The Black-Eyed Blonde

22

That was the second time I came close to giving up. I was sore in body and spirit and could see no way forward along the path I’d been following for what seemed a very long time, although it had been no more than a week or so. The heat showed no sign of lifting, and in the mornings a pall of brownish-blue smog hung above the streets, the sun trying its best to strike through it, with not much success. The city felt like one vast, congested lung.

I sat for hours in my office with my feet on the desk, my jacket off, and my shirt collar open, gazing listlessly into space or watching a small squadron of flies circling endlessly around the light fixture dangling from the ceiling. More than once I was tempted to get the bottle out of the drawer in my desk, but I knew what would happen if I did.

A few would-be clients dropped in, but none of them stayed. One was a woman who was convinced that her next-door neighbor was trying to poison her cat. There was something familiar about her, and then I realized she had come to me before, a few years back, with the same complaint, and I’d given her the same brush-off. I guess she’d worked her way through all the private investigators in the phone directory and was now going down the list a second time. I should have bawled her out, I suppose, but I felt sorry for her. Awash in sadness myself, I was feeling sorry for everything, even the bonsai tree, a Japanese maple, that I had bought one day on a whim, to brighten up the office and keep me company in the long hours when nothing was happening and no one called, and that was dying despite all my efforts to save it, or because of them, maybe.

One particularly slow morning when even the flies seemed jaded, I called Bernie Ohls, to ask him how things were going in what the newspapers, during the day or two that Harlan Potter had allowed them to stay interested, had dubbed the Cahuilla Club Case. There was nothing new, Bernie said. He sounded as listless as I felt. There was a rasp in his voice, and I guessed he had kept on smoking after he’d fallen off the wagon that night at Victor’s. I had helped him fall and felt guilty now.

“No trace of Canning,” he said. “Bartlett is still not talking, because he can’t — you certainly fixed him, Marlowe, with that quick draw of yours. Seems the cap you put in his knee blasted a hole in an artery. They’re not holding out much hope for him. And the Mexes remain unidentified.”

“You talk to your friends in the Tijuana border patrol again?” I asked.

“What for? They know nothing, those guys, and care less. I figure that pair were after something of theirs your pal Peterson had run off with, and then they made the mistake of tangling with Canning and that so-called butler of his.”

He stopped to cough. He sounded like an old Nash sedan with real bad carburetor trouble. “What about you?” he said. “You still in touch with the mystery man who hired you to find Peterson?”

“We have off-and-on contact,” I said. “I haven’t been paid yet.”

“That so? And to think of all the trouble you went to on his behalf.”

“Go easy there, Bernie,” I said. “I don’t want you getting all choked up with sympathy.”

He chuckled, but that made him cough again. “Hold out for your dough,” he croaked when the fit had passed. “Booze and smokes ain’t getting any cheaper.”

“Thanks for that advice. I’ll try to keep it in mind.”

He laughed again. “So long, sucker,” he said, and I could hear him wheezing as he hung up.

I’d hardly put the receiver back in its cradle when the thing rang, making me jump, as usual. I thought it was Bernie calling me back with some further amusing crack. But it wasn’t.

“Marlowe?” a man’s voice said, low and guarded.

“This is Marlowe.”

“Philip Marlowe?”

“That’s right.”

“The private investigator?”

“How long is this questionnaire going to be, bud?” I asked.

There was a pause. “This is Peterson. Nico Peterson.”

* * *

It was commuter hour at Union Station. The main terminus always looks to me like a giant adobe church. I parked on Alameda Street and joined the hurrying crowd. It was like diving into a swollen, surging river, except for the heat and the mingled smells of sweat and hot dogs and trains. The public address system was squawking stuff that no one could understand. A redcap, crossing in front of me, ran over my foot with the back wheel of his trolley and didn’t even say he was sorry.

