Poodle Springs

29

I spent the night in the guest room. In the morning I was out of the house early. I got coffee in a place on Riverside that also sold stuffed burros, and little key chains with genuine gold nuggets attached. The desert looked harsher than I'd ever seen it as I drove over to Muriel Valentine's house. The earth had a harsh eroded look like an angry dowager, and the cactus plants seemed more loutish than I remembered them yesterday. The hard disinterested sky was cloudless and the heat was dry and unyielding as I got out and walked up Muriel's walk again. The houseboy answered my ring and let me stand in the hall while he went to fetch Mrs. Valentine. When she appeared she seemed as bleak as the desert. Her eyes looked as if she'd cried and her mouth was thin. "He's not here," she said.

"Your husband," I said.

"Yes. I don't know where he is."

The tip of her tongue appeared and touched her lower lip and disappeared.

"When did he leave?"

"He's been gone since the day after you left him here," she said.

"You know Lipshultz is dead," I said.

"Yes."

"Did you know he worked for your father?" I said.

She stepped back as if I had poked a live snake at her.

"Your father owns the Agony Club," I said.

She didn't say anything. She kept looking at me, her face tight, the tip of her tongue darting occasionally out over her lower lip. I looked back at her. Nothing else happened. Finally I turned and walked out and closed the door behind me. She felt worse than I did. I got in the Olds and sat for a moment staring at nothing, then I put the Olds in gear and headed for L.A.

I found Angel sitting on her front porch looking at the beach. There was toast grown cold on a saucer and a cup of tea turned dark with the tea bag sitting in it. Angel sat in the rocker with her knees up, her arms around them, her chin resting on them. The rocker shifted slightly but she wasn't really rocking.

"He's not here," she said.

"You waiting for him?" I said.

"Yes. I didn't go to work. I can't. I have to be here in case he comes."

"I've lost him," I said. "He's not where I left him."

The rocker moved a little. Angel didn't say anything.

The sound of the surf, muffled as it rolled over the sand, was a white sound behind us. There were people on the beach moving past us in both directions. Up the beach a bulldozer was moving sand around near a new playground.

"He's not worth this, Angel," I said. "He's got no spine."

"I love him," she said and shrugged. The rocker moved a little again and then stopped.

I thought about Muriel, her face scraped bare of anything but hurt. I looked at Angel. Would Angel forgive that too, another woman. Hell, another wife. This creep had two wives crazy about him. I was on my way to having none. "You wouldn't have a guess where he might be?" I said.

She shook her head.

"He'll come back here, though," she said. "Sooner or later."

"I'm not so sure, Angel," I said, "that he didn't kill Lippy."

"He wouldn't," she said.

"And if he killed Lippy he might have killed Lola."

Angel simply shook her head, grimly, and stared at the beach.

There wasn't anything else to say. If he'd killed Lola and I'd helped him get away then I was on the hook for Lippy as much as he was. I tried a wry smile at her and turned and went away from there. When I glanced back she was still staring at the beach, motionless.

I drove from Venice downtown to see Bernie Ohls. He was in his cubicle. Empty desk with a phone on it, swivel chair, hat on a hook on the back of the door.

"Harlan Potter spring you?" he said when I came in. "Or you tunnel out of the Springs jail?"

"Potter," I said.

"Bet he and his daughter were happy about that," Ohls said.

"Like spawning salmon," I said. I sat in the plain chair opposite the desk. There were no pictures on the walls, no citation, not even a window. Ohls had killed at least nine men that I knew of, several when they thought he was covered.

The office was as blank as a waiter's stare.

"You're not looking too good, Marlowe," Ohls said. "You look like a man who didn't sleep well, who had a lousy breakfast."

"Les Valentine and Larry Victor are the same guy," I said.

Ohls was sitting with one foot cocked on the open lower drawer of his desk. He took his foot off the drawer and swiveled the chair around and slowly placed both feet on the ground.

"Is that a fact?" he said. I could see him turning this over in his mind.

"Aren't they both married?" Ohls said.

"Yeah."

"You've known this for a while."

"I've known it since before Lola Faithful got killed," I said.

"You said something to us, maybe Lipshultz wouldn't have gone down," Ohls said.

"Yeah."

Ohls shifted his seat around and put one foot back up on the open drawer. He clasped both hands behind his neck.

"Marlowe of the desert," he said. "Hawkshaw to the stars."

I let that pass. I'd earned what was coming.

"You think that maybe you played it a little too tight this time, cutie? And a guy gets buzzed that didn't have to? Say Lippy deserved it more than some. He didn't deserve it this time, from this guy."

"Nobody deserves it, Bernie."

"Sure, Marlowe, let your heart bleed a little. And while you're at it why don't you explain to me why you held out on us."

"I didn't think he did it," I said.

"You didn't think he did it," Ohls said. "Who appointed you? This is cop business, friend."

"He's a loser, he's a spineless creep, but he's got a nice little girl who loves everything about him."

"Only one?" Ohls said.

I shrugged. "I'll get to that. I still don't know if he did it, but I have to admit he looks more likely every time you turn it around."

"You covered for some guy you barely know because he's got a nice wife."

"They looked happy, Bernie. You don't see too much of that. And I figured if you got him you'd like him for it so much he'd be in Q before the public defender got his briefcase open."

"I don't railroad people, Marlowe."

"Sure you don't, Bernie, and you don't turn down a likely suspect either. This guy had argued with the victim earlier, he's got to have a shaky record. He's got the gumption of a popsicle…" I turned my palms up and spread my hands.

"Bartender says the beef with Lola started when she showed him a picture. You know anything about that?"

"Larry had a file full of nude photos," I said. "I checked the files when I found his office."

"They're not there now," Ohls said. "Nude pictures of who?"

"Women, explicit, kind of stuff worth some money twenty-five years ago."

"Not much of a living in it now," Ohls said. "Unless you want it for blackmail."

I shrugged.

"Okay, Marlowe," Ohls said, "you can tell me everything, from the beginning real slow, lotta small words, so as not to confuse me. And once I've heard it all, and I'm satisfied that you're not being cute, then we'll have a stenographer in and we'll go through it all for her."

He put both feet up on his desk and leaned farther back in his chair, his hands laced across his solar plexus.

"Go," he said.

I told him pretty much everything, leaving out the fact that I had a picture of Sondra Lee in the trunk of my car. When I came to the part about Blackstone, Ohls whistled silently to himself. When I was finished he said, "And you still think Larry, Les, whatever the hell his name is, didn't do it?"

"I don't know, Bernie. I'm here. I've told you what I know. You and I both know how long this guy will be around if Clayton Blackstone finds out his daughter's married to a bigamist."

"A little work for fast Eddie," Ohls said.

"Damn little," I said.

"We could charge you with obstructing justice," Ohls said. "Interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty, aiding and abetting the escape of a felon, accessory after the fact of homicide, obtaining motor vehicle information dishonestly, impersonating a police officer and being stupider than three sheep."

"I got an overdue library book, too," I said. "May as well make a clean breast of it."

"Get out of here," Ohls said.

"What about the stenographer?" I said.

"The hell with the stenographer," Ohls said. "If you so much as walk on a posted lawn, Marlowe…" He waved his hand, dismissing me with the back of it. The way a man shoos away a gnat.

I got up and went.