Playback

“Yeah.”

He chuckled. “The monosyllable indicates a surfeit of Henry Clarendon IV. I don’t blame you. Very well, Mr. Marlowe, why are you interested in Mitchell? But I suppose you can’t tell me.”

“No sir, I can’t. I’m interested in knowing why he left so soon after coming back, who paid his bill for him and why, if Mrs. West or, say, some well-heeled friend like Clark Brandon paid for him, it was necessary to pay a week in advance as well.”

His thin worn eyebrows curved upwards. “Brandon could easily guarantee Mitchell’s account by lifting the telephone. Mrs. West might prefer to give him the money and have him pay the bill himself. But a week in advance? Why would our Javonen tell you that? What does it suggest to you?”

“That there’s something about Mitchell the hotel doesn’t want known. Something that might cause the sort of publicity they hate.”

“Such as?”

“Suicide and murder are the sort of things I mean. That’s just by way of example. You’ve noticed how the name of a big hotel is hardly ever mentioned when one of the guests jumps out of a window? It’s always a midtown or a downtown hotel or a well-known exclusive hotel—something like that. And if it’s rather a high class place, you never see any cops in the lobby, no matter what happened upstairs.”

His eyes went sideways and mine followed his. The canasta table was breaking up. The dolled-up and well-iced woman called Margo West strolled off towards the bar with one of the men, her cigarette holder sticking out like a bowsprit.

“So?”

“Well,” I said, and I was working hard, “if Mitchell keeps his room on the records, whatever room he had—”

“Four-eighteen,” Clarendon put in calmly. “On the ocean side.

Fourteen dollars a day out of season, eighteen in season.”

“Not exactly cheap for a guy on his uppers. But he still has it, let’s say. So whatever happened, he’s just away for a few days. Took his car out, put his luggage in around seven A.M. this morning. A damn funny time to leave when he was as drunk as a skunk late last night.”

Clarendon leaned back and let his gloved hands hang limp. I could see that he was getting tired. “If it happened that way, wouldn’t the hotel prefer to have you think he had left for good? Then you’d have to search for him somewhere else. That is, if you really are searching for him.”

I met his pale stare. He grinned.

“You’re not making very good sense to me, Mr. Marlowe. I talk and talk, but not merely to hear the sound of my voice. I don’t hear it naturally in any case. Talking gives me an opportunity to study people without seeming altogether rude. I have studied you. My intuition, if such be the correct word, tells me that your interest in Mitchell is rather tangential. Otherwise you would not be so open about it.”

“Uh-huh. Could be,” I said. It was a spot for a paragraph of lucid prose. Henry Clarendon IV would have obliged. I didn’t have a damn thing more to say.

“Run along now,” he said. “I’m tired. I’m going up to my room and lie down a little. A pleasure to have met you, Mr. Marlowe.” He got slowly to his feet and steadied himself with the stick. It was an effort. I stood up beside him.

“I never shake hands,” he said. “My hands are ugly and painful. I wear gloves for that reason. Good evening. If I don’t see you again, good luck.”

He went off, walking slowly and keeping his head erect. I could see that walking wasn’t any fun for him. The two steps up from the main lobby to the arch were made one at a time, with a pause in between. His right foot always moved first. The cane bore down hard beside his left. He went out through the arch and I watched him move towards an elevator. I decided Mr. Henry Clarendon IV was a pretty smooth article.

I strolled along to the bar. Mrs. Margo West was sitting in the amber shadows with one of the canasta players. The waiter was just setting drinks before them. I didn’t pay too much attention because farther along in a little booth against the wall was someone I knew better. And alone.

She had the same clothes on except that she had taken the bandeau off her hair and it hung loose around her face.

I sat down. The waiter came over and I ordered. He went away. The music from the invisible record player was low and ingratiating.

She smiled a little. “I’m sorry I lost my temper,” she said.

“I was very rude.”

“Forget it. I had it coming.”

“Were you looking for me in here?”

“Not especially.”

“Were you—oh, I forgot.” She reached for her bag and put it in her lap. She fumbled in it and then passed something rather small across the table, something not small enough for her hand to hide that it was a folder of traveler’s checks. “I promised you these.”

“No.”

“Take them, you fool! I don’t want the waiter to see.”

I took the folder and slipped it into my pocket. I reached into my inside pocket and got out a small receipt book. I entered the counterfoil and then the body of the receipt. “Received from Miss Betty Mayfield, Hotel Casa del Poniente, Esmeralda, California, the sum of $5000 in American Express Company traveler’s checks of $100 denomination, countersigned by the owner, and remaining her property subject to her demand at any time until a fee is arranged with, and an employment accepted by me, the undersigned.”

I signed this rigmarole and held the book for her to see it.

“Read it and sign your name in the lower left-hand corner.”

She took it and held it close to the light.

“You make me tired,” she said. “Whatever are you trying to spring?”

“That I’m on the level and you think so.”

She took the pen I held out and signed and gave the stuff back to me. I tore out the original and handed it to her. I put the book away.

The waiter came and put my drink down. He didn’t wait to be paid. Betty shook her head at him. He went away.

“Why don’t you ask me if I have found Larry?”

“All right. Have you found Larry, Mr. Marlowe?”

“No. He has skipped the hotel. He had a room on the fourth floor on the same side as your room. Must be fairly nearly under it. He took nine pieces of luggage and beat it in his Buick. The house peeper, whose name is Javonen—he calls himself an assistant manager and security officer—is satisfied that Mitchell paid his bill and even a week in advance for his room. He has no worries. He doesn’t like me, of course.”

“Does somebody?”

“You do—five thousand dollars worth.”

“Oh, you are an idiot. Do you think Mitchell will come back?”

“I told you he paid a week in advance.”

She sipped her drink quietly. “So you did. But that could mean something else.”

“Sure. Just spit-balling, for example, I might say it could mean that he didn’t pay his bill, but someone else did. And that the someone else wanted time to do something—such as getting rid of that body on your balcony last night. That is, if there was a body.”

“Oh, stop it!”

She finished her drink, killed her cigarette, stood up and left me with the check. I paid it and went back through the lobby, for no reason that I could think of. Perhaps by pure instinct. And I saw Goble getting into the elevator. He seemed to have a rather strained expression. As he turned he caught my eye, or seemed to, but he gave no sign of knowing me. The elevator went up.

I went out to my car and drove back to the Rancho Descansado. I lay down on the couch and went to sleep. It had been a lot of day. Perhaps if I had a rest and my brain cleared, I might have some faint idea of what I was doing.

18

An hour later I was parked in front of the hardware store. It wasn’t the only hardware store in Esmeralda, but it was the only one that backed on the alley called Polton’s Lane. I walked east and counted the stores. There were seven of them to the corner, all shining with plate glass and chromium trim. On the corner was a dress shop with mannequins in the windows, scarves and gloves and costume jewelry laid out under the lights. No prices showing. I rounded the corner and went south. Heavy eucalyptus trees grew out of the sidewalk. They branched low down and the trunks looked hard and heavy, quite unlike the tall brittle stuff that grows around Los Angeles. At the far corner of Polton’s Lane there was an automobile agency. I followed its high blank wall, looking at broken crates, piles of cartons, trash drums, dusty parking spaces, the back yard of elegance. I counted the buildings. It was easy. No questions to ask. A light burned in the small window of a tiny frame cottage that had long ago been somebody’s simple home. The cottage had a wooden porch with a broken railing. It had been painted once, but that was in the remote past before the shops swallowed it up. Once it may even have had a garden. The shingles of the roof were warped. The front door was a dirty mustard yellow. The window was shut tight and needed hosing off. Behind part of it hung what remained of an old roller blind. There were two steps up to the porch, but only one had a tread. Behind the cottage and halfway to the loading platform of the hardware store there was what had presumably been a privy. But I could see where a water pipe cut through the sagging side. A rich man’s improvements on a rich man’s property. A one-unit slum.

I stepped over the hollow place where a step would have been and knocked on the door. There was no bell push. Nobody answered. I tried the knob. Nobody had locked the door. I pushed it open and went in. I had that feeling. I was going to find something nasty inside.

A bulb burned in a frayed lamp crooked on its base, the paper shade split. There was a couch with a dirty blanket on it. There was an old cane chair, a Boston rocker, a table covered with a smeared oilcloth. On the table spread out beside a coffee cup was a copy of El Diario, a Spanish language newspaper, also a saucer with cigarette stubs, a dirty plate, a tiny radio which emitted music. The music stopped and a man began to rattle off a commercial in Spanish. I turned it off. The silence fell like a bag of feathers. Then the clicking of an alarm clock from beyond a half open door. Then the clank of a small chain, a fluttering sound and a cracked voice said rapidly: “Quién es? Quién es? Quien es?” This was followed by the angry chattering of monkeys.

