The Black-Eyed Blonde

24

It was a shade after ten o’clock when she phoned. I had weakened and got out the bottle again from its deep lair in the desk drawer and poured myself a modest two fingers of bourbon. Somehow liquor doesn’t seem so serious a thing when you drink it from a paper cup. The whiskey stung my mouth, which was already raw from all the cigarettes I’d smoked in the course of this long day. I certainly wasn’t the one to be telling Bernie Ohls he should kick the habit.

I knew the phone was going to ring a second before it rang. Her voice was hushed, almost a whisper. “He’s here,” she said. “Come by the usual way, through the conservatory. And don’t forget to turn off your headlights.”

I can’t remember what I said in reply. Maybe I said nothing. I was still in that strangely dreamy state of suspension, seeming to float outside myself, watching my own actions but somehow not taking part in them. I suppose it was the effect of all the waiting and the time wasting.

Rufus had gone home, and the floor he had been mopping had long since dried, though the soles of my shoes squeaked on it as if it were still wet. The night outside was cool now, and the day’s smoke had cleared from the air at last. I had parked the car on Vine, under a streetlamp. It looked like a big dark animal, crouching there at the sidewalk, and the headlights seemed to be giving me a baleful glare. It took a while to start, too, coughing and sputtering before it rattled into life. It was probably due for an oil change, or something like that.

I drove slowly, but all the same it wasn’t long before I came in sight of the sea. I turned right along the highway, with the waves a ghostly, turbulent white line out in the darkness on my left. I flicked on the radio. It was a thing I rarely did, and in fact I forgot for long periods that it was there. The station it was tuned to was playing an old number by the Paul Whiteman band, hot music made safely cool for the masses. It beats me how a guy with the name Whiteman ever got up the nerve to play jazz.

A jackrabbit ran across the road in front of me, its tail unnaturally aglow in the headlights. There was some comparison I could have made between the animal and me, but I felt too detached to bother.

When I came to the gate I killed the lights and took my foot off the gas and let the car drift to a stop. The moon had gone in and there was blackness everywhere. Trees loomed like great blind brutes nosing their way out of the night. I sat there for a while, listening to the engine ticking. I felt like a traveler come to the end of a long and weary journey. I wanted to rest, but I knew I couldn’t, not yet.

I got out of the car and stood beside it for a minute, sniffing the air. There was a scorched smell from the engine, but beyond that the night was fragrant with the scent of grass and roses and other things I didn’t know the names of. I set off walking across the lawn. The house at the front was dark except for a few lighted windows on the first floor. I came to the gravel sweep below the front door and veered off to the left. The smell of roses was intense here, cloying and almost overpowering.

There was a flurry somewhere close by and I halted, but could see nothing in the darkness. Then I caught a flash of blue, a deep, shiny blue, and there was a swishing sound that quickly faded. It must have been the peacock. I hoped it wouldn’t do its scream, my nerves couldn’t have borne it.

As I rounded the corner of the house and approached the conservatory, I heard the sound of a piano and stopped to listen. Chopin, I guessed, but I was probably wrong — to me everything on the piano sounds like Chopin. The music, tiny from this distance, seemed heartrendingly lovely, and, well, just heartrending. Imagine, I thought to myself, imagine being able to make a noise like that on a big black box made out of wood and ivory and stretched wires.

The French doors leading into the conservatory were locked, but I got that trusty gadget on my key ring into operation, and after a few seconds I was inside.

I followed the sound of the music. In the dimness I crossed what I remembered as the living room and walked along a short, carpeted corridor, at the end of which was a closed door to what I figured must be the music room. I crept forward, trying not to make a sound, but I was still a good five yards from the door when the music broke off in the middle of a phrase. I stopped too, and stood listening, but heard nothing, except a steady, low buzzing from a faulty bulb in a tall lamp beside me. What was I waiting for? Did I expect the door to burst open and a crowd of music lovers to come surging out and usher me inside and sit me down in the front row?

I didn’t knock, just turned the knob and pushed open the door and stepped through.

Clare was seated at the piano. As I came in, she was closing the lid and turning sideways on the stool to look at me. She must have heard me in the corridor. Her face was expressionless; she didn’t even seem surprised at my unannounced appearance. She was wearing a floor-length, midnight-blue gown with a high collar. Her hair was pinned up, and she had on earrings and a necklace of small white diamonds. She looked as if she had dressed for a concert. Where was her audience?

