The Collected Raymond Chandler

by Raymond Chandler

  “That’s what’s been the matter all along,” I said. “I just wouldn’t buy what was staring me in the face. Steelgrave is Weepy Moyer. That’s solid, isn’t it?”

  “Most certainly. And it can be proved.”

  “Steelgrave is a reformed character and doing fine. Then this Stein comes out bothering him, wanting to cut in. I’m guessing, but that’s about how it would happen. Okay, Stein has to go. Steelgrave doesn’t want to kill anybody—and he has never been accused of killing anybody. The Cleveland cops wouldn’t come out and get him. No charges pending. No mystery—except that he had been connected with a mob in some capacity. But he has to get rid of Stein. So he gets himself pinched. And then he gets out of jail by bribing the jail doctor, and he kills Stein and goes back into jail at once. When the killing shows up whoever let him out of jail is going to run like hell and destroy any records there might be of his going out. Because the cops will come over and ask questions.”

  “Very naturally, amigo.”

  I looked her over for cracks, but there weren’t any yet.

  “So far so good. But we’ve got to give this lad credit for a few brains. Why did he let them hold him in jail for ten days? Answer One, to make himself an alibi. Answer Two, because he knew that sooner or later this question of him being Moyer was going to get aired, so why not give them the time and get it over with? That way any time a racket boy gets blown down around here they’re not going to keep pulling Steelgrave in and trying to hang the rap on him.”

  “You like that idea, amigo?”

  “Yes. Look at it this way. Why would he have lunch in a public place the very day he was out of the cooler to knock Stein off? And if he did, why would young Quest happen around to snap that picture? Stein hadn’t been killed, so the picture wasn’t evidence of anything. I like people to be lucky, but that’s too lucky. Again, even if Steelgrave didn’t know his picture had been taken, he knew who Quest was. Must have. Quest had been tapping his sister for eating money since he lost his job, maybe before. Steelgrave had a key to her apartment. He must have known something about this brother of hers. Which simply adds up to the result, that that night of all nights Steelgrave would not have shot Stein—even if he had planned to.”

  “It is now for me to ask you who did,” she said politely.

  “Somebody who knew Stein and could get close to him. Somebody who already knew that photo had been taken, knew who Steelgrave was, knew that Mavis Weld was on the edge of becoming a big star, knew that her association with Steelgrave was dangerous, but would be a thousand times more dangerous if Steelgrave could be framed for the murder of Stein. Knew Quest, because he had been to Mavis Weld’s apartment, and had met him there and given him the works, and he was a boy that could be knocked clean out of his mind by that sort of treatment. Knew that those bone-handled .32’s were registered to Steelgrave, although he had only bought them to give to a couple of girls, and if he carried a gun himself, it would be one that was not registered and could not be traced to him. Knew—”

  “Stop!” Her voice was a sharp stab of sound, but neither frightened nor even angry. “You will stop at once, please! I will not tolerate this another minute. You will now go!”

  I stood up. She leaned back and a pulse beat in her throat. She was exquisite, she was dark, she was deadly. And nothing would ever touch her, not even the law.

  “Why did you kill Quest?” I asked her.

  She stood up and came close to me, smiling again. “For two reasons, amigo. He was more than a little crazy and in the end he would have killed me. And the other reason is that none of this—absolutely none of it—was for money. It was for love.”

  I started to laugh in her face. I didn’t. She was dead serious. It was out of this world.

  “No matter how many lovers a woman may have,” she said softly, “there is always one she cannot bear to lose to another woman. Steelgrave was the one.”

  I just stared into her lovely dark eyes. “I believe you,” I said at last.

  “Kiss me, amigo.”

  “Good God!”

  “I must have men, amigo. But the man I loved is dead. I killed him. That man I would not share.”

  “You waited a long time.”

  “I can be patient—as long as there is hope.”

  “Oh, nuts.”