Then silence again.

From a big cage over in the corner the round angry eye of a parrot looked at me. He sidled along the perch as far as he could go.

“Amigo,” I said.

The parrot let out a screech of insane laughter.

“Watch your language, brother,” I said.

The parrot crab walked to the other end of the perch and pecked into a white cup and shook oatmeal from his beak contemptuously. In another cup there was water. It was messy with oatmeal.

“I bet you’re not even housebroken,” I said.

The parrot stared at me and shuffled. He turned his head and stared at me with his other eye. Then he leaned forward and fluttered his tail feathers and proved me right.

“Necio!” he screamed. “Fuera!”

Somewhere water dripped from a leaky faucet. The clock ticked.

The parrot imitated the ticking amplified.

I said: “Pretty Polly.”

“Hijo de la chingada,” the parrot said.

I sneered at him and pushed the half-open door into what there was of a kitchen. The linoleum on the floor was worn through to the boards in front of the sink. There was a rusty three-burner gas stove, an open shelf with some dishes and the alarm clock, a riveted hot water tank on a support in the corner, the antique kind that blows up because it has no safety valve. There was a narrow rear door, closed, with a key in the lock, and a single window, locked. There was a light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The ceiling above it was cracked and stained from roof leaks. Behind me the parrot shuffled aimlessly on his perch and once in a while let out a bored croak.

On the zinc drain board lay a short length of black rubber tubing, and beside that a glass hypodermic syringe with the plunger pushed home. In the sink were three long thin empty tubes of glass with tiny corks near them. I had seen such tubes before.

I opened the back door, stepped to the ground and walked to the converted privy. It had a sloping roof, about eight feet high in front, less than six at the back. It opened outward, being too small to open any other way. It was locked but the lock was old. It did not resist me much.

The man’s scuffed toes almost touched the floor. His head was up in the darkness inches from the two by four that held up the roof. He was hanging by a black wire, probably a piece of electric light wire. The toes of his feet were pointed down as if they reached to stand on tiptoe. The worn cuffs of his khaki denim pants hung below his heels. I touched him enough to know that he was cold enough so that there was no point in cutting him down.

He had made very sure of that. He had stood by the sink in his kitchen and knotted the rubber tube around his arm, then clenched his fist to make the vein stand out, then shot a syringe full of morphine sulphate into his blood stream. Since all three of the tubes were empty, it was a fair guess that one of them had been full. He could not have taken in less than enough. Then he had laid the syringe down and released the knotted tube. It wouldn’t be long, not a shot directly into the blood stream. Then he had gone out to his privy and stood on the seat and knotted the wire around his throat. By that time he would be dizzy. He could stand there and wait until his knees went slack and the weight of his body took care of the rest. He would know nothing. He would already be asleep.

I closed the door on him. I didn’t go back into the house. As I went along the side towards Polton’s Lane, that handsome residential street, the parrot inside the shack heard me and screeched: “Quién es? Quién es? Quien es?”

Who is it? Nobody, friend. Just a footfall in the night.

I walked softly, going away.

19

I walked softly, in no particular direction, but I knew where I would end up. I always did. At the Casa del Poniente. I climbed back into my car on Grand and circled a few blocks aimlessly, and then I was parked as usual in a slot near the bar entrance. As I got out I looked at the car beside mine. It was Goble’s shabby dark little jalopy. He was as adhesive as a band-aid.

At another time I would have been racking my brains for some idea of what he was up to, but now I had a worse problem. I had to go to the police and report the hanging man. But I had no notion what to tell them. Why did I go to his house? Because, if he was telling the truth, he had seen Mitchell leave early in the morning. Why was that of significance? Because I was looking for Mitchell myself. I wanted to have a heart to heart talk with him. About what? And from there on I had no answers that would not lead to Betty Mayfield, who she was, where she came from, why she changed her name, what had happened back in Washington, or Virginia or wherever it was, that made her run away.

I had $5000 of her money in traveler’s checks in my pocket, and she wasn’t even formally my client. I was stuck, but good.

I walked over to the edge of the cliff and listened to the sound of the surf. I couldn’t see anything but the occasional gleam of a wave breaking out beyond the cove. In the cove the waves don’t break, they slide in politely, like floorwalkers. There would be a bright moon later, but it hadn’t checked in yet.

Someone was standing not far away, doing what I was doing. A woman. I waited for her to move. When she moved I would know whether I knew her. No two people move in just the same way, just as no two sets of fingerprints match exactly.

I lit a cigarette and let the lighter flare in my face, and she was beside me.

“Isn’t it about time you stopped following me around?”

“You’re my client. I’m trying to protect you. Maybe on my seventieth birthday someone will tell me why.”

“I didn’t ask you to protect me. I’m not your client. Why don’t you go home—if you have a home—and stop annoying people?”

“You’re my client—five thousand dollars worth. I have to do something for it—even if it’s no more than growing a mustache.”

“You’re impossible. I gave you the money to let me alone. You’re the most impossible man I ever met. And I’ve met some dillies.”

“What happened to that tall exclusive apartment house in Rio? Where I was going to lounge in silk pajamas and play with your long lascivious hair, while the butler set out the Wedgwood and the Georgian silver with that faint dishonest smile and those delicate gestures, like a pansy hair stylist fluttering around a screen star?”

“Oh, shut up!”

“Wasn’t a firm offer, huh? Just a passing fancy, or not even that. Just a trick to make me slaughter my sleeping hours and trot around looking for bodies that weren’t there.”

“Did anybody ever give you a swift poke in the nose?”

“Frequently, but sometimes I make them miss.”

I grabbed hold of her. She tried to fight me off, but no fingernails. I kissed the top of her head. Suddenly she clung to me and turned her face up.

“All right. Kiss me, if it’s any satisfaction to you. I suppose you would rather have this happen where there was a bed.”

“I’m human.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You’re a dirty low-down detective. Kiss me.”

I kissed her. With my mouth close to hers I said: “He hanged himself tonight.”

She jerked away from me violently. “Who?” she asked in a voice that could hardly speak.

“The night garage attendant here. You may never have seen him. He was on mesca, tea, marijuana. But tonight he shot himself full of morphine and hanged himself in the privy behind his shack in Polton’s Lane. That’s an alley behind Grand Street.”

She was shaking now. She was hanging on to me as if to keep from falling down. She tried to say something, but her voice was just a croak.

“He was the guy that said he saw Mitchell leave with his nine suitcases early this morning. I wasn’t sure I believed him. He told me where he lived and I went over this evening to talk to him some more. And now I have to go to the cops and tell them. And what do I tell them without telling them about Mitchell and from then on about you?”

“Please—please—please leave me out of it,” she whispered. “I’ll give you more money. I’ll give you all the money you want.”

“For Pete’s sake. You’ve already given me more than I’d keep. It isn’t money I want. It’s some sort of understanding of what the hell I’m doing and why. You must have heard of professional ethics. Some shreds of them still stick to me. Are you my client?”

“Yes. I give up. They all give up to you in the end, don’t they?”

“Far from it. I get pushed around plenty.”

I got the folder of traveler’s checks out of my pocket and put a pencil flash on them and tore out five. I refolded it and handed it to her. “I’ve kept five hundred dollars. That makes it legal. Now tell me what it’s all about.”

“No. You don’t have to tell anybody about that man.”

“Yes, I do. I have to go to the cop house just about now. I have to. And I have no story to tell them that they won’t bust open in three minutes. Here, take your goddamn checks—and if you ever push them at me again, I’ll smack your bare bottom.”

She grabbed the folder and tore off into the darkness to the hotel. I just stood there and felt like a damn fool. I don’t know how long I stood there, but finally I stuffed the five checks into my pocket and went wearily back to my car and started off to the place where I knew I had to go.

20

A man named Fred Pope who ran a small motel had once told me his views on Esmeralda. He was elderly, talkative, and it always pays to listen. The most unlikely people sometimes drop a fact or two that means a lot in my business.

“I been here thirty years,” he said. “When I come here I had dry asthma. Now I got wet asthma. I recall when this town was so quiet dogs slept in the middle of the boulevard and you had to stop your car, if you had a car, and get out and push them out of the way. The bastards just sneered at you. Sundays it was like you was already buried. Everything shut up as tight as a bank vault. You could walk down Grand Street and have as much fun as a stiff in the morgue. You couldn’t even buy a pack of cigarettes. It was so quiet you could of heard a mouse combin’ his whiskers. Me and my old woman—she’s been dead fifteen years now—used to play cribbage in a little place we had down on the street that goes along the cliff, and we’d listen in case something exciting would happen—like an old geezer taking a walk and tapping with a cane. I don’t know if the Hellwigs wanted it that way or whether old man Hellwig done it out of spite. In them years he didn’t live here. He was a big shot in the farm equipment business.”

