"If they find me," he said.
"Find you? You poor simp, I found you in three days on a skipped IOU. You think the cops can't find you on suspicion of murder one? You think I was the only person to see you argue with that blonde in Reno's? What was her name?"
"I don't know. Lola, Lola something. I hardly knew her."
"What were you arguing about?"
"She was drunk."
"What were you arguing about?"
"I used to date her," Victor said.
"Un huh, but you don't know her last name."
He shrugged. "You know how it is, Marlowe."
"No," I said. "I don't."
"You meet a lot of jillies, you sleep with them, they get to thinking it's more serious than you do."
"But not serious enough to tell you their last name," I said.
"Well, I suppose she said, but, hey, I can't remember every name, huh?" He was making a comeback, the fear was shifting back a little, into the shade. I was going to help him, oh, boy.
"Remember this one, pal, or I'll drive you straight downtown."
"Jesus Christ," he said again. The fear was back. "Don't do that. I can remember, her name was, ah…"
He pretended to be thinking hard.
"Her name was Faithful, Lola Faithful. I think maybe she used to hoof it a little."
"Lola Faithful," I said.
"Yeah, probably a stage name, but that's how she was in the book when I used to be dating her. Honest to God."
"And she was mad because you weren't dating her anymore."
"Yeah," Victor said, "right. She was mad as hell, Marlowe."
"How long you been married to Angel?"
"Three years and, ah, seven months."
"Break up with Lola before that?"
"Sure, hell, what kind of guy you think I am?"
"I don't want to know."
"Yeah," Victor said, "broke up with Lola long time before we got married, Soon as I started going with Angel I tossed her over."
"Uh huh," I said. "So like four years ago you ditched Lola Faithful, and a few days ago she braces you in a bar and starts screaming about it?"
"She carries a torch, Marlowe, not my fault."
I puffed a little on my pipe and squinted at him through the smoke. "I've heard sailors tell better stories to Filipino barmaids," I said.
"Well, if you don't believe me then why the hell are you sitting here with me?"
"Two things, maybe three," I said. "One, you're not the type. You're a con man, a booster, a guy that always has a little grift going; I don't think you've got the iron in your bones that it takes to kill a man."
"You ever kill anybody, tough guy?" Victor said.
"Second," I said, "why would you kill her there in your office and leave her there and not even lock the door? You'd be inviting the coppers to come and get you and say you did it."
"Yeah," he said. "I'm not that stupid."
"We'll see," I said.
"You said maybe three reasons," Victor said. "What's the other one?"
He fished the last cigarette out of my pack and crumpled the pack and threw it out the side window. Then he pushed in the car lighter and waited for it to pop.
"Like I said, I'm a romantic."
Victor turned toward me. "I didn't kill her, Marlowe. You've got to believe that."
"I don't have to," I said. "We'll make it a working hypothesis for the moment. You got a place to coop?"
"How about your place?" Victor said.
"My place is occupied," I said.
"Yeah, but, you know, I wouldn't take up a lot of room."
"Occupied," I said, "by my wife, and myself. You're not invited."
"Christ, Marlowe, I got no place to go the cops wouldn't think of."
"They know about Muriel?" I said.
"No, Jesus, nobody knows about her."
"Go there," I said.
"Muriel's?"
"Why not? She's your wife, she thinks. It's your house."
He shook his head. "It's her house," he said. "Her and her old man's."
"You rather spend the night with your back to the wall in the lock-up?"
Victor was silent. The cigarette was down to a stub between his first two fingers. He took another drag, carefully, not burning his lips.
"How'm I going to get there?" he said.
"I'll drive you."
"All the way to Poodle Springs?"
"I live there," I said. "It's on my way home."
"You live in the Springs?" Victor said.
"Sure," I said. "Look at my jawline, the tilt of my chin."
"Marlowe," he said. "Holy Christ, are you the guy that married Harlan Potter's daughter?"
"She married me," I said.
"For chrissake, you live right down the street from me."
"Small world," I said.
18
We rode a lot of the way in silence. Victor said about every 15 minutes that he wished he had a cigarette. As we passed the Bakersfield cutoff I said, "Tell me about Muriel's father."
"Clayton Blackstone?" I could hear Victor take in air and let it out through his nose.
"Yeah."
The sun was gone now and the road cut through the empty desert like a faint ribbon in the headlights.
"Rich," Victor said.
I waited, as the highway spooled underneath us through the stationary dark.
"Rich and mean," Victor said.
"It's how you get rich," I said.
"He got rich a lot of ways," Victor said, "not all of them legal."
I waited some more.
"Most of them not legal," Victor said. "But he did it a while ago so now he's upper class and his daughter is a princess."
"It's a big rough country," I said. "Happens all the time."
"Yeah, but not to me."
"You asked for it," I said, just to be saying something.
"Blackstone made his money out of gambling, ships off the coast, out past the three-mile limit," Victor said. "Get anything you wanted out there, then. Cards, dice, roulette, a horse parlor, rooms for private games. You could get girls, booze, marijuana, coke and this was in the days when high school kids never heard of it."
"Sure," I said, "picked you up in water taxis at the pier in Bay City."