I was a little early, and to use up time I stopped at a paper stand and bought a pack of chewing gum. I don’t chew gum, but I couldn’t think what else to ask for — I’d seen enough newspapers to last me for a long time. The guy who ran the stand was fat, and his face was greased with sweat. We sympathized with each other about the heat, and he gave me a free copy of the Chronicle, which I was too polite to refuse. As soon as I was out of his sight, I dumped it in a trash bin.

I felt as keyed up as a bobby-soxer on her way to her first Sinatra concert.

I was still a long way off when I glimpsed Peterson through a parting in the crowd. I knew straight off it was him. There was no mistaking that pencil mustache, the oiled, wavy hair, the too-bright blue jacket and the pale slacks. He was sitting on a bench under the big departures board, which was where he’d said he’d be waiting. He looked scared all over. There was a suitcase standing beside him, and he was holding on to the handle of it as if he thought the thing might suddenly sprout legs and scuttle away.

I hung back, struggling with a surge of surprise and confusion that hit me like a sucker punch. The shock was that I recognized the suitcase. It was made of pigskin bleached from age and had battered fittings of gold metal. I hadn’t seen it in quite a while, but there was no mistaking it.

I moved sideways through the crowd and stopped in front of him. “Hello, Mr. Peterson,” I said. He looked up at me with suspicion and hostility in his eyes. He was everything I’d expected, and more. He was deeply tanned, and a single, glistening black curl hung down on his forehead, real cute, as if it had been arranged there, which it probably had. The collar of his shirt was open, the two flaps of it folded back nicely over the lapels of his jacket. He wore a fine gold chain around his neck, with a crucifix almost hidden in a nest of wiry black chest hair. “I’m Marlowe,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?”

He looked past me, to see if I’d brought backup, I suppose. “I came alone,” I told him, “like you said I should.”

“How about flashing some ID?” He hadn’t got to his feet; he just sat there looking up at me narrowly. He was trying to seem unconcerned and insolent, but he was gripping the handle of the suitcase so tightly his knuckles were white under the suntan. He had his sister’s green eyes. It was uncanny, looking into them and seeing hers.

When I put my hand inside my jacket, he couldn’t stop himself from flinching. I brought out my license slowly and showed it to him. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere and talk.” He stood up and flexed his shoulders to make his suit jacket sit right. I could see he was a man blissfully in love with himself.

We were about to move away when the numbers on the departure board above us changed with a loud rattle, and he flinched again. When you’re in the state he was in, the crackle from a bowl of breakfast cereal will sound like a firing squad cocking its rifles. He was one worried fellow.

He picked up the suitcase. “That looks heavy,” I said. “Why don’t you let a redcap take it for you?”

“Don’t make jokes, Marlowe,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m not in the mood for humor. You packing a gun?”

“No.”

“No? What kind of private eye are you?”

“The kind who doesn’t carry a gun with him everywhere he goes. Besides, a couple of Mexicans helped themselves to my weapon.”

But he didn’t react to that the way I thought he would. He didn’t react at all.

* * *

We found a coffee shop away from the main concourse and sat down at a table in the corner, facing the door. The place wasn’t too busy. Customers kept looking at their watches and jumping up and rushing out, but then others came in, more slowly, to replace them. Peterson shoved the suitcase against the wall behind his chair.

“Nice bag,” I said.

“What?”

“The suitcase. A handsome piece, with the gold fittings and all.”

“It’s not mine.” He was watching the door. His green eyes were sharp and bulged a little, like a hare’s.

“So,” I said, “you’re not dead.”

“You’re real perceptive,” he said, with a nasty snicker.

The waitress came and we ordered coffee. Peterson had his eye on a tough-looking type standing at the counter, wearing a gray fedora and a tie with a dragon painted on it.

“How come you called me?” I asked.

“Say what?”

“Why me?”

“I’d heard your name, then I saw you mentioned in the paper when they were running stories on Lynn.”

“So you knew I was after you.”

“What do you mean, after me?”

“I’ve been looking into the circumstances of your sad demise.”

“That so? On behalf of who?”

“Can’t you guess?”

His face took on a bitter twist. “Sure, I can guess.”