“More likely,” I said, “he was smart enough to know that a place like Esmeralda would become a valuable investment in time.”

“Maybe,” Fred Pope said. “Anyhow, he just about created the town. And after a while he came to live here—up on the hill in one of them great big stucco houses with tile roofs. Pretty fancy. He had gardens with terraces and big green lawns and flowering shrubs, and wrought iron gates—imported from Italy, I heard, and Arizona fieldstone walks, and not just one garden, half a dozen. And enough land to keep the neighbors out of his hair. He drank a couple bottles of hooch a day and I heard he was a pretty rough customer. He had one daughter, Miss Patricia Hellwig. She was the real cream and still is.

“By that time Esmeralda had begun to fill up. At first it was a lot of old women and their husbands, and I’m tellin’ you the mortician business was real good with tired old men that died and got planted by their loving widows. The goddamn women last too long. Mine didn’t.”

He stopped and turned his head away for a moment, before he went on.

“There was a streetcar from San Diego by then, but the town was still quiet—too quiet. Not hardly anybody got born here. Childbearing was thought kind of too sexy. But the war changed all that. Now we got guys that sweat, and tough school kids in Levis and dirty shirts, and artists and country club drunks and them little gift shops that sell you a two-bit highball glass for eight-fifty. We got restaurants and liquor stores, but we still don’t have no billboards or poolrooms or drive-ins. Last year they tried to put in a dime-in-the-slot telescope in the park. You ought to of heard the town council scream. They killed it for sure, but the place ain’t no bird refuge any more. We got as smart stores as Beverly Hills. And Miss Patricia, she spent her whole life working like a beaver to give things to the town. Hellwig died five years ago. The doctors told him he would have to cut down on the booze or he wouldn’t live a year. He cussed them out and said if he couldn’t take a drink when he wanted to, morning, noon or night, he’d be damned if he’d take one at all. He quit—and he was dead in a year.

“The docs had a name for it—they always have—and I guess Miss Hellwig had a name for them. Anyway, they got bumped off the staff of the hospital and that knocked them loose from Esmeralda. It didn’t matter a whole lot. We still got about sixty doctors here. The town’s full of Hellwigs, some with other names, but all of the family one way or another. Some are rich and some work. I guess Miss Hellwig works harder than most. She’s eighty-six now, but tough as a mule. She don’t chew tobacco, drink, smoke, swear or use no make-up. She give the town the hospital, a private school, a library, an art center, public tennis courts, and God knows what else. And she still gets driven in a thirty-year-old Rolls Royce that’s about as noisy as a Swiss watch. The mayor here is two jumps from a Hellwig, both downhill. I guess she built the municipal center too, and sold it to the city for a dollar. She’s some woman. Of course we got Jews here now, but let me tell you something. A Jew is supposed to give you a sharp deal and steal your nose, if you ain’t careful. That’s all bunk. A Jew enjoys trading; he likes business, but he’s only tough on the surface. Underneath a Jewish businessman is usually real nice to deal with. He’s human. If you want cold-blooded skinning, we got a bunch of people in this town now that will cut you down to the bone and add a service charge. They’ll take your last dollar from you between your teeth and look at you like you stole it from them.”

21

The cop house was part of a long modernistic, building at the corner of Hellwig and Orcutt. I parked and went into it, still wondering how to tell my story, and still knowing I had to tell it.

The business office was small but very clean, and the duty officer on the desk had two sharp creases in his shirt, and his uniform looked as if it had been pressed ten minutes before. A battery of six speakers on the wall was bringing in police and sheriff’s reports from all over the county. A tilted plaque on the desk said the duty officer’s name was Griddell. He looked at me the way they all look, waiting.

“What can we do for you, sir?” He had a cool pleasant voice, and that look of discipline you find in the best ones.

“I have to report a death. In a shack behind the hardware store on Grand, in an alley called Polton’s Lane, there’s a man hanging in a sort of privy. He’s dead. No chance to save him.”

“Your name, please?” He was already pressing buttons.

“Philip Marlowe. I’m a Los Angeles private detective.”

“Did you notice the number of this place?”

“It didn’t have one that I could see. But it’s right smack behind the Esmeralda Hardware Company.”

“Ambulance call, urgent,” he said into his mike. “Possible suicide in a small house behind the Esmeralda Hardware Store. Man hanging in a privy behind the house.”

He looked up at me. “Do you know his name?”

I shook my head. “But he was the night garage man at the Casa del Poniente.”

He flicked some sheets of a book. “We know him. Has a record for marijuana. Can’t figure how he held the job, but he may be off it now, and his sort of labor is pretty scarce here.”

A tall sergeant with a granite face came into the office, gave me a quick glance and went out. A car started.

The duty officer flicked a key on a small PBX. “Captain, this is Griddell on the desk. A Mr. Philip Marlowe has reported a death in Polton’s Lane. Ambulance moving. Sergeant Green is on his way. I have two patrol cars in the vicinity.”

He listened for a moment, then looked at me. “Captain Alessandro would like to speak to you, Mr. Marlowe: Down the hall, last door on the right, please.”

He was on the mike again before I was through the swinging door.

The last door on the right had two names on it. Captain Alessandro in a plaque fastened to the wood, and Sergeant Green on a removable panel. The door was half open, so I knocked and went in.

The man at the desk was as immaculate as the desk officer. He was studying a card through a magnifying glass, and a tape recorder beside him was telling some dreary story in a crumpled, unhappy voice. The captain was about six feet three inches tall and had thick dark hair and a clear olive skin. His uniform cap was on the desk near him. He looked up, cut off the tape recorder and put down the magnifying glass and the card.

“Have a seat, Mr. Marlowe.”

I sat down. He looked at me for a moment without speaking. He had rather soft brown eyes, but his mouth was not soft.

“I understand you know Major Javonen at the Casa.”

“I’ve met him, Captain. We are not close friends.”

He smiled faintly. “That’s hardly to be expected. He wouldn’t enjoy private detectives asking questions in the hotel. He used to be in the CIC. We still call him Major. This is the politest goddamn town I was ever in. We are a goddamn smooth bunch around here, but we’re police just the same. Now about this Ceferino Chang?”

“So that’s his name. I didn’t know.”

“Yes. We know him. May I ask what you are doing in Esmeralda?”

“I was hired by a Los Angeles attorney named Clyde Umney to meet the Super Chief and follow a certain party until that party came to a stop somewhere. I wasn’t told why, but Mr. Umney said he was acting for a firm of Washington attorneys and he didn’t know why himself. I took the job because there is nothing illegal in following a person, if you don’t interfere with that person. The party ended up in Esmeralda. I went back to Los Angeles and tried to find out what it was all about. I couldn’t, so I took what I thought was a reasonable fee, two hundred and fifty, and absorbed my own expenses. Mr. Umney was not very pleased with me.”

The captain nodded. “That doesn’t explain why you are here or what you have to do with Ceferino Chang. And since you are not now working for Mr. Umney, unless you are working for another attorney you have no privilege.”

“Give me a break, if you can, Captain. I found out that the party I was following was being blackmailed, or there was an attempt at blackmail, by a man named Larry Mitchell. He lives or lived at the Casa. I have been trying to get in touch with him, but the only information I have is from Javonen and this Ceferino Chang. Javonen said he checked out, paid his bill, and a week in advance for his room. Chang told me he left at seven A.M. this morning with nine suitcases. There was something a bit peculiar about Chang’s manner, so I wanted to have another talk with him.”

“How did you know where he lived?”

“He told me. He was a bitter man. He said he lived on a rich man’s property, and he seemed angry that it wasn’t kept up.”

“Not good enough, Marlowe.”

“Okay, I didn’t think it was myself. He was on the weed. I pretended to be a pusher. Once in a while in my business a man has to do a good deal of faking.”

“Better. But there’s something missing. The name of your client—if you have one.”

“Could it be in confidence?”

“Depends. We never disclose the names of blackmail victims, unless they come out in court. But if this party has committed or been indicted for a crime, or has crossed a state line to escape prosecution, then it would be my duty as an officer of the law to report her present whereabouts and the name she is using.”

“Her? So you know already. Why ask me? I don’t know why she ran away. She won’t tell me. All I know is she is in trouble and in fear, and that somehow Mitchell knew enough to make her say uncle.”

He made a smooth gesture with his hand and fished a cigarette out of a drawer. He stuck it in his mouth but didn’t light it.

He gave me another steady look.

“Okay, Marlowe. For now I’ll let it lay. But if you dig anything up, here is where you bring it.”

