The bell chimed and a tall dark girl in jodhpurs opened the door. Sexy was very faint praise for her. The jodhpurs, like her hair, were coal black. She wore a white silk shirt with a scarlet scarf loose around her throat. It was not as vivid as her mouth. She held a long brown cigarette in a pair of tiny golden tweezers. The fingers holding it were more than adequately jeweled. Her black hair was parted in the middle and a line of scalp as white as snow went over the top of her head and dropped out of sight behind. Two thick braids of her shining black hair lay one on each side of her slim brown neck. Each was tied with a small scarlet bow. But it was a long time since she was a little girl.
She looked sharply down at my empty hands. Studio stills are usually a little too big to put in your pocket.
I said: “Miss Weld please.”
“You can give me the stills.” The voice was cool, drawling and insolent, but the eyes were something else. She looked almost as hard to get as a haircut.
“For Miss Weld personally. Sorry.”
“I told you she was taking a bath.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Are you quite sure you have the stills, amigo?”
“As sure as I’ll ever be. Why?”
“Your name?” Her voice froze on the second word, like a feather taking off in a sudden draft. Then it cooed and hovered and soared and eddied and the silent invitation of a smile picked delicately at the corners of her lips, very slowly, like a child trying to pick up a snowflake.
“Your last picture was wonderful, Miss Gonzales.”
The smile flashed like lightning and changed her whole face. The body came erect and vibrant with delight. “But it was stinking,” she glowed. “Positively God-damned stinking, you sweet lovely man. You know but positively God-damn well it was stinking.”
“Nothing with you in it stinks for me, Miss Gonzales.”
She stood away from the door and waved me in. “We will have a drink,” she said. “The God-damnest drink we will have. I adore flattery, however dishonest.”
I went in. A gun in the kidney wouldn’t have surprised me a bit. She stood so that I had to practically push her mammaries out of the way to get through the door. She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight. She closed the door and danced over to a small portable bar.
“Scotch? Or would you prefer a mixed drink? I mix a perfectly loathsome Martini,” she said.
“Scotch is fine, thanks.”
She made a couple of drinks in a couple of glasses you could almost have stood umbrellas in. I sat down in a chintz chair and looked around. The place was old-fashioned. It had a false fireplace with gas logs and a marble mantel, cracks in the plaster, a couple of vigorously colored daubs on the walls that looked lousy enough to have cost money, an old black chipped Steinway and for once no Spanish shawl on it. There were a lot of new-looking books in bright jackets scattered around and a double-barreled shotgun with a handsomely carved stock stood in the corner with a white satin bow tied around the barrels. Hollywood wit.
The dark lady in the jodhpurs handed me a glass and perched on the arm of my chair. “You may call me Dolores if you wish,” she said, taking a hearty swig out of her own tumbler.
“Thanks.”
“And what may I call you?”
I grinned.
“Of course,” she said, “I am most fully aware that you are a God-damn liar and that you have no stills in your pockets. Not that I wish to inquire into your no doubt very private business.”
“Yeah?” I inhaled a couple of inches of my liquor. “Just what kind of bath is Miss Weld taking? An old-fashioned soap or something with Arabian spices in it?”
She waved the remains of the brown cigarette in the small gold clasp. “Perhaps you would like to help her. The bathroom is over there—through the arch and to the right. Most probably the door is not locked.”
“Not if it’s that easy,” I said.
“Oh,” she gave me the brilliant smile again. “You like to do the difficult things in life. I must remember to be less approachable, must I not?” She removed herself elegantly from the arm of my chair and ditched her cigarette, bending over enough so that I could trace the outline of her hips.
“Don’t bother, Miss Gonzales. I’m just a guy who came here on business. I don’t have any idea of raping anybody.”
“No?” The smile became soft, lazy and, if you can’t think of a better word, provocative.
“But I’m sure as hell working up to it,” I said.
“You are an amusing son-of-a-bitch,” she said with a shrug and went off through the arch, carrying her half-quart of Scotch and water with her. I heard a gentle tapping on a door and her voice: “Darling, there’s a man here who says he has some stills from the studio. He says. Muy simpático. Muy guapo también. Con cojones.”
