“I didn’t say where it happened, cheapie. Take a kind word and forget the whole thing. You got told, you better stay told.”
“Oh sure. I do something you don’t like and I’m swimming to Catalina with a streetcar on my back. Don’t try to scare me, Mendy. I’ve been up against the pros. You ever been in England?”
“Be smart, cheapie. Things can happen to a guy in this town. Things can happen to big strong boys like Big Willie Magoon. Take a look at the evening paper.”
“I’ll get one if you say so. It might even have my picture in it. What about Magoon?”
“Like I said—things can happen. I wouldn’t know how except what I read. Seems Magoon tried to shake down four boys in a car with Nevada plates. Was parked right by his house. Nevada plates with big numbers like they don’t have. Must have been some kind of a rib. Only Magoon ain’t feeling funny, what with both arms in casts, and his jaw wired in three places, and one leg in high traction. Magoon ain’t tough any more. It could happen to you.”
“He bothered you, huh? I saw him bounce your boy Chick off the wall in front of Victor’s. Should I ring up a friend in the Sheriff’s office and tell him?”
“You do that, cheapie,” he said very slowly. “You do that.”
“And I’ll mention that at the time I was just through having a drink with Harlan Potter’s daughter. Corroborative evidence, in a sense, don’t you think? You figure to smash her up too?”
“Listen to me careful, cheapie—”
“Were you ever in England, Mendy? You and Randy Starr and Paul Marston or Terry Lennox or whatever his name was? In the British Army perhaps? Had a little racket in Soho and got hot and figured the army was a cooling-off spot?”
“Hold the line.”
I held it. Nothing happened except that I waited and my arm got tired. I switched the receiver to the other side. Finally he came back.
“Now listen careful, Marlowe. You stir up that Lennox case and you’re dead. Terry was a pal and I got feelings too. So you got feelings. I’ll go along with you just this far. It was a Commando outfit. It was British. It happened in Norway, one of those islands off the coast. They got a million of them. November 1942. Now will you lie down and rest that tired brain of yours?”
“Thank you, Mendy. I will do that. Your secret is safe with me. I’m not telling it to anybody but the people I know.”
“Buy yourself a paper, cheapie. Read and remember. Big tough Willie Magoon. Beat up in front of his own house. Boy, was he surprised when he come out of the ether!”
He hung up. I went downstairs and bought a paper and it was just as Menendez had said. There was a picture of Big Willie Magoon in his hospital bed. You could see half his face and one eye. The rest of him was bandages. Seriously but not critically injured. The boys had been very careful about that. They wanted him to live. After all he was a cop. In our town the mobs don’t kill a cop. They leave that to the juveniles. And a live cop who has been put through the meat grinder is a much better advertisement. He gets well eventually and goes back to work. But from that time on something is missing—the last inch of steel that makes all the difference. He’s a walking lesson that it is a mistake to push the racket boys too hard—especially if you are on the vice squad and eating at the best places and driving a Cadillac.
I sat there and brooded about it for a while and then I dialed the number of The Carne Organization and asked for George Peters. He was out. I left my name and said it was urgent. He was expected in about five-thirty.
I went over to the Hollywood Public Library and asked questions in the reference room, but couldn’t find what I wanted. So I had to go back for my Olds and drive downtown to the Main Library. I found it there, in a smallish red-bound book published in England. I copied what I wanted from it and drove home. I called The Carne Organization again. Peters was still out, so I asked the girl to reroute the call to me at home.
I put the chess board on the coffee table and set out a problem called The Sphynx. It is printed on the end papers of a book on chess by Blackburn, the English chess wizard, probably the most dynamic chess player who ever lived, although he wouldn’t get to first base in the cold war type of chess they play nowadays. The Sphynx is an eleven-mover and it justifies its name. Chess problems seldom run to more than four or five moves. Beyond that the difficulty of solving them rises in almost geometrical progression. An eleven-mover is sheer unadulterated torture.
