"Mr. Marlowe?"
I turned to look at the woman from the picture. She was frowning down at the brand-new card I'd had printed up. I hadn't even had an office yet when I ordered them so they merely said Philip Marlowe, Investigation, Poodle Springs. Linda had vetoed the brass knuckles rampant.
"Yes, Ma'am," I said.
"Sit down, please," she said. "Have you been admiring my husband's work?"
"Yes, Ma'am. Is that your husband with you here?" I nodded at the picture.
"Yes, that's Les. He set the timer and then joined me. He's very clever."
The body belied the face. The face with its penurious mouth said, I won't give you a damned thing. The body with strong breasts and proud hips said, You can have anything you can take. I was newly married to an angel, but I could feel the challenge.
"That's my father in the painting," she said.
I smiled.
"You may smoke, if you wish," she said. "I do not, my father never approved, but Les does and I rather enjoy the smell."
"Thanks," I said. "Maybe in a while."
I crossed my legs.
"I'm trying to locate your husband, Mrs. Valentine."
"Really?"
"Yes, I've been employed to find him by a man who claims your husband owes him $100,000."
"That's ridiculous."
"My employer says that your husband ran up $100,000 in gambling debts at his, ah, casino and left him holding lOU's for the amount."
"lOU's for illegal gambling are not enforceable," she snapped.
"Yes, Ma'am. But it has put my client in a difficult position with his employer."
"Mr. Marlowe, this is no doubt of interest to someone. But surely not to me, or to anyone who knows my husband. My husband does not gamble. Nor does he give people lOU's. He pays for what he buys. He does not need to do otherwise. He makes a good living, and I am the fortunate recipient of my father's considerable generosity."
"Could you tell me where your husband is now, Ma'am? Perhaps if I talked with him I could clear this up."
"Les is on location in San Benedict with a film company. He is doing publicity photographs. Studios often employ him for that sort of thing. He is a very accomplished and well-regarded photographer of young women."
She liked the young women part the way a cow likes beefsteak.
"I see that," I said. "Which studio is he working for?"
Mrs. Valentine shrugged, as if the question were negligible. "I don't keep track," she said.
When she wasn't speaking she kept her lips slightly apart and her tongue moved restlessly in her mouth. "And I am certainly not going to have him beset with some wild accusations from a man known to be a criminal."
"I didn't say who my employer was," I said.
"I know who it is, it's that Mr. Lipshultz. He approached me directly and I let him know then what I thought of his cock-and-bull story."
I took Lippy's IOU out of my inside pocket and held it up for her to see.
She shook her head angrily. "He showed me that, too," she said. "I don't believe it. It's not Les's signature."
I got up and walked to one of the artsy framed photographs on the wall. In the lower right corner they were signed Les Valentine in the same innocuous cramped little hand that I had on the IOU. I held the IOU signature beside the photo signature. I held the pose for a minute with my eyebrows raised.
She stared at the two signatures as if she'd never seen either one. Her tongue darted about in her mouth. She was breathing a little harder than she had been.
She rose suddenly and walked to the bleached oak sideboard under her father's picture.
"I will have a drink, Mr. Marlowe. Would you care to join me?"
"No, Ma'am," I said, "but I'll smoke my cigarette now, I think."
I shook one loose and lipped it out of the pack. I lit it and drew in a lungful of smoke and let it out slowly through my nose. Mrs. Valentine poured herself some kind of green liquor and sipped it two or three quick times before she turned back to me.
"My husband enjoys gambling, Mr. Marlowe. I know that, and I hoped to prevent you from knowing that."
I worked on my cigarette a little while she drank most of the rest of her green drink.
"I have been happy to indulge him in this… my father would have said weakness, I suppose. As I say, I enjoy my father's affection and his largesse. Les is an artistic man, and like many artists he is whimsical. He is full of quirky needs. Sensitivities, one might say, that other men, perhaps like you, worldly men, do not necessarily have. In the past I have paid his debts and been happy to have contributed in my way to his artistic fulfillment."