"Now he owns banks, and hotels, and clubs and restaurants, but that's where his money came from. He's still got people around."
"Tough guys?" I said.
"Guys that'll kick out your teeth and then shoot you for mumbling."
"He connected with the Agony Club?" I said.
"Naw, Lippy runs that."
"Lippy says his boss is a guy named Blackstone, and that Blackstone is a hard number about the books."
"Jesus," Victor said, "I didn't know that." He rubbed both eyes with the heels of his open hands. "Well, old Clayton isn't going to hack me while I'm married to his daughter."
"Unless he finds out you're also married to Angel," I said.
"Jesus Christ, Marlowe."
The Poodle Springs turn-off loomed out of the night. I turned off into the deeper black of the desert roadway. There were occasional glimmers of light up the canyons where somebody had built into the slagged side of the arroyo and was squatting, doing whatever desert squatters do. I felt a million miles from anywhere, no closer to civilization than to the stars that glimmered without warmth above me. Alone in the darkness listening to the whining litany of a weak man who'd tried to be too cute.
"How do you get along with Blackstone?" I said.
"You don't get along with a guy like Blackstone," Victor said. "He tolerates you or he doesn't. Me he tolerates because I belong to little Muffy."
I could hear the sound of bitterness that tinged his words like the bite of an underripe orange.
"Here's how it looks to me," I said. "Lippy wants you because you owe him money. The cops want you because you might have killed Lola Faithful. Blackstone tolerates you, but if he finds out about Angel he may let some air into
your skull."
"Yeah," Victor said. His hands were clenched in front of his chest and he was staring down at his thumbs. "I don't care about myself, Marlowe. But we gotta protect Angel."
"I could tell that," I said. "I could tell just knowing you as I do that your life is a long unbroken sequence of self-sacrifice and concern for others."
"Honest to God, Marlowe. I love that girl. Maybe the only thing I ever loved. Guys would laugh probably, hear me saying something like this, but I'd turn myself in today if it would help her. But I can't because if Blackstone found out about me and Angel he'd have her killed too."
"Well, if you can restrain your passion for self-sacrifice," I said, "and keep your mouth shut and hide out with your Poodle Springs wife until I figure this out…"
I let it hang. I didn't have a finish for the sentence myself. Neither did he. We were silent until I dropped him in front of Muriel's place. He took off his hairpiece, put it in my glove compartment and walked wearily up the walk. As he reached the door I saw his shoulders straighten. I put the Olds in gear and drove on toward the house I shared with Linda.
19
"Clayton Blackstone is a very dignified man," Linda said. "I do not believe all that stuff that Muffy's husband told you."
We were having breakfast by the pool in the already solid heat of the desert morning. There was a scent of bougainvillaea on the air and the sound of birds, foraging in the morning before the heat got too bad.
"It's a question of law whether he's her husband," I said. "I think the first marriage precludes those that follow." I sipped my coffee, some sort of Kona roast that Tino had shipped to him. "On the other hand, I'm not up on my bigamy law."
"Clayton Blackstone is a friend of Daddy's," Linda said. She was wearing a pale blue silk thing that concealed enough of her to be legal, but only that.
"I don't know where Daddy got his money," I said, "but if you have enough of it some of it has to be dirty."
"You think my father has been dishonest?"
"It's not that simple," I said.
"Well, what do you think?"
"I think he probably at least allowed a little dishonesty."
"Oh pooh," Linda said.
Tino came and took away the empty juice glasses.
"Obviously Les, or Larry, or whatever he calls himself, is a compulsive gambler. Obviously he's a fortune hunter. Obviously he's dishonest. Why are you protecting him? Why not simply turn him in to the police?" Linda said. "Report to Mr. Lipshultz where he is, and get to spend some afternoons with me, drinking gimlets, and holding hands, and, um… whatever."
"He doesn't understand it, either," I said.
"Les? I should think he wouldn't, the worm, what kind of a man would get himself into this kind of a mess." Linda's eyes were bright with distaste.
"He's addicted," I said.
"To drugs?"
"To risk. He's probably a compulsive gambler, and he has to turn everything into a gamble."
"Why on earth would a man want to do that? Why does someone feel that way about gambling?"
"It's not gambling," I said. "It's risk, the danger of losing, that gets the juices going."
"He likes to lose?" Linda said. The angry glint was gone from her eyes and she was frowning slightly so that the lovely little line appeared horizontally between her perfect eyebrows. She leaned toward me on the chaise, holding her little blue wisp of a garment together at the throat so that she could maintain the semblance of decency and, in the process, keep me from getting out of hand.
"No, but he likes the chance of losing," I said. "It excites him."
"So he gambles and commits bigamy and takes pornographic pictures and maybe murders someone?"
"Things get out of hand," I said. "Now there's too much danger. He's not getting a thrill out of it. Now he's scared. And I don't think he killed the woman in his office."
Linda leaned back against the chaise and chewed on the edge of her lower lip a little, looking at me sideways out of the corners of her eyes.
"You're thinking," I said.
"Umm."
"You're beautiful when you think," I said.
"You understand this man very well," Linda said.
"I'm a detective, lady. I meet a lot of people in trouble."
