The man in the smock said: “Not if they sniffed him, miss.”11
She opened her bag and grabbed a handful of paper money and pushed it at him. “You’ll take care of him, I’m sure.”
“Jeeze,” the man said, pop-eyed. “I sure will, miss.”
“Regan is the name,” she said sweetly. “Mrs. Regan. You’ll probably see me again. Haven’t been here long, have you?”
“No’m.” His hands were doing frantic things with the fistful of money he was holding.
“You’ll get to love it here,” she said. She took hold of my arm. “Let’s ride in your car, Marlowe.”
“It’s outside on the street.”
“Quite all right with me, Marlowe. I love a nice walk in the fog. You meet such interesting people.”
“Oh, nuts,” I said.
She held on to my arm and began to shake. She held me hard all the way to the car. She had stopped shaking by the time we reached it. I drove down a curving lane of trees on the blind side of the house. The lane opened on De Cazens Boulevard, the main drag of Las Olindas. We passed under the ancient sputtering arc lights and after a while there was a town, buildings, dead-looking stores, a service station with a light over a nightbell, and at last a drugstore that was still open.12
“You better have a drink,” I said.
She moved her chin, a point of paleness in the corner of the seat. I turned diagonally into the curb and parked. “A little black coffee and a smattering of rye would go well,” I said.
“I could get as drunk as two sailors and love it.”
I held the door for her and she got out close to me, brushing my cheek with her hair. We went into the drugstore. I bought a pint of rye at the liquor counter and carried it over to the stools and set it down on the cracked marble counter.
“Two coffees,” I said. “Black, strong and made this year.”13
“You can’t drink liquor in here,” the clerk said. He had a washed-out blue smock, was thin on top as to hair, had fairly honest eyes and his chin would never hit a wall before he saw it.
Vivian Regan reached into her bag for a pack of cigarettes and shook a couple loose just like a man.14 She held them towards me.
“It’s against the law to drink liquor in here,” the clerk said.
I lit the cigarettes and didn’t pay any attention to him. He drew two cups of coffee from a tarnished nickel urn and set them in front of us. He looked at the bottle of rye, muttered under his breath and said wearily: “Okey, I’ll watch the street while you pour it.”
He went and stood at the display window with his back to us and his ears hanging out.
“My heart’s in my mouth doing this,”15 I said, and unscrewed the top of the whiskey bottle and loaded the coffee. “The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars’ place was a night club and they had two uniformed men in the lobby every night—to see that the guests didn’t bring their own liquor instead of buying it from the house.”
The clerk turned suddenly and walked back behind the counter and went in behind the little glass window of the prescription room.
We sipped our loaded coffee. I looked at Vivian’s face in the mirror back of the coffee urn. It was taut, pale, beautiful and wild. Her lips were red and harsh.
“You have wicked eyes,” I said. “What’s Eddie Mars got on you?”
She looked at me in the mirror. “I took plenty away from him tonight at roulette—starting with five grand I borrowed from him yesterday and didn’t have to use.”
“That might make him sore. You think he sent that loogan after you?”
“What’s a loogan?”16
“A guy with a gun.”
“Are you a loogan?”
“Sure,” I laughed. “But strictly speaking a loogan is on the wrong side of the fence.”17
“I often wonder if there is a wrong side.”18
“We’re losing the subject. What has Eddie Mars got on you?”
“You mean a hold on me of some sort?”
“Yes.”
Her lip curled. “Wittier, please, Marlowe. Much wittier.”
“How’s the General? I don’t pretend to be witty.”19
“Not too well. He didn’t get up today. You could at least stop questioning me.”
“I remember a time when I thought the same about you. How much does the General know?”
“He probably knows everything.”
“Norris would tell him?”
“No. Wilde, the District Attorney, was out to see him. Did you burn those pictures?”
“Sure. You worry about your little sister, don’t you—from time to time.”
“I think she’s all I do worry about. I worry about Dad in a way, to keep things from him.”20
“He hasn’t many illusions,” I said, “but I suppose he still has pride.”
“We’re his blood. That’s the hell of it.” She stared at me in the mirror with deep, distant eyes. “I don’t want him to die despising his own blood. It was always wild blood, but it wasn’t always rotten blood.”21
“Is it now?”
“I guess you think so.”
“Not yours. You’re just playing the part.”
She looked down. I sipped some more coffee and lit another cigarette for us. “So you shoot people,” she said quietly. “You’re a killer.”
“Me? How?”
“The papers and the police fixed it up nicely. But I don’t believe everything I read.”
“Oh, you think I accounted for Geiger—or Brody—or both of them.”
She didn’t say anything. “I didn’t have to,” I said. “I might have, I suppose, and got away with it. Neither of them would have hesitated to throw lead at me.”
“That makes you just a killer at heart, like all cops.”22
“Oh, nuts.”
“One of those dark deadly quiet men who have no more feelings than a butcher has for slaughtered meat. I knew it the first time I saw you.”