She went back to the sideboard and poured herself another drink. It looked like something she did easily. She drank some.
"But this, $100,000 to a man like Lipshultz." She shook her head as if she couldn't continue, or saw no need to. "We talked, I said that it was time for him to become responsible, to grow a bit more worldly. I hoped, frankly, to snap him out of his childishness in this regard. I said he would have to liquidate this debt himself."
I finished my cigarette and stubbed it out in a polished abalone shell that sat on the end table in the middle of the desert. I looked at the photographs of young women on the wall. I wondered how many sensitivities Les had to be indulged in.
"Does he work out of his home?" I said.
The bilious hooch she was drinking was beginning to work. She shifted her hips restlessly as she stood by the sideboard. Her thighs beneath the black silk lounging slacks were full of energy. There was a smudge of red along the high cheekbones on the schoolmarm face.
"Like a part-time plumber? Hardly. He has an office in Los Angeles."
"Do you have the address, Mrs. Valentine?"
"Certainly not. Les comes and goes as he will. Our marriage is perfectly founded on trust. I don't need to know his office address."
I let my eyes run over the glamour photos mounted on the wall. Several of the women were famous, two movie stars, one a model who'd been on the cover of Life. All were signed in the lower right corner in gold in the distinctive small hand.
Mrs. Valentine was watching me. Her glass was nearly full again.
"You think I fear those women, Mr. Marlowe? You think I can't keep him at home?"
She put her drink on the sideboard and half turned so I could see her in partial profile and ran her hands over her breasts and down along her body, smoothing the fabric on her thighs.
"Zowie," I said.
She stared at me, holding the pose, the dark rose color spreading across her cheeks. Then she chuckled, a nasty, bubbly little sound.
"The $100,000 is a matter between you and Les and that dreadful Mr. Lipshultz. If you want to play your little boy games, go ahead. I will await the…" she made a gentle hiccup "… outcome." She sipped her drink.
"What is that stuff?" I said. "It smells like plant food."
"Good-bye, Mr. Marlowe."
I stood, put on my hat and went out of there. She was still posing with her chest stuck out. There was a big potted palm tree on the front porch. I looked at it as I went by.
"Maybe she'll give you some," I said.
7
Tino was at the door when I pulled the Olds in beside Linda's Fleetwood.
"Mrs. Marlowe is by the pool, sir."
"Thank you, Tino, how does she look?"
"Very lovely, sir."
"That's correct, Tino."
Tino smiled widely. I went through the make-believe living room and out onto the patio by the pool. Linda was on a pale blue chaise, wearing a one-piece white bathing suit and a pale blue wide-brimmed hat that matched the chaise. On the low white table next to the chaise a tall narrow glass contained something with fruit in it. Linda looked up from her book.
"Darling, have you had a hard day talking with Mr. Lipshultz?"
I took off my coat and loosened my tie. I sat in the pale blue chair beside the chaise. Linda ran one fingernail along the crease of my pant
s.
"Did my big detective get all worn out working all day?"
Tino appeared at the patio door.
"May I bring you something, sir?"
I smiled gratefully.
"A gimlet," I said. "Make it a double."
Tino nodded and disappeared.
"I talked to Lipshultz," I said. "I also talked to Mrs. Les Valentine."
Linda raised her eyebrows. "Muffy Blackstone?"
"Woman maybe forty-five," I said. "Looks like someone pasted the head of a schoolteacher on the body of a Varga girl."
"That's Muffy. Though I'm not sure I like you noticing the body."
"Just doing my job," I said.
"She's Clayton Blackstone's daughter. He's a friend of Daddy's. Very wealthy. At forty she married for the first time, a nobody. The Springs was in an uproar."
"What do you know about Les?"
"Very little. No money, no distinction. It is assumed he married her for her money. Clayton Blackstone is perhaps wealthier than Daddy."
"Heavens," I said.
"He seems quite a drab little man," Linda said.
"Yeah," I said. "Probably has a run-down office someplace, over a garage."