Once in a long while when I feel mean enough I set it out and look for a new way to solve it. It’s a nice quiet way to go crazy. You don’t even scream, but you come awfully close.
George Peters called me at five-forty. We exchanged pleasantries and condolences.
“You’ve got yourself in another jam, I see,” he said cheerfully. “Why don’t you try some quiet business like embalming?”
“Takes too long to learn. Listen, I want to become a client of your agency, if it doesn’t cost too much.”
“Depends on what you want done, old boy. And you’d have to talk to Carne.”
“No.”
“Well, tell me.”
“London is full of guys like me, but I wouldn’t know one from the other. They call them private enquiry agents. Your outfit would have connections. I’d just have to pick a name at random and probably get hornswoggled. I want some information that should be easy enough to get, and I want it quick. Must have it before the end of next week.”
“Spill.”
“I want to know something about the war service of Terry Lennox or Paul Marston, whatever name he used. He was in the Commandos over there. He was captured wounded in November 1942 in a raid on some Norwegian island. I want to know what outfit he was posted from and what happened to him. The War Office will have all that. It’s not secret information, or I wouldn’t think so. Let’s say a question of inheritance is involved.”
“You don’t need a P.I. for that. You could get it direct. Write them a letter.”
“Shove it, George. I might get an answer in three months. I want one in five days.”
“You have a thought there, pal. Anything else?”
“One thing more. They keep all their vital records over there in a place they call Somerset House. I want to know if he figures there in any connection—birth, marriage, naturalization, anything at all.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Who’s paying the bill?”
“Suppose the names don’t show?”
“Then I’m stuck. If they do, I want certified copies of anything your man turns up. How much you soaking me?”
“I’ll have to ask Carne. He may thumb it out altogether. We don’t want the kind of publicity you get. If he lets me handle it, and you agree not to mention the connection, I’d say three hundred bucks. Those guys over there don’t get much by dollar standards. He might hit us for ten guineas, less than thirty bucks. On top of that any expenses he might have. Say fifty bucks altogether and Carne wouldn’t open a file for less than two-fifty.”
“Professional rates.”
“Ha, ha. He never heard of them.”
“Call me, George. Want to eat dinner?”
“Romanoff’s?”
“All right,” I growled, “if they’ll give me a reservation—which I doubt.”
“We can have Carne’s table. I happen to know he’s dining privately. He’s a regular at Romanoff’s. It pays off in the upper brackets of the business. Carne is a pretty big boy in this town.”
“Yeah, sure. I know somebody—and know him personally—who could lose Carne under his little fingernail.”
“Good work, kid. I always knew you would come through in the clutch. See you about seven o’clock in the bar at Romanoff’s. Tell the head thief you’re waiting for Colonel Carne. He’ll clear a space around you so you don’t get elbowed by any riffraff like screenwriters or television actors.”
“See you at seven,” I said.
We hung up and I went back to the chess board. But The Sphynx didn’t
seem to interest me any more. In a little while Peters called me back and said it was all right with Carne provided the name of their agency was not connected with my problems. Peters said he would get a night letter off to London at once.
CHAPTER 41
Howard Spencer called me on the following Friday morning. He was at the Ritz-Beverly and suggested I drop over for a drink in the bar.
“Better make it in your room,” I said.
“Very well, if you prefer it. Room 828. I’ve just talked to Eileen Wade. She seems quite resigned. She has read the script Roger left and says she thinks it can be finished off very easily. It will be a good deal shorter than his other books, but that is balanced by the publicity value. I guess you think we publishers are a pretty callous bunch. Eileen will be home all afternoon. Naturally she wants to see me and I want to see her.”
“I’ll be over in half an hour, Mr. Spencer.”
He had a nice roomy suite on the west side of the hotel. The living room had tall windows opening on a narrow iron-railed balcony. The furniture was upholstered in some candy-striped material and that with the heavily flowered design of the carpet gave it an old-fashioned air, except that everything you could put a drink down on had a plate glass top and there were nineteen ash trays spotted around. A hotel room is a pretty sharp indication of the manners of the guests. The Ritz-Beverly wasn’t expecting them to have any.