The fellow at the counter in the fedora drank the last of his coffee and sauntered out, whistling. I could feel Peterson relaxing a notch or two.

“I talked to Mandy Rogers,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?” he said indifferently. “Nice kid.” It was obvious Mandy wasn’t a significant part of his landscape anymore. If she ever had been.

“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said.

He as good as shrugged. “Yeah, she was always unlucky.”

I felt like hitting him, but instead I said, “What do you want with me, Peterson?”

He scratched his jaw with a fingernail, making a rasping sound. “I need you to run an errand for me,” he said. “Pays a hundred bucks.”

“What kind of errand?”

He was watching the door again. “An easy one,” he said. “I need the suitcase delivered to a certain party.”

“Oh, yes? Why can’t you do it yourself?”

“Too busy,” he said. He snickered again. It was the kind of noise that would make me very irritated if I had to hear it very often. “You want the job or not?”

“Let’s hear some details,” I said.

Our coffee came, in those big, off-white cups you see only in railway stations and the less greasy of greasy spoons. I tasted the coffee and was sorry I had.

“Okay,” Peterson said, lowering his voice, “here’s the deal. I stand up and walk out of here, leaving the suitcase against the wall there. You wait, say, half an hour, then take it and bring it to a guy called—”

“Lou Hendricks?” I said.

He gave me that hare-eyed stare again. “How did you know—?”

“Because,” I said, “Mr. Hendricks invited me for a ride in his big black car and issued threats, assuring me he’d break my legs if I didn’t tell him where you were.”

He frowned. “He’s not the one that hired you to find me?”

“Nope.”

“He just picked you up off the street?”

“That’s right.”

He scowled and chewed on a knuckle for a bit. “So what did you say to him?” he asked at last.

“I said I didn’t know your whereabouts and that even if I did, I wouldn’t tell him. I said so far as I knew, you were dead. He didn’t buy that. Someone had put him straight.”

Peterson nodded, thinking hard. There was a light film of sweat on his forehead. He fingered his mustache, which had tiny beads of moisture sprinkled through it. I didn’t like looking at it. The worst thing about it was the little gap down the middle of it, a pale nick that seemed too intimate a part of him to be on public show.

I pushed the coffee aside and lit a cigarette. “You want to tell me what happened, Nico?”

He flew straight into a bluster. “I don’t need to tell you anything! I’m offering you a hundred dollars for a job, and that’s it. You ready to do it?”

I pretended to consider. “If you mean the money, I can live without it. As for the job, let’s see.”

He took a silver pillbox from his jacket pocket and extracted a small white pill and slipped it under his tongue.

“Got a headache?” I asked.

He didn’t seem to think that worth replying to. “Listen, Marlowe,” he said, “I’m in something of a hurry here. You going to take the suitcase and deliver it to the person we mentioned or not?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “And you may as well slow down. You’re scared, you’re on the run, and if I’m the only one you could think to turn to, then obviously you’re in serious trouble. I’ve been on your trail for some time, and there are a few things I want cleared up. Now, are you ready to talk?”

He pouted, and I could see him as a sulky kid. “What do you want to know?” he mumbled.

“Everything, pretty much. Let’s start with the suitcase. What’s in it that Lou Hendricks is so eager to get his hands on?”

“Just some stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Look, Marlowe—”

I grabbed his wrist where it had been resting on the table and squeezed until the bones inside it creaked. He tried to pull away, but I held on.

“You’re hurting me!” he snarled.

“Yeah, and I’ll hurt you a lot more if you don’t start talking. What’s in the suitcase?”

He tried again to free himself, but I squeezed harder. “Let go,” he whined. “I’ll tell you, for Christ’s sake!”

I loosened my fingers, and he slumped back on his chair as if all the air had suddenly gone out of him. “It has a false bottom,” he said in a sullen undertone. “Underneath there’s ten keys of horse, in twenty cellophane bags.”

“Heroin?”

“Keep your voice down!” He threw a quick look around the room. No one was taking any notice of us. “Heroin, yeah, that’s what I said.”

