“What’s going to happen to us?” the beatnik man asked Jesse.
“Nothing,” I quickly and loudly said. Jesse’s eyes locked on me. “Nothing at all. Because they’re smart. Whatever’s behind them is behind them. They’re running, and they don’t want to make the law dogs any madder, any hungrier for ’em than they already are. Hell, here they just shot up a guy a little. No big deal. Nothing to change their hand.”
Beside me, I heard Sal sigh in disgust.
“You’re pretty smart,” said Jesse. “You don’t look like no salesman or tourist. What’s your name?”
“Marlowe. Philip Marlowe.”
“Honey,” he told Nora, “dig through those wallets and find me Mr. Philip Marlowe.”
She did. He flipped it open. Found the badge. When he held it out for all to see, Scooter swung his shotgun at me.
“Keep looking,” I said. “That tin is only for suckers.”
“Well, well, well,” said Jesse, pulling my photostat from the wallet. “You’re a private detective.
“Hey, honey!” he yelled to Nora, who’d moved back between us, her green eyes staring at me. Her red lips were open. “He’s a private eye! Like, we’re in the movies!
“And he might be packing a gun. Check him out, sugar.”
Nora walked over to me as I stood, pulled my jacket wide. She came close. Her hands slid over my chest, down along my sides. When they reached my belt, she slid them around to my back. Her breasts brushed my shirt. Her hair was thick and musty below my chin. She wore dime-store lilac perfume and nothing before or since has ever smelled so sweet. Jesse’s eyes burned.
She stepped back, whispered, “Help me.”
To Jesse, she said, “He doesn’t have a gun.”
She walked away from me slow and easy, her pants tight across her round hips. She looked back over her shoulder. The red lips smiled.
“So, Marlowe,” said Jesse, “what’s a big-time L.A. dick like you doing in a nowhere town like this?”
“I’m looking for a man,” I said.
“You lookin’ for me?” Jesse tapped his chest.
“You’re not my business,” I told him.
“So you’re lucky. Who you looking for?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
Jesse flipped open the cylinder on his .22 revolver. He flicked out the three spent shells from the trucker, fished three fresh bullets from his jacket pocket, reloaded the cylinder, snapped it shut. The gun stared at me.
“You better know,” he told me. “And you better come across with it. I don’t like dicks doing what I don’t know.”
“My client is the wife of a movie producer—”
“See, babe?” said Jesse. “I told you you’d be a star.”
“She’s from Germany,” I said. “Jewish. When she was a girl, her father sent her, her mother, brothers and sisters, and cousins to America. Get away from the Nazis. Her father stayed behind. Her uncle, his older brother, ran the family business. The uncle figured it would be just another pogrom, rough but survivable. He convinced the father to stay behind, too, and help mind the family store.”
“That wasn’t so smart,” said Jesse.
“No,” I agreed. “They rode the train to Auschwitz.”
“Your client hire you to kill Nazis? Here?”
“Two weeks ago, a man came into the big synagogue in L.A. He bought two Yahrzeit candles. One for her father, Abraham Muller. One for her uncle, Saul Muller. My client hired me to find out who’s lighting candles for her dead kin.”
“Why light candles for the dead?” said Nora softly. “It’s the living who need them.”
“Why look for that guy here?” asked Jesse.
“All the rabbi got out of him was that he had a four hour and twenty minute bus ride from L.A. to where he was going. This is the third bus stop about four hours and twenty minutes from L.A.”
Jesse shook his head. He stood.
“Marlowe, you ain’t so big-time after all. Come on,” he waved his pistol. “Let’s you and me look outside. Maybe we’ll find your candle lighter.”
He made me lead the way. Outside, by the gas pumps, he told me to turn around. He kept three long steps away.
“Kind of dumb thing to do,” he said.
The wind blew bullets of sand in our faces, but none closed his eyes. We squinted at each other.
“What?” I asked him.
“Take your pick,” he said. “Playin’ with the Nazis. Hunting somebody who lights candles for ghosts.”
“Killing a trooper,” I said.
Jesse shrugged. “He shouldn’t have caught us.”
“What about the others?”