"Oh, darling," Linda said. "Don't be such a bastard."
Tino appeared with a large square glass set on a squat stem. He took it carefully off the tray and set it down on a napkin by my elbow. He looked at Linda's glass, noticed it was nearly full and went silently away.
"What does Clayton Blackstone do?" I said.
"He is wealthy," she said. "That's what he does."
"Like your daddy," I said.
Linda smiled brightly. I sipped some of the gimlet. It was clean and cold and slid down through the desert parch like a fresh rain.
"Hard to make all that money," I said, "without getting your hands a little dirty."
"Daddy never said that."
"No, I'll bet he didn't."
"Why do you say that? What are you doing talking to Muffy Blackstone?"
"Valentine."
"Muffy Valentine."
I drank another swallow of the gimlet. The pool glistened blue and still beside me.
"Her husband is into Lippy for a hundred g's."
"Into?"
"Lippy took his marker. Mrs. Valentine had always bailed him out before. This time she won't. Says he's got to grow up, and settle this debt himself."
"Well, good for her. I'm sure he's been a dreadful trial."
"She seems a little trying herself," I said.
"Yes, I suppose she is," Linda said. A beautiful frown wrinkle appeared briefly between her eyebrows. I leaned over and kissed it. "She was single all that time and devoted to Daddy, and all… She drinks a little too much, too."
"Anyway. Guy Lippy works for is unhappy about getting stuck for a hundred g's, told Lippy he had thirty days to get it back. Lippy can't find Les. Mrs. Valentine says he's off doing still work on a picture set. Lippy says if he doesn't get it back his boss will send a couple of hard boys out to see him. So Lippy hired me to find Les and talk him into giving Lippy his hundred thousand."
"Well, if anyone can do it, I'm sure you can. Look how you've been able to talk me right out of my clothes," Linda said.
"As I recall I don't get the chance to," I said. I looked at the pool. "Have you ever…?"
"In a pool?" Linda said. "Darling, you are a beast. Besides, what about Tino?"
"I don't care if Tino's ever done anything in a pool," I said.
We each drank a little bit of our drink. The desert evening was already cooling, and the desert sounds were starting to dwindle. I listened to it for a while, looking at the arch of Linda's foot. Linda listened too.
"Funny thing," I said after a while, "the big boss, guy was going to put the heat on Lippy. His name was Blackstone."
"Clayton Blackstone?"
"I don't know. Probably a different Blackstone."
"Oh, I'm sure," Linda said.
Tino came in a little while with two more drinks on a tray. He took away the empty glasses and was gone as silently as he'd come. Except when he served you it was as if he didn't exist. High up a prairie hawk moved in slow circles, riding the wind's currents, its spread wings nearly motionless.
"Why would you do this, darling? Work for this man Lipshultz?"
"It's my profession," I said.
"Even though you don't need the money?"
I sighed. "You don't need the money. I do. I don't have any put aside."
"But a man like Lipshultz?"
"In my business you don't get all well-bred upper-class people who have good manners and live in safe neighborhoods," I said. "In my kind of work Lipshultz is well above average."
"Then why not get into another business?" Linda said.
"I like my work," I said.
"I'm sure Daddy would…"
I cut her off. "Sure he could, and I could get a grey flannel suit and be the boss's son-in-law, except I'm kind of old to be the boss's son-in-law."
Linda looked away.
"Look," I said, "Mrs. Marlowe. I'm just a lug. There are things I can do. I can shoot, I can keep my word, I can walk into dark narrow places. So I do them. I find work that fits what I do, and who I am. Manny Lipshultz is in trouble, he can pay, he's not hiring me to do something illegal, or even immoral. He's in trouble and he needs help and that's what I do and he's got money and I need some. Would you be happier if I took Mrs. Valentine's money to help her husband welch on his debt?"
"I'd rather we stopped talking about this and went in and had dinner and then retired to our room and…" She shrugged her shoulders in a way that didn't mean I don't know.
