The Black-Eyed Blonde

18

When I was young, a couple of millennia ago, I used to think I knew what I was doing. I was aware of the world’s caprices — the goat dances it likes to do with our hopes and desires — but where my own actions were concerned, I was pretty confident that I was sitting square in the driver’s seat, with the wheel held firmly in my own two hands. Now I know different. Now I know that decisions we think we make are in fact made only in hindsight, and that at the time things are actually happening, all we do is drift. It doesn’t trouble me much, this awareness of how little control I have over my affairs. Most of the time I’m content to slide along with the current, paddling my fingers in the water and tickling the odd fish out of its element. There are occasions, though, when I wish I’d made at least some effort to look ahead and calculate the consequences of what I was doing. I’m thinking here of my second visit to the Cahuilla Club, which was, I can safely say, a hell of a lot different from the first …

* * *

It was afternoon, and the place was busy. Some kind of convention was going on, and there were a lot of guys, most of them old, in colored shirts and tartan Bermuda shorts milling about among the bougainvillea with tall glasses in their hands, not all of them entirely steady on their pins. They were all wearing red fezzes, like upended flowerpots with tassels. Marvin the twitching gatekeeper had called ahead to the manager’s office and then waved me on. I left the Olds under a shady tree and walked up to the clubhouse. Halfway there I met the young-old guy who had accosted me last time. He was raking leaves off the pathway. He didn’t seem to recognize me. I greeted him anyway.

“Captain Hook about?” I asked. He gave me a nervous glance and went on with his raking. I tried again: “How are the Lost Boys today?”

He shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not s’posed to be talking to you,” he muttered.

“Is that so? Who says?”

“You know.”

“The captain?”

He looked warily this way and that. “You didn’t ought to mention him,” he said. “You gonna get me in trouble.”

“Well now, I wouldn’t want to do that. Only—”

A voice behind us spoke. “Lamarr? Didn’t I tell you about annoying the visitors?”

Lamarr gave a start, making a ducking motion with his shoulders, as if expecting a blow. Floyd Hanson strolled up, as usual with a hand in the pocket of his fresh-pressed slacks. Today he wore a light blue linen jacket and a white shirt and a shoelace tie fastened with the head of a bull carved from some shiny black stone.

“Hello, Mr. Hanson,” I said. “Lamarr wasn’t being annoying.”

Hanson nodded to me, with his crooked little smile, and laid a hand on Lamarr’s khaki-clad shoulder and spoke to him softly: “You run along now, Lamarr.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Hanson,” Lamarr said, stammering. He threw a glance at me that was half resentful and half scared. Then he shuffled off with his rake in tow. Hanson watched him go with an indulgent expression.

“Lamarr has a good heart,” he said, “only he fantasizes.”

“He thinks you’re Captain Hook,” I said.

He nodded, smiling. “I don’t know how he knows about Peter Pan. I guess someone must have read the story to him once, or maybe he was taken to see it performed. Even the Lamarrs of this world had mothers, after all.” He turned to me. “What can I do for you, Mr. Marlowe?”

“You heard about Lynn Peterson?” I said.

He frowned. “Yes, of course. A tragic thing. Did I see your name somewhere in the newspaper reports of her death?”

“You probably did. I was with her when the killers took her.”

“I see. That must have been upsetting.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Upsetting, that’s the word.”

“Why did they ‘take her,’ as you put it?”

“They were looking for her brother.”

“Even though he’s dead?”

“Is he?”

Hanson said nothing to that, only gave me a long, reflective look, holding his head to one side. “Have you come to ask me more questions about Nico?” he said. “There’s really nothing further I can tell you.”

“You know a guy named Lou Hendricks?” I asked.

He thought about it. “The man who runs that casino out in the desert? I’ve met him. He’s been here at the club once or twice.”

“He’s not a member?”

“No. He came as a guest.”

Off across the lawn, the conventioneers sent up a ragged cheer. Hanson glanced in their direction, shading his eyes with a hand. “We have the Shriners in today,” he said, “as you see. They’re holding a charity golf tournament. They tend to get a little rowdy. Would you care for a drink?”

“I guess it wouldn’t do any harm. Just so long as it’s not tea.”

He smiled. “Come this way.”

We went in through the front door, past the ornate desk and the pert receptionist with the blue spectacles. There were groups of old fellows in fezzes loitering about the corridors and in the bar and the dining room. “Let’s go to my office,” Hanson said. “It’s quieter there.”