I stood up. He stood up too and held his hand out.

“We’re not tough. We just have a job to do. Don’t get too hostile with Javonen. The guy who owns that hotel draws a lot of water around here.”

“Thanks, Captain. I’ll try to be a nice little boy—even to Javonen.”

I went back along the hall. The same officer was on the desk. He nodded to me and I went out into the evening and got into my car. I sat with my hands tight on the steering wheel. I wasn’t too used to cops who treated me as if I had a right to be alive. I was sitting there when the desk officer poked his head out of the door and called that Captain Alessandro wanted to see me again.

When I got back to Captain Alessandro’s office, he was on the telephone. He nodded me to the customer’s chair and went on listening and making quick notes in what looked like the sort of condensed writing that many reporters use. After a while he said: “Thanks very much. We’ll be in touch.”

He leaned back and tapped on his desk and frowned.

“That was a report from the sheriff’s substation at Escondido. Mitchell’s car has been found—apparently abandoned. I thought you might like to know.”

“Thanks, Captain. Where was this?”

“About twenty miles from here, on a country road that leads to Highway 395, but is not the road a man would naturally take to get to 395. It’s a place called Los Penasquitos Canyon. Nothing there but outcrop and barren land and a dry river bed. I know the place. This morning a rancher named Gates went by there with a small truck, looking for fieldstone to build a wall. He passed a two-tone Buick hardtop parked off the side of the road. He didn’t pay much attention to the Buick, except to notice that it hadn’t been in a wreck, so somebody just parked it there.

“Later on in the day, around four, Gates went back to pick up another load of fieldstone. The Buick was still there. This time he stopped and looked it over. No keys in the lock, but the car wasn’t locked up. No sign of any damage. Just the same, Gates wrote down the license number and the name and address on the registration certificate. When he got back to his ranch he called the substation at Escondido. Of course the deputies knew Los Penasquitos Canyon. One of them went over and looked at the car. Clean as a whistle. The deputy managed to trick the trunk open. Empty except for a spare tire and a few tools. So he went back to Escondido and called in here. I’ve just been talking to him.”

I lit a cigarette and offered one to Captain Alessandro. He shook his head.

“Got any ideas, Marlowe?”

“No more than you have.”

“Let’s hear them anyway.”

“If Mitchell had some good reason to get lost and had a friend who would pick him up—a friend nobody here knew anything about—he would have stored his car in some garage. That wouldn’t have made anyone curious. There wouldn’t be anything to make the garage curious. They would just be storing a car. Mitchell’s suitcases would already have been in his friend’s car.”

“So?”

“So there wasn’t any friend. So Mitchell disappeared into thin air—with his nine suitcases—on a very lonely road that was hardly ever used.”

“Go on from there.” His voice was hard now. It had an edge to it. I stood up.

“Don’t bully me, Captain Alessandro. I haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve been very human so far. Please don’t get the idea that I had anything to do with Mitchell’s disappearance. I didn’t—and still don’t—know what he had on my client. I just know that she is a lonely and frightened and unhappy girl. When I know why, if I do manage to find out, I’ll let you know or I won’t. If I don’t, you’ll just have to throw the book at me. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened to me. I don’t sell out—even to good police officers.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out that way, Marlowe. Let’s hope.”

“I’m hoping with you, Captain. And thanks for treating me the way you have.”

I walked back down the corridor, nodded to the duty officer on the desk and climbed back into my car again. I felt twenty years older.

I knew—and I was pretty damn sure Captain Alessandro knew too—that Mitchell wasn’t alive, that he hadn’t driven his car to Los Penasquitos Canyon, but somebody had driven him there, with Mitchell lying dead on the floor of the back seat.

There was no other possible way to look at it. There are things that are facts, in a statistical sense, on paper, on a tape recorder, in evidence. And there are things that are facts because they have to be facts, because nothing makes any sense otherwise.

22

It is like a sudden scream in the night, but there is no sound. Almost always at night, because the dark hours are the hours of danger. But it has happened to me also in broad daylight—that strange, clarified moment when I suddenly know something I have no reason for knowing. Unless out of the long years and the long tensions, and in the present case, the abrupt certainty that what bullfighters call “the moment of truth” is here.

There was no other reason, no sensible reason at all. But I parked across from the entrance to the Rancho Descansado, and cut my lights and ignition, and then drifted about fifty yards downhill and pulled the brake back hard.

I walked up to the office. There was the small glow of light over the night bell, but the office was closed. It was only ten-thirty. I walked around to the back and drifted through the trees. I came on two parked cars. One was a Hertz rent car, as anonymous as a nickel in a parking meter, but by bending down I could read the license number. The car next to it was Goble’s little dark jalopy. It didn’t seem very long since it was parked by the Casa del Poniente. Now it was here.

I went on through the trees until I was below my room. It was dark, soundless. I went up the few steps very slowly and put my ear to the door. For a little while I heard nothing. Then I heard a strangled sob—a man’s sob, not a woman’s. Then a thin, low cackling laugh. Then what seemed to be a hard blow. Then silence.

I went back down the steps and through the trees to my car. I unlocked the trunk and got out a tire iron. I went back to my room as carefully as before—even more carefully. I listened again. Silence. Nothing. The quiet of the night. I reached out my pocket flash and flicked it once at the window, then slid away from the door. For several minutes nothing happened. Then the door opened a crack.

I hit it hard with my shoulder and smashed it wide open. The man stumbled back and then laughed. I saw the glint of his gun in the faint light. I smashed his wrist with the tire iron. He screamed. I smashed his other wrist. I heard the gun hit the floor.

I reached back and switched the lights on. I kicked the door shut.

He was a pale-faced redhead with dead eyes. His face was twisted with pain, but his eyes were still dead. Hurt as he was, he was still tough.

“You ain’t going to live long, boy,” he said.

“You’re not going to live at all. Get out of my way.”

He managed to laugh.

“You’ve still got legs,” I said. “Bend them at the knees and lie down—face down—that is, if you want a face.”

He tried to spit at me, but his throat choked. He slid down to his knees, holding his arms out. He was groaning now. Suddenly he crumpled. They’re so goddamn tough when they hold the stacked deck. And they never know any other kind of deck.

Goble was lying on the bed. His face was a mass of bruises and cuts. His nose was broken. He was unconscious and breathing as if half strangled.

The redhead was still out, and his gun lay on the floor near him. I wrestled his belt off and strapped his ankles together. Then I turned him over and went through his pockets. He had a wallet with $670 in it, a driver’s license in the name of Richard Harvest, and the address of a small hotel in San Diego. His pocketbook contained numbered checks on about twenty banks, a set of credit cards, but no gun permit.

I left him lying there and went down to the office. I pushed the button of the night bell, and kept on pushing it. After a while a figure came down through the dark. It was Jack in a bathrobe and pajamas. I still had the tire iron in my hand.

He looked startled. “Something the matter, Mr. Marlowe?”

“Oh, no. Just a hoodlum in my room waiting to kill me. Just another man beaten to pieces on my bed. Nothing the matter at all. Quite normal around here, perhaps.”

“I’ll call the police.”

“That would be awfully damn nice of you, Jack. As you see, I am still alive. You know what you ought to do with this place? Turn it into a pet hospital.”

He unlocked the door and went into the office. When I heard him talking to the police I went back to my room. The redhead had guts. He had managed to get into a sitting position against the wall. His eyes were still dead and his mouth was twisted into a grin. I went over to the bed. Goble’s eyes were open.

“I didn’t make it,” he whispered. “Wasn’t as good as I thought I was. Got out of my league.”

“The cops are on their way. How did it happen?”

“I walked into it. No complaints. This guy’s a life-taker. I’m lucky. I’m still breathing. Made me drive over here. He cooled me, tied me up, then he was gone for a while.”

“Somebody must have picked him up, Goble. There’s a rent car beside yours. If he had that over at the Casa, how did he get back there for it?”

Goble turned his head slowly and looked at me. “I thought I was a smart cookie. I learned different. All I want is back to Kansas City. The little guys can’t beat the big guys—not ever. I guess you saved my life.”

Then the police were there.

First two prowl car boys, nice cool-looking serious men in the always immaculate uniforms and the always deadpan faces. Then a big tough sergeant who said his name was Sergeant Holzminder, and that he was the cruising sergeant on the shift. He looked at the redhead and went over to the bed.

“Call the hospital,” he said briefly, over his shoulder.

One of the cops went out to the car. The sergeant bent down over Goble. “Want to tell me?”

“The redhead beat me up. He took my money. Stuck a gun into me at the Casa. Made me drive him here. Then he beat me up.”

“Why?”

Goble made a sighing sound and his head went lax on the pillow. Either he passed out again or faked it. The sergeant straightened up and turned to me. “What’s your story?”