"Maybe you're a little like this one. Maybe you do the work you do because it's dangerous."
"Like Larry Victor? I get a thrill out of danger?"
"There must be some reason," Linda said, "why you don't stay home and help me spend ten million dollars."
"Maybe I could get a little gold ring grafted onto my neck," I said, "and you could wear me on your charm bracelet."
"You really are impossible, aren't you," Linda said. "Fortunately I find you scrumptious."
"I know that," I said.
20
There was a Santa Ana wind blowing in Hollywood and it had blown the smog out past Catalina. The sky was as blue as a cornflower and the weather was in the low seventies when I parked on Sunset and walked back toward Western to Reno's cafe. It was just after noon and most of the hookers had broken for lunch. North and east across the Valley past Pasadena I could see the snow on top of the San Gabriel Mountains.
I went into Reno's. It smelled as if they hadn't cleaned the grill in a while. I went to the bar and sat at one end. There were two guys in plaid suits hunched over a notebook at the other end, and in the booth I'd sat in the other day a white-haired guy in a black western-style shirt was feeding drinks to a hard-faced old woman with the faint memory of blonde in her hair.
She was wearing bright blue harlequin glasses studded with rhinestones. The old guy's teeth had that perfect even quality that only comes from a store.
There was no one else in the place. The bartender slid down the bar as if he had more time than anyone needed. He was a tall narrow guy with a bald head. Wisps of black hair were carefully plastered over it to make it look worse. His teeth were yellow and he had the color of a man who goes out only at night.
"What'll it be, pal," he said.
"Rye," I said. "Straight up."
He pulled a bottle from the display rack behind him and poured me a shot of Old Overholt, rang up the cost, put the check on the bar in front of me.
"Lola Faithful come in here much?" I said.
The bartender shrugged and started to move on down the bar. I took a twenty-dollar bill out of my pocket and folded it the long way and let it stand like a small green tent on the bar in front of me. The bartender moved back down the bar toward it.
"Thought you'd want to run a tab," he said.
"I do," I said.
He looked at the twenty and moistened his lips with a tongue the color of a raw oyster.
"Lola Faithful come in here much?" I said.
"Oh, Lola, sure, I didn't get you the first time. Hell, Lola comes in here all the time. Christ, that's what she does. She comes in here."
He grinned with his big yellow teeth, like an old horse. He was looking at the twenty. I picked it up by one end and looked at it poised on my fingertips.
"What can you tell me about her?"
"She drinks Manhattans," he said.
"Anything else?"
"I think she used to be some kind of a hoochie-cooch dancer," he said.
"And?"
"And nothing," he said. "That's all I know."
I nodded.
"Know a guy named Larry Victor?" I said.
"Naw," the bartender said. His eyes followed the movement of the twenty. "Only a few regulars, I know. Most people ain't regulars." He stopped looking at the twenty for a moment and swept the room with a glance.
"Hell," he said, "would you be a regular here?"
"Les Valentine?" I said. He shook his head.
I let the twenty fall from my fingers and slid it over the bar toward him. He picked it up in long fingers and folded it expertly and tucked it into the watch pocket of his tan poplin pants. Then he picked up the bottle of rye and topped off my glass.
"House bonus," he said.
I nodded and he went down the bar and began to polish glasses with a towel better suited to other purposes.
I waited.
The two guys in plaid folded up their notebook and left to make their fortune. The old guy in the booth was succeeding too well with his date. She was drunk already and pawing him. A Mexican kid, maybe ten, came into the bar.
"Shine, Mister?" he said.
"No, thanks," I said.
"Hey, Chico," the bartender said. "How many times I got to tell you, out." He started around the bar.
"Pictures?" the kid said to me.
I shook my head.
"Reefers, maybe? Coke?"
The bartender came around the bar and swiped at the kid with his towel.
"Go on, kid, take a hike."
I took a dollar from my pocket and handed it to the kid.
"Here," I said. "Thanks for asking."
The kid took the bill and dashed for the door.
"You keep coming in here, kid, you're going to end up down to juvie hall, goddammit."
The bartender went back behind the bar shaking his head.
"Beaners," he muttered.
I sipped my rye. The bartender cut up some limes and lemons and stored them in a big-mouthed jar.
The old couple in the booth had another round. She had her head on his shoulder now, her eyes half shut, her mouth dropped open. A fly circled slowly in on the wet spot where my glass had sat. It lazed down close to it, its translucent wings blurred, then it landed and sampled some and rubbed its forefeet together in appreciation. I had another sip of rye.
A red-haired woman came into the bar and glanced around and saw me and came to the bar and sat two stools away. It was the same woman who had played the jukebox during Lola's argument with Victor.
"White wine, Willie," she said.
The bartender got a big jug of wine out of the under-bar refrigerator and poured some in a glass and set it in front of her on a napkin. He put the jug in a sink full of ice, where it was handy, rang up the bill on the register and put it near her on the bar. She picked up the wine and looked at it for a moment and then carefully drank maybe half the glass. She put the glass down on the bar without letting go of the stem and looked at the bartender.
Poodle Springs (philip marlowe) Page 8