“For delivery to Lou Hendricks. Who from?”

He shrugged. “Just a guy.” He was massaging his wrist with the fingers of his other hand. His eyes were full of rage. I told myself to remember never to let him get the drop on me.

“What guy?” I asked.

“A guy down south.”

“Give me the name.”

He took a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and wiped his mouth with it. “You know Mendy Menendez?”

I paused. That wasn’t the name I had expected. Menendez was a hoodlum, used to be very big in these parts — one of the biggest, in fact. But he’d moved to Mexico, and the last I’d heard of him, he was operating out of Acapulco. Nice work if you can get it, if you choose to call it work. “Yeah, I know him,” I said.

“He and Hendricks have a business going between them. Menendez sends up a consignment every couple months or so and Hendricks handles the distribution.”

“And you’re the courier.”

“I did it a few times. Easy money.”

“You bring that much junk every time?”

“More or less.”

“What’s ten kilos of heroin worth?”

“On the street?” He pursed his lips, then grinned. “Depending on demand, about as much as a flatfoot like you will earn in a lifetime.”

Those lips of his were pink and almost as shapely as a woman’s. This wasn’t the man Clare Cavendish was in love with, the one she had spoken of with such passion that night in her bedroom, sitting on the bed beside her unconscious brother; I had only to look at Peterson, to see those mean eyes and hear his whining tone, to know she wouldn’t have touched him with an ebony cigarette holder. No, there was someone else, and now I knew who it was. I’d known for some time, I suppose, but you can know something and at the same time not know it. It’s one of the things that help us put up with our lot in life and not go crazy.

“You know how many lives that much dope would destroy?” I asked.

He sneered. “You think the life of a junkie is worth saving?”

I studied the tip of my cigarette. I hoped that at some point before we parted I might get the opportunity to smash my fist into Peterson’s pretty, suntanned face. “So what did you do,” I said, “decide to keep the stuff for yourself and make a deal of your own with someone else?”

“There’s a guy I knew in Frisco, he said that for a cut he could take whatever I had and sell it to the mob, no questions asked.”

“But it didn’t work out.”

Peterson swallowed; I heard him do it. I thought maybe he was going to cry. It must have seemed so simple, the old switcheroo. He’d hang on to the suitcase and let his pal sell the dope to a client that even Lou Hendricks, if he got to hear about the deal, wouldn’t dare challenge. In the meantime, Peterson would be on his way to somewhere far off and safe, his pockets bulging with more dough than he’d ever dreamed could be his.

“The guy I knew,” Peterson said, “he met with a fatal accident — his old lady caught him two-timing and shot him in the face, before blowing her own brains out.”

“A tragic tale,” I said.

“Yeah. Sure. Tragic. And there I was, stuck with twenty bags of horse and no one to sell it to.”

“Couldn’t you have gone to the mob yourself?”

“I didn’t have the contacts. Plus”—he gave a sad little laugh—“I was too scared. Then I heard about Lynn, and that made me even more scared. Things seemed to be — they seemed to be closing in around me. I knew what would happen if Hendricks got his hands on me.”

“Why didn’t you just surrender, call up Hendricks and say you were sorry and hand over the suitcase?”

“Oh, sure. Hendricks would say thanks, relieve me of the goods, and then have one of his boys pull out my fingernails with a pair of pliers. And that would be just for starters. You don’t know these people.”

He was wrong there, but it wasn’t worth contradicting him. The coffee in my cup had developed a shiny skin, like a miniature oil spill. The smoke of my cigarette tasted acrid in my mouth. You can feel tainted just by being in the vicinity of a two-bit swindler like Peterson.

“Let’s back up a bit,” I said. “Tell me how you faked your death.”

He gave an angry sigh. “How long you going to keep me here, Marlowe,” he demanded, “answering your damn fool questions?”

“As long as it takes. I’m a man prone to curiosity. Humor me.”

He had begun distractedly massaging his wrist again. It was beginning to show bruise marks already. I didn’t think I had such steely talons.