“I haven’t any, Sergeant. The man on the bed had dinner with me tonight. We’d met a couple of times. He said he was a Kansas City PI. I never knew what he was doing here.”

“And this?” The sergeant made a loose motion towards the redhead, who was still grinning a sort of unnatural epileptic grin.

“I never saw him before. I don’t know anything about him, except that he was waiting for me with a gun.”

“That your tire iron?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

The other cop came back into the room and nodded to the sergeant. “On the way.”

“So you had a tire iron,” the sergeant said coldly. “So why?”

“Let’s say I just had a hunch someone was waiting for me here.”

“Let’s try it that you didn’t have a hunch, that you already knew. And knew a lot more.”

“Let’s try it that you don’t call me a liar until you know what you’re talking about. And let’s try it that you don’t get so goddamn tough just because you have three stripes. And let’s try something more. This guy may be a hood, but he still has two broken wrists, and you know what that means, Sergeant? He’ll never be able to handle a gun again.”

“So we book you for mayhem.”

“If you say so, Sergeant.”

Then the ambulance came. They carried Goble out first and then the intern put temporary splints on the two wrists of the redhead. They unstrapped his ankles. He looked at me and laughed.

“Next time, pal, I’ll think of something original—but you did all right. You really did.”

He went out. The ambulance doors clanged shut and the growling sound of it died. The sergeant was sitting down now, with his cap off. He was wiping his forehead.

“Let’s try again,” he said evenly. “From the beginning. Like as if we didn’t hate each other and were just trying to understand. Could we?”

“Yes, Sergeant. We could. Thanks for giving me the chance.”

23

Eventually I landed back at the cop house. Captain Alessandro had gone. I had to sign a statement for Sergeant Holzminder.

“A tire iron, huh?” he said musingly. “Mister, you took an awful chance. He could have shot you four times while you were swinging on him.”

“I don’t think so, Sergeant. I bumped him pretty hard with the door. And I didn’t take a full swing. Also, maybe he wasn’t supposed to shoot me. I don’t figure he was in business for himself.”

A little more of that, and they let me go. It was too late to do anything but go to bed, too late to talk to anyone. Just the same I went to the telephone company office and shut myself in one of the two neat outdoor booths and dialed the Casa del Poniente.

“Miss Mayfield, please. Miss Betty Mayfield. Room 1224.”

“I can’t ring a guest at this hour.”

“Why? You got a broken wrist?” I was a real tough boy tonight. “Do you think I’d call if it wasn’t an emergency?”

He rang and she answered in a sleepy voice.

“This is Marlowe. Bad trouble. Do I come there or do you come to my place?”

“What? What kind of trouble?”

“Just take it from me for just this once. Should I pick you up in the parking lot?”

“I’ll get dressed. Give me a little time.”

I went out to my car and drove to the Casa. I was smoking my third cigarette and wishing I had a drink when she came quickly and noiselessly up to the car and got in.

“I don’t know what this is all about,” she began, but I interrupted her.

“You’re the only one that does. And tonight you’re going to tell me. And don’t bother getting indignant. It won’t work again.”

I jerked the car into motion and drove fast through silent streets and then down the hill and into the Rancho Descansado and parked under the trees. She got out without a word and I unlocked my door and put the lights on.

“Drink?”

“All right.”

“Are you doped?”

“Not tonight, if you mean sleeping pills. I was out with Clark and drank quite a lot of champagne. That always makes me sleepy.”

I made a couple of drinks and gave her one. I sat down and leaned my head back.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m a little tired. Once in every two or three days I have to sit down. It’s a weakness I’ve tried to get over, but I’m not as young as I was. Mitchell’s dead.”

Her breath caught in her throat and her hand shook. She may have turned pale. I couldn’t tell.

“Dead?” she whispered. “Dead?”

“Oh, come off it. As Lincoln said, you can fool all of the detectives some of the time, and some of the detectives all the time, but you can’t—”

“Shut up! Shut up right now! Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Just a guy who has tried very hard to get where he could do you some good. A guy with enough experience and enough understanding to know that you were in some kind of jam. And wanted to help you out of it, with no help from you.”

“Mitchell’s dead,” she said in a low breathless voice. “I didn’t mean to be nasty. Where?”

“His car has been found abandoned in a place you wouldn’t know. It’s about twenty miles inland, on a road that’s hardly used. A place called Los Penasquitos Canyon. A place of dead land. Nothing in his car, no suitcases. Just an empty car parked at the side of a road hardly anybody ever uses.”

She looked down at her drink and took a big gulp. “You said he was dead.”

“It seems like weeks, but it’s only hours ago that you came over here and offered me the top half of Rio to get rid of his body.”

“But there wasn’t—I mean, I must just have dreamed—”

“Lady, you came over here at three o’clock in the morning in a state of near-shock. You described just where he was and how he was lying on the chaise on your little porch. So I went back with you and climbed the fire stairs, using the infinite caution for which my profession is famous. And no Mitchell, and then you asleep in your little bed with your little sleeping pill cuddled up to you.”

“Get on with your act,” she snapped at me. “I know how you love it. Why didn’t you cuddle up to me? I wouldn’t have needed a sleeping pill—perhaps?”

“One thing at a time, if you don’t mind. And the first thing is that you were telling the truth when you came here. Mitchell was dead on your porch. But someone got his body out of there while you were over here making a sucker out of me. And somebody got him down to his car and then packed his suitcases and got them down. All this took time. It took more than time. It took a great big reason. Now who would do a thing like that—just to save you the mild embarrassment of reporting a dead man on your porch?”

“Oh, shut up!” She finished her drink and put the glass aside.

“I’m tired. Do you mind if I lie down on your bed?”

“Not if you take your clothes off.”

“All right—I’ll take my clothes off. That’s what you’ve been working up to, isn’t it?”

“You might not like that bed. Goble was beaten up on it tonight—by a hired gun named Richard Harvest. He was really brutalized. You remember Goble, don’t you? The fat sort of man in the little dark car that followed us up the hill the other night.”

“I don’t know anybody named Goble. And I don’t know anybody named Richard Harvest. How do you know all this? Why were they here—in your room?”

“The hired gun was waiting for me. After I heard about Mitchell’s car I had a hunch. Even generals and other important people have hunches. Why not me? The trick is to know when to act on one. I was lucky tonight—or last night. I acted on a hunch. He had a gun, but I had a tire iron.”

“What a big strong unbeatable man you are,” she said bitterly.

“I don’t mind the bed. Do I take my clothes off now?”

I went over and jerked her to her feet and shook her. “Stop your nonsense, Betty. When I want your beautiful white body, it won’t be while you’re my client. I want to know what you are afraid of. How the hell can I do anything about it if I don’t know? Only you can tell me.”

She began to sob in my arms.

Women have so few defenses, but they certainly perform wonders with those they have.

I held her tight against me. “You can cry and cry and sob and sob, Betty. Go ahead, I’m patient. If I wasn’t that—well, hell, if I wasn’t that—”

That was as far as I got. She was pressed tight to me trembling. She lifted her face and dragged my head down until I was kissing her.

“Is there some other woman?” she asked softly, between my teeth.

“There have been.”

“But someone very special?”

“There was once, for a brief moment. But that’s a long time ago now.”

“Take me. I’m yours—all of me is yours. Take me.”

24

A banging on the door woke me. I opened my eyes stupidly. She was clinging to me so tightly that I could hardly move. I moved her arms gently until I was free. She was still sound asleep.

I got out of bed and pulled a bathrobe on and went to the door;

I didn’t open it.

“What’s the matter? I was asleep.”

“Captain Alessandro wants you at the office right away. Open the door.”

“Sorry, can’t be done. I have to shave and shower and so on.”

“Open the door. This is Sergeant Green.”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant. I just can’t. But I’ll be along just as soon as I can make it.”

“You got a dame in there?”

“Sergeant, questions like that are out of line. I’ll be there.”

I heard his steps go down off the porch. I heard someone laugh. I heard a voice say, “This guy is really rich. I wonder what he does on his day off.”

I heard the police car going away. I went into the bathroom and showered and shaved and dressed. Betty was still glued to the pillow. I scribbled a note and put in on my pillow. “The cops want me. I have to go. You know where my car is. Here are the keys.”

I went out softly and locked the door and found the Hertz car. I knew the keys would be in it. Operators like Richard Harvest don’t bother about keys. They carry sets of them for all sorts of cars.

Captain Alessandro looked exactly as he had the day before. He would always look like that. There was a man with him, an elderly stony-faced man with nasty eyes.

Captain Alessandro nodded me to the usual chair. A cop in uniform came in and put a cup of coffee in front of me. He gave me a sly grin as he went out.

