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.” Always the sharp line.
I said, “You know something, Lou? The Peeler was a small-time chiseler, but I liked him okay. He had some heart. But you, you’re just act two, and act two ain’t never as good as act one.” The bartender came over but I waved him away.
Mardo gave me what he thought was a hard sneer. “We can go out in the parking lot and see just how good I am, you want.”
“You’re scaring me to death, Lou. Here’s a guy, knocked over Leo Pinella, and he’s sitting in the middle of Musso’s wearing the evidence.”
Lou Mardo’s right eye began to twitch and he looked at me like he thought I was kidding him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I unbuttoned my jacket and opened it enough so that he could see what was on my shirt. “I just left your partner Barris in an orange grove up by Pinella’s party house, Lou. Pinella and a couple of his thugs were working on him and he told them you were involved.”
Lou Mardo went as white as his hat. He said, “He’s lyin’. It wasn’t me.”
I shook my head. “Lou, I can see you nine years old saying that. You’ve been saying that every day of your life. You gotta think of something new.”
He picked up the scotch, then put it back down. Donna Reed got up with the two executives and the three of them left. Mardo didn’t look at her now.
I said, “Pinella put a bullet in Frank Barris and killed him. I shot Pinella, but it looked pretty low in the gut. He might not die. He’ll be with a doctor now and if he makes it, he’ll send a couple of his boys to pay you a visit, Lou.”
Lou Mardo began to sweat. There was a film of droplets above his lip and beneath his eyes and over his forehead. He picked up the scotch glass again and this time he drained it. He took his hat off and then he put it back on. He shook his head to himself like he couldn’t believe this was happening. Guys like Lou Mardo never could. “We had that job aced. We got in and out of there on a charm. There must’ve been a couple of hundred other people up there. How’d he put the finger on us?”
I put my hand on his arm and squeezed, settling him down. “You got twenty-two thousand.”
He nodded.
“I want Barris’s split.”
He looked at me sharply and frowned, still thinking to chisel. “What are you talking about?”
I shifted my stool closer to his and put one foot on the floor and leaned into him. The .38 was in my belt and he could see it now. “I’ve been through Frank’s apartment and it isn’t there. Barris didn’t even put part of his cut in the bank yet. I’m thinking you were trying to work a way to weasel all of it, and you have the whole nut.”
Mardo’s mouth got small and his eyes got wide and he blinked a lot, maybe telling himself he had enough to worry about without me, but not yet able to convince himself. “I spent it already.”
“You spent your side, Lou. Frank’s side is still there.”
“I had expenses.” A whine.
I reached under my coat and put my hand on the .38 and I spoke very slowly. “Leo’s on his way, Lou. Frank had some things to take care of, and now I’m going to take care of them for him, so I need his split.”
He looked down at the gun and he lifted his glass again but the glass was empty. He gave a little shrug and put down the glass and said, “Sure.”
He paid his bar tab and we went
out to his car and he opened the trunk and there it was. What was left of the twenty-two thousand dollars in hundreds and twenties and tens and fives and ones, sitting in an army knapsack in the trunk of a gleaming new 1953 Lincoln Continental Cabriolet. He counted out eleven thousand, all the while shaking his head as if he still couldn’t believe that this was happening. He lost count twice.
The small bills filled my pants and my jacket and made each pocket bulge. When I had Barris’s split, Mardo looked at what he had left after the clothes and the car and the looking good. It wasn’t much to have a guy like Leo Pinella after you. I said, “You still got a little time. There’s New York. There’s Mexico.”
He shook his head. The sky was falling. “We had that job aced. We knew when to go in and when to come out and where Pinella kept the money. We got away clean, Marlowe.”
“Sure. For guys like you it’s always clean.”
Mardo shook his head again. “This wasn’t my baby. It was Frankie’s. Frankie was a regular at Pinella’s since the war. We were talking about all the money Pinella pulled in and what he did with it and where he must keep it and Frankie said he could find out and he did. Then he got the plans from the county and it was a piece of cake. In and out, man. In and out.”
“Sure.” I had it, then. I could see the whole thing.
Mardo kept shaking his head. “It was supposed to be a snap. Now I’m fucked. I’m fucked.”
“Uh-huh.”
I left Lou Mardo in Musso’s parking lot and drove back to my apartment. I counted the money again and arranged it by denominations and then put it in a shoe box behind the refrigerator. I pulled off my clothes, took a long shower, and dressed. I drank half a tumbler of Tennessee bourbon, and then I drove to Louise Barris’s house.
The little boy answered the door. He was wearing the same shorts and the same dirt-smudged tee-shirt as yesterday. He was eating another Mars bar. He smiled when he saw me. It was a good smile, and made me smile back. I wanted to tell him that with all the damn candy he ate he’d better be sure to brush his teeth.
He went into the kitchen and came back with his mother. Her radio was going back there, Tony Bennett singing Rags to Riches. When Tony Bennett was on the radio, you couldn’t worry about what your boy ate. She said, “Did the sonofabitch cough up what he owes me?”
I made my right hand into a gun and shot the boy with a wink. “Tell you what, Robby. Head outside and give me and your mom a minute to talk.”
He left without saying a word or looking at his mother. Come to think of it, I had never heard him say a word in her presence. Maybe he never spoke to her and she never spoke to him. Maybe she ignored him. I’ll never make that mistake again. I waited until I heard the front door slam, and then I looked at Louise. She didn’t look happy. “I don’t need any lectures on how to raise my boy from some two-bit peeper.”
I said, “Frank’s dead. Leo Pinella killed him because he stole twenty-two thousand dollars of Pinella’s money.”
