“I need a drink,” she said after a thick pause. “Or maybe I’ll fall down.”
“That’s a lovely coat,” I said. I was up to her now. I reached out and touched it. She didn’t move. Her mouth moved in and out, trembling.
“Stone marten,” she whispered. “Forty thousand dollars. Rented. For the picture.”
“Is this part of the picture?” I gestured around the room.
“This is the picture to end all pictures—for me. I—I do need that drink. If I try to walk—” the clear voice whispered away into nothing. Her eyelids fluttered up and down.
“Go ahead and faint,” I said. “I’ll catch you on the first bounce.”
A smile struggled to arrange her face for smiling. She pressed her lips together, fighting hard to stay on her feet.
“Why did I come too late?” I asked. “Too late for what?”
“Too late to be shot.”
“Shucks, I’ve been looking forward to it all evening. Miss Gonzales brought me.”
“I know.”
I reached out and touched the fur again. Forty thousand dollars is nice to touch, even rented.
“Dolores will be disappointed as hell,” she said, her mouth edged with white.
“No.”
“She put you on the spot—just as she did Stein.”
“She may have started out to. But she changed her mind.”
She laughed. It was a silly pooped-out little laugh like a child trying to be supercilious at a playroom tea party.
“What a way you have with the girls,” she whispered. “How the hell do you do it, wonderful? With doped cigarettes? It can’t be your clothes or your money or your personality. You don’t have any. You’re not too young, nor too beautiful. You’ve seen your best days and—”
Her voice had been coming faster and faster, like a motor with a broken governor. At the end she was chattering. When she stopped a spent sigh drifted along the silence and she caved at the knees and fell straight forward into my arms.
If it was an act if worked perfectly. I might have had guns in all nine pockets and they would have been as much use to me as nine little pink candles on a birthday cake.
But nothing happened. No hard characters peeked at me with automatics in their hands. No Steelgrave smiled at me with the faint dry remote killer’s smile. No stealthy footsteps crept up behind me.
She hung in my arms as limp as a wet tea towel and not as heavy as Orrin Quest, being less dead, but heavy enough to make the tendons in my knee joints ache. Her eyes were closed when I pushed her head away from my chest. Her breath was inaudible and she had that bluish look on the parted lips.
I got my right hand under her knees and carried her over to a gold couch and spread her out on it. I straightened up and went along to the bar. There was a telephone on the corner of it but I couldn’t find the way through to the bottles. So I had to swing over the top. I got a likely-looking bottle with a blue and silver label and five stars on it. The cork had been loosened. I poured dark and pungent brandy into the wrong kind of glass and went back over the bar top, taking the bottle with me.
She was lying as I had left her, but her eyes were open.
“Can you hold a glass?”
She could, with a little help. She drank the brandy and pressed the edge of the glass hard against her lips as if she wanted to hold them still. I watched her breathe into the glass and cloud it. A slow smile formed itself on her mouth.
“It’s cold tonight,” she said.
She swung her legs over the edge of the couch and put her feet on the floor.
“More,” she said, holding the glass out. I poured into it. “Where’s yours?”
“Not drinking. My emotions are being worked on enough without that.”
The second drink made her shudder. But the blue look had gone away from her mouth and her lips didn’t glare like stop lights and the little etched lines at the corners of her eyes were not in relief any more.
“Who’s working on your emotions?”
“Oh, a lot of women that keep throwing their arms around my neck and fainting on me and getting kissed and so forth. Quite a full couple of days for a beat-up gumshoe with no yacht.”
“No yacht,” she said. “I’d hate that. I was brought up rich.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You were born with a Cadillac in your mouth. And I could guess where.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Could you?”
“Didn’t think it was a very tight secret, did you?”
“I—I—” She broke off and made a helpless gesture. “I can’t think of any lines tonight.”
“It’s the technicolor dialogue,” I said. “It freezes up on you.”
“Aren’t we talking like a couple of nuts?”
“We could get sensible. Where’s Steelgrave?”
She just looked at me. She held the empty glass out and I took it and put it somewhere or other without taking my eyes off her. Nor she hers off me. It seemed as if a long long minute went by.
“He was here,” she said at last, as slowly as if she had to invent the words one at a time. “May I have a cigarette?”
“The old cigarette stall,” I said. I got a couple out and put them in my mouth and lit them. I leaned across and tucked one between her ruby lips.
“Nothing’s cornier than that,” she said. “Except maybe butterfly kisses.”
“Sex is a wonderful thing,” I said. “When you don’t want to answer questions.”
She puffed loosely and blinked, then put her hand up to adjust the cigarette. After all these years I can never put a cigarette in a girl’s mouth where she wants it.
She gave her head a toss and swung the soft loose hair around her cheeks and watched me to see how hard that hit me. All the whiteness had gone now. Her cheeks were a little flushed. But behind her eyes things watched and waited.
“You’re rather nice,” she said, when I didn’t do anything sensational. “For the kind of guy you are.”
I stood that well too.