“The paper didn’t mention I stole a car from some folks who were nice to us. They walked.”
“I get the idea.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t. I seen you looking at Nora.”
“I couldn’t help it. You sent her to me.”
“Man, nobody sends her nowhere. She goes where she wants. You best remember that. You also better remember what all I done for her. Her old man, always hasselin’ me. Stepfather, and he didn’t want no man around her. Specially me. ’Tween you and me . . . I think he had the taste for her himself.”
“She could give it to anybody.”
“Yeah,” he shook his head. “He come down to my shack. Shouldn’t ever bother a man at his place.”
“No,” I agreed, “you shouldn’t.”
“What you said back there. About the law dogs. They catch us, you think maybe we can walk? Couple years, sure, but . . . ”
“You killed some badges, a salesman, her old man.” I shrugged while I racked my mind for an answer he’d believe. “If that stops now, if they catch you alive or you surrender . . . you got a chance to cop a crazy plea.”
He laughed into the wind.
“Crazy? Man, all I been is sane. The world’s crazy! People always messing with me, never letting me have what I want, thinking they’s better. Nora, she knew me, knew I’d get her old man off her back and her out of that two-bit town, but no, they had to go messin’ with me. And Scooter, lockin’ him up. Jesse don’t forget his friends. Or his enemies. Crazy? Hell, no, I ain’t crazy!”
“When they catch you,” I said, “it’s worth a shot.”
“If they catch me, Marlowe. And there’s only one kind of shot makes any sense.”
“Can we go back inside?”
“Sure,” he said. “I figured you for a wiseguy, but you don’t know nothing I don’t know.”
As we walked toward the cafe, I said, “Does Nora know how deep in trouble you got her?”
“I warned you about her.” Jesse laughed. “Does Nora know? Just ’cause she looks that good don’t mean she’s stupid. An’ she knows she travels with me till I say no.”
As my hand touched the cafe screen door, Jesse said: “Hey, Marlowe. You go getting sweet on her, remember: she called her old man and told him where we were.”
“Jesse,” said Scooter when we walked through the door, “what are we going to do? It’s two hours till the bus comes!”
“You got T.V. here?” asked Jesse.
“Not yet,” said Hank, shaking his head. I sat next to Sal, the cook.
“Hell, Scooter! We got beer, we got a radio.” He grinned at Nora. Her stare back was cold and hard. “We’ll have us a party.”
The radio played “Young Love.”
“Hey, babe!” Jesse shuffled across the cafe floor to where Nora sat. “They’re playing our song!”
He tucked his pistol in his belt and pulled Nora to her feet. Whirled her into his arms. The song had a tangled rhythm for dancing, but they didn’t seem to mind. He was wild smiles and flashing eyes. She leaned back into his arms, swung her hair.
“What will they do to us?” the beatnik woman whispered to her man.
“They’ll let us go. We’ll be okay,” he replied. “We just have to do what they say.”
“Follow orders?”
It was Sal, the cook. Whispering to no one in particular as we watched the mad dance. “Trust them?”
“We don’t have much choice,” I said. “Not yet. If we can make a better chance . . . ”
“What chance? You wait like sheep and you die or go on living and be better off dead, better dead to the world.”
“Bide your time,” I hissed to him. “We’ll make it.”
The song ended. Nora left Jesse in the middle of the dance floor. She shot me a glance all we prisoners saw, a plea.
“What about me?” whined Scooter.
I glanced to my right. Billy and Anna the waitress sat closest to the door to the garage. They saw my look.
“You? Hell, Scooter! Grab yourself a girl!” Jesse looked us over, said, “Ain’t nobody here gonna complain.”
And I went cold. Knew.
Scooter put his shotgun on the table by Jesse. Licked his lips, ran his hand through his greasy black hair. The radio played a commercial for laundry soap. Scooter walked over to Anna.
“You’ll have to shoot me first.” She stood up, put her back against the wall. Ten feet from the side door.
“You’re too old and skinny anyway,” he said.
Scooter swung his beady eyes to the beatnik woman. She had heavy breasts beneath her black sweater. Scooter held out his hand. She started to cry.
