The Black-Eyed Blonde

14

There was a lamp in the bedroom, on the bedside table, with roses painted on the shade. The painting was pretty crude, done by an amateur. I’d been meaning to get rid of the thing, but somehow I never had. It wasn’t that I was attached to it. It was a piece of kitsch, like so many of the other things Mrs. Paloosa stuffed her house with. She was a collector of knickknacks, Mrs. P. Or maybe accumulator is a better word — she’d accumulated all this crap, and now I was stuck with it. Not that I noticed it much. Most of it had faded into the background, and I hardly registered it anymore. That lamp, though, was the last thing I saw at night, when I switched it off, and in the darkness an image of it would stay printed on the back of my eyes for quite a while. What was it Oscar Wilde said about the wallpaper in the room where he was dying? One of us will have to go.

Now I lay on my back, with my face turned sideways on the pillow, staring at those roses. They looked as if they were painted with thick globs of strawberry jam that subsequently dried out and lost its sheen. I’d just made love to one of the most beautiful women I’d ever been allowed to get my arms around, but nevertheless I wasn’t at ease. The fact was, Clare Cavendish was out of my league, and I knew it. She had class, she had money to burn, she was married to a polo player, and she drove an Italian sports car. What the hell was she doing in bed with me?

I didn’t know she was awake, but she was. She must have been reading my thoughts again, because she asked, in her sultry way, “Do you sleep with all your clients?”

I turned my head toward hers on the pillow. “Only the female ones,” I said.

She smiled. The best and loveliest smiles have a hint of melancholy in them. Hers was like that. “I’m glad I came over tonight,” she said. “I was so nervous, and then you looked so coldly at me when I arrived, I thought I should turn around and leave.”

“I was nervous, too,” I said. “I’m glad you stayed.”

“Well, I’ve got to go now.”

She kissed me on the tip of my nose and sat up. Her breasts were so small they were hardly there when she was lying down. The sight of them made my mouth go dry. They were sort of flat along the top and plump underneath, and the tips of them were turned up in a delightful way that made me smile. “When will I see you again?” I asked. On these occasions, there’s nothing original to say.

“Soon, I hope.”

She had turned sideways and was sitting on the side of the bed with her back to me, putting on her stockings. It was a beautiful back, long, slim, tapered. I wanted a cigarette, but I don’t smoke in bed after lovemaking, ever.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

She looked at me over her bare shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“It’s two o’clock in the morning,” I said. “You’re hardly in the habit of coming home at that hour, are you?”

“Oh, you mean will Richard be wondering where I am? He’s out somewhere, with one of his girls, I imagine. I told you: we have an understanding.”

“Arrangement, I think, was the word you used.”

She was facing away from me again, fiddling with fasteners. “Arrangement, understanding — what’s the difference?”

“Call me a quibbler, but I think there is a difference.”

She stood up and stepped into her skirt and zipped it at the side. I like to watch women getting dressed. Of course, it’s not as much fun as watching them getting undressed. It’s more of an aesthetic experience. “Anyway,” she said, “he’s out and won’t know what time I came home. Not that he’d care.”

I’d noticed before how she spoke of her husband, matter-of-factly, without bitterness. That marriage, it was clear, had died and been buried a long time ago. But if she thought even an estranged husband wasn’t capable of being jealous any longer, she didn’t know men.

“What about your mother?” I asked. I was sitting up myself now.

She was fastening the buckle of a big leather belt, but she stopped and looked at me in puzzlement. “My mother? What about her?”

“Won’t she hear you coming in?”

She laughed. “You’ve been to the house,” she said. “Didn’t you notice how big it is? We each have a wing to ourselves, her on one side, Richard and me on the other.”

“What about your brother — where does he hang out?”

“Rett? Oh, he sort of floats.”

“What does he do?”

“How do you mean? Is my other shoe on that side of the bed? God, we did fling ourselves about, didn’t we.”

I leaned over the side, found her shoe, gave it to her. “I mean, does he work?” I asked.

This time she threw me an arch look. “Rett doesn’t need to work,” she said, as if explaining something to a child. “He’s the apple of his mother’s eye, and that’s all he needs to do, stay apple-cheeked and sweet.”

“He didn’t seem very sweet to me.”

“He didn’t need to, to you.”

“You don’t much like him, I can see.”

She paused again, thinking about it. “I love him, of course — he’s my brother, after all, even if we have different fathers. But no, I don’t think I like him. Maybe I will, if he grows up one day. But I doubt that’s going to happen. Or not while Mother is alive, anyway.”

It seemed rude, sitting there in bed while she was busily preparing herself to face the world, even if it was the world of night, so I got up and started getting dressed myself.

I had my shirt on when she stepped close and kissed me. “Good night, Philip Marlowe,” she said. “Or good morning, I suppose that should be.” She began to turn away, but I held her by the elbow.

“What did your mother say about talking to me?” I asked.

“What did she say?” She shrugged. “Not much.”

“I’m wondering why you didn’t ask me what she said. You’re not curious?”

“I did ask you.”

“But not like you really wanted to know.”

She turned around to face me and gave me a level look. “All right, then, what did she say?”

I grinned. “Not much.”

She didn’t grin back. “Really?”

“She told me how perfume is made. And she told me about your father, how he died.”

“That’s a cruel story.”

“One of the cruelest. She’s a tough lady, to get over a thing like that and go on to do all she’s done.”

Her mouth tightened a little. “Oh, yes. She’s tough, all right.”