“But I don’t really know what kind of guy you are, do I?” She laughed suddenly and a tear came from nowhere and slid down her cheek. “For all I know you might be nice for any kind of guy.” She snatched the cigarette loose and put her hand to her mouth and bit on it. “What’s the matter with me? Am I drunk?”
“You’re stalling for time,” I said. “But I can’t make up my mind whether it’s to give someone time to get here—or to give somebody time to get far away from here. And again it could just be brandy on top of shock. You’re a little girl and you want to cry into your mother’s apron.”
“Not my mother,” she said. “I could get as far crying into a rain barrel.”
“Dealt and passed. So where is Steelgrave?”
“You ought to be glad wherever he is. He had to kill you. Or thought he had.”
“You wanted me here, didn’t you? Were you that fond of him?”
She blew cigarette ash off the back of her hand. A flake of it went into my eye and made me blink.
“I must have been,” she said, “once.” She put a hand down on her knee and spread the fingers out, studying the nails. She brought her eyes up slowly without moving her head. “It seems like about a thousand years ago I met a nice quiet little guy who knew how to behave in public and didn’t shoot his charm around every bistro in town. Yes, I liked him. I liked him a lot.”
She put her hand up to her mouth and bit a knuckle. Then she put the same hand into the pocket of the fur coat and brought out a white-handled automatic, the brother of the one I had myself.
“And in the end I liked him with this,” she said.
I went over and took it out of her hand. I sniffed the muzzle. Yes. That made two of them fired around.
“Aren’t you going to wrap it up in a handkerchief, the way they do in the movies?”
I just dropped it into my other pocket, where it could pick up a few interesting crumbs of tobacco and some seeds that grow only on the southeast slope of th
e Beverly Hills City Hall. It might amuse a police chemist for a while.
CHAPTER 28
I watched her for a minute, biting at the end of my lip. She watched me. I saw no change of expression. Then I started prowling the room with my eyes. I lifted up the dust cover on one of the long tables. Under it was a roulette layout but no wheel. Under the table was nothing.
“Try that chair with the magnolias on it,” she said.
She didn’t look towards it so I had to find it myself. Surprising how long it took me. It was a high-backed wing chair, covered in flowered chintz, the kind of chair that a long time ago was intended to keep the draft off while you sat crouched over a fire of cannel coal.
It was turned away from me. I went over there walking softly, in low gear. It almost faced the wall. Even at that it seemed ridiculous that I hadn’t spotted him on my way back from the bar. He leaned in the corner of the chair with his head tilted back. His carnation was red and white and looked as fresh as though the flower girl had just pinned it into his lapel. His eyes were half open as such eyes usually are. They stared at a point in the corner of the ceiling. The bullet had gone through the outside pocket of his double-breasted jacket. It had been fired by someone who knew where the heart was.
I touched his cheek and it was still warm. I lifted his hand and let it fall. It was quite limp. It felt like the back of somebody’s hand. I reached for the big artery in his neck. No blood moved in him and very little had stained his jacket. I wiped my hands off on my handkerchief and stood for a little longer looking down at his quiet little face. Everything I had done or not done, everything wrong and everything right—all wasted.
I went back and sat down near her and squeezed my kneecaps.
“What did you expect me to do?” she asked. “He killed my brother.”
“Your brother was no angel.”
“He didn’t have to kill him.”
“Somebody had to—and quick.”
Her eyes widened suddenly.
I said: “Didn’t you ever wonder why Steelgrave never went after me and why he let you go to the Van Nuys yesterday instead of going himself? Didn’t you ever wonder why a fellow with his resources and experience never tried to get hold of those photographs, no matter what he had to do to get them?”
She didn’t answer.
“How long have you known the photographs existed?” I asked.
“Weeks, nearly two months. I got one in the mail a couple of days after—after that time we had lunch together.”
“After Stein was killed.”
“Yes, of course,”
“Did you think Steelgrave had killed Stein?”
“No. Why should I? Until tonight, that is.”
“What happened after you got the photo?”
“My brother Orrin called me up and said he had lost his job and was broke. He wanted money. He didn’t say anything about the photo. He didn’t have to. There was only one time it could have been taken.”
“How did he get your number?”
“Telephone? How did you?”
“Bought it.”
“Well—” She made a vague movement with her hand. “Why not call the police and get it over with.”
“Wait a minute. Then what? More prints of the photo?”
“One every week. I showed them to him.” She gestured toward the chintzy chair. “He didn’t like it. I didn’t tell him about Orrin.”
“He must have known. His kind find things out.”
“I suppose so.”
“But not where Orrin was hiding out,” I said. “Or he wouldn’t have waited this long. When did you tell Steelgrave?”
She looked away from me. Her fingers kneaded her arm. “Today,” she said in a distant voice.
“Why today?”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Please,” she said. “Don’t ask me a lot of useless questions. Don’t torment me. There’s nothing you can do. I thought there was—when I called Dolores. There isn’t now.”
I said: “All right. There’s something you don’t seem to understand. Steelgrave knew that whoever was behind that photograph wanted money—a lot of money. He knew that sooner or later the blackmailer would have to show himself. That was what Steelgrave was waiting for. He didn’t care anything about the photo itself, except for your sake.”