A voice I had heard before said sharply: “Shut up, you little bitch. I’ll be out in a second.”
The Gonzales came back through the archway humming. Her glass was empty. She went to the bar again. “But you are not drinking,” she cried, looking at my glass.
“I ate dinner. I only have a two-quart stomach anyway. I understand a little Spanish.”
She tossed her head. “You are shocked?” Her eyes rolled. Her shoulders did a fan dance.
“I’m pretty hard to shock.”
“But you heard what I said? Madre de Dios. I’m so terribly sorry.”
“I’ll bet,” I said.
She finished making herself another highball.
“Yes. I am so sorry,” she sighed. “That is, I think I am. Sometimes I am not sure. Sometimes I do not give a good goddamn. It is so confusing. All my friends tell me I am far too outspoken. I do shock you, don’t I?” She was on the arm of my chair again.
“No. But if I wanted to be shocked I’d know right where to come.” She reached her glass behind her indolently and leaned towards me.
“But I do not live here,” she said. “I live at the Chateau Bercy.”
“Alone?”
She slapped me delicately across the tip of my nose. The next thing I knew I had her in my lap and she was trying to bite a piece off my tongue. “You are a very sweet son-of-a-bitch,” she said. Her mouth was as hot as ever a mouth was. Her lips burned like dry ice. Her tongue was driving hard against my teeth. Her eyes looked enormous and black and the whites showed under them.
“I am so tired,” she whispered into my mouth. “I am so worn, so incredibly tired.”
I felt her hand in my breast pocket. I shoved her off hard, but she had my wallet. She danced away with it laughing, flicked it open and went through it with fingers that darted like little snakes.
“So glad you two got acquainted,” a voice off to one side said coolly. Mavis Weld stood in the archway.
Her hair was fluffed out carelessly and she hadn’t bothered with make-up. She wore a hostess gown and very little else. Her legs ended in a little green and silver slippers. Her eyes were empty, her lips contemptuous. But she was the same girl all right, dark glasses on or off.
The Gonzales gave her a quick darting glance, closed my wallet and tossed it. I caught it and put it away. She strolled to a table and picked up a black bag with a long strap, hooked it over her shoulder and moved towards the door.
Mavis Weld didn’t move, didn’t look at her. She looked at me. But there was no emotion of any kind in her face. The Gonzales opened the door and glanced outside and almost closed it and turned.
“The name is Philip Marlowe,” she said to Mavis Weld. “Nice don’t you think?”
“I didn’t know you bothered to ask them their names,” Mavis Weld said. “You so seldom know them long enough.”
“I see,” the Gonzales answered gently. She turned and smiled at me faintly. “Such a charming way to call a girl a whore, don’t you think?”
Mavis Weld said nothing. Her face had no expression.
“At least,” the Gonzales said smoothly as she pulled the door open again, “I haven’t been sleeping with any gunmen lately.”<
br />
“Are you sure you can remember?” Mavis Weld asked her in exactly the same tone. “Open the door, honey. This is the day we put the garbage out.”
The Gonzales looked back at her slowly, levelly, and with a knife in her eyes. Then she made a faint sound with her lips and teeth and yanked the door wide. It closed behind her with a jarring smash. The noise didn’t even flicker the steady dark-blue glare in Mavis Weld’s eyes.
“Now suppose you do the same—but more quietly,” she said.
I got out a handkerchief and scrubbed the lipstick over my face. It looked exactly the color of blood, fresh blood. “That could happen to anybody,” I said. “I wasn’t petting her. She was petting me.”
She marched to the door and heaved it open. “On your way, dreamboat. Make with the feet.”
“I came here on business, Miss Weld.”
“Yes. I can imagine. Out. I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. And if I did, this wouldn’t be either the day or the hour.”
“Never the time and place and the loved one all together,” I said.
“What’s that?” She tried to throw me out with the point of her chin, but even she wasn’t that good.
“Browning. The poet, not the automatic. I feel sure you’d prefer the automatic.”