“Hello, Clare,” I said. “Don’t let me interrupt the music.”

The drapes were drawn in front of the two tall windows in the wall behind the piano. The only light in the room came from a big brass lamp that stood on the piano lid. It had a globe of white glass, and its base was molded in the shape of a lion’s claw. It was the kind of thing Clare’s mother would think was the last word in style. Around it were arranged a couple of dozen photographs in silver frames of varying sizes. In one of them I recognized Clare as a young girl, wearing a tiara of flowers in her short blond hair.

She stood up now, the silk stuff of her gown making a faint, brittle rustling; it was the kind of female sound that always sets a man’s heart pitter-pattering, whatever the circumstances. Her face still showed nothing of what she was feeling.

“I didn’t hear your car,” she said. “Perhaps I was playing too loudly.”

“I left it at the gate,” I said.

“Yes, but usually I hear when a car stops anywhere about.”

“It was the music, then.”

“Yes. I was distracted.”

We stood there, with fifteen feet or so of floor between us, gazing at each other in a helpless sort of way. I hadn’t known how hard this was going to be. I was holding my hat in my hand.

“Where is he?” I asked.

She drew back her shoulders and lifted her head, her nostrils flaring, as if I had said something offensive. “Why have you come here?” she asked.

“You told me to. On the phone.”

She frowned, her brow wrinkling. “Did I?”

“Yes, you did.”

Her mind seemed somewhere else; she was distracted, all right. When she spoke again her voice had become unnaturally loud, as if she meant it to carry. “What do you want with us?”

“You know what?” I said. “Now that you ask, I’m not really sure. I suppose I thought I could get some things cleared up, but all of a sudden I can’t seem to remember what they are, exactly.”

“You sounded very angry, when you called.”

“That’s because I was. I still am.”

Her mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. “You don’t show it.”

“It’s what they teach you at detective school. I think it’s called ‘masking your emotions.’ You’re not bad at it yourself.”

“Do you care to tell me what it is you’re angry about?”

I laughed, or made a laughing noise, anyway, and shook my head. “Ah, sweetheart,” I said, “where would I begin?”

There was a sound off to my left, a sort of strangulated gurgle, and when I turned to look where it had come from I was surprised to see Richard Cavendish sprawled on a sofa, asleep or passed out, I couldn’t tell which. How had I not noticed him when I first came into the room? A body on a sofa — that’s the kind of thing I’m not supposed to miss. He was lying back with his arms flung out to either side and his legs splayed. He was wearing jeans and shiny cowboy boots and a checked shirt. His face had a gray pallor, and his mouth was open.

“He came stumbling in here a while ago, very drunk,” Clare said. “He’ll sleep for hours and remember nothing in the morning. It often happens. He’s drawn by the sound of the piano, I think, though music repels him, or so he likes to tell me.” She did that tense little smile again. “It’s like the moth and the flame, I suppose.”

“Mind if I sit down?” I said. “I’m kind of tired.”

She pointed to an ornate, lyre-backed chair upholstered in yellow silk. It looked too delicate to support my weight, but I sat on it anyway. Clare returned to the music stool and arranged herself there, one knee crossed over the other under her gown and an arm draped along the lid of the piano. She sat with her back held very straight. Somehow I hadn’t noticed before how long and slender her neck was. The diamonds at her throat sparkled, reminding me of the lights of the city I had been watching earlier from my office window, while I waited for her to call.

“I saw Peterson,” I said.

That got a response. She drew herself forward quickly as if to jump to her feet, and I saw the knuckles of her left hand tighten where it rested on the piano lid. Her black eyes were wide, and an almost feverish light came into them. When she spoke, her voice was choked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just did,” I said.

“I mean, before now. When did you see him?”

“Today, around noon.”

“Where?”

“It doesn’t matter where. He called me, said he wanted to meet, I met him.”

“But—” She blinked rapidly and gave herself a tiny shake that ran all the way down to the tip of her shoe where it was peeping out from under the hem of her blue gown. “What did he say? Did he — did he give any explanation of why he pretended to be dead? He can’t just have appeared like that, with a phone call and a request to meet you. Tell me. Tell me.”