“You’ve got enough shady friends to know different.”
“They’re all soft compared to you.”
“Thanks, lady. You’re no English muffin yourself.”
“Let’s get out of this rotten little town.”
I paid the check, put the bottle of rye in my pocket, and we left. The clerk still didn’t like me.
We drove away from Las Olindas through a series of little dank beach towns with shack-like houses built down on the sand close to the rumble of the surf and larger houses built back on the slopes behind. A yellow window shone here and there, but most of the houses were dark. A smell of kelp came in off the water and lay on the fog. The tires sang on the moist concrete of the boulevard. The world was a wet emptiness.
We were close to Del Rey before she spoke to me for the first time since we left the drugstore. Her voice had a muffled sound, as if something was throbbing deep under it.
“Drive down by the Del Rey beach club.23 I want to look at the water. It’s the next street on the left.”
There was a winking yellow light at the intersection. I turned the car and slid down a slope with a high bluff on one side, interurban tracks24 to the right, a low straggle of lights far off beyond the tracks, and then very far off a glitter of pier lights and a haze in the sky over a city. That way the fog was almost gone. The road crossed the tracks where they turned to run under the bluff, then reached a paved strip of waterfront highway that bordered an open and uncluttered beach. Cars were parked along the sidewalk, facing out to sea, dark. The lights of the beach club were a few hundred yards away.
I braked the car against the curb and switched the headlights off and sat with my hands on the wheel. Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness.25
I moved out from under the wheel into the middle of the seat. She turned her body a little away from me as if to peer out of the window. Then she let herself fall backwards, without a sound, into my arms. Her head almost struck the wheel.26 Her eyes were closed, her face was dim. Then I saw that her eyes opened and flickered, the shine of them visible even in the darkness.
“Hold me close, you beast,”27 she said.
I put my arms around her loosely at first. Her hair had a harsh feeling against my face. I tightened my arms and lifted her up. I brought her face slowly up to my face. Her eyelids were flickering rapidly, like moth wings.
I kissed her tightly and quickly. Then a long slow clinging kiss. Her lips opened under mine. Her body began to shake in my arms.
“Killer,” she said softly, her breath going into my mouth.
I strained her against me until the shivering of her body was almost shaking mine. I kept on kissing her. After a long time she pulled her head away enough to say: “Where do you live?”
“Hobart Arms. Franklin near Kenmore.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“Want to?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“What has Eddie Mars got on you?”
Her body stiffened in my arms and her breath made a harsh sound. Her head pulled back until her eyes, wide open, ringed with white, were staring at me.
“So that’s the way it is,” she said in a soft dull voice.
“That’s the way it is. Kissing is nice, but your father didn’t hire me to sleep with you.”
“You son of a bitch,” she said calmly, without moving.
I laughed in her face. “Don’t think I’m an icicle,” I said. “I’m not blind or without senses. I have warm blood like the next guy. You’re easy to take—too damned easy. What has Eddie Mars got on you?”
“If you say that again, I’ll scream.”
“Go ahead and scream.”
She jerked away and pulled herself upright, far back in the corner of the car.
“Men have been shot for little things like that, Marlowe.”
“Men have been shot for practically nothing. The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don’t play at it.”
She fumbled in her bag and got a handkerchief out and bit on it, her head turned away from me. The tearing sound of the handkerchief came to me. She tore it with her teeth,28 slowly, time after time.
“What makes you think he has anything on me?” she whispered, her voice muffled by the handkerchief.
“He lets you win a lot of money and sends a gunpoke around to take it back for him. You’re not more than mildly surprised. You didn’t even thank me for saving it for you. I think the whole thing was just some kind of an act. If I wanted to flatter myself, I’d say it was at least partly for my benefit.”
“You think he can win or lose as he pleases.”
“Sure. On even money bets, four times out of five.”
“Do I have to tell you I loathe your guts, Mister Detective?”
“You don’t owe me anything. I’m paid off.”
She tossed the shredded handkerchief out of the car window. “You have a lovely way with women.”
“I liked kissing you.”29
“You kept your head beautifully. That’s so flattering. Should I congratulate you, or my father?”
“I liked kissing you.”
Her voice became an icy drawl. “Take me away from here, if you will be so kind. I’m quite sure I’d like to go home.”
“You won’t be a sister to me?”
“If I had a razor, I’d cut your throat—just to see what ran out of it.”
“Caterpillar blood,”30 I said.
I started the car and turned it and drove back across the interurban tracks to the highway and so on into town and up to West Hollywood. She didn’t speak to me. She hardly moved all the way back. I drove through the gates and up the sunken driveway to the porte-cochere of the big house. She jerked the car door open and was out of it before it had quite stopped. She didn’t speak even then. I watched her back as she stood against the door after ringing the bell. The door opened and Norris looked out. She pushed past him quickly and was gone. The door banged shut and I was sitting there looking at it.
I turned back down the driveway and home.