"You're very demanding, Mrs. Marlowe."
"Yes," she said, "I am."
We went in and left the glasses where they were. What the hell. Tino would pick them up. Didn't want the help getting bored.
8
There were 55 Valentines in the L.A. phone book. One was a Lester and one was a Leslie. Lester lived in Encino and was a Division Manager for Pacific Bell; Leslie had a place on Hope Street and was a retail florist. I called information. They hadn't any other Les Valentines listed.
I had no office in L.A. anymore. I had to make the calls from a phone booth on the corner of Cahuenga and Hollywood Boulevard across from the old office. I called a local modeling agency and the Chamber of Commerce in San Benedict. They were both civil to me, which is a high average in L.A.
It was January and cool in L.A. Across the valley, the highest peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains were snowcapped. In Hollywood people pretended it was winter and wore furs along the boulevard, and producers wore argyle sweaters under tweed jackets on their way to lunch at Musso and Frank's. I was clean-shaven, smelling of bay rum and back in town for the first time in a month. Fast, tough, and on a case.
I got in the Olds, went south a block to Sunset and then headed west.
The Triton Modeling Agency was in a courtyard off of Westwood Boulevard, just north of Olympic. The center of the courtyard was covered with white pebbles divided into squares with redwood planking. In each square a small palm tree grew in single file down the center of the yard. There were maybe ten commercial establishments in the complex, a rare-book shop, a store selling Mexican jewelry, a leather store, a lawyer. I walked along the low-canopied porch that fronted the entries until I came to Triton. I rang the little brass bell and opened the door. It was a plush, carpeted silver office. Walls and ceiling done in silver paint, the reception desk silver plastic, and behind the desk a blonde with long thighs and flawless nylons. She wore a scarlet dress of some loose knit material, and as I entered she was reapplying scarlet color to her lips. She kept carefully at it while I stood in front of her desk.
"Yippie I oh chi yea," I said.
She finished her last touch and closed her compact mirror and looked at me.
"Yes, Cowboy?"
"I'm easily excited," I said.
"How nice for you," she said.
"
Married, too," I said.
"How nice for you," she said.
"Thanks. My name is Marlowe. I called about one of your models, Sondra Lee?"
"Ah, the detective." She looked me over the way a fish examines a worm. "Well, you've certainly got the shoulders for it," she said.
"Can you tell me how to get in touch with Miss Lee?" I said.
"Sure," the blonde said. "I called her. She said you can come see her at her place."
The blonde handed me a piece of paper with an address on it.
"It's off Beverly Glen," the blonde said. "Near the top."
I thanked her and turned to leave.
"If the marriage doesn't work…" she said.
I turned, gave her the gunman's salute with my thumb and forefinger, and left.
I picked up Beverly Glen off of Wilshire. North of Sunset it started to climb. The foliage pressed in close on it and the hills rose on either side waiting for the first heavy rain to wash the houses that rode their flanks down into the roadway. Sondra Lee's place would be one of the first to go. Its back end rested on two 15-foot lally columns that stood on concrete footings in the hillside. The driveway curved around the house and stopped to form a circle in front. There was no yard but the area in front of the house was full of flowering shrubs, and hummingbirds danced and spiraled over them as I pulled the car to a stop near the front door.
A Mexican woman answered my ring. Miss Lee was in the solarium. I followed her through the overdone bungalow into a glass addition that leaned against the front side of the house. A door at one end opened out onto the pool. It was closed now against the bite of a Hollywood winter, and Miss Lee was reclining indoors, on a leather-covered fainting couch, wearing a very small two-piece black bathing suit and tanning in the rays of the afternoon sun as it came filtering through the glass roof. There was a bar across the end nearest the house, and a couple of canvas chairs sitting about.
The woman on the couch had been on so many magazine covers that I felt I knew her. Her hair was jet black, and her eyes were black, and her skin was pale even after tanning. She looked like you could disappear forever into one of her sighs.
Poodle Springs (philip marlowe) Page 3