I fetched out my cigarette case. I didn’t ask if she minded if I smoked; I didn’t feel like being that polite. “He was never your lover, was he,” I said. “That was just a line you fed me, so there’d be a reason for you to hire me to go search for him.” She began to say something, but I spoke over her. “Don’t bother lying,” I said. “Look, the fact is, I don’t care. I never really bought the please-find-my-lost-boyfriend line anyway — just from your description of him I knew Peterson was the kind of guy you wouldn’t give the time of day to.”

“Then why did you pretend to believe me?”

“I was curious. Plus, if I’m honest, I didn’t like the prospect of you walking out of my office and my never seeing you again. Pathetic, right?”

She blushed. That threw me, and made me wonder if I should revise, even if only by a little, all the harsh conclusions I’d been coming to about her and her character since I’d talked to Peterson that morning. Maybe she was the kind of woman who gets wrapped easily around men’s little fingers. Who was I to judge her? But then I thought about the lies she’d told me, if only by omission, thought of all the ways she’d deceived me from the start, and the anger surged up in me again.

She was sitting now with her face turned to the left, showing me her perfect profile. You can hate a woman and still know that all she has to do is beckon and you’d throw yourself at her feet and shower her shoes with kisses.

“Please,” she said, “tell me what happened when you met him.”

“He had a suitcase with him. He wanted me to deliver it to a man called Lou Hendricks. Know the name?”

She shrugged dismissively. “I suppose I’ve heard it.”

“Damn right you have. He’s the guy Peterson was supposed to bring the dope to.”

“What dope?”

I chuckled. She was still looking away from me, still giving me the classic profile, the one that was so much better than Cleopatra’s. “Come on,” I said. “You can stop pretending now — the charade is over. You’ve got nothing to lose by being honest — or have you forgotten how to do that?”

“There’s no need to be insulting.”

“No, I agree, but it’s kind of enjoyable.”

I’d been tapping the cigarette into my cupped palm, and now Clare stood up and took a big glass ashtray from the lid of the piano and came and handed it to me, and I emptied the ash from my hand into it and then set it on the floor beside my chair. She turned with another swish of silk and walked back and sat down again on the piano stool. Even though I was mad at her, mad as hell, the knowledge ached in me that I had lost for good whatever small fragment of her she had briefly allowed me to think was mine.

“Tell me something,” I said. “Was it all a pretense?”

I noticed the drapes at the window on the left stirring a little, though I couldn’t feel the least draft.

“What do you mean, all?”

“You know what I mean.”

She looked down at her hands where they were clasped together in her lap. I was thinking of the lamp beside my bed with the blood-red roses painted on it, and her moaning in my arms, and her eyelids fluttering, and her fingernails pressing into my shoulder.

“No,” she said, in a voice so small and soft I could hardly hear it. “No, not everything.”

She lifted her eyes to mine and with a begging look put a finger to her lips and gave her head a tiny, quick shake. I returned a blank stare. She needn’t have worried; I wasn’t going to say out loud the thing she was silently asking me not to say. What would be the point? Why add more damage to what had already been done? Besides, I was desperate to believe she had gone to bed with me because she’d wanted to, that it wasn’t another thing she’d done for the man she really loved.

Those drapes stirred again. “You’re asking a lot, Mrs. Cavendish,” I said, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. Clare nodded and lowered her head again. I stubbed my cigarette into the ashtray on the floor and stood up.

“All right, Terry,” I called. “You may as well come out now. We’re done playing.”

* * *

At first nothing happened, except that Clare Cavendish gave a funny, stifled little squeak, as if something had stung her, and clapped a hand over her mouth. Then those mysteriously moving drapes parted and the man I knew as Terry Lennox stepped into the room, wearing that smile of his I remembered so well: boyish, embarrassed, a little rueful. He wore a double-breasted dark suit and a blue bow tie. He was tall and thin and elegant, the elegance made all the more pointed by his seeming unawareness of it. He had dark hair and a trim mustache.

It struck me that I’d never seen his real face. When I’d first known him, some years back, his hair was white and his right cheek and jaw were frozen, the dead skin lined with long, thin scars. In the war he’d been caught in a mortar blast and then captured by the Germans, who had patched him up any old how. That, at least, was the story he’d spun. Then, later, when his wife got murdered and it looked like he was going to take the rap for it, he’d fled to Mexico — with my help, I may as well say — where he’d faked his suicide and had a big piece of plastic surgery done, an expensively expert job this time, and changed himself into a Suramericano. I’d seen him once under his new identity; then he’d disappeared from my life. And now he was back.

