The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel Page 13

  “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.”

  15

  I drove with the window open. The cool night air was soft on my swollen cheek, but not as soft as Clare Cavendish’s fingers had been, earlier, before I’d ruined everything and sent her off into the night, frightened and angry. I couldn’t get her out of my head. It was just as well, since thinking of her meant I didn’t have to think about Nico Peterson’s sister and what was likely to be waiting for me at the reservoir. I also didn’t care to dwell on the fact that I’d made a bad mistake by getting those two Mexicans mad at me. If I hadn’t, if I’d kept cool and found a way around them, maybe I could have prevented them from taking the woman. Unlikely, but not impossible. But that was something to feel guilty about another time, not now.

  It wasn’t much of a drive up to Encino, and even though the streets were empty I dawdled along, not at all anxious to get there before I had to. Terry Lennox used to live in Encino, in a big fake English mansion on a couple of acres of choice real estate. That was in the days when his wife was still alive and he was married to her again—they’d got together twice, which must be some kind of definition of double trouble.

  I still missed Terry. He was a disaster area all to himself, but he was my friend, and in this world, in my world, that’s a rare thing—I don’t do friendship easily. I wondered where he was now and what he was up to. Last I’d heard of him, he was in Mexico somewhere, spending his late wife’s money. There probably wasn’t too much of it left by now, I thought, Terry being the kind of spender he was. I told myself that one of these days I’d drink a gimlet in his honor again over at Victor’s. It used to be our haunt, Terry’s and mine, and I went there a couple of times and raised a toast to him when I thought he was dead. Terry had us all fooled, for a while.

  I was so tired I nearly drove smack into the “No Entry” sign. I turned right and straightaway saw the lights up ahead. There were two patrol cars parked nose to nose at the side of the road, as well as Bernie’s beat-up Chevy and an ambulance with its back doors open and the light pouring out. It was a strange scene, out here in these lonely parts, under the sentinel pines.

  I pulled in, and when I got out of the car my lower back nearly seized up, I was so stiff after that drive. I thought longingly of my bed, even without Clare Cavendish in it. I’m getting too old for this kind of work.

  Bernie was standing with a guy in a white coat who I thought might be either a medic or one of the coroner’s men. At their feet there was something body-shaped, covered up with a blanket. I had a cigarette going, but I dropped it on the ground and trod on it. After I had gone a few steps I had to backtrack and make sure it was fully out. It would be one thing to burn down West Hollywood, as the old guy on Nico Peterson’s street had warned me I was in danger of doing, but Encino was a different matter. A blaze in Encino would knock a large hole in the funds of half the insurance companies in Los Angeles County and beyond. Terry Lennox’s house—or, rather, his wife’s house—had been worth a hundred grand or more. But I needn’t have worried—the ground was soaked after all that recent rain, and everything smelled sodden and resinous.

  Not far from Bernie were three or four cops in uniform and a couple of plainclothes guys in hats, playing the beams of their flashlights over the ground. Pine needles glinted in the light. I had the impression that no one’s heart was in the search. A couple of Mexicans in a car would be long gone across the border by now, and no number of clues would be likely to lead to them.

  “What took you so long?” Bernie said.

  “I made a few stops to admire the scenery and think poetic thoughts.”

  “Sure you did. Come on—what have you been doing since I was at your place?”

  “Catching up on my needlepoint,” I said. I looked at the blanket-covered body on the ground. “That her?”

  “According to her driver’s license. Identification ain’t going to be easy.” He lifted back a corner of the blanket with the toe of one of those clumpy shoes of his. “Don’t ya think?”

  The Mexicans had done a job on her, all right. She had a lot more face than when I’d last seen her; it was swollen like a pumpkin and black and blue all over. The features weren’t all in the right place, either. Plus, a sort of deep second mouth had been carved into her throat, under her chin. That would have been López, with his little