  She smiled a free, beautiful and perfectly natural smile. “And you cannot do a damn thing about all this, darling, unless you destroy Mavis Weld utterly and finally.”

  “Last night she proved she was willing to destroy herself.”

  “If she was not acting.” She looked at me sharply and laughed. “That hurt, did it not? You are in love with her.”

  I said slowly, “That would be kind of silly. I could sit in the dark with her and hold hands, but for how long? In a little while she will drift off into a haze of glamour and expensive clothes and froth and unreality and muted sex. She won’t be a real person any more. Just a voice from a sound track, a face on a screen. I’d want more than that.”

  I moved towards the door without putting my back to her. I didn’t really expect a slug. I thought she liked better having me the way I was—and not being able to do a damn thing about any of it.

  I looked back as I opened the door. Slim, dark and lovely and smiling. Reeking with sex. Utterly beyond the moral laws of this or any world I could imagine.

  She was one for the book all right. I went out quetly. Very softly her voice came to me as I closed the door.

  “Querido—I have liked you very much. It is too bad.”

  I shut the door.

  CHAPTER 35

  As the elevator opened at the lobby a man stood there waiting for it. He was tall and thin and his hat was pulled low over his eyes. It was a warm day but he wore a thin topcoat with the collar up. He kept his chin low.

  “Dr. Lagardie,” I said softly.

  He glanced at me with no trace of recognition. He moved into the elevator. It started up.

  I went across to the desk and banged the bell. The large fat soft man came out and stood with a pained smile on his loose mouth. His eyes were not quite so bright.

  “Give me the phone.”

  He reached down and put it on the desk. I dialed Madison 7911. The voice said: “Police.” This was the Emergency Board.

  “Chateau Bercy Apartments, Franklin and Girard in Hollywood. A man named Dr. Vincent Lagardie wanted for questioning by homicide, Lieutenants French and Beifus, has just gone up to Apartment 412. This is Philip Marlowe, a private detective.”

  “Franklin and Girard. Wait there please. Are you armed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold him if he tries to leave.”

  I hung up and wiped my mouth off. The fat softy was leaning against the counter, white around the eyes.

  They came fast—but not fast enough. Perhaps I ought to have stopped him. Perhaps I had a hunch what he would do, and deliberately let him do it. Sometimes when I’m low I try to reason it out. But it gets too complicated. The whole damn case was that way. There was never a point where I could do the natural obvious thing without stopping to rack my head dizzy with figuring how it would affect somebody I owed something to.

  When they cracked the door he was sitting on the couch holding her pressed against his heart. His eyes were blind and there was bloody foam on his lips. He had bitten through his tongue.

  Under her left breast and tight against the flame-colored shirt lay the silver handle of a knife I had seen before. The handle was in the shape of a naked woman. The eyes of Miss Dolores Gonzales were half open and on her lips there was the dim ghost of a provocative smile.

  “The Hippocrates smile,” the ambulance intern said, and sighed. “On her it looks good.”

  He glanced across at Dr. Lagardie who saw nothing and heard nothing, if you could judge by his face.

  “I guess somebody lost a dream,” the intern said. He bent over and closed her eyes.

  THE LONG GOODBYE

  CHAPTER 1


  The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers. The parking lot attendant had brought the car out and he was still holding the door open because Terry Lennox’s left foot was still dangling outside, as if he had forgotten he had one. He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white. You could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a joint that exists for that purpose and for no other.

  There was a girl beside him. Her hair was a lovely shade of dark red and she had a distant smile on her lips and over her shoulders she had a blue mink that almost made the Rolls-Royce look like just another automobile. It didn’t quite. Nothing can.

  The attendant was the usual half-tough character in a white coat with the name of the restaurant stitched across the front of it in red. He was getting fed up.

  “Look, mister,” he said with an edge to his voice, “would you mind a whole lot pulling your leg into the car so I can kind of shut the door? Or should I open it all the way so you can fall out?”