“This is Mr. Henry Cumberland of Westfield, Carolina, Marlowe. North Carolina. I don’t know how he found his way out here, but he did. He says Betty Mayfield murdered his son.”

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing for me to say. I sipped the coffee which was too hot, but good otherwise.

“Like to fill us in a little, Mr. Cumberland?”

“Who’s this?” He had a voice as sharp as his face.

“A private detective named Philip Marlowe. He operates out of Los Angeles. He is here because Betty Mayfield is his client. It seems that you have rather more drastic ideas about Miss Mayfield than he has.”

“I don’t have any ideas about her, Captain,” I said. “I just like to squeeze her once in a while. It soothes me.”

“You like being soothed by a murderess?” Cumberland barked at me.

“Well, I didn’t know she was a murderess, Mr. Cumberland. It’s all news to me. Would you care to explain?”

“The girl who calls herself Betty Mayfield—and that was her maiden name—was the wife of my son, Lee Cumberland. I never approved of the marriage. It was one of those wartime idiocies. My son received a broken neck in the war and had to wear a brace to protect his spinal column. One night she got it away from him and taunted him until he rushed at her. Unfortunately, he had been drinking rather heavily since he came home, and there had been quarrels. He tripped and fell across the bed. I came into the room and found her trying to put the brace back on his neck. He was already dead.”

I looked at Captain Alessandro. “Is this being recorded, Captain?”

He nodded. “Every word.”

“All right, Mr. Cumberland. There’s more, I take it.”

“Naturally. I have a great deal of influence in Westfield. I own the bank, the leading newspaper, most of the industry. The people of Westfield are my friends. My daughter-in-law was arrested and tried for murder and the jury brought in a verdict of guilty.”

“The jury were all Westfield people, Mr. Cumberland?”

“They were. Why shouldn’t they be?”

“I don’t know, sir. But it sounds like a one-man town.”

“Don’t get impudent with me, young man.”

“Sorry, sir. Would you finish?”

“We have a peculiar law in our state, and I believe in a few other jurisdictions. Ordinarily the defense attorney makes an automatic motion for a directed verdict of not guilty and it is just as automatically denied. In my state the judge may reserve his ruling until after the verdict. The judge was senile. He reserved his ruling. When the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, he declared in a long speech that the jury had failed to consider the possibility that my son had in a drunken rage removed the brace from his neck in order to terrify his wife. He said that where there was so much bitterness anything was possible, and that the jury had failed to consider the possibility that my daughter-in-law might have been doing exactly what she said she was doing—trying to put the brace back on my son’s neck. He voided the verdict and discharged the defendant.

“I told her that she had murdered my son and that I would see to it that she had no place of refuge anywhere on this earth. That is why I am here.”

I looked at the captain. He looked at nothing. I said: “Mr. Cumberland, whatever your private convictions, Mrs. Lee Cumberland, whom I know as Betty Mayfield, has been tried and acquitted. You have called her a murderess. That’s a slander. We’ll settle for a million dollars.”

He laughed almost grotesquely. “You small-town nobody,” he almost screamed. “Where I come from you would be thrown into jail as a vagrant.”

“Make it a million and a quarter,” I said. “I’m not so valuable as your ex-daughter-in-law.”

Cumberland turned on Captain Alessandro. “What goes on here?” he barked. “Are you all a bunch of crooks?”

“You’re talking to a police officer, Mr. Cumberland.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn what you are,” Cumberland said furiously. “There are plenty of crooked police.”

“It’s a good idea to be sure—before you call them crooked,” Alessandro said, almost with amusement. Then he lit a cigarette and blew smoke and smiled through it.

“Take it easy, Mr. Cumberland. You’re a cardiac case. Prognosis unfavorable. Excitement is very bad for you. I studied medicine once. But somehow I became a cop. The war cut me off, I guess.”

Cumberland stood up. Spittle showed on his chin. He made a strangled sound in his throat. “You haven’t heard the last of this,” he snarled.

Alessandro nodded. “One of the interesting things about police work is that you never hear the last of anything. There are always too many loose ends. Just what would you like me to do? Arrest someone who has been tried and acquitted, just because you are a big shot in Westfield, Carolina?”

“I told her I’d never give her any peace,” Cumberland said furiously. “I’d follow her to the end of the earth. I’d make sure everyone knew just what she was!”

“And what is she, Mr. Cumberland?”

“A murderess that killed my son and was let off by an idiot of a judge—that’s what she is!”

Captain Alessandro stood up, all six feet three inches of him. “Take off, buster,” he said coldly. “You annoy me. I’ve met all kinds of punks in my time. Most of them have been poor stupid backward kids. This is the first time I’ve come across a great big important man who was just as stupid and vicious as a fifteen-year-old delinquent. Maybe you own Westfield, North Carolina, or think you do. You don’t own a cigar butt in my town. Get out before I put the arm on you for interfering with an officer in the performance of his duties.”

Cumberland almost staggered to the door and groped for the knob, although the door was wide open. Alessandro looked after him. He sat down slowly.

“You were pretty rough, Captain.”

“It’s breaking my heart. If anything I said makes him take another look at himself—oh well, hell!”

“Not his kind. Am I free to go?”

“Yes. Goble won’t make charges. He’ll be on his way back to Kansas City today. We’ll dig up something on this Richard Harvest, but what’s the use? We put him away for a while, and a hundred just like him are available for the same work.”

“What do I do about Betty Mayfield?”

“I have a vague idea that you’ve already done it,” he said, deadpan.

“Not until I know what happened to Mitchell.” I was just as deadpan as he was.

“All I know is that he’s gone. That doesn’t make him police business.”

I stood up. We gave each other those looks. I went out.

25

She was still asleep. My coming in didn’t wake her. She slept like a little girl, soundlessly, her face at peace. I watched her for a moment, then lit a cigarette and went out to the kitchen. When I had put coffee on to percolate in the handsome paper-thin dime store aluminum percolator provided by the management, I went back and sat on the bed. The note I had left was still on the pillow with my car keys.

I shook her gently and her eyes opened and blinked.

“What time is it?” she asked, stretching her bare arms as far as she could. “God, I slept like a log.”

“It’s time for you to get dressed. I have some coffee brewing. I’ve been down to the police station—by request. Your father-in-law is in town, Mrs. Cumberland.”

She shot upright and stared at me without breathing.

“He got the brush, but good, from Captain Alessandro. He can’t hurt you. Was that what all the fear was about?”

“Did he say—say what happened back in Westfield?”

“That’s what he came here to say. He’s mad enough to jump down his own throat. And what of it? You didn’t, did you? Do what they said?”

“I did not.” Her eyes blazed at me.

“Wouldn’t matter if you had—now. But it wouldn’t make me very happy about last night. How did Mitchell get wise?”

“He just happened to be there or somewhere nearby. Good heavens, the papers were full of it for weeks, It wasn’t hard for him to recognize me. Didn’t they have it in the papers here?”

“They ought to have covered it, if only because of the unusual legal angle. If they did, I missed it. The coffee ought to be ready now. How do you take it?”

“Black, please. No sugar.”

“Fine. I don’t have any cream or sugar. Why did you call yourself Eleanor King? No, don’t answer that. I’m stupid. Old man Cumberland would know your unmarried name.”

I went out to the kitchen and removed the top of the percolator, and poured us both a cup. I carried hers to her. I sat down in a chair with mine. Our eyes met and were strangers again.

She put her cup aside. “That was good. Would you mind looking the other way while I gather myself together?”

“Sure.” I picked a paperback off the table and made a pretense of reading it. It was about some private eye whose idea of a hot scene was a dead naked woman hanging from the shower rail with the marks of torture on her. By that time Betty was in the bathroom. I threw the paperback into the wastebasket, not having a garbage can handy at the moment. Then I got to thinking there are two kinds of women you can make love to. Those who give themselves so completely and with such utter abandonment that they don’t even think about their bodies. And there are those who are self-conscious and always want to cover up a little. I remembered a girl in a story by Anatole France who insisted on taking her stockings off. Keeping them on made her feel like a whore. She was right.

When Betty came out of the bathroom she looked like a fresh-opened rose, her make-up perfect, her eyes shining, every hair exactly in place.

“Will you take me back to the hotel? I want to speak to Clark.”

“You in love with him?”

“I thought I was in love with you.”

“It was a cry in the night,” I said. “Let’s not try to make it more than it was. There’s more coffee out in the kitchen.”

“No, thanks. Not until breakfast. Haven’t you ever been in love? I mean enough to want to be with a woman every day, every month, every year?”

“Let’s go.”

“How can such a hard man be so gentle?” she asked wonderingly.

“If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.”

