Poodle Springs

6

Les Valentine's house was off Racquet Club Road, on one of those curvy little streets created to make an instant neighborhood. There were giant cactus plants at regular intervals, and jacaranda trees for a touch of color. The bungalows with their wide roofs were set close to the drive so that there was room for the pool in back, and the patio, which represented the ultimate advancement of civilization in the desert. No one was in sight. The only movement was the soft sluice of water sprinklers. Everybody was probably inside trying on outfits for the party at the Racquet Club Saturday night.

I parked the Olds in front and walked up the crushed white stone path to the porch. On either side of the Spanish oak door there were bull's-eye glass panels which went with the Spanish architecture like a Scotch Margarita. A Japanese houseboy opened the door and took my hat and put me in the front parlor to sit while he went for Madame.

The room was all white stucco. In one corner was a conical stucco fireplace in case the temperature dropped below ninety after the sun went down. The hearth was red Mexican tile. On the front wall was a large oil painting of a mean-looking guy in a three-piece suit with big white eyebrows, and the mouth of a man who tips people a nickel. On the end wall, to the left of the fireplace, was a series of photographs, full of arty lighting from below and odd over-the-shoulder poses of women. Black and white stuff, framed expensively as if they were important. On an easel near the doors to the patio was a big blow-up of a man and a woman. She was in her mid-30s, serious-looking, with the same kind of mouth as the mean-looking old guy in the oil on the front wall. Even though he was balding, the man with her seemed younger. He wore rimless glasses in the picture and a smile that said, Don't pay attention to me.

"Mr. Marlowe?"

I turned to look at the woman from the picture. She was frowning down at the brand-new card I'd had printed up. I hadn't even had an office yet when I ordered them so they merely said Philip Marlowe, Investigation, Poodle Springs. Linda had vetoed the brass knuckles rampant.

"Yes, Ma'am," I said.

"Sit down, please," she said. "Have you been admiring my husband's work?"

"Yes, Ma'am. Is that your husband with you here?" I nodded at the picture.

"Yes, that's Les. He set the timer and then joined me. He's very clever."

The body belied the face. The face with its penurious mouth said, I won't give you a damned thing. The body with strong breasts and proud hips said, You can have anything you can take. I was newly married to an angel, but I could feel the challenge.

"That's my father in the painting," she said.

I smiled.

"You may smoke, if you wish," she said. "I do not, my father never approved, but Les does and I rather enjoy the smell."

"Thanks," I said. "Maybe in a while."

I crossed my legs.

"I'm trying to locate your husband, Mrs. Valentine."

"Really?"

"Yes, I've been employed to find him by a man who claims your husband owes him $100,000."

"That's ridiculous."

"My employer says that your husband ran up $100,000 in gambling debts at his, ah, casino and left him holding lOU's for the amount."

"lOU's for illegal gambling are not enforceable," she snapped.

"Yes, Ma'am. But it has put my client in a difficult position with his employer."

"Mr. Marlowe, this is no doubt of interest to someone. But surely not to me, or to anyone who knows my husband. My husband does not gamble. Nor does he give people lOU's. He pays for what he buys. He does not need to do otherwise. He makes a good living, and I am the fortunate recipient of my father's considerable generosity."

"Could you tell me where your husband is now, Ma'am? Perhaps if I talked with him I could clear this up."

"Les is on location in San Benedict with a film company. He is doing publicity photographs. Studios often employ him for that sort of thing. He is a very accomplished and well-regarded photographer of young women."

She liked the young women part the way a cow likes beefsteak.

"I see that," I said. "Which studio is he working for?"

Mrs. Valentine shrugged, as if the question were negligible. "I don't keep track," she said.

When she wasn't speaking she kept her lips slightly apart and her tongue moved restlessly in her mouth. "And I am certainly not going to have him beset with some wild accusations from a man known to be a criminal."

"I didn't say who my employer was," I said.

"I know who it is, it's that Mr. Lipshultz. He approached me directly and I let him know then what I thought of his cock-and-bull story."

I took Lippy's IOU out of my inside pocket and held it up for her to see.

She shook her head angrily. "He showed me that, too," she said. "I don't believe it. It's not Les's signature."

I got up and walked to one of the artsy framed photographs on the wall. In the lower right corner they were signed Les Valentine in the same innocuous cramped little hand that I had on the IOU. I held the IOU signature beside the photo signature. I held the pose for a minute with my eyebrows raised.

She stared at the two signatures as if she'd never seen either one. Her tongue darted about in her mouth. She was breathing a little harder than she had been.

She rose suddenly and walked to the bleached oak sideboard under her father's picture.

"I will have a drink, Mr. Marlowe. Would you care to join me?"

"No, Ma'am," I said, "but I'll smoke my cigarette now, I think."

I shook one loose and lipped it out of the pack. I lit it and drew in a lungful of smoke and let it out slowly through my nose. Mrs. Valentine poured herself some kind of green liquor and sipped it two or three quick times before she turned back to me.

"My husband enjoys gambling, Mr. Marlowe. I know that, and I hoped to prevent you from knowing that."

I worked on my cigarette a little while she drank most of the rest of her green drink.

"I have been happy to indulge him in this… my father would have said weakness, I suppose. As I say, I enjoy my father's affection and his largesse. Les is an artistic man, and like many artists he is whimsical. He is full of quirky needs. Sensitivities, one might say, that other men, perhaps like you, worldly men, do not necessarily have. In the past I have paid his debts and been happy to have contributed in my way to his artistic fulfillment."

She went back to the sideboard and poured herself another drink. It looked like something she did easily. She drank some.

"But this, $100,000 to a man like Lipshultz." She shook her head as if she couldn't continue, or saw no need to. "We talked, I said that it was time for him to become responsible, to grow a bit more worldly. I hoped, frankly, to snap him out of his childishness in this regard. I said he would have to liquidate this debt himself."

I finished my cigarette and stubbed it out in a polished abalone shell that sat on the end table in the middle of the desert. I looked at the photographs of young women on the wall. I wondered how many sensitivities Les had to be indulged in.

"Does he work out of his home?" I said.

The bilious hooch she was drinking was beginning to work. She shifted her hips restlessly as she stood by the sideboard. Her thighs beneath the black silk lounging slacks were full of energy. There was a smudge of red along the high cheekbones on the schoolmarm face.

"Like a part-time plumber? Hardly. He has an office in Los Angeles."

"Do you have the address, Mrs. Valentine?"

"Certainly not. Les comes and goes as he will. Our marriage is perfectly founded on trust. I don't need to know his office address."

I let my eyes run over the glamour photos mounted on the wall. Several of the women were famous, two movie stars, one a model who'd been on the cover of Life. All were signed in the lower right corner in gold in the distinctive small hand.

Mrs. Valentine was watching me. Her glass was nearly full again.

"You think I fear those women, Mr. Marlowe? You think I can't keep him at home?"

She put her drink on the sideboard and half turned so I could see her in partial profile and ran her hands over her breasts and down along her body, smoothing the fabric on her thighs.

"Zowie," I said.

She stared at me, holding the pose, the dark rose color spreading across her cheeks. Then she chuckled, a nasty, bubbly little sound.

"The $100,000 is a matter between you and Les and that dreadful Mr. Lipshultz. If you want to play your little boy games, go ahead. I will await the…" she made a gentle hiccup "… outcome." She sipped her drink.

"What is that stuff?" I said. "It smells like plant food."

"Good-bye, Mr. Marlowe."

I stood, put on my hat and went out of there. She was still posing with her chest stuck out. There was a big potted palm tree on the front porch. I looked at it as I went by.

"Maybe she'll give you some," I said.