Poodle Springs

27

It was quiet in the Poodle Springs hoosegow. There were a couple of other prisoners, but it was late and they were asleep. The only noise was the sound of sleeping men, an occasional snore, a mutter, once a brief sob.

I lay on the bunk in the dark. Outside the late night life of the Springs went on. People had midnight snacks and made love and watched movies on TV and slept quietly with the dog at the foot of the bed and the refrigerator humming quietly in the kitchen. The jail was attached to the police station and I could hear the patrol cars come and go: the sound of their radios, indistinct in the night, the crunch of tires on gravel, once the siren as a car pulled out in a hurry. But mostly there was nothing to hear, and nothing to do.

I wondered if Lippy would have been killed if I'd told the cops all I knew. If I'd told them even as much as I'd told Blackstone. Guys like Lippy were always walking on the railing, but dying's a long fall. Blackstone had no reason to kill Lippy, even if he found out that he was chasing Les for money. A word from the boss would have been enough. But Les had a reason, and he had a reason to kill Lola Faithful too, a blackmail reason having to do with a picture. Whoever killed Lola had also cleaned out Larry's files-I smiled to myself in the dark. When he was in Poodle Springs I called him Les, when he was in L.A. I called him Larry. No wonder I was confused-were they looking for the picture? Why would the killer take all the files? Because he was looking for something, or she was, and he didn't have time to look through them all. If Larry killed her he'd know what was in the files. He wouldn't have to take them. But he might because he'd know the cops would find them and maybe he didn't want them known, though there were pictures on sale at any newsstand as graphic as Larry's. Still, he might be embarrassed.

The turnkey strolled down the corridor outside the row of cells, his crepe-soled shoes squeaking. He paused in front of each cell and stared in for a moment before he moved on.

There hadn't been anyone in all those nude photos that I recognized except Sondra Lee. And I had her picture tucked under the floor mat in the trunk of my car. Suppose Larry had agreed to pay Lola blackmail and she came and brought the picture and he killed her and took it. He'd destroy the picture-but would Lola show up with the only print? Would she be that stupid? I didn't believe it. Blackmailers don't give up their leverage that easy. Even stupid blackmailers.

I thought about a cigarette. I didn't have any, or my pipe, or for that matter my shoelaces or my tie or my belt. I got up and walked in a tight circle around the cell a few times. It didn't make me sleepy. I lay back down on the bunk. There was no sheet, but there was a mattress and a blanket. I'd been in jails that had neither. Ah, Marlowe, you glamorous adventurer. Why the hell wasn't it Larry? Even if he did have a pretty, big-eyed little wife who adored him. Was she the legal one? Maybe I should check the bigamy laws when I got out. Hadn't had a lot of bigamy cases lately.

I did some deep breathing.

And where was the picture? Lola would have kept a copy. It wasn't in her house. If the cops had found it, it would have led them somewhere. They were as stuck as I was, stucker because they didn't know the things that I was stuck about. Could be in a safe-deposit box. Except where was the key? And whiskey-voiced old broads like Lola didn't usually keep safe-deposit boxes. Maybe she stashed the negative with a friend. Except whiskey-voiced old broads like Lola didn't usually trust friends with valuable property. The simplest answer was Larry again, and the simplest answer on Lippy was Les. And Les was Larry.

I did some more deep breathing.

Somewhere before morning I dozed off finally and dreamed that I was in love with a huge nude photograph of Linda, and every time I reached it Tweedledum and Tweedledee grabbed it away and ran off in perfect tandem.