“Hello, old sport,” he said. “Think you could spare me a cigarette? I smelled the smoke of yours and developed a sudden craving.”

I had to hand it to Terry — who else could have hidden behind a curtain for half an hour and come out as poised and self-mockingly smooth as Cary Grant? I stepped forward, taking out my cigarette case and flipping it open with my thumb and holding it out to him. “Help yourself,” I said. “You give it up, or what?”

“Yes,” he said, taking one of my cigarettes and rolling it appreciatively in his fingers. “It was affecting my health.” He put a hand to his chest. “The dry air down there doesn’t agree with me.”

Strange, isn’t it, how even at a time like that people plunge right away into small talk? Clare was still sitting on the piano stool with her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t even turned to look at Terry. Well, she didn’t need to.

I offered a match and Terry leaned down to the flame.

“How was the flight?” I asked. “You came up from Acapulco, right?”

“No,” he said, “I was in Baja on a little vacation when Clare called. Luckily I was able to catch a local crop duster to Tijuana and then a Mexicana Airlines flight up here. The plane was a DC-3. I clutched the armrests so tightly my fingers are still numb.”

He did that trick he always used to do, taking a big draw of smoke and letting it hang on his lower lip for a second before inhaling it. “Ah,” he said with a sigh, “that tastes good.” He put his head to one side and ran a critical eye over me. “You look pretty ropey, Phil,” he said. “Been having a hard time with all this business with Nico and so on? I’m sorry — truly, I am.”

He meant it, too. That was Terry — he’d rob you of your wallet, knock you down, and trample on you, then a second later help you up, dust you off, and offer you his deepest apologies. And you’d believe him. You’d even find yourself inquiring if he was all right and saying you hoped he hadn’t strained his wrist or anything by having to keep that heavy-looking gun trained on you while he was going through your pockets. Am I being unfair? Maybe a little. In the old days, when I thought I knew him, he’d been pretty straight. Couldn’t hold his drink or hold on to his money, and always had a woman problem, but I’d never known him to be seriously crooked. That last bit had changed now.

“How’s Menendez?” I asked.

He smiled wryly. “Oh, you know Mendy. He’s the cat that always falls on his feet.”

“You see much of him?”

“He keeps in touch. I owe him a lot, as you know.”

Yes, I knew. It was Menendez, along with Terry’s other old wartime buddy, Randy Starr, who’d helped him disappear and find a new identity after his so-called suicide in Otatoclán. The three of them had been in a foxhole together somewhere in France when that mortar shell landed, and it was Terry who’d saved all their lives by grabbing the shell and running outside and heaving it into the air like a quarterback throwing a Hail Mary pass. Or that, at least, was how the continuing story went. I never knew how much to believe about Terry and his adventures, and I still don’t. For instance, later on I’d discovered that he wasn’t Terry Lennox from Salt Lake City, as he claimed, but Paul Marston, a Canadian, born in Montreal. But who else might he have been, before that? And who would he be, I wondered, the next time I saw him, if I ever should see him again? How many layers does an onion have?

“Mendy’s based in Acapulco, right?” I said. “That where you are, too?”

“Yes. It’s pleasant there, on the ocean.”

“What is it you call yourself? I’ve forgotten.”

“Maioranos,” he said, and looked sheepish. “Cisco Maioranos.”

“Another alias. Doesn’t suit you, Terry. I’d have said—”

“For God’s sake!” Clare cried out suddenly, rising in a flurry from the piano stool and turning on us with white-faced fury. “Are you going to stand there chatting all night? It’s grotesque! You’re like two awful little boys who’ve done something naughty and got away with it.”

We turned and stared at her. I think we’d forgotten she was there. “Steady on, old girl,” Terry said, with a less than successful attempt at lightness. “We’re just two old friends doing a bit of catching up.” He tipped me a quick wink. “Aren’t we, Phil?”

Clare was going to say something more, since it was obvious there was a lot she had to say, but just then there was a gentle tapping on the door and it opened a little way and a weird apparition appeared there. It was a head, with a face as white as a Noh actor’s mask and a lot of hair gathered up in a sort of close-fitting mesh. We stared at this thing, all three of us, and then it spoke. “I was looking for a book in the library and heard voices. Have yiz no bed to go to?”

