I stopped in front of the building and got a flashlight out of the glove compartment and shined it in the doorway. Huddled back, trying to avoid the light, was Angel, the other wife. I switched off the flash and got out of the car, and when I did she dashed out of the doorway and headed up Western toward Hollywood. What I needed, a foot race. I took a deep inhale and headed out after her. I caught her after she had rounded the corner at Hollywood and was heading west. I might not have caught her at all but she broke one of the high heels on her shoes.
"It's me," I said, "Marlowe, the guy that drove off with Larry."
She was breathing very hard, and crying a little from fear, and didn't quite get who I was. I held her arms while she tried to pull away.
"Marlowe," I said, "your pal, your protector, your confidant. I won't hurt you."
She struggled less, then even less, and finally stood, her breath going in and out hard, her shoulders shaking, the tears running down her face. I still held her wrists, but she had stopped trying to hit me, and she wasn't trying to pull away.
"It's me," I said again, "Marlowe the moonlight knight. The shabby savior of ladies in doorways."
I was so tired I was dopey.
"Where's Larry?" she said.
I didn't answer. Instead I looked at the spotlight that was suddenly in my eyes from the car that had swung around the corner from Western and pulled up over the curb beside us.
"Hold it right there," a voice said. It was a cop voice, a little bored, a little tough. They came out of the spotlight on either side of me.
"Hands on the car, Jack," one of them said.
I put my hands on the roof of the car. One of them kicked my legs apart and patted me down. He took the gun from under my arm. Made me wonder why I carried it, people kept taking it away. Then the cop stepped back away from me.
"Got some ID?" he said.
I fished my wallet out again and handed it over and the cop looked at the contents in the light of the spotlight. They were both plainclothes, one fat with his tie snugged up around his neck but off center. The other one, the one doing the talking, was a tall, loose-built guy with glasses. He had on jeans and a tee shirt and wore his gun inside the belt of his jeans in front.
"My name's Bob Kane," he said as he handed me back my wallet. "You mind telling me why you were chasing this lady?"
"I wanted to give her a ride home," I said.
Kane smiled happily.
"Hear that, Gordy?" he said to his fat partner. "Guy just wanted to drive her home."
Gordy had his gun still out but was holding it at his side pointed at the ground.
"No shit," Gordy said. He was wearing a wide-brimmed panama hat with a big flowered band.
"She didn't seem to want to ride home," Kane said. "She kind of looked to be running like hell to get away from you."
"She didn't recognize me," I said.
"You know this guy?" Kane said. His glasses had big round lenses and his eyes were pleasant and heartless behind them, enlarged a little.
Angel nodded. "I know him," she said.
"So how come you were running?" Kane said.
"Like he says, I didn't recognize him."
"How you know him?" Kane said.
"He's a… a friend of my husband's."
"Really," Kane said. "That so, Marlowe?"
"I know him," I said.
"Yeah?" Kane stepped back and leaned against the door of the unmarked police car. He folded his long arms and looked at us for a while.
"Marlowe," he said. "Aren't you the guy found the body in her husband's office?"
"Yeah," I said. This wasn't going well, and I had a sense it wasn't going to get better.
"And now you're down hanging around his office and you just happen to run into his wife and chase her and she runs because she doesn't recognize you."
"Exactly," I said.
"If I was a smart copper," Kane said, "I wouldn't be out here around four o'clock in the morning on stakeout. So this is probably too deep for me, but it looks kind of a funny set of circumstances, if you follow me."
"You're too modest," I said.
"Yeah, probably am, been a failing of mine," Kane said. "You aren't planning to go anywhere far, are you, Marlowe?"
I shrugged.
"You want this guy to give you a ride home, Mrs. Victor?"
Angel nodded.
"Fine," Kane said. "Go ahead."
"Bob," Gordy said, "you oughta haul them in."
"For what?" Kane said.
"Hell, for questioning, hold them until morning, let the lieutenant talk with them."
"Lady's worried about her husband," Kane said. "We'll let him take her home."
"Damn it, Bob," Gordy said.
"Gordy," Kane said, "one of us is a sergeant and one of us isn't. You remember whether it's me or you?"
"You, Bob."
Kane nodded.
"Okay, why don't you go ahead and drive Mrs. Victor on home, Mr. Marlowe. We'll be moseying along behind just to sort of keep track."
He handed me back my gun, I put it under my arm so it would be there when the next guy wanted to take it away, and Angel and I went on down to my car and pulled away. In the rearview mirror I saw the headlights of the unmarked car fall in behind us.
24
"Where's Larry?" Angel said. She was small on the front seat beside me. The dashboard clock said 4:07.
"He's safe," I said.
"I can't wait to see him," she said.
"Can't," I said. "You'd lead the cops right to him."
"Where is he?" she said.
"It's better not to tell you," I said.
"I'm his wife, Mr. Marlowe." She turned in the seat toward me.
"That's why the cops are following you," I said.
"Following?"
"You think they just happened by?" I said. "They have a tail on you."