“Do you like her?”

“Don’t you think you’ve asked me enough questions for one night?”

I held up my hands. “You’re right,” I said, “I have. It’s just…”

She waited. “Well? It’s just what?”

“It’s just that I don’t know whether to trust you or not.”

She smiled coldly, and for a second I saw her mother in her, her tough mother. “Make a Pascalian wager,” she said.

“Who’s Pascal?”

“Frenchman. Long time ago. Philosopher, of a sort.” She walked out to the living room. I followed her. I was barefoot. She picked up her purse and turned to me. Anger had made her go pale. “How can you say you don’t trust me?” she said and nodded toward the bedroom door. “How can you, after that?”

I went and poured myself yet another whiskey, my back turned to her. “I didn’t say I don’t trust you, I said I don’t know whether to trust you or not.”

This made her so angry that she actually stamped her foot. I had an image of Lynn Peterson stopping in the doorway of her brother’s house and doing the same thing, for a different reason. “You know what you are?” she said. “You’re a pedant. Do you know what a pedant is?”

“A peasant with a lisp?”

She was fairly glaring at me. Who’d have thought eyes of that color could generate such fire? “And what you’re not is a comic.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. It probably didn’t sound as if I meant it. “I’ll get your coat.”

I held it open for her. She just stood there, still glaring at me, a little muscle rippling in her jaw. “I see I was wrong about you,” she said.

“In what way?”

“I thought you were — oh, never mind.”

She put her arms into the coat sleeves. I could have made her turn around; I could have embraced her, could have said I was sorry and said it so there was no question but that I meant it. Because I was sorry. I could have bitten off my tongue. She was maybe the loveliest thing that had happened so far in my life, lovelier even than Linda Loring, and here I was, with my big mouth, questioning her trustworthiness and making cheap cracks. That’s Marlowe for you, the Indian who throws away a pearl richer than all his tribe.

“Listen,” I said, “something happened today.”

She turned back to me, looking worried suddenly, and wary. “Oh?” she said. “What?”

I told her how I had gone to Peterson’s house, how Lynn had come in while I was searching the place, how the Mexicans had arrived, and the rest of it. I made it short, with no frills. While I was speaking, she kept her eyes fixed on my mouth, as though she were lip-reading.

When I finished she stood motionless, blinking slowly. “But why,” she said in a dead-sounding voice. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before now?”

“There were other things going on.”

“My God.” She paused, shaking her head. “I don’t understand you. All this evening when”—she waved a hand in a helpless gesture—“the bedroom, all that — how could you not tell me — how could you keep it from me?”

“I wasn’t ‘keeping it from you,’” I said. “What was happening, with you and me, just seemed more important.”

She shook her head again in angry disbelief. “Who were they,” she asked, “these Mexicans?”

“They were after Nico. I had the impression he had something of theirs or owed them something — money, I suppose. You know anything about that?”

She made another gesture with her hand, impatiently dismissive this time. “Of course not.” She glanced in desperation about the room, then looked at me again. “Is that what happened to your face?” she asked. “Was it the Mexicans who did that to you?” I nodded. She thought about this, trying to add things up, to figure them out. “And now they have Lynn. Will they harm her?”

“They’re a pretty tough pair,” I said.

She put a hand to her mouth. “My God,” she repeated, in the barest whisper. It was all too much for her; she was having difficulty even taking it in. “And the police,” she said, “the police came?”

“Yes. A fellow I know, out of the Sheriff’s office. That was him driving away when you arrived.”

“He was here? Did you tell him about me?”

“Of course I didn’t. He has no idea who you are, who I’m working for. And he never will, unless he puts me in front of a grand jury, and he’s not going to do that.”

She was blinking again, even more slowly than before. “I’m frightened,” she murmured. But as well as the fear there was a kind of wonderment in her voice, the wonderment of a person who can’t understand how she could get herself into such a mess.

“There’s no need for you to be scared,” I said. I tried to touch her arm, but she drew back quickly, as if my fingers would soil the sleeve of her coat.

“I must go home now,” she said coldly and turned away.

I walked behind her down the redwood steps. The cold blast coming back from her should have hung icicles in my eyebrows. She climbed into the car and had hardly slammed the door shut before she had the engine going. She drove off in a cloud of exhaust smoke that got into my mouth and stung my nostrils. I climbed the steps, clearing my throat, yet again. Nice work, Phil, I said to myself in disgust; nice work.

I was on the last few steps when the phone started to ring. Whoever it was, at this time of night, wouldn’t be calling with glad tidings. I got to the phone just as the bell stopped. I swore. I swear a lot when I’m home alone. It sort of humanizes the place, I don’t know how.

I finished my drink, then carried my glass into the kitchen along with Clare’s and washed them both at the sink and set them upside down on the rack to dry. I was tired. My face ached, and the tom-toms had started up again at the back of my head.

I was still complimenting myself bitterly on the nice job I’d done tonight with Clare when the phone rang again. It was Bernie Ohls. Somehow I’d known it was going to be Bernie.

“Where the hell were you?” he barked. “I thought you must be dead.”

“I stepped out for a minute to commune with the stars.”

“Very romantic.” He paused — for effect, I suppose. “We found the dame.”

“Lynn Peterson?”

“No — Lana Turner.”

“Tell me.”

“Get up here and see for yourself. Encino Reservoir. Come along Encino Avenue, take a right when you see the ‘No Entry’ sign. And bring your smelling salts — it ain’t a pretty sight.”