  The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back. It didn’t bother him enough to give him the shakes. At The Dancers they get the sort of people that disillusion you about what a lot of golfing money can do for the personality.

  A low-swung foreign speedster with no top drifted into the parking lot and a man got out of it and used the dash lighter on a long cigarette. He was wearing a pullover check shirt, yellow slacks, and riding boots. He strolled off trailing clouds of incense, not even bothering to look towards the Rolls-Royce. He probably thought it was corny. At the foot of the steps up to the terrace he paused to stick a monocle in his eye.

  The girl said with a nice burst of charm: “I have a wonderful idea, darling. Why don’t we just take a cab to your place and get your convertible out? It’s such a wonderful night for a run up the coast to Montecito. I know some people there who are throwing a dance around the pool.”

  The white-haired lad said politely: “Awfully sorry, but I don’t have it any more. I was compelled to sell it.” From his voice and articulation you wouldn’t have known he had had anything stronger than orange juice to drink.

  “Sold it, darling? How do you mean?” She slid away from him along the seat but her voice slid away a lot farther than that.

  “I mean I had to,” he said. “For eating money.”

  “Oh, I see.” A slice of spumoni wouldn’t have melted on her now.

  The attendant had the white-haired boy right where he could reach him—in a low-income bracket. “Look, buster,” he said, “I’ve got to put a car away. See you some more some other time—maybe.”

  He let the door swing open. The drunk promptly slid off the seat and landed on the blacktop on the seat of his pants. So I went over and dropped my nickel. I guess it’s always a mistake to interfere with a drunk. Even if he knows and likes you he is always liable to haul off and poke you in the teeth. I got him under the arms and got him up on his feet.

  “Thank you so very much,” he said politely.

  The girl slid under the wheel. “He gets so goddam English when he’s loaded,” she said in a stainless-steel voice. “Thanks for catching him.”

  “I’ll get him in the back of the car,” I said.

  “I’m terribly sorry. I’m late for an engagement.” She let the clutch in and the Rolls started to glide. “He’s just a lost dog,” she added with a cool smile. “Perhaps you can find a home for him. He’s housebroken—more or less.”

  And the Rolls ticked down the entrance driveway onto Sunset Boulevard, made a right turn, and was gone. I was looking after her when the attendant came back. And I was still holding the man up and he was now sound asleep.

  “Well, that’s one way of doing it,” I told the white coat.

  “Sure,” he said cynically. “Why waste it on a lush? Them curves and all.”

  “You know him?”

  “I heard the dame call him Terry. Otherwise I don’t know him from a cow’s caboose. But I only been here two weeks.”

  “Get my car, will you?” I gave him the ticket.

  By the time he brought my Olds over I felt as if I was holding up a sack of lead. The white coat helped me get him into the front seat. The customer opened an eye and thanked us and went to sleep again.

  “He’s the politest drunk I ever met,” I said to the white coat.

  “They come all sizes and shapes and all kinds of manners,” he said. “And they’re all bums. Looks like this one had a plastic job one time.”

  “Yeah.” I gave him a dollar and he thanked me. He was right about the plastic job. The right side of my new friend’s face was frozen and whitish and seamed with thin fine scars. The skin had a glossy look along the scars. A plastic job and a pretty drastic one.

  “Whatcha aim to do with him?”

  “Take him home and sober him up enough to tell me where he lives.”

  The white coat grinned at me. “Okay, sucker. If it was me, I’d just drop him in the gutter and keep going. Them booze hounds just make a man a lot of trouble for no fun. I got a philosophy about them things. The way the competition is nowadays a guy has to save his strength to protect hisself in the clinches.”

  “I can see you’ve made a big success out of it,” I said.

  He looked puzzled and then he started to get mad, but by that time I was in the car and moving.

  He was partly right of course. Terry Lennox made me plenty of trouble. But after all that’s my line of work.

