Poodle Springs

18

We rode a lot of the way in silence. Victor said about every 15 minutes that he wished he had a cigarette. As we passed the Bakersfield cutoff I said, "Tell me about Muriel's father."

"Clayton Blackstone?" I could hear Victor take in air and let it out through his nose.

"Yeah."

The sun was gone now and the road cut through the empty desert like a faint ribbon in the headlights.

"Rich," Victor said.

I waited, as the highway spooled underneath us through the stationary dark.

"Rich and mean," Victor said.

"It's how you get rich," I said.

"He got rich a lot of ways," Victor said, "not all of them legal."

I waited some more.

"Most of them not legal," Victor said. "But he did it a while ago so now he's upper class and his daughter is a princess."

"It's a big rough country," I said. "Happens all the time."

"Yeah, but not to me."

"You asked for it," I said, just to be saying something.

"Blackstone made his money out of gambling, ships off the coast, out past the three-mile limit," Victor said. "Get anything you wanted out there, then. Cards, dice, roulette, a horse parlor, rooms for private games. You could get girls, booze, marijuana, coke and this was in the days when high school kids never heard of it."

"Sure," I said, "picked you up in water taxis at the pier in Bay City."

"Now he owns banks, and hotels, and clubs and restaurants, but that's where his money came from. He's still got people around."

"Tough guys?" I said.

"Guys that'll kick out your teeth and then shoot you for mumbling."

"He connected with the Agony Club?" I said.

"Naw, Lippy runs that."

"Lippy says his boss is a guy named Blackstone, and that Blackstone is a hard number about the books."

"Jesus," Victor said, "I didn't know that." He rubbed both eyes with the heels of his open hands. "Well, old Clayton isn't going to hack me while I'm married to his daughter."

"Unless he finds out you're also married to Angel," I said.

"Jesus Christ, Marlowe."

The Poodle Springs turn-off loomed out of the night. I turned off into the deeper black of the desert roadway. There were occasional glimmers of light up the canyons where somebody had built into the slagged side of the arroyo and was squatting, doing whatever desert squatters do. I felt a million miles from anywhere, no closer to civilization than to the stars that glimmered without warmth above me. Alone in the darkness listening to the whining litany of a weak man who'd tried to be too cute.

"How do you get along with Blackstone?" I said.

"You don't get along with a guy like Blackstone," Victor said. "He tolerates you or he doesn't. Me he tolerates because I belong to little Muffy."

I could hear the sound of bitterness that tinged his words like the bite of an underripe orange.

"Here's how it looks to me," I said. "Lippy wants you because you owe him money. The cops want you because you might have killed Lola Faithful. Blackstone tolerates you, but if he finds out about Angel he may let some air into your skull."

"Yeah," Victor said. His hands were clenched in front of his chest and he was staring down at his thumbs. "I don't care about myself, Marlowe. But we gotta protect Angel."

"I could tell that," I said. "I could tell just knowing you as I do that your life is a long unbroken sequence of self-sacrifice and concern for others."

"Honest to God, Marlowe. I love that girl. Maybe the only thing I ever loved. Guys would laugh probably, hear me saying something like this, but I'd turn myself in today if it would help her. But I can't because if Blackstone found out about me and Angel he'd have her killed too."

"Well, if you can restrain your passion for self-sacrifice," I said, "and keep your mouth shut and hide out with your Poodle Springs wife until I figure this out…"

I let it hang. I didn't have a finish for the sentence myself. Neither did he. We were silent until I dropped him in front of Muriel's place. He took off his hairpiece, put it in my glove compartment and walked wearily up the walk. As he reached the door I saw his shoulders straighten. I put the Olds in gear and drove on toward the house I shared with Linda.