“No,” she moaned softly. “Please. No.”
“Just a dance,” yelled Jesse. He lifted Scooter’s shotgun off the table. “Hey, Scooter—you need this big long thing?”
The beatnik woman looked at her man. He stared at the floor.
Scooter jerked her out of her chair. The radio played “Love Letters in the Sand.”
She was taller than Scooter. He ground his hips into her, dug his chin into her shoulder, her right hand twisted down and trapped in his. Over the music, we could hear her sobbing.
In the reflection of the windows, I saw Anna reach through the side door. Jesse was laughing, watching his buddy paw the beatnik woman. My car slowly, silently slid down the hoist.
The song ended. The woman tried to break away, but Scooter pulled her with him. Headed outside, toward the houses across the highway. She cried, dragged her feet. Pleaded, “No!”
“All this stops!” yelled Sal. He stood. “Let her go! Get out of here!”
“Sit down!” yelled Jesse. His hand rested on his pistol. “Mind your own business or—”
Anna moved from the door. I stood, turned my back to Jesse, and tried to push Sal down in his chair. He shrugged me off, moved me aside—moved me closer to the door. I kept my feet, backed toward the wall as if I was distancing myself from the cook.
“Or what?” shouted Sal. “Your bullets can’t kill me. Now let her go and get out!”
Sal walked toward Jesse, toward the beatnik woman and Scooter. Nora moved out of the way.
“You ain’t very smart for a Mexican,” snapped Jesse.
Sal lunged toward Jesse.
The beatnik woman broke free from Scooter.
Jesse was on his feet, backpedaling. He shot at Sal’s chest. Fired again. By the time he fired the third round I was at the door. Jesse yelled: “Get Marlowe!” and fired again. Sal draped his body on the gun that Jesse emptied into him. I ran into the garage. The beatnik woman screamed as I jerked open my car door, dove across the seat, opened the glove compartment, found the Luger I hadn’t needed to carry on a simple ghost hunt. Behind me in the cafe I heard a crash: Billy jumped Scooter, got knocked down by the shotgun butt. Billy bought the seconds I needed. I’d rolled to my back, was sitting up when Scooter and his shotgun filled the doorway. I shot him and shot him and shot him, and he fell.
Screams echoed inside the cafe as I squirmed out of my car. I sent a round high through the door to keep them inside and scurried out the garage to the front of the building, ducking low behind the beatniks’ car and circling toward the cafe windows.
When I stuck my head up and looked through the window I saw Jesse. He had the Winchester aimed at the side door to the garage. I zeroed him, squeezed the trigger.
The window shattered—but the thick glass deflected my bullet. Jesse whirled. The Winchester roared my way. The slug screeched across the hood of the car and crashed into a gas pump.
A sane man would have stayed inside the cafe and picked me off with the rifle. But Jesse was wrong, he must have been crazy. He kicked open the cafe door and sent another bullet my way. It missed the car, but it, too, hit a fuel pump. Gas fumes filled the air. Jesse swore. Huddled behind the car, I knew he was coming toward me, rifle raised, waiting for his shot. The closer he got the more likely it became that even if I shot him, he’d put one in me. Another rifle bullet slammed into the car metal between us. I tried to remember how many rounds a Winchester held.
When he was maybe ten feet away, he fired again, trying to angle the bullet down over the hood. The slug ricocheted on the concrete apron, sparked off the metal handle of the gas hose.
An explosion of heat knocked me against the car and turned the world orange. Where the gas pump had been was now a roaring flame twenty feet high. Acrid black smoke swirled around me. The heat seared my face and hands, my eyes were tearing, and I had no choice. I stuck the Luger over the hood of the car, squeezed off a blind round and ran toward the highway. My feet hit the pavement. The two houses were ahead. I looked back toward the cafe.
Saw Jesse zeroing me with the rifle. I ducked. He fired. The rifle bullet ripped a line across my shoulders and flipped me off the road. I hit the ditch on my back. My wind blew out, the Luger spun from my hand.