“Look little man, do I have to call the manager to bounce you downstairs like a basketball?”
I went over and pushed the door shut. She held on to the last moment. She didn’t quite kick me, but it cost her an effort not to. I tried to ease her away from the door without appearing to. She didn’t ease worth a darn. She stood her ground, one hand still reaching for the doorknob, her eyes full of dark-blue rage.
If you’re going to stand that close to me,” I said, “maybe you’d better put some clothes on.”
She took her hand back and swung it hard. The slap sounded like Miss Gonzales slamming the door, but it stung. And it reminded me of the sore place on the back of my head.
“Did I hurt you?” she said softly.
I nodded.
“That’s fine.” She hauled off and slapped me again, harder if anything. “I think you’d better kiss me,” she breathed. Her eyes were clear and limpid and melting. I glanced down casually. Her right hand was balled into a very businesslike fist. It wasn’t too small to work with, either.
“Believe me,” I said. “There’s only one reason I don’t. Even if you had your little black gun with you. Or the brass knuckles you probably keep on your night table.”
She smiled politely.
“I might just happen to be working for you,” I said. “And I don’t go whoring around after every pair of legs I see.” I looked down at hers. I could see them all right and the flag that marked the goal line was no larger than it had to be. She pulled the hostess gown together and turned and walked over to the little bar shaking her head.
“I’m free, white and twenty-one,” she said. “I’ve seen all the approaches there are. I think I have. If I can’t scare you, lick you, or seduce you, what the hell can I buy you with?”
“Well—”
“Don’t tell me,” she interrupted sharply and turned with a glass in her hand. She drank and tossed the loose hair around and smiled a thin little smile. “Money, of course. How damned stupid of me to overlook that.”
“Money would help,” I said.
Her mouth twisted in wry disgust but the voice was almost affectionate. “How much money?”
“Oh a hundred bucks would do to start with.”
“You’re cheap. It’s a cheap little bastard, isn’t it? A hundred bucks it says. Is a hundred bucks money in your circle, darling?”
“Make it two hundred then. I could retire on that.”
“Still cheap. Every week of course. In a nice clean envelope?”
“You could skip the envelope. I’d only get it dirty.”
“And just what would I get for this money, my charming little gum-shoe? I’m quite sure of what you are, of course.”
“You’d get a receipt. Who told you I was a gum-shoe?”
She stared out of her own eyes for a brief instant before the act dropped over her again. “It must have been the smell.” She sipped her drink and stared at me over it with a faint smile of contempt.
“I’m beginning to think you write your own dialogue,” I said. “I’ve been wondering just what was the matter with it.”
I ducked. A few drops splattered me. The glass splintered on the wall behind me. The broken pieces fell soundlessly.
“And with that,” she said, completely calm, “I believe I must have used up my entire stock of girlish charm.”
I went over and picked up my hat. “I never thought you killed him,” I said. “But it would help to have some sort of reason for not telling you were there. It’s a help to have enough money for a retainer just to establish myself. And enough information to justify my accepting the retainer.”
She picked a cigarette out of a box, tossed it in the air, caught it between her lips effortlessly and lit it with a match that came from nowhere.
“My goodness. Am I supposed to have killed somebody?” she asked. I was still holding the hat. It made me feel foolish. I don’t know why. I put it on and started for the door.
“I trust you have carfare home,” the contemptuous voice said behind me.
I didn’t answer. I just kept going. When I had the door ready to open she said: “I also trust Miss Gonzales gave you her address and phone number. You should be able to get almost anything out of her—including, I am told, money.”
I let go of the doorknob and went back across the room fast. She stood her ground and the smile on her lips didn’t slip a millimeter.
“Look,” I said. “You’re going to find this hard to believe. But I came over here with the quaint idea that you might be a girl who needed some help—and would find it rather hard to get anyone you could bank on. I figured you went to that hotel room to make some kind of a payoff. And the fact that you went by yourself and took chances on being recognized—and were recognized by a house dick whose standard of ethics would take about as much strain as a very tired old cobweb—all this made me think you might be in one of those Hollywood jams that really mean curtains. But you’re not in any jam. You’re right up front under the baby spot pulling every tired ham gesture you ever used in the most tired B-picture you ever acted in—if acting is the word—”
“Shut up,” she said, between teeth so tight they grated. “Shut up, you slimy, blackmailing keyhole peeper.”