Spencer shook hands. “Sit down,” he said. “What will you drink?”
“Anything or nothing. I don’t have to have a drink.”
“I fancy a glass of Amontillado. California is poor drinking country in the summer. In New York you can handle four times as much for one half the hangover.”
“I’ll take a rye whiskey sour.”
He went to the phone and ordered. Then he sat down on one of the candy-striped chairs and took off his rimless glasses to polish them on a handkerchief. He put them back on, adjusted them carefully, and looked at me.
“I take it you have something on your mind. That’s why you wanted to see me up here rather than in the bar.”
“I’ll drive you out to Idle Valley. I’d like to see Mrs. Wade too.”
He looked a little uncomfortable. “I’m not sure that she wants to see you,” he said.
“I know she doesn’t. I can get in on your ticket.”
“That would not be very diplomatic of me, would it?”
“She tell you she didn’t want to see me?”
“Not exactly, not in so many words.” He cleared his throat. “I get the impression that she blames you for Roger’s death.”
“Yeah. She said that right out—to the deputy who came the afternoon he died. She probably said it to the Sheriff’s homicide lieutenant that investigated the death. She didn’t say it to the coroner, however.”
He leaned back and scratched the inside of his hand with a finger, slowly. It was just a sort of doodling gesture.
“What good would it do for you to see her, Marlowe? It was a pretty dreadful experience for her. I imagine her whole life had been pretty dreadful for some time. Why make her live it over? Do you expect to convince her that you didn’t miss out a little?”
“She told the deputy I killed him.”
“She couldn’t have meant that literally. Otherwise—”
The door buzzer rang. He got up to go to the door and open it. The room service waiter came in with the drinks and put them down with as much flourish as if he was serving a seven course dinner. Spencer signed the check and gave him four bits. The guy went away. Spencer picked up his glass of sherry and walked away as if he didn’t want to hand me my drink. I let it stay where it was.”
“Otherwise what?” I asked him.
“Otherwise she would have said something to the coroner, wouldn’t she?” He frowned at me. “I think we are talking nonsense. Just what did you want to see me about?”
“You wanted to see me.”
“Only,” he said coldly, “because when I talked to you from New York you said I was jumping to conclusions. That implied to me that you had something to explain. Well, what is it?”
“I’d like to explain it in front of Mrs. Wade.”
“I don’t care for the idea. I think you had better make your own arrangements. I have a great regard for Eileen Wade. As a businessman I’d like to salvage Roger’s work if it can be done. If Eileen feels about you as you suggest, I can’t be the means of getting you into her house. Be reasonable.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “Forget it. I can get to see her without any trouble. I just thought I’d like to have somebody along with me as a witness.”
“Witness to what?” he almost snapped at me.
“You’ll hear it in front of her or you won’t hear it at all.”
“Then I won’t hear it at all.”
I stood up. “You’re probably doing the right thing, Spencer. You want that book of Wade’s—if it can be used. And you want to be a nice guy. Both laudable ambitions. I don’t share either of them. The best of luck to you and goodbye.”
He stood up suddenly and started towards me. “Now just a minute, Marlowe. I don’t know what’s on your mind but you seem to take it hard. Is there some mystery about Roger Wade’s death?”
“No mystery at all. He was shot through the head with a Webley Hammerless revolver. Didn’t you see a report of the inquest?”
“Certainly.” He was standing close to me now and he looked bothered. “That was in the eastern papers and a couple of days later a much fuller account in the Los Angeles papers. He was alone in the house, although you were not far away. The servants were away, Candy and the cook, and Eileen had been uptown shopping and arrived home just after it happened. At the moment it happened a very noisy motorboat on the lake drowned the sound of the shot, so that even you didn’t hear it.”