“I knew Floyd Hanson,” he said in his sulky way. “He used to let me in the club when the old man was away.”

“What do you mean?”

He twisted up his face again in that way that made it no longer pretty. “My father had disowned me, banned from coming anywhere near him or his precious Cahuilla Club. I liked going in there and getting drunk and throwing up on his Indian rugs.”

“What did you have on Hanson?”

“Did I have to have something on him?”

“I’d say so. He was taking a big risk, letting you come in there. I’ve met your father. He didn’t seem to me a tolerant man. Were you paying Hanson?”

He laughed; it was the first genuine laugh I’d heard from him. “Naw,” he said. “I didn’t need to pay him. There were things I knew about him. He made a pass at me once, when I was young. He said afterward he didn’t know what had come over him and begged me to swear not to tell the old man. I said sure, I wouldn’t tell. But I let Hanson know that from then on we had a deal.” He smiled to himself, proud of his own smartness.

“The body you dressed up in your clothes that night and left at the side of the road,” I asked, “where did it come from — who was it?”

“Some roustabout working at the club,” he said.

“Did you kill him?”

He reared back from me, staring. “What, are you kidding?”

“Then Hanson must have done it.” I paused. “Funny, I didn’t take him for a killer. I didn’t think he had it in him.”

Peterson was thinking it over. “I didn’t ask him about the body,” he said petulantly. “I guess I thought whoever it was had died from natural causes. I didn’t see any marks on him. Floyd and I put him into my suit out back of the clubhouse, then brought him in a wheelbarrow out onto the road. I’d been playing drunk all evening, making sure everyone saw me—”

“Including Clare Cavendish.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Clare was there. Also, I’d fixed it with Lynn to identify the body and arrange for the cremation. Everything was set up, everything was in place. I had a car parked down the road, and as soon as Floyd and I had got the body dumped I hightailed it north, with the suitcase in the trunk. It should have worked.” He smacked a fist into the palm of his other hand. “It should have worked.”

“Your father know about any of this?”

“I don’t think so. How would he? Floyd wouldn’t have said anything.” He picked a matchstick from the ashtray and rolled it between two fingers and a thumb. “How come you met him?”

“Who? Your father? I went out to the club to ask about you. I spoke to Hanson, who was less than helpful. Then, later, two Mexicans turned up, the ones who’d killed your sister, also looking for you, and your father and Bartlett the butler got ahold of them and squeezed them till their pips popped. I made the mistake of paying a return visit while this was going on, and next thing I knew I was being dunked in the swimming pool, to encourage me to tell all I knew about you and your supposed whereabouts. Impressive man, your father. Forceful. I can see why you and he wouldn’t get along so well.”

I was watching the waitress at her station by the counter, sneaking a break. She was a washed-out blonde with sad eyes and an unhappy mouth. She kept pushing out her lower lip and blowing upward, so that the fringe of damp hair at her forehead lifted and fell back again. I felt a sudden stab of pity for her, for the mean life she’d been condemned to, running around here all day, amid the noise and the smells and the endless rush of hurrying, impatient, ill-tempered people. Then I thought, who am I to pity her? What do I know about her and her life? What do I know about anyone?

“I hate the old bastard,” Peterson said, in a faraway tone. “He queered everything for me, from the start.”

Oh, sure, I wanted to say, it’s all the old man’s fault — it always is, with people like you. But I didn’t. “You know he’s on the run,” I said, “your father.”

That cheered him up a bit. “He is? Why?”

“He killed those Mexicans, or had them killed.”

“Yeah?” He seemed amused. “Where’d he go?”

“That’s what a lot of people would like to know.”

“He’ll be in Europe somewhere. He has dough stashed there. He’ll be operating under a false name.” He chuckled, almost admiringly. “They’ll never find him.”

We were silent for a while, the two of us; then Peterson stirred himself. “I got to move, Marlowe,” he said. “What’s it to be? Will you take the stuff to Hendricks?”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll take the stuff.”