She turned in the seat and stared back at the headlights behind us.
"Following me?"
It was as if the last half hour hadn't happened.
"Yes, Ma'am," I said.
"Is he all right?" she said. She turned back from staring at the tail and tucked a leg up under herself and leaned an arm against the back of the seat. As she spoke she bent toward me a little.
"He's fine, Angel. He's safe. He misses you."
She nodded. "I miss him."
We were the only cars on the road as we drove toward Venice. The cops lounged along three or four car lengths behind us.
"Who are you?" Angel said.
"Marlowe," I said. "I'm a private detective on a case."
"Are you a friend of Larry's?"
"I just met him once before, the night we ran out on the cops."
"So why are you helping him?"
"Beats me," I said.
"That's no answer," she said. The cop headlights behind us lit most of the interior of my car. In the light her eyes were wide and dark and full of sweetness.
"You're right," I said. "I don't think he killed the woman, but he seems to me the kind of guy that might have a little trouble in his background. Not a tough guy, and not connected. The kind of guy the cops will nail. They'll try him at a night session in Bay City and have him sitting in Chino looking at twenty years to life without ever figuring out how he got there."
"Larry wouldn't kill anyone."
"No," I said. "I don't think so either. Are you married to him?"
Angel nodded. There was pride in that nod, and contentment, and something more, something protective, the way a young mother nods when you ask if that's her baby.
"Almost four years," she said.
"Ever hear of a guy named Les Valentine?" I said.
"No."
"Woman named Muriel Blackstone?"
"No."
We were on Wilshire and when it ran out against the Pacific we turned left and drove along the empty beachfront. The moonlight on the waves emphasized how empty the ocean was, and endless, rolling in from Zanzibar.
"He's wanted for murder," I said.
"But he didn't do that. He's in some other kind of trouble," she said. "The kind that brought you to him."
In the moonlight the buildings looked stately, like Moorish castles, the peeling paint and crumbled stucco smoothed out.
"He is, isn't he, Mr. Marlowe?"
"There's a gambler named Lipshultz," I said. "Larry owes him money. He hired me to find him."
She nodded, a nod of confirmation.
"He's had trouble before, hasn't he?" I said.
"He's an artist, Mr. Marlowe. He's imaginative. Many people have said he's a genius with a camera."
"And?" I said.
"And he's impulsive, he's not good with rules. He feels something, he does it. He has an artistic temperament."
"So he bets hunches," I said.
"Yes."
"And they sometimes don't pay off."
"No, they don't. But he has to be free to follow his intuition, don't you see. To limit him is to stifle him."
"He ever been in other kinds of trouble?"
She was silent for a bit, looking out at the silver ocean rolling slowly toward us. On the beach below, above the tide line, some bums were sleeping, clutching their scraps of belongings.
"I think he's had some trouble with women."
"Like what?" I said.
"I don't know, he never said. I don't question him."
"Why not?" I said.
"I love him," she said. As if it answered all the questions.
"So what makes you think there was trouble with women?"
"There were phone calls for him from a woman, and when he hung up he was angry."
"Un huh."
"And…" She looked at her lap for a moment, where she had folded her hands. I waited, listening to the wheels murmur over the asphalt.
"And?" I said.
"And there was a picture, I saw."
I waited.
"It was a picture of a woman. She was undressed and posing…" She stared harder at her hands. If the light had been better I think I'd have seen her blushing.
"Suggestively?" I said.
"Yes." She said it so softly I could barely hear.
"And you didn't ask him about it?" I said.
"No. It was from the time in Larry's life before he met me. He had a right to that time. It had nothing to do with me."
"You trust him?"
"In the way you mean, yes. He loves me, too."
"He sure as hell ought to," I said.
We pulled up behind the house where she and Larry lived… when Larry wasn't living with his other wife in Poodle Springs. She got out her side and I got out mine and came around. The cops stopped a little ways behind us.
"I'll walk you to the door," I said.
"No need," she said. There was the lilt of anxiety in her voice.
"Just to see that you get in safe," I said. "I'm in love too, with my wife."
Angel smiled suddenly, like sunrise after a rainy night.
"That's lovely," she said. "Isn't it."
"Yes," I said.
We walked down the alley to her front door and she unlocked it and let herself in.
"Thanks," she said.
Then she closed the door. I heard the bolt slide, and turned and headed back to the Olds. When I got in and pulled away the cops blinked their lights once, and then shut them off and settled in to watch.
25
Linda didn't like me staying away overnight. I didn't like it too much myself, but there wasn't much to be done about it. When we had talked about that for most of the late morning, I got to eat some eggs and go to sleep. It was a little after four when I was up again, showered, shaved, smelling like a desert flower and tougher than two armadillos, on my way to the Agony Club to report to my employer.