I held her coat for her and we went out to my car. On the way back to the hotel she didn’t speak at all. When we got there and I slid into the now familiar parking slot, I took the five folded traveler’s checks out of my pocket and held them out to her.

“Let’s hope it’s the last time we pass these back and forth,” I said. “They’re wearing out.”

She looked at them, but didn’t take them. “I thought they were your fee,” she said rather sharply.

“Don’t argue, Betty. You know very well that I couldn’t take money from you.”

“After last night?”

“After nothing. I just couldn’t take it. That’s all. I haven’t done anything for you. What are you going to do? Where are you going? You’re safe now.”

“I’ve no idea. I’ll think of something.”

“Are you in love with Brandon?”

“I might be.”

“He’s an ex-racketeer. He hired a gunman to scare Goble off. The gunman was ready to kill me. Could you really love a man like that?”

“A woman loves a man. Not what he is. And he may not have meant it.”

“Goodbye, Betty. I gave it what I had, but it wasn’t enough.”

She reached her hand out slowly and took the checks. “I think you’re crazy. I think you’re the craziest man I ever met.” She got out of the car and walked away quickly, as she always did.

26

I gave her time to clear the lobby and go up to her room, and then I went into the lobby myself and asked for Mr. Clark Brandon on a house phone. Javonen came by and gave me a hard look, but he didn’t say anything.

A man’s voice answered. It was his all right.

“Mr. Brandon, you don’t know me, although we shared an elevator the other morning. My name is Philip Marlowe. I’m a private detective from Los Angeles, and I’m a friend of Miss Mayfield. I’d like to talk to you a little, if you’ll give me the time.”

“I seem to have heard something about you, Marlowe. But I’m all set to go out. How about a drink around six this evening?”

“I’d like to get back to Los Angeles, Mr. Brandon. I won’t keep you long.”

“All right,” he said grudgingly. “Come on up.”

He opened the door, a big, tall, very muscular man in top condition, neither hard nor soft. He didn’t offer to shake hands. He stood aside, and I went in.

“You alone here, Mr. Brandon?”

“Sure. Why?”

“I wouldn’t want anyone else to hear what I have to say.”

“Well say it and get done.”

He sat in a chair and put his feet up on an ottoman. He flicked a gold lighter at a gold-tipped cigarette. Big deal.

“I first came down here on the instructions of a Los Angeles lawyer to follow Miss Mayfield and find out where she went, and then report back. I didn’t know why and the lawyer said he didn’t either, but that he was acting for a reputable firm of attorneys in Washington. Washington, D.C.”

“So you followed her. So what?”

“So she made contact with Larry Mitchell, or he with her, and he had a hook of some sort into her.”

“Into a lot of women from time to time,” Brandon said coldly. “He specialized in it.”

“He doesn’t any more, does he?”

He stared at me with cool blank eyes. “What’s that mean?”

“He doesn’t do anything any more. He doesn’t exist any more.”

“I heard he left the hotel and went off in his car. What’s it to do with me?”

“You didn’t ask me how I know he doesn’t exist any more.”

“Look, Marlowe.” He flicked ash from his cigarette with a contemptuous gesture. “It could be that I don’t give a damn. Get to what concerns me, or get out.”

“I also got involved down here, if involved is the word, with a man named Goble who said he was a private eye from Kansas City, and had a card which may or may not have proved it. Goble annoyed me a good deal. He kept following me around. He kept talking about Mitchell. I couldn’t figure what he was after. Then one day at the desk you got an anonymous letter. I watched you read it over and over. You asked the clerk who left it. The clerk didn’t know. You even picked the empty envelope out of the wastebasket. And when you went up in the elevator you didn’t look happy.”

Brandon was beginning to look a little less relaxed. His voice had a sharper edge.

“You could get too nosy, Mr. PI. Ever think of that?”

“That’s a silly question. How else would I make a living?”

“Better get out of here while you can still walk.”

I laughed at him, and that really burned him. He shot to his feet and came striding over to where I was sitting.

“Listen, boy friend. I’m a pretty big man in this town. I don’t get pushed around much by small-time operators like you. Out!”

“You don’t want to hear the rest?”

“I said, out!”

I stood up. “Sorry. I was prepared to settle this with you privately. And don’t get the idea that I’m trying to put a bite on you—like Goble. I just don’t do those things. But if you toss me out—without hearing me out—I’ll have to go to Captain Alessandro. He’ll listen.”

He stood glowering for a long moment. Then a curious sort of grin appeared on his face.

“So he’ll listen to you. So what? I could get him transferred with one phone call.”

“Oh, no. Not Captain Alessandro. He’s not brittle. He got tough with Henry Cumberland this morning. And Henry Cumberland isn’t a man that’s used to having anyone get tough with him, any place, any time. He just about broke Cumberland in half with a few contemptuous words. You think you could get that guy to lay off? You should live so long.”

“Jesus,” he said, still grinning, “I used to know guys like you once. I’ve lived here so long now I must have forgotten they still make them. Okay. I’ll listen.”

He went back to the chair and picked another gold-tipped cigarette from a case and lit it. “Care for one?”

“No thanks. This boy Richard Harvest—I think he was a mistake. Not good enough for the job.”

“Not nearly good enough, Marlowe. Not nearly. Just a cheap sadist. That’s what comes of getting out of touch. You lose your judgment. He could have scared Goble silly without laying a finger on him. And then taking him over to your place—what a laugh! What an amateur! And look at him now. No good for anything any more. He’ll be selling pencils. Would you care for a drink?”

“I’m not on that kind of terms with you, Brandon. Let me finish. In the middle of the night—the night I made contact with Betty Mayfield, and the night you chased Mitchell out of The Glass Room—and did it very nicely, I might add—Betty came over to my room at the Rancho Descansado. One of your properties, I believe. She said Mitchell was dead on a chaise on her porch. She offered me large things to do something about it. I came back over here and there was no man dead on her porch. The next morning the night garage man told me Mitchell had left in his car with nine suitcases. He’d paid his bill and a week in advance to hold his room. The same day his car was found abandoned in Los Penasquitos Canyon. No suitcases, no Mitchell.”

Brandon stared hard at me, but said nothing.

“Why was Betty Mayfield afraid to tell me what she was afraid of? Because she had been convicted of murder in Westfield, North Carolina, and then the verdict was reversed by the judge, who has that power in that state, and used it. But Henry Cumberland, the father of the husband she was accused of murdering, told her he would follow her anywhere she went and see that she had no peace. Now she finds a dead man on her porch. And the cops investigate and her whole story comes out. She’s frightened and confused. She thinks she couldn’t be lucky twice. After all, a jury did convict her.”

Brandon said softly: “His neck was broken. He fell over the end wall of my terrace. She couldn’t have broken his neck. Come out here. I’ll show you.”

We went out on the wide sunny terrace. Brandon marched to the end wall and I looked down over it and I was looking straight down on a chaise on Betty Mayfield’s porch.

“This wall isn’t very high,” I said. “Not high enough to be safe.”

“I agree,” Brandon said calmly. “Now suppose he was standing like this”—he stood with his back against the wall, and the top of it didn’t come very much above the middle of his thighs. And Mitchell had been a tall man too—”and he goads Betty into coming over near enough so that he can grab her, and she pushes him off hard, and over he goes. And he just happens to fall in such a way—by pure chance—that his neck snaps. And that’s exactly how her husband died. Do you blame the girl for getting in a panic?”

“I’m not sure I blame anybody, Brandon. Not even you.”

He stepped away from the wall and looked out to sea and was silent for a moment. Then he turned.

“For nothing,” I said, “except that you managed to get rid of Mitchell’s body.”

“Now, how in hell could I do that?”

“You’re a fisherman, among other things. I’ll bet that right here in this apartment you have a long strong cord. You’re a powerful man. You could get down to Betty’s porch, you could put that cord under Mitchell’s arms, and you have the strength to lower him to the ground behind the shrubbery. Then, already having his key out of his pocket, you could go to his room and pack up all his stuff, and carry it down to the garage, either in the elevator, or down the fire stairs. That would take three trips. Not too much for you. Then you could drive his car out of the garage. You probably knew the night man was a doper and that he wouldn’t talk, if he knew you knew. This was in the small hours of the night. Of course the garage man lied about the time. Then you could drive the car as near as possible to where Mitchell’s body was, and dump him into it, and drive off to Los Penasquitos Canyon.”

Brandon laughed bitterly. “So I am in Los Penasquitos Canyon with a car and a dead man and nine suitcases. How do I get out of there?”

“Helicopter.”

“Who’s going to fly it?”

“You. They don’t check much on helicopters yet, but they soon will, because they are getting more and more numerous. You could have one brought to you in Los Penasquitos Canyon, having arranged in advance, and you could have had someone come along to pick up the pilot. A man in your position can do almost anything, Brandon.”