It was Clare’s mother. She came all the way into the room now. She was wearing a pink woolen dressing gown and pink slippers with pink bobbles on them. The white stuff on her face was some kind of beauty mask. Her eyes staring out of it were red-rimmed, like a drunk’s, and her lips were the color of raw steak.

“Oh, Mother,” Clare said in a tone of desperation, with a hand to her forehead, “please go back to bed.”

Mrs. Langrishe ignored her and stepped into the room and shut the door behind her. She was looking at Terry and frowning. She said, “And who is this, may I ask?”

Terry didn’t hesitate but moved toward her smoothly, smiling, with a slim hand extended. “Lennox is the name, Mrs. Langrishe,” he said. “Terry Lennox. I don’t think we’ve met.”

Ma Langrishe peered at him for a moment, trying to fix him, then suddenly smiled. None of them, the young ones or the old, could resist Terry when he turned the charm on them, like a spray of mist from a perfume bottle. She took his hand in both of hers. “Are you a friend of Richard’s?” she asked.

Terry hesitated. “Ehm — yes, I suppose I am.”

His glance flickered in the direction of the sofa, and now Ma Langrishe looked there as well. “Why, there he is!” she said, and her smile broadened and grew softer still. “Ah, God, will you look at him, sleeping like a baby.” She turned to Clare and the lurid gash of her mouth tightened. “And what are you all dressed up for?” she demanded. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Please go back to bed, Mother,” Clare said again. “You know we have that meeting with the Bloomingdale’s people in the morning. You’ll be exhausted.”

“Ach, will you leave me alone!” her mother barked. She turned to Terry again with a roguish twinkle. “Have you and Richard been out on the tiles, is that it? The poor boy, he shouldn’t drink — it goes straight to his head.” She turned and again gazed indulgently at the figure sprawled on the sofa. “He’s a terrible man, so he is.” As if he’d heard her, Cavendish stirred in his sleep and gave a loud snort. The old woman cackled delightedly. “Listen to him! Isn’t he a fierce rascal altogether.”

At last she noticed me. She frowned. “I remember you,” she said, pointing a finger at my chest. “You’re what’s-his-name, the detective fella.” Her lips curved upward in a sly, malignant smile, and the white mask developed a mesh of tiny cracks at either side of her mouth, and for a second she looked uncannily like a clown. “Have you found her ladyship’s pearls?” she asked, in a softly suggestive, crooning voice. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No, I haven’t found them yet,” I said. “But I’m hot on their trail.”

The clown’s smile died instantly, and she pointed that finger again, and this time it had an angry tremor. “Don’t you be making a mock of me, my bucko,” she rasped.

“I think, Mrs. Langrishe,” Terry said, cutting in smoothly, “I think Clare is right, I think you should go back to bed. You don’t want to miss your beauty sleep.”

She looked at him and her eyes narrowed. I guess she’d dealt with too many smooth talkers like Terry over the years to be taken in for long by his hazy charm.

Clare stepped forward and laid a hand lightly on the woman’s arm. “Come along, Mother, please,” she said. “Mr. Marlowe and Terry are old friends. That’s why I invited them over tonight — it’s sort of a reunion.”

I judged the shrewd old bird knew she was being lied to, but probably she was tired and was happy enough to accept the lie and bow out. She smiled sweetly at Terry again, threw me a scowl, then allowed herself to be led away, to the door. Clare, walking her along, glanced back at Terry and at me. I wondered if a day would come when she’d look like her mother looked now.

When the two women had gone, Terry blew air out through pursed lips and then laughed softly. “Quite a lady,” he said. “She had me terrified.”

“You didn’t look too scared to me,” I said.

“Oh, well, you know me — a master of disguise.” He went to where I’d been sitting and leaned down and crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the floor, then slipped his hands into his pockets and strolled over to the sofa and stood looking down at Cavendish where he lay sprawled like a cartoon image of a drunkard. “Poor Dick,” he said. “Clare’s mother was right: he shouldn’t drink.”

“Did you know him?” I asked. “I mean, before now?”