His office was a big high handsome room discreetly fitted with choice pieces of blond furniture and some nice native Indian rugs on the floor. The walls were paneled in cherrywood, and there was a desk just like the one in the reception area, only bigger and more ornate. Hanson sure didn’t stint himself when it came to his creature comforts. What I did miss were any signs of a personal life — no framed photos of a wife and kiddies or a glamour shot of a lady love with a cigarette and a Veronica Lake wave that guys like Hanson usually have in a prominent position on their desks. Maybe he didn’t go in for ladies, or maybe the club frowned on the personal touch — what did it matter? All the same, there was something almost uncanny in the clipped neatness of the place.

“Take a seat, Mr. Marlowe,” Hanson said. He crossed to a sideboard on which an array of bottles was set out. “What can I get you?” he asked.

“Whiskey is fine.”

He searched through the bottles. “I’ve got some Old Crow here — will that do? I’m a martini man myself.”

He poured me a stiff one, added some cubes of ice, and came and handed me the glass. I was sitting on a neat little sofa with beveled wooden legs and a high back. “You not joining me?” I asked.

“Not while I’m working. Mr. Canning has strong views on the perils of the bottle.” He did his twinkling smile.

“Mind if I smoke? Mr. Canning got views on the weed, too?”

“Go ahead, please.” He watched me light up. I offered him my case, but he shook his head. He went to his desk and sat back against the front of it with his arms and ankles crossed. “You’re a persistent man, Mr. Marlowe,” he said lightly.

“You mean, I’m a pain in the rear.”

“That’s not what I said. I admire persistence.”

I sipped my drink and smoked my smoke and glanced about the room. “What exactly do you do, Mr. Hanson?” I asked. “I know you’re the manager, but what does that require of you?”

“There’s a lot of administration involved in running a club like this — you’d be surprised.”

“Mr. Canning give you a free hand?”

His eyes narrowed a fraction. “More or less. We have, you might say, an understanding.”

“Which is?” I seemed to know a lot of people who had understandings with each other.

“He leaves me alone to manage the place, and I don’t trouble him when difficulties arise. Unless the difficulties are — how shall we say? — hard for me to deal with alone.”

“Then what happens?”

He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Then Mr. Canning takes charge,” he said softly.

I found myself blinking, as if there were dust in my eyes. The bourbon seemed to be working its magic awful fast. “I can see,” I said, “you have a healthy respect for your employer.”

“He’s a person who commands respect. How’s your drink, by the way?”

“My drink is very fine. It tastes of hickory fires on fall afternoons in the far backwoods of Kentucky.”

“Why, I do believe you’re something of a poet, Mr. Marlowe.”

“I’ve read a line or two of Keats in my time. Shelley, too.” What the hell was I talking about? My tongue seemed suddenly to have a mind of its own. “But I didn’t come here to talk poetry,” I said. I felt myself sliding down on the sofa and struggled to sit up straight. I looked at the glass in my hand. The liquor in it trembled and the ice cubes knocked together with a gentle sound, as if they were discussing me among themselves. I peered around the room again, blinking some more. The sun was very bright in the window, cutting like sword blades through the slats of the wooden blind.

Hanson was watching me with close attention. “What did you come here for, Mr. Marlowe?” he asked.

“Came to talk to you some more about Peterson, didn’t I,” I said. “Nico Peterson, that is.” I was having trouble with my tongue again; it seemed to have swollen to about twice its normal size and sat in my mouth like a hot, soft potato with a bristly skin. “Not to mention his sister.” I frowned. “Even though I have mentioned her. Haven’t I? Lynn, her name is. Was. Good-looking woman. Nice eyes. Nice green eyes. Of course, you know her.”

“Do I?”

“Sure you do.” I was having difficulty now with my s’s; they kept getting caught on my front teeth, like knotted-up lengths of dental floss. “She was here, that day I came to see you. When was that? Anyway, doesn’t matter. We met her coming out of the — out of the whaddyacallit, the swi — the swim — the swimming pool.” I leaned forward to put the tumbler down on a low glass table in front of the sofa but miscalculated and let go of it when it still had a couple of inches to go and it landed on the glass with a sharp crack. “You know what,” I said, “I think I’m—”

Then my voice finally gave out. I was sliding forward on the sofa again. Hanson seemed very far away and high above me and was wavering somehow, as if I were sunk underwater and looking up at him through the swaying surface.

“Are you all right, Mr. Marlowe?” he asked in a voice that boomed in my ears. He was still leaning back against the desk, still with his arms folded. I could see he was smiling.

With a big effort, I got my voice to work again. “What did you put in the drink?”

“What’s that? You seem to be slurring your words. I would have thought you’d be a man who could hold his liquor, Mr. Marlowe. It seems I was wrong.”

I reached out a hand in a crazy attempt to get hold of him, but he was way too far off, and besides I don’t think my fingers would have had the strength to fix on anything. Abruptly I lost control and felt myself tumbling to the floor heavily, like a sack of grain. Then the light slowly went out.