“Good. But don’t get any ideas yourself — I’m going to let Hendricks know you have the suitcase.”

“Do what you like,” I said.

He slid a hand inside his jacket and brought out a billfold and held it in his lap, under the level of the table, and began to count out a stack of sawbucks. There were a lot of them in there. I hoped he hadn’t pulled any funny tricks with Mendy Menendez’s dope, like taking a slice of it for himself and replacing it with a couple of bags of plaster of paris. Hendricks wouldn’t be dumb enough to be fooled by that old trick.

“I don’t want your money, Peterson,” I said.

He gave me a sidelong look, suspicious and calculating. “How come?” he said. “You operating a charity?”

“Those bills have been through hands I wouldn’t want to touch.”

“Then why—?”

“I liked your sister,” I said quietly. “She had spirit. Let’s say I’m doing this for her.” He would have laughed, if it hadn’t been for the look in my eye. “What about you, what are your plans?” I asked. Not that I cared, only I wanted to be sure I was never going to see him again.

“I’ve got a pal,” he said.

“Another one?”

“Works for a South American cruise line. He can get me a job. Then when we get to Rio or Buenos Aires or someplace like that, I’ll jump ship and start a new life.”

“What kind of a job is your friend offering?”

He smirked. “Nothing very demanding. Being nice to the passengers, helping them with any little problems that might arise. That kind of thing.”

“So your dad was right,” I said. “It’ll be official.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll be a bona fide, paid-up member of the honorable order of gigolos.”

The smirk died. “That’s rich,” he said, “coming from a peeper. But think of this — you’ll still be here pounding the pavement and spying on people’s husbands to catch them shtupping their girlfriends, while I’m in a hammock basking in the southern sun.”

He began to get to his feet, but I caught him by the wrist again and held him back. “I’ve got one last question,” I said.

He licked those lovely pink lips of his, glanced longingly toward the door, then sat down again, slowly. “What’s that?”

“Clare Cavendish,” I said. “She says you and her were romantically involved.”

He opened his eyes so wide they almost bulged out of their sockets. “She said that?” He breathed a laugh. “Really?”

“You’re telling me it’s not true?”

He shook his head, not in denial but a kind of amazement. “I’m not saying I would’ve turned her down — I mean, who would? — but she never had an eye for me. A dame like that, she was way out of my league.”

I let go of his wrist. “That’s all I wanted to know,” I said. “Now you can leave.”

But he stayed where he was, his eyes narrowing. “She’s the one that hired you to go after me, right?” he said, and nodded. “Yeah, that figures.”

He was looking at me the way I’d looked at the waitress, with pity in his eyes. “He sent her to you, didn’t he? He used to talk about you — that’s where I first heard your name mentioned. He knew you’d fall for her, for those eyes of hers, that hair, the ice maiden act. You’d be the type that couldn’t resist her.” He leaned back, a big broad smile spreading slowly over his face, like molasses. “Jeez, Marlowe, you poor sap.” Then he stood up and was gone.

There was a phone booth beside the cash register. I squeezed myself into it and pushed the folding door shut behind me. The air inside smelled of sweat and warm Bakelite. Through the glass panel in the door I could see across the room to the suitcase under the table, by the wall. Maybe I was hoping someone would snatch it and run off with it, but I knew that wouldn’t happen; things like that never happen, not when you want them to.

I dialed Langrishe Lodge. It was Clare who answered. “This is Marlowe,” I said. “Tell him I want to see him.”

I heard her catch her breath. “Who?”

“You know damned well who. Tell him to catch a plane, the next one out. It’ll get him here by tonight. Phone me when he’s in.”

She began to say something more, but I hung up.

I went back to the table, and the waitress came over. She smiled at me, in her weary way, and gathered up the two cups. “You didn’t drink your coffee,” she said.

“It’s all right. My doctor tells me I drink too much of the stuff anyway.” I gave her a five-dollar bill and told her to keep the change. She stared at me, her smile growing uncertain.

“Buy yourself a hat,” I said.