“That’s correct,” I said. “Then the motorboat went away, and I walked back from the lake edge and into the house, heard the doorbell ringing, and opened it to find Eileen Wade had forgotten her keys. Roger was already dead. She looked into the study from the doorway, thought he was asleep on the couch, went up to her room, then out to the kitchen to make some tea. A little later than she did I also looked into the study, noticed there was no sound of breathing, and found out why. In due course I called the law.”
“I see no mystery,” Spencer said quietly, all the sharpness gone from his voice. “It was Roger’s own gun, and only the week before he had shot it off in his own room. You found Eileen struggling to get it away from him. His state of mind, his behavior, his depressions over his work—all that was brought out.”
“She told you the stuff is good. Why should he be depressed over it?”
“That’s just her opinion, you know. It may be very bad. Or he may have thought it worse than it was. Go on. I’m not a fool. I can see there is more.”
“The homicide dick who investigated the case is an old friend of mine. He’s a bulldog and a bloodhound and an old wise cop. He doesn’t like a few things. Why did Roger leave no note—when he was a writing fool? Why did he shoot himself in such a way as to leave the shock of discovery to his wife? Why did he bother to pick the moment when I couldn’t hear the gun go off? Why did she forget her house keys so that she had to be let in to the house? Why did she leave him alone on the day the help got off? Remember, she said she didn’t know I would be there. If she did, those two cancel out.”
“My God,” Spencer bleated, “are you telling me the damn fool cop suspects Eileen?”
“He would if he could think of a motive.”
“That’s ridiculous. Why not suspect you? You had all afternoon. There could have been only a few minutes when she could have done it—and she had forgotten her house keys.”
“What motive could I have?”
He reached back and grabbed my whiskey sour and swallowed it whole. He put the glass down carefully and got a handkerchief out and wiped his lips and his fingers where the chilled glass had moistened them. He put
the handkerchief away. He stared at me.
“Is the investigation still going on?”
“Couldn’t say. One thing is sure. They know by now whether he had drunk enough hooch to pass him out. If he had, there may still be trouble.”
“And you want to talk to her,” he said slowly, “in the presence of a witness.”
“That’s right.”
“That means only one of two things to me, Marlowe. Either you are badly scared or you think she ought to be.”
I nodded.
“Which one?” he asked grimly.
“I’m not scared.”
He looked at his watch. “I hope to God you’re crazy.”
We looked at each other in silence.
CHAPTER 42
North through Coldwater Canyon it began to get hot. When we topped the rise and started to wind down towards the San Fernando Valley it was breathless and blazing. I looked sideways at Spencer. He had a vest on, but the heat didn’t seem to bother him. He had something else to bother him a lot more. He looked straight ahead through the windshield and said nothing. The valley had a thick layer of smog nuzzling down on it. From above it looked like a ground mist and then we were in it and it jerked Spencer out of his silence.
“My God, I thought Southern California had a climate,” he said. “What are they doing—burning old truck tires?”
“It’ll be all right in Idle Valley,” I told him soothingly. “They get an ocean breeze in there.”
“I’m glad they get something besides drunk,” he said. “From what I’ve seen of the local crowd in the rich suburbs I think Roger made a tragic mistake in coming out here to live. A writer needs stimulation—and not the kind they bottle. There’s nothing around here but one great big suntanned hangover. I’m referring to the upper crust people of course.”
I turned off and slowed down for the dusty stretch to the entrance of Idle Valley, then hit the paving again and in a little while the ocean breeze made itself felt, drifting down through the gap in the hills at the far end of the lake. High sprinklers revolved over the big smooth lawns and the water made a swishing sound as it licked at the grass. By this time most of the well-heeled people were away somewhere else. You could tell by the shuttered look of the houses and the way the gardener’s truck was parked smack in the middle of the driveway. Then we reached the Wades’ place and I swung through the gateposts and stopped behind Eileen’s Jaguar. Spencer got out and marched stolidly across the flagstones to the portico of the house. He rang the bell and the door opened almost at once. Candy was there in the white jacket and the dark good-looking face and the sharp black eyes. Everything was in order.
The Collected Raymond Chandler Page 139