“Oh, yes. He and Clare often came down to Mexico. We all knew each other — Nico, our friend Mendy, some others. There’s a bar on the waterfront where we used to gather of an evening for cocktails. Nice place.” He turned to look at me over his shoulder. “You should come visit, one day. You look like you could do with some sun and relaxation. You push yourself too hard, Phil, you always did.”

On the day after his wife was murdered, I had driven Terry down to Tijuana, to the airport there, where he’d caught a flight south. When I got back, Joe Green was waiting for me. They knew Terry had skipped and took me in as an accessory. I got roughed up by Joe’s boss, a bruiser called Gregorius, and spent a couple of nights in the cooler before they let me go, after hearing of Terry’s oh-so-convenient suicide. It was a close one, for me and my so-called reputation. Yes, Terry owed me.

He walked back now and stood in front of me, his hands still in his pockets. He had on his most cajoling smile. “You bring the suitcase, by any chance?” he asked. “I’m guessing that’s why Nico wanted to see you, to hand it over. Nico never had much tenacity. He scares too easily. I have to admit, I always despised him a little.”

“Not enough to stop you using him as your mule.”

He widened his eyes. “My mule? Oh, now, sport, you don’t think I’m in this business, do you? Too dirty for me.”

“I’d have agreed with you once,” I said. “But you’ve changed, Terry. I can see it in your eyes.”

“You’re wrong, Phil.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Sure, I’ve changed — I’ve had to. Life down there isn’t all guitar bands and margaritas and chicken mole. I’ve had to do some things I’d never have dreamed of doing up here.”

“You saying you ran through the money you inherited from Sylvia? That was Harlan Potter’s money, left to her. There had to be a lot of it.”

He pursed his lips again, I think to stop himself from smiling. “Let’s say I made some ill-judged investments.”

“With Mendy Menendez?”

He said nothing, but I could see I was right. “So you’re in hock to Mendy, and owe him big-time. That’s why you sent Clare to me — it was on behalf of Mendy. I’m right, yes?”

Terry turned and paced away from me stiff-legged, looking at the floor, then turned and paced back the way he had come and stopped in front of me again. “As I say, you know Mendy. He doesn’t give much quarter when it comes to money, debts, things like that.”

“I thought you were his buddy and his hero,” I said, “on account of you having saved him and Randy Starr from a bloody death on the battlefield.”

Terry chuckled. “Heroes get tarnished, after a while,” he said. “And then, you know as well as I do what people are like — they tire of being grateful. They even start resenting that they have to feel beholden to you.”

I thought that one over. He was right. It had always surprised me that Mendy had helped him in the first place. I had suspected that Terry must have had some kind of hold on him. I thought of asking now if that had been the case, but I couldn’t work up the interest.

“Of course,” he went on, “Clare would have been happy to help me out. She has a lot of money of her own, you know. She wanted to give me some to pay off Mendy, but”—he flashed that apologetic, self-excusing smile—“I have a few shreds of honor still intact.”

“What about the two Mexicans?” I said.

“Yes,” Terry said, and a wrinkle formed between his eyebrows, “that was a bad business. Nico’s sister — I never met her, but I’m sure she didn’t deserve to die.”

“She was in it with Nico,” I said. “She identified the body.”

“Yes, but all the same, to be murdered like that—” He made a grimace. “I swear I didn’t know Mendy was sending the Mexicans after Nico. I thought he would wait until Clare had — had talked to you, until you’d had time to find Nico, as I had no doubt you would have, if Mendy had waited a while longer. But Mendy is an unfortunate blend of impatience and distrust. So he sent those two heavies up here to begin their own search for Nico. A sad mistake.”

“Thing is, of course,” I said, “no one, not you or Mendy or anyone else, would have known about Nico’s disappearing act if Clare hadn’t spotted him on the street that day in San Francisco.”

“Yes, that’s true. You know”—he swiveled on his heel and did another bit of stiff-legged pacing, his hands clasped behind his back now—“I can’t help but wish she hadn’t seen him. Everything would have been so much simpler.”

“That’s probably true. But was it her fault? She didn’t tell Mendy she’d seen him, did she. I’m guessing she told you, and you told Mendy. And that’s how the machine got rolling. Am I right?”

“I can’t lie to you.” That made me laugh, and when I did, Terry looked hurt — he really did. “Anyway, I’m not lying now,” he said, in an offended tone. “Yes, I told Mendy. I shouldn’t have, I know. But like I said, I have reasons to be grateful to him—”

“And also you needed to make yourself look good with him, by bringing him the choice snippet of news that Peterson was only playing dead and was still at large, with Mendy’s suitcase full of junk in his possession.”