“You don’t need me,” I said. “You don’t need anybody. You’re so God-damn smart you could talk your way out of a safe-deposit box. Okay. Go ahead and talk your way out. I won’t stop you. Just don’t make me listen to it. I’d burst out crying to think a mere slip of an innocent little girl like you should be so clever. You do things to me, honey. Just like Margaret O’Brien.”
She didn’t move or breathe when I reached the door, nor when I opened it. I don’t know why. The stuff wasn’t that good.
I went down the stairs and across the court and out of the front door, almost bumping into a slim dark-eyed man who was standing there lighting a cigarette.
“Excuse me,” he said quietly, “I’m afraid I’m in your way.”
I started to go around him, then I noticed that his lifted right hand held a key. I reached out and snapped it out of his hand for no reason at all. I looked at the number stamped on it. No. 14. Mavis Weld’s apartment. I threw it off behind some bushes.
“You don’t need that,” I said. “The door isn’t locked.”
“Of course,” he said. There was a peculiar smile on his face. “How stupid of me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re both stupid. Anybody’s stupid that bothers with that tramp.”
“I wouldn’t quite say that,” he answered quietly, his small sad eyes watching me without any particular expression.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I just said it for you. I beg your pardon. I’ll g
et your key.” I went over behind the bushes, picked it up and handed it to him.
“Thank you very much,” he said. “And by the way—” He stopped. I stopped. “I hope I don’t interrupt an interesting quarrel,” he said. “I should hate to do that. No?” He smiled. “Well, since Miss Weld is a friend in common, may I introduce myself. My name is Steelgrave. Haven’t I seen you somewhere?”
“No you haven’t seen me anywhere, Mr. Steelgrave,” I said. “My name’s Marlowe, Philip Marlowe. It’s extremely unlikely that we’ve met. And strange to relate I never heard of you, Mr. Steelgrave. And I wouldn’t give a damn, even if your name was Weepy Moyer.” I never knew quite why I said that. There was nothing to make me say it, except that the name had been mentioned. A peculiar stillness came over his face. A peculiar fixed look in his silent black eyes. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, looked at the tip, flicked a little ash off it, although there was no ash to flick off, looking down as he said: “Weepy Moyer? Peculiar name. I don’t think I ever heard that. Is he somebody I should know?”
“Not unless you’re unusually fond of ice picks,” I said, and left him. I went on down the steps, crossed to my car, looked back before I got in. He was standing there looking down at me, the cigarette between his lips. From that distance I couldn’t see whether there was any expression on his face. He didn’t move or make any kind of gesture when I looked back at him. He didn’t even turn away. He just stood there. I got in and drove off.
CHAPTER 13
I drove east on Sunset but I didn’t go home. At La Brea I turned north and swung over to Highland, out over Cahuenga Pass and down on to Ventura Boulevard, past Studio City and Sherman Oaks and Encino. There was nothing lonely about the trip. There never is on that road. Fast boys in stripped-down Fords shot in and out of the traffic streams, missing fenders by a sixteenth of an inch, but somehow always missing them. Tired men in dusty coupés and sedans winced and tightened their grip on the wheel and ploughed on north and west towards home and dinner, an evening with the sports page, the blatting of the radio, the whining of their spoiled children and the gabble of their silly wives. I drove on past the gaudy neons and the false fronts behind them, the sleazy hamburger joints that look like palaces under the colors, the circular drive-ins as gay as circuses with the chipper hard-eyed carhops, the brilliant counters, and the sweaty greasy kitchens that would have poisoned a toad. Great double trucks rumbled down over Sepulveda from Wilmington and San Pedro and crossed towards the Ridge Route, starting up in low-low from the traffic lights with a growl of lions in the zoo.
The Collected Raymond Chandler Page 95