“He certainly proved that,” she said wearily.
“In his own way,” I said.
Her voice came to me with glacial calm. “He killed my brother. He told me so himself. The gangster showed through then all right. Funny people you meet in Hollywood, don’t you—including me.”
“You were fond of him once,” I said brutally.
Red spots flared on her cheeks.
“I’m not fond of anybody,” she said. “I’m all through being fond of people.” She glanced briefly towards the highbacked chair. “I stopped being fond of him last night. He asked me about you, who you were and so on. I told him. I told him that I would have to admit that I was at the Van Nuys Hotel when that man was lying there dead.”
“You were going to tell the police that?”
“I was going to tell Julius Oppenheimer. He would know how to handle it.”
“If he didn’t one of his dogs would,” I said.
She didn’t smile. I didn’t either.
“If Oppenheimer couldn’t handle it, I’d be through in pictures,” she added without interest. “Now I’m through everywhere else as well.”
I got a cigarette out and lit it. I offered her one. She didn’t want one. I wasn’t in any hurry. Time seemed to have lost its grip on me. And almost everything else. I was flat out.
“You’re going too fast for me,” I said, after a moment. “You didn’t know when you went to the Van Nuys that Steelgrave was Weepy Moyer.”
“No.”
“Then what did you go there for?”
“To buy back those photographs.”
“That doesn’t check. The photographs didn’t mean anything to you then. They were just you and him having lunch.”
She stared at me and winked her eyes tight, then opened them wide. “I’m not going to cry,” she said. “I said I didn’t know. But when he was in jail that time, I had to know there was something about him that he didn’t care to have known. I knew he had been in some kind of racket, I guess. But not killing people.”
I said: “Uh-huh.” I got up and walked around the highbacked chair again. Her eyes traveled slowly to watch me. I leaned over the dead Steelgrave and felt under his arm on the left side. There was a gun there in the holster. I didn’t touch it. I went back and sat down opposite her again.
“It’s going to cost a lot of money to fix this,” I said.
For the first time she smiled. It was a very small smile, but it was a smile. “I don’t have a lot of money,” she said. “So that’s out.”
“Oppenheimer has. You’re worth millions to him by now.”
“He wouldn’t chance it. Too many people have their knives into the picture business these days. He’ll take his loss and forget it in six months.”
“You said you’d go to him.”
“I said if I got into a jam and hadn’t really done anything, I’d go to him. But I have done something now.”
“How about Ballou? You’re worth a lot to him too.”
“I’m not worth a plugged nickel to anybody. Forget it, Marlowe. You mean well, but I know these people.”
“That puts it up to me,” I said. “That would be why you sent for me.”
“Wonderful,” she said. “You fix it, darling. For free.” Her voice was brittle and shallow again.
I went and sat beside her on the davenport. I took hold of her arm and pulled her hand out of the fur pocket and took hold of that. It was almost ice cold, in spite of the fur.
She turned her head and looked at me squarely. She shook her head a little. “Believe me, darling, I’m not worth it—even to sleep with.”
I turned the hand over and opened the fing
ers out. They were stiff and resisted. I opened them out one by one. I smoothed the palm of her hand.
“Tell me why you had the gun with you.”
“The gun?”
“Don’t take time to think. Just tell me. Did you mean to kill him?”
“Why not, darling? I thought I meant something to him. I guess I’m a little vain. He fooled me. Nobody means anything to the Steelgraves of this world. And nobody means anything to the Mavis Welds of this world any more.”
She pulled away from me and smiled thinly. “I oughtn’t to have given you that gun. If I killed you I might get clear yet.”
I took it out and held it towards her. She took it and stood up quickly. The gun pointed at me. The small tired smile moved her lips again. Her finger was very firm on the trigger.
“Shoot high,” I said. “I’m wearing my bullet-proof underwear.”
She dropped the gun to her side and for a moment she just stood staring at me. Then she tossed the gun down on the davenport.
“I guess I don’t like the script,” she said. “I don’t like the lines. It just isn’t me, if you know what I mean.”
She laughed and looked down at the floor. The point of her shoe moved back and forth on the carpeting. “We’ve had a nice chat, darling. The phone’s over there at the end of the bar.”
“Thanks, do you remember Dolores’s number?”
“Why Dolores?”
When I didn’t answer she told me. I went along the room to the corner of the bar and dialed. The same routine as before. Good evening, the Chateau Bercy, who is calling Miss Gonzales please. One moment, please, buzz, buzz, and then a sultry voice saying: “Hello?”
“This is Marlowe. Did you really mean to put me on a spot?”
I could almost hear her breath catch. Not quite. You can’t really hear it over the phone. Sometimes you think you can.
“Amigo, but I am glad to hear your voice,” she said, “I am so very very glad.”
“Did you or didn’t you?”
“I—I don’t know. I am very sad to think that I might have. I like you very much.”
“I’m in a little trouble here.”
The Collected Raymond Chandler Page 107