“Ah, yes,” Terry said. “That suitcase.”

“You gave it to me to keep for you, one day.”

“That’s right, so I did. Was that the night you drove me to Tijuana, after poor Sylvia had died? I can’t remember. When you saw Peterson with it you recognized it, of course.”

“It sure has had a life.”

“English-made, you see. The English build to last.”

He stopped pacing and sat down on the piano stool and crossed one knee over the other and put a hand to his chin, like Rodin’s Thinker. Terry had the spindliest legs I’d ever seen on anybody. Like a stork, he was.

He started to say something, but just then Richard Cavendish sat upright on the sofa and looked at us, licking his lips and blinking. “Wha’s going on?” he said thickly.

Terry hardly gave him a glance. “It’s all right, Dick,” he said. “You go back to sleep.”

“Oh, all right,” Cavendish muttered and flopped down the way he had been before, with his arms and legs thrown out to either side. After a second or two he began to snore softly.

Terry was patting his pockets. I don’t know what he expected to find there. “I’d ask you for another cigarette,” he said, “only I don’t want to start up again full-time.” He looked up at me sideways. “You going to tell me where the suitcase is?” he asked.

“Sure. It’s in a locker at Union Station, and the key to the locker is in an envelope on the way to a pal of mine — well, sort of a pal — named Bernie Ohls. He’s assistant chief of homicide, works out of the Sheriff’s office.”

The room was suddenly very still. Terry sat there, all twisted up on himself, with his knees crossed and that hand to his chin and the other supporting his elbow. I went to the window and stepped into the opening between the drapes and looked out. There was nothing to see, only darkness and my own shadowy reflection in the glass.

“I don’t think,” Terry said behind me, “I don’t think that was wise, old chum. I don’t think that was wise at all.” He didn’t sound angry, or menacing, or anything much, really, except maybe wistful — yes, that’s the word: wistful.

Then he spoke again and his voice had changed. “Ah,” he said, “it’s you. What’s that you’ve got there?”

I turned from the window. Terry was still sitting on the piano stool with his back to me. Beyond him, Clare’s brother, Everett, was standing in the open doorway, that floppy lock of hair hanging down across his forehead. He didn’t look in much better shape than when I’d seen him last, but at least he was conscious. He wore pajamas and a silk dressing gown with dragons embroidered on it. He had on penny loafers — they looked odd with the pajamas — and he had a pistol in his hand. It was a dainty little thing, some kind of a Colt, I thought. I could see it had a pearl handle. It didn’t look serious at all, but all guns, even the daintiest of them, can knock a hole in the toughest heart.

He looked at me as I stepped forward, out of the shadow of the drapes, and his eyes grew uncertain. I was what he hadn’t expected.

“Hello, Everett,” I said. “Did we wake you? Your mother was here just now.” He stared at me. He looked younger than he was because his face was weak. And, I suppose, because his mother spoiled and cosseted him and protected him from the big bad world. At least, that’s what she thought she was doing.

“Who are you?” he said. His eyes were sunken, ringed with dark purple shadows.

“Name’s Marlowe,” I said. “We met before, on a couple of occasions. The first time you were awake, and we talked on the lawn — you remember? You thought maybe I was the new chauffeur. The second time, you didn’t know I was there.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You asked me who I was,” I said, “and I was explaining.”

I made myself smile. I was playing for time. Everett Edwards the Third might have been a milksop, as Wilber Canning would have said, but he was also a heroin addict, and he had a gun in his hand.

“Oh, yes,” he said, in a tone of disgust. “I remember now: you’re the fellow who was looking for Clare that day. Some kind of a detective, aren’t you?” He giggled suddenly. “A detective! That’s rich. I have a gun, and you’re a detective. That’s really rich.”

He turned his attention to Terry. “You,” he said, not giggling now, “why are you here?”

Terry considered. “Well, I’m sort of a friend of the family, Rett. You know me.” I could still only see Terry’s back, and the back of his head, but he seemed pretty calm. I was glad. Everyone was going to have to be very, very calm for the next few minutes.