She stared at me for a solid ten-count, then raised her hands to her head and nodded. She went into the kitchen. I heard water run, then the pipe-hammer you get when you turn the water off too quickly, and then she came back. She said, “I guess I’ll have to take care of his affairs. I guess I’ll finally get what’s coming to me from the sonofabitch.” She looked around the seedy little room when she said it, as if everything were suddenly going to change. “What about the twenty-two thousand?”
“I have Frank’s split.”
She wet her lips. “Well, I guess that should belong to me now.”
I shook my head.
Her mouth stretched and the skin around her eyes tightened. “Goddamn it, he was my husband. The bastard had obligations.” She shouted it.
I said, “You put the finger on him to Leo Pinella.”
She turned the color of steamed clams.
“Frank told me he married a whore and he meant it. He met you when you were working up at Pinella’s party house. He took you out of there and married you, but he could never get what you had been out of his head.”
She looked at the door as if she expected the boy to come back.
“So Frank hit the bottle and fell apart. Maybe he wasn’t all that together to begin with. He was broke and he owed plenty and maybe the scumbags he had for friends helped him get the idea of taking down Pinella’s. Only he needed to find out how Pinella ran his operation, and only someone who had worked there would know. That’s you. You knew where Pinella had his money room and you went along because if Frank had some money he could pay you what he owed you, and maybe a little extra. Only Frank was still a lush and lushes have a hard time doing what they’re supposed to do. When it looked like he was stiffing you with the bad check, you called Pinella. You tipped him that Frank had been the guy who’d taken him down.”
“He owed me.” Her voice was shrill.
I took out the bank papers that I had taken off Frank Barris’s body and threw them at her. “Deposit papers,” I said. “Frank was going to cover the check, he just didn’t get around to it.”
Her mouth worked, and when her voice came out it was hoarse. “I should still get the money. It’s mine. I need it.”
“You get nothing. I’m going to put the eleven grand into an account for the boy.”
She came at me with her hands balled into fists, flailing at me and spitting and telling me I couldn’t do that, that the money was hers, that I was a no good sonofabitch just like Frank. I grabbed her wrists and shook her and slapped her hard one time. Her hair was wild and she was breathing deep and if she could’ve gotten to a butcher knife she would have used it.
I said, “I’m going to put the money into an account for the boy. When he needs it for school or for clothes or for things like that, I’ll draw some out and use it. When he’s twenty-one, if there’s any left, I’ll give half to you and half to him. His father’s dead and he’s going to need you more than ever, now. You’re going to be here for him. If you aren’t, or if you try to create a problem for me, I will go to Leo Pinella and tell him that you were the person who fingered his money room. Do you understand that?”
She nodded. She looked scared, but she would get used to it.
I said, “I’m going to go now and call the cops. They’ll find Frank’s body and they’ll be by to tell you that he’s dead. Play stupid. You’re going to have to sit down with the boy and tell him. That’s going to be hard, but that’s part of being his mother.”
She said, “I know what being a mother is.”
“All right.” I wanted to say something more. I didn’t want to just leave. “Maybe you got a raw deal in all of this, too. If Frank was willing to marry you, maybe he should’ve been willing to accept what you were, and maybe you had a right to expect that he would. If he had, maybe you would’ve gotten what you wanted and he would’ve gotten what he wanted and everything would’ve been just great. He didn’t. I can’t help you with that.”
She crossed her arms and she looked small and pinched and alone. She was not looking at me. “No one ever could,” she said. “Go to hell.”
I nodded and left then, and drove to Frank Barris’s apartment. I went in through the bathroom window again and took a beer out of Frank’s icebox and sat at the little dining room table and drank some of it. I called the cops and told them that Leo Pinella had killed a guy named Frank Barris and left the body in an orange grove up in Glendale. I gave them directions to the little adobe shed. I told them where I had put the Luger, and that they would find Leo Pinella’s prints on it and that the bullet in Barris had come from that gun. Then I hung up. I sat a little while longer and finished the beer. I felt old and I didn’t really want to go home. There was nothing there to go back to.
After a while I got up and went into Frank’s bedroom and took the unfinished model of the P-38 out of his closet. I put the pieces carefully in the box, making sure I had the instructions and all of the parts. Then I closed the box and left.
If I took my
time, I might be able to do a pretty good job on the little airplane. It would give me something to do in the evenings, and at the end of the week it would be fun to show the boy.
When my veterinarian tells me he’s got four orphaned kittens on his hands because the momma cat stood her ground to protect them from a crazed Rottweiler, I cry like a baby and adopt the entire family. When the six o’clock news tells the story of the guy in Michigan who fell through the ice and drowned as he tried to save two children he didn’t know, I choke up for the rest of the night. I am a sucker for heroes, and, at a point in my life when I very much needed one, Raymond Chandler gave me Philip Marlowe.
I read “Red Wind” in a broken-backed second-hand bookstore copy of Trouble Is My Business and went through the rest of Chandler’s work as fast as I could find it. What Chandler was doing wasn’t just telling lurid stories (which he did, better than almost anyone), he was exploring the ways a good man might retain his goodness in a modern world, and his themes were the themes of courage and duty and personal responsibility. I found this work profound. I still find it so. It caused me, for perhaps the first time, to consciously think about how I wanted to live my life and what would constitute acceptable ethical behavior and who I wanted to be. This reflection and the themes that grow from it recur in my work. Appropriately, they form the basis of “The Man Who Knew Dick Bong.”
Philip Marlowe didn’t just help to shape my fiction, he helped to shape my life.
Thanks, Ray.
Robert Crais
ESSENCE D’ORIENT
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Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe Page 30