In the bright sun the parking lot was as empty as it had been last time. I parked again out front under the portcullis and walked in through the door that seemed always slightly ajar. Maybe it was Lippy's trademark, always an open door for a sucker. This time the two gunmen weren't around. Lippy was getting careless. I walked across the gambling hall and knocked on Lippy's door. No answer. They wouldn't leave the front door open with no one around. I knocked again. Same silence. I turned the knob. The door opened and I went in and found him. Even before I found him I knew what I'd find. The air conditioning had slowed the process, but the smell of death was there when the door opened.
Lippy was in his swivel chair behind his desk, with his back to me. His head hung down, chin on his chest. His hands rested on the arms, stiffened now in death, the fingers beginning to bloat. There was black dried blood mingled with the hair on the back of his head. And mixed with the smell of death was a smell of burnt hair. I looked closely and saw that there was singed hair mingled with the blood. I walked around the desk and squatted in front of Lippy. The exit wound was dark and messy. Lippy's face had begun to bloat.
I stood slowly and looked around the room. No sign of struggle, no sign of robbery. A bottle of good Scotch stood on the sideboard, an ice bucket with water in the bottom, one glass. The file drawers were closed and locked. No sign of any attempt to jimmy them. I went back out into the casino and walked around lightly, feeling the emptiness of the place long before I'd proved it to myself by looking. The two bodyguards were nowhere. Probably in the unemployment office.
I sighed out loud in the empty casino. Maybe I was in the wrong business. Maybe I should be an advance man for a funeral parlor. I walked heavily back into Lippy's office. He must have been sitting comfortably, staring out the window, admiring the desert, and someone had leaned over the desk with a small-caliber handgun and shot him in the back of the head. And I came along and found him. I reached over and picked up Lippy's phone and dialed the cops. Pretty soon, at least, I wouldn't be alone.
A couple of highway patrol guys came roaring in about thirty seconds ahead of a couple of Riverside Sheriff's Deputies, and about two minutes ahead of a cruiser from Poodle Springs which was outside its jurisdiction but showed up anyway. The uniforms milled around and told me not to touch anything and examined the scene of the crime for clues and generally marked time till a couple of Riverside investigators showed up in plain clothes with some lab people and a moonfaced guy from the coroner's office.
A dick named Fox took my statement. He was dark haired and tight skinned and wore his sunglasses pushed up on his head while he talked to me.
"Didn't I see your name on the wire last week?" Fox said. "Discovered a murder victim in Hollywood?"
"It's a gift," I said. "At the peak of the season I sometimes discover two, three corpses a day."
"Maybe you do more than discover them," Fox said.
"Sure," I said. "I blast them for no reason then call the buttons at once and wait around for you to come and suspect me. I love being questioned by cops."
Fox nodded, looking at the notes he'd taken on my statement.
"Cops love it too. We got nothing better to do than talk cute with some second-rate gumshoe from the desert."
"I used to be a second-rate gumshoe from L.A.," I said. "I moved out here when I got married."
"Lucky for us," Fox said. "You say Lippy hired you to look for a guy owed him money."
I nodded.
"Who was it?"
I was quiet.
Fox took a deep breath.
"Marlowe," he said, "if you know anything at all besides how to peep through keyholes, you know that this is a murder case and a guy who skipped owing Lippy money is a suspect and that withholding the name of a murder suspect is enough to get your license lifted and your keister in jail."
I nodded. He was right. I was out so far on the limb now for Larry Victor/Les Valentine that I felt like a coconut.
"Guy named Les Valentine," I said. "Lives in the Springs."
Fox turned to one of the Poodle Springs prowlies, an apple-cheeked kid with short blond hair.
"Monson," F
ox said, "you know anybody lives in the Springs named Les Valentine?"
Monson nodded and said, "Lemme speak to you alone, Sarge."
Fox raised his eyebrows and followed Monson across the room. They stood near Lippy's door and talked for a few moments in low voices. I got my pipe out while I waited, and packed it, and got it burning. The coroner was through looking at Lippy. Two guys in coveralls came in with a body bag and a dolly. They worked Lippy's stiff body into the bag and wrestled it onto the dolly and went out the office door. Lippy bumped against the door frame on the way out.
Fox and Monson got through talking and Fox came back to me. He threw one leg over the edge of Lippy's desk and looked down at me.
"Monson says Valentine is married to Clayton Black-stone's daughter."
"He had to whisper that?" I said.
"Says you're married to Harlan Potter's daughter."
"That's what he had to whisper?" I said.
"He had to whisper both," Fox said. "He didn't want you to know that us stalwart minions of the law are impressed with stuff like that."
"Are you?" I said.
"Maybe not, but sometimes people up the line are," Fox said.
"Don't worry about Harlan Potter," I said.
"Sure," Fox said. "I won't worry about him, you won't worry about him, the Sheriff, who's up for reelection this fall, won't worry about him. While you're not worrying about him, take a seat out in the casino for a little bit while we clean up here. We might want to chat some more."
I sat in the casino for about an hour and smoked my pipe while technicians cruised around the premises and Fox spent a lot of time talking on the phone in Lippy's office.
Poodle Springs (philip marlowe) Page 11