Poodle Springs

32

I was back in Venice, where Angel worked as a waitress at a combination cafe and bookstore on the beach. The lunch crowd was gone and there were only a few early lush types sipping drinks at the outdoor tables and trying to look as if one would do them, they were just passing time. I sat and ordered coffee. Angel brought it to me.

"Take a minute," I said. "I need to show you something."

I pushed a chair away from the table with my foot.

"They don't allow me to sit with the customers," Angel said, "but I'm due for my break. You can come in back."

I got up and followed her through the kitchen to a storage room where full gallon-size cans of tomatoes and jugs of olive oil were stacked against the bare cinder-block walls. There was a mop and bucket next to the door.

I took the picture of Muriel out and handed it to Angel.

"You know her?" I said.

Angel shook her head. Her cheeks colored. I'd been looking at so many nude pictures lately I'd forgotten that she might be embarrassed. I liked her for it.

"Sorry," I said. "But it's the only picture I've got."

"It's all right," Angel said. She looked at the picture again. "She does have a wonderful body," she said.

"Sure," I said. "Larry took this picture."

"Larry?"

"I can't prove it, but I know it's the picture that Lola showed to Larry when they had their fight. She was trying to blackmail him with it."

"Because he took a naked picture?"

"Because it's his wife," I said.

Angel smiled tentatively at me.

"I don't understand," she said.

"Larry also goes by the name Les Valentine," I said. "-Under that name he is married to this woman, Muriel Blackstone, now Muriel Valentine."

"Larry's married to me," Angel said.

"Yes," I said, "and Les is married to her and Les and Larry are the same guy."

"I don't believe that," Angel said.

"No reason you should," I said. "But it's the truth and I've kept it from you as long as I'm going to."

"I don't know why you come to me and lie to me like this," Angel said. "You must be very evil or very sick."

"Tired," I said. "Tired of wading around in this swamp. Maybe your husband did kill somebody, maybe he didn't; but he's bolted again and I don't know where he is and I don't care. No more secrets."

"You still don't know where Larry is?" Angel said. It was as if everything else I'd told her had washed off her without a mark.

"No," I said. "Do you?"

"No. Do you think something happened to him?"

"No, I think he did what he knows how to do. He ran away."

"He wouldn't leave me," Angel said.

I just shook my head. I didn't know what the hell Larry/Les would do or where he'd go, and I was beginning to doubt that I ever would.

"He wouldn't," Angel said again.

I fished a card out of my wallet and handed it to her.

"If you find out where he is," I said, "you can call me."

She took the card without looking at it. I doubted that she'd call. I doubted that anyone would call. Ever.

I went out of the restaurant and back along the beach. The Pacific lumbered in toward me. The swells looked tired as they crested and fell apart on the beach, and gathered themselves and withdrew slowly, and got upright and fell toward the beach again.

Time to go back to the Springs.