Ten, twenty seconds of agony. The air I sucked into my lungs stank of burning gasoline and sand. I rolled to my stomach. Jesse walked toward me, rifle in hand. Behind him hurried a girl clutching a purse. A pillar of flame rose into the sky.
Jesse stopped in the center of the highway, raised the rifle to his shoulder.
“Later, Marlowe,” he said.
Nora was six feet behind him. From her black purse that had gone to the prom she pulled out the revolver they’d taken off the trooper they killed. She shot Jesse in the back. He staggered forward a few steps, sagged to his knees, fell dead on the road.
It took a week for me to get to my feet. Nora held the revolver at her side. Billy ran toward us from the cafe, Scooter’s shotgun in his hands.
“I saved your life,” she told me as I took the gun from her. “Remember that. Tell them that.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Marlowe!” She reached for me, but I knocked her hand away. “You owe me! I saved you!”
She got twenty-five years. She should have hung.
A line of fire burned across my back. My shirt was sticky. I was wobbly, nauseous. I left her standing there for Billy to guard, shuffled past the giant flame to the cafe. The living had fled into the desert. The dead trucker waited inside. Scooter. And a man called Sal. He lay on his back, his white shirt soaked red. I rolled up his left sleeve, found the tattooed numbers. My client believed me when I told her I found nobody and that she should forget and leave the dead to their own heaven or hell.
* * *
* * *
Raymond Chandler made journeys to the dark alleys of America legitimate for American literature in general and for me in particular.
Chandler’s keen eye, cool prose, and timeless popularity beat the critics into accepting him as a “legitimate” author in the 1950’s, when I was a boy in Montana dreaming of being a writer. For me, being a writer meant—and means—telling stories that say something about good and evil, stories that show some small truths of how we live and that take a stand in a world of violent moral and physical chaos. When I was growing up, the stories of Chandler—and of Dashiell Hammett and others—did that for me. They did it without sacrificing entertainment, without preaching. When I setforth to write my first novel, I chose to travel those dark and fruitful alleys they’d shown me, and wrote Six Days of the Condor.
But I worried, felt embarrassed that I had n
ot penned an East of Eden. My book was good, the best I could then do, but was it enough?
In the months before Condor came out, I worked as an aide for U.S. Senator Lee Metcalf. One cold and dreary February afternoon in 1974, I muttered about the lack of “weight” of my first novel to the senator’s legislative assistant. She was tough, smart, and broked no nonsense. With a cigarette dangling from her lips, she said: “Kid, if you can ever write something half as good and important as ‘Killer in the Rain,’ you’re all right.”
And I still believe her.
James Grady
ASIA
* * *
* * *
ERIC VAN LUSTBADER
1958
ANGELA CARTER WAS the most beautiful girl in the world. She had creamy skin the color of peaches, her long hair was the color of cornsilk, and her huge eyes had that warmth that reminded you of summer days when you had nothing better to do than lie beneath an apple tree and stare at an endless sky.
Angela Carter was something, all right. She was also dead.
The mournful wail of a siren along Hollywood Boulevard reminded me of the cruelty of wasted youth. Angela Carter’s youth.
I had just wrapped up the case. Angela Carter had come into my office six months ago, her face pale with fear. Someone, she had said, was terrorizing her over the phone.
It had turned out that Angela Carter’s half-brother, the professional baseball player she had idolized, had been making the obscene calls. I had found out too late. He had strangled her in a fit of rage, when, half drunk, he had seen a man coming out of her apartment at three a.m. But not before he had raped her, as he had confessed he had dreamt of doing all along.
It was that kind of world, I told myself, as I stood with my head against the glass of the office window. Three in the morning, an empty bottle of Scotch in my fist, and I was so tired I wanted to sleep for a month solid.
Then what was I doing here in the office with no one to talk to but the roaches and the mice? I watched the cop car, red lights revolving, careening around a corner. The siren was no more than a sigh. The smoke from my cigarette clung to the glass, smearing the neon into artist’s colors. Maybe, I told myself sourly, it was because I could no longer bear to be in the company of human beings. Maybe it was because after all these years of being knee-deep in murder, blackmail, and drug running I had finally begun to figure it was time to get out of this crummy business.
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe Page 37