  I was living that year in a house on Yucca Avenue in the Laurel Canyon district. It was a small hillside house on a dead-end street with a long flight of redwood steps to the front door and a grove of eucalyptus trees across the way. It was furnished, and it belonged to a woman who had gone to Idaho to live with her widowed daughter for a while. The rent was low, partly because the owner wanted to be able to come back on short notice, and partly because of the steps. She was getting too old to face them every time she came home.

  I got the drunk up them somehow. He was eager to help but his legs were rubber and he kept falling asleep in the middle of an apologetic sentence. I got the door unlocked and dragged him inside and spread him on the long couch, threw a rug over him and let him go back to sleep. He snored like a grampus for an hour. Then he came awake all of a sudden and wanted to go to the bathroom. When he came back he looked at me peeringly, squinting his eyes, and wanted to know where the hell he was. I told him. He said his name was Terry Lennox and that he lived in an apartment in Westwood and no one was waiting up for him. His voice was clear and unslurred.

  He said he could handle a cup of black coffee. When I brought it he sipped it carefully holding the saucer close under the cup.

  “How come I’m here?” he asked, looking around.

  “You squiffed out at The Dancers in a Rolls. Your girl friend ditched you.”

  “Quite,” he said. “No doubt she was entirely justified.”

  “You English?”

  “I’ve lived there. I wasn’t born there. If I might call a taxi, I’ll take myself off.”

  “You’ve got one waiting.”

  He made the steps on his own going down. He didn’t say much on the way to Westwood, except that it was very kind of me and he was sorry to be such a nuisance. He had probably said it so often and to so many people that it was automatic.

  His apartment was small and stuffy and impersonal. He might have moved in that afternoon. On a coffee table in front of a hard green davenport there was a half empty Scotch bottle and melted ice in a bowl and three empty fizzwater bottles and two glasses and a glass ash tray loaded with stubs with and without lipstick. There wasn’t a photograph or a personal article of any kind in the place. It might have been a hotel room rented for a meeting or a farewell, for a few drinks and a talk, for a roll in the hay. It didn’t look like a place where anyone lived.
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  He offered me a drink. I said no thanks. I didn’t sit down. When I left he thanked me some more, but not as if I had climbed a mountain for him, nor as if it was nothing at all. He was a little shaky and a little shy but polite as hell. He stood in the open door until the automatic elevator came up and I got into it. Whatever he didn’t have he had manners.

  He hadn’t mentioned the girl again. Also, he hadn’t mentioned that he had no job and no prospects and that almost his last dollar had gone into paying the check at The Dancers for a bit of high class fluff that couldn’t stick around long enough to make sure he didn’t get tossed in the sneezer by some prowl car boys, or rolled by a tough hackie and dumped out in a vacant lot.

  On the way down in the elevator I had an impulse to go back up and take the Scotch bottle away from him. But it wasn’t any of my business and it never does any good anyway. They always find a way to get it if they have to have it.

  I drove home chewing my lip. I’m supposed to be tough but there was something about the guy that got me. I didn’t know what it was unless it was the white hair and the scarred face and the clear voice and the politeness. Maybe that was enough. There was no reason why I should ever see him again. He was just a lost dog, like the girl said.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was the week after Thanksgiving when I saw him again. The stores along Hollywood Boulevard were already beginning to fill up with overpriced Christmas junk, and the daily papers were beginning to scream about how terrible it would be if you didn’t get your Christmas shopping done early. It would be terrible anyway; it always is.

  It was about three blocks from my office building that I saw a cop car double-parked and the two buttons in it staring at something over by a shop window on the sidewalk. The something was Terry Lennox—or what was left of him—and that little was not too attractive.

  He was leaning against a store front. He had to lean against something. His shirt was dirty and open at the neck and partly outside his jacket and partly not. He hadn’t shaved for four or five days. His nose was pinched. His skin was so pale that the long thin scars hardly showed. And his eyes were like holes poked in a snowbank. It was pretty obvious that the buttons in the prowl car were about ready to drop the hook on him, so I went over there fast and took hold of his arm.