Terry went on: “Remember the good times we had, down in Acapulco? Remember the day I taught you to water-ski? That was a good day, wasn’t it? And then we all had dinner at that place on the beach, Pedro’s, it’s called. It’s still there. I often go, and when I do I think of you, and the fine times we had.”

“You bastard,” Everett said quietly. “You were the one who got me started. You were the one who gave me that stuff in the first place.” His hand was quivering and the gun in it was quivering too. That wasn’t a good thing. A quivering gun can easily go off; I’ve seen it happen. Everett was close to tears, but they would be tears of rage. “You were the one.”

“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, Rett,” Terry said with a little laugh. “You were a very nervous boy in those days, and I thought an occasional pinch of happy powder would do you good. I’m sorry if I was wrong.”

“How dare you come here, to this house,” Everett said, and his hand shook even more and the gun barrel yawed in a way that made me clench my teeth.

“Listen,” I said, “listen, Rett, why don’t you give me the gun?”

The young man stared at me for a moment, then let out a high-pitched squeal of laughter. “Is that how detectives talk,” he said, “is it really? I thought that only happened in the movies.” He put on a mock-serious face and deepened his voice so that it sounded something like mine: “Why don’t you give me the gun, Everett, before someone gets hurt.” He threw his eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t you get it, you stupid man? That’s the whole point — someone is going to get hurt. Someone is going to get hurt very badly. Isn’t that so, Terry? Isn’t that so, my old playmate from Acapulco days?”

That was when Terry made his mistake. In situations like that, someone always does; someone always makes the wrong, the stupid move, and all hell follows. He suddenly propelled himself off the piano stool and lunged forward, like a swimmer making a shallow dive into an oncoming wave, landed on his stomach, and snatched up the glass ashtray that was on the floor there, beside the chair where I had been sitting. He meant to fling it at Everett, a lethal discus. He didn’t realize that when you’re lying on your front like that, you can’t get much force into a throw. Besides, Everett was too quick for him, and Terry was still drawing back his arm when Everett took a step forward, the gun held out at arm’s length, and pointed it at Terry’s head and pulled the trigger.

The slug caught Terry in the forehead, just below the hairline. He stayed as he was for a moment, lying flat-out with the ashtray in one hand and the other braced beside him on the floor as he tried to get himself up. But he wasn’t going to get up, not ever again. There were two holes in his head, the one in his forehead and another, bigger one at the back, at the base of his skull. There was a lot of blood coming out of this second hole, and some sticky-looking gray stuff, too. His head dropped and his face slammed onto the carpet.

Everett looked like he was going to fire again, but I reached him before he could get off a second shot. I didn’t have much trouble taking the gun away from him. In fact, he as good as handed it to me. He had gone as limp as a girl, and he stood there, his lower lip trembling, staring down at Terry where he lay bleeding on the floor. One of Terry’s feet, the right one, twitched a few times and then went still. I noticed, as I’ve had occasion to notice before, how much like fried bacon gunpowder smells.

Behind Everett the door opened again, and this time Clare came in. She stopped in the doorway and looked at the scene before her with an expression of horror and disbelief. Then she strode forward and pushed her brother aside and fell to her knees. She lifted Terry’s head and cradled it in her lap. She said nothing. She didn’t even weep. She really had loved him; I saw that clearly now. How could I not?

She looked up at me, at the gun in my hand. “Did you—?”

I shook my head.

She turned to her brother. “Was it you?” He would not look at her. “I’ll never forgive you,” she said to him, in a calm, almost formal-sounding voice. “I’ll never forgive you, and I hope you die. I hope you give yourself an overdose, very soon, and go into a coma and never come out of it. I always hated you, and now I know why. I knew someday you’d ruin my life.”

Everett still didn’t look at her, didn’t reply, didn’t say a word. After all, there wasn’t much to say.

Behind us, Richard Cavendish got to his feet and shambled forward. Seeing Terry, and the bright blood soaking into the front of his wife’s blue gown, he stopped. Nothing happened for a few seconds; then Cavendish suddenly laughed. “Well, well,” he said. “Man down, eh?” And he laughed again. I figured he thought he was having a dream, that none of what he was seeing was real. He advanced again and, stepping over Terry’s body, put out a hand and patted Clare on the head and then reeled on through the doorway, humming to himself, and was gone.

At last, Clare began to cry. I thought of going to her, but what would I have done? It was too late for me to do anything.