“And then what?”

“You loaded Mitchell’s body and his suitcases into the helicopter and flew out to sea and set the helicopter hovering close to the water, and then you could dump the body and the suitcases, and drift on back to wherever the helicopter came from. A nice clean well-organized job.”

Brandon laughed raucously—too raucously. The laugh had a forced sound.

“You think I’d actually be idiot enough to do all this for a girl I had only just met?”

“Uh-uh. Think again, Brandon. You did it for you. You forget Goble. Goble came from Kansas City. Didn’t you?”

“What if I did?”

“Nothing. End of the line. But Goble didn’t come out here for the ride. And he wasn’t looking for Mitchell, unless he already knew him, and between them, they figured they had a gold mine. You were the gold mine. But Mitchell got dead and Goble tried to go it alone, and he was a mouse fighting with a tiger. But would you want to explain how Mitchell fell off your terrace? Would you want an investigation of your background? What so obvious as for the polices to think you had thrown Mitchell over the wall? And even if they couldn’t prove it, where would you be in Esmeralda from then on?”

He walked slowly to the far end of the terrace and back. He stood in front of me, his expression completely blank.

“I could have you killed, Marlowe. But in some strange way in the years I have lived here, I don’t seem to be that kind of guy any more. So you have me licked. I don’t have any defense, except to have you killed. Mitchell was the lowest kind of man, a blackmailer of women. You could be right all along the line, but I wouldn’t regret it. And it’s just possible, believe me, just possible that I too went out on a limb for Betty Mayfield. I don’t expect you to believe it, but it is possible. Now, let’s deal. How much?”

“How much for what?”

“For not going to the cops.”

“I already told you how much. Nothing. I just wanted to know what happened. Was I approximately right?”

“Dead right, Marlowe. Right on the nose. They may get me for it yet.”

“Maybe. Well, I’ll take myself out of your hair now. Like I said—I want to get back to Los Angeles. Somebody might offer me a cheap job. I have to live, or do I?”

“Would you shake hands with me?”

“No. You hired a gun. That puts you out of the class of people I shake hands with. I might be dead today, if I hadn’t had a hunch.”

“I didn’t mean him to kill anyone.”

“You hired him. Goodbye.”

27

I got out of the elevator and Javonen seemed to be waiting for me. “Come into the bar,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

We went into the bar, which was very quiet at that hour. We sat at a corner table. Javonen said quietly: “You think I’m a bastard, don’t you?”

“No. You have a job. I have a job. Mine annoyed you. You didn’t trust me. That doesn’t make you a bastard.”

“I try to protect the hotel. Who do you try to protect?”

“I never know. Often, when I do know, I don’t know how. I just fumble around and make a nuisance of myself. Often I’m pretty inadequate.”

“So I heard—from Captain Alessandro. If it’s not too personal, how much do you make on a job like this?”

“Well, this was a little out of the usual line, Major. As a matter of fact, I didn’t make anything.”

“The hotel will pay you five thousand dollars—for protecting its interests.”

“The hotel, meaning Mr. Clark Brandon.”

“I suppose. He’s the boss.”

“It has a sweet sound—five thousand dollars. A very sweet sound. I’ll listen to it on my way back to Los Angeles.” I stood up.

“Where do I send the check, Marlowe?”

“The Police Relief Fund could be glad to have it. Cops don’t make much money. When they get in trouble they have to borrow from the Fund. Yes, I think the Police Relief Fund would be very grateful to you.”

“But not you?”

“You were a major in the CIC. You must have had a lot of chances to graft. But you’re still working. I guess I’ll be on my way.”

“Listen, Marlowe. You’re being a damn fool. I want to tell you—”

“Tell yourself, Javonen. You have a captive audience. And good luck.”

I walked out of the bar and got into my car. I drove to the Descansado and picked up my stuff and stopped at the office to pay my bill. Jack and Lucille were in their usual positions. Lucille smiled at me.

Jack said: “No bill, Mr. Marlowe. I’ve been instructed. And we offer you our apologies for last night. But they’re not worth much, are they?”

“How much would the bill be?”

“Not much. Twelve-fifty maybe.”

I put the money on the counter. Jack looked at it and frowned.

“I said there was no bill, Mr. Marlowe.”

“Why not? I occupied the room.”

“Mr. Brandon—”

“Some people never learn, do they? Nice to have known you both. I’d like a receipt for this. It’s deductible.”

28

I didn’t do more than ninety back to Los Angeles. Well, perhaps I hit a hundred for a few seconds now and then. Back on Yucca Avenue I stuck the Olds in the garage and poked at the mailbox. Nothing, as usual. I climbed the long flight of redwood steps and unlocked my door. Everything was the same. The room was stuffy and dull and impersonal as it always was. I opened a couple of windows and mixed a drink in the kitchen. I sat down on the couch and stared at the wall. Wherever I went, whatever I did, this was what I would come back to. A blank wall in a meaningless room in a meaningless house.

I put the drink down on a side table without touching it. Alcohol was no cure for this. Nothing was any cure but the hard inner heart that asked for nothing from anyone.

The telephone started to ring. I picked it up and said emptily: “Marlowe speaking.”

“Is this Mr. Philip Marlowe?”

“Yes.”

“Paris has been trying to reach you, Mr. Marlowe. I’ll call you back in a little while.”

I put the phone down slowly and I think my hand shook a little.

Driving too fast, or not enough sleep.

The call came through in fifteen minutes: “The party calling you from Paris is on the line, sir. If you have any difficulty, please flash your operator.”

“This is Linda. Linda Loring. You remember. me, don’t you, darling?”

“How could I forget?”

“How are you?”

“Tired—as usual. Just came off a very trying sort of case. How are you?”

“Lonely. Lonely for you. I’ve tried to forget you. I haven’t been able to. We made beautiful love together.”

“That was a year and a half ago. And for one night. What am I supposed to say?”

“I’ve been faithful to you. I don’t know why. The world is full of men. But I’ve been faithful to you.”

“I haven’t been faithful to you, Linda. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I didn’t know you expected me to be faithful.”

“I didn’t. I don’t. I’m just trying to say that I love you. I’m asking you to marry me. You said it wouldn’t last six months. But why not give it a chance? Who knows—it might last forever. I’m begging you. What does a woman have to do to get the man she wants?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know how she knows she wants him. We live in different worlds. You’re a rich woman, used to being pampered. I’m a tired hack with a doubtful future. Your father would probably see to it that I didn’t even have that.”

“You’re not afraid of my father. You’re not afraid of anyone. You’re just afraid of marriage. My father knows a man when he sees one. Please, please, please. I’m at the Ritz. I’ll send you a plane ticket at once.”

I laughed. “You’ll send me a plane ticket? What sort of guy do you think I am? I’ll send you a plane ticket. And that will give you time to change your mind.”

“But, darling, I don’t need you to send me a plane ticket. I have—”

“Sure. You have the money for five hundred plane tickets. But this one will be my plane ticket. Take it, or don’t come.”

“I’ll come, darling. I’ll come. Hold me in your arms. Hold me close in your arms. I don’t want to own you. Nobody ever will. I just want to love you.”

“I’ll be here. I always am.”

“Hold me in your arms.”

The phone clicked, there was a buzzing sound, and then the line went dead.

I reached for my drink. I looked around the empty room—which was no longer empty. There was a voice in it, and a tall slim lovely woman. There was a dark hair on the pillow in the bedroom. There was that soft gentle perfume of a woman who presses herself tight against you, whose lips are soft and yielding, whose eyes are half blind.

The telephone rang again. I said: “Yes?”

“This is Clyde Umney, the lawyer. I don’t seem to have had any sort of satisfactory report from you. I’m not paying you to amuse yourself. I want an accurate and complete account of your activities at once. I demand to know in full detail exactly what you have been doing since you returned to Esmeralda.”

“Having a little quiet fun—at my own expense.”

His voice rose to a sharp cackle. “I demand a full report from you at once. Otherwise I’ll see that you get bounced off your license.”

“I have a suggestion for you, Mr. Umney. Why don’t you go kiss a duck?”

There were sounds of strangled fury as I hung up on him.

Almost immediately the telephone started to ring again.

I hardly heard it. The air was full of music

About the Author

RAYMOND CHANDLER was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 23, 1888, but spent most of his boyhood and youth in England, where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a free-lance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator. During World War I, he served in France with the First Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, transferring later to the Royal Flying Corps (R.A.F.). In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his business career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing, publishing his first stories in Black Mask. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. Never a prolific writer, he published only one collection of stories and seven novels in his lifetime. In the last year of his life he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died in La Jolla, California, on March 26, 1959.