1. Even in his risky visit to Eddie Mars, Marlowe chooses not to carry a gun. (See note 18 on this page.)
2. Marlowe has already taken away guns from Agnes, Carmen, Joe Brody, and Carol. In Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade takes guns from the gay couple Cairo and Wilmer, but there it symbolizes Spade’s manly superiority. In TBS, Marlowe is an equal opportunity confiscator.
3. Recalls the sexually charged brief coupling of Carol and Marlowe in Chapter Seventeen. The detective also calls Carol “kid.”
4. Marlowe is referring to their boxing match of a conversation back on this page.
5. As we have seen, Vivian, like Marlowe, prefers to arm herself with wisecracks.
6. blotto: Very drunk. Early-twentieth-century slang. Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English quotes Chandler’s fellow Dulwich College alum P. G. Wodehouse: “He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto.”
7. A great example of Vivian’s—and Chandler’s—humor, which went virtually unnoticed when TBS first appeared. Vivian’s phrasing owes a debt to the contemporary (and timeless) comedian Groucho Marx.
8. When a Philip Marlowe radio show was planned in the late forties, Chandler advised the producers that they should “not always give him the punch line….Let the other characters have the toppers.” Here Marlowe lets Vivian lead.
9. As with her reference to Proust in Chapter Eleven, Vivian plays the card of class superiority, reminding Marlowe (albeit playfully) who’s boss.
10. West Point: Military academy.
11. Even the parking lot attendant gets into the act.
12. Drugstores in the 1930s offered much more in the way of service and sociability than they do today, combining elements of late-night diners, cafés, and restaurants. Besides selling medicines, they served food, famously provided sodas fresh from the fountain, and sometimes (as here) sold liquor.
The location is Greenwich Village and the scene is a diner, but Edward Hopper’s classic slice of period Americana captures the feel of Marlowe and Vivian’s late-night drugstore visit. (Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942)
13. Marlowe doesn’t think very highly of drugstore fare. By the time of 1942’s The High Window, he has given in: he sarcastically orders “a cup of coffee, weak, and a very thin ham sandwich on stale bread.”
14. Recalling Vivian’s “mannishness” (see note 1 on this page).
15. Marlowe is being sarcastic. What he’s doing is illegal, but he knows there’s nothing to worry about, from the clerk or from the police.
16. loogan: A thug or goon. Probably from the Irish.
17. In keeping with his consistent attention to language, Marlowe bemusedly educates Vivian about the hard-boiled lingo, which is hardly the hallmark of the loogan.
18. As noted previously (see note 15 on this page), Vivian’s cynicism exceeds Marlowe’s—at least so far.
19. Of course, Marlowe does attempt to be witty, and his self-awareness of the attempt is part of what takes him off the page and makes him seem like one of us. He’s not the stereotypical hard-boiled detective, but he puts on that identity when it suits him. It doesn’t always suit him. In Farewell, My Lovely he turns over “a few witty sayings in my mind, but none of them seemed amusing at the moment.” And even when he’s amused, his interlocutors frequently are not. “Not funny,” Anne Riordan chides Marlowe in Farewell, M
y Lovely. “Not even fast.” “It’s a waste of time talking to you,” complains Lieutenant Breeze in The High Window. “All you do is crack wise.” (See the “Sharpened Tongues” text box on page 17.)
Marlowe calls ironic attention to the trappings of the genre in The High Window: “What I like about this place is that it runs so true to type,” he says, noting among other things “the silent guy with the gun, the night club owner with the soft gray hair and the B-picture mannerisms, and now you—the tall dark torcher with the negligent sneer, the husky voice, the hard-boiled vocabulary.” The singer he’s addressing responds, “And what about the wise-cracking snooper with the last year’s gags and the come-hither smile?”
20. Whatever else can be said about them, the Sternwoods do stick together. Ultimately this differentiates Vivian from the typical scheming femme fatale: her motive is loyalty.
21. The concern over hereditary depravity is a central theme of Hammett’s The Dain Curse. The 1946 Big Sleep film pulls an unlikely reversal by having General Sternwood himself deem his daughters full of “corrupt blood.”
22. Vivian voices the cynicism regarding the police that runs throughout the novel.
Medicinal rye
23. The location corresponds to that of Playa del Rey, a beach city south of Venice. If Marlowe and Vivian are heading up along the coast through the “dank little beach towns” of Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Manhattan Beach, they would hit Playa del Rey before heading east back into the city.
24. The Pacific Electric Redondo Beach–Del Rey line led along the coast from Playa del Rey through the “dank little beach towns” noted earlier, with its terminus in Clifton-by-the-Sea at the south end of Redondo Beach. The line was well traveled by tourists and beachgoers in its heyday, as much of its route ran within a block of the beach. Service was abandoned in 1940, and little trace of the route remains today.
Pacific Electric map showing interurban routes for coastal cities (courtesy of the Prelinger Library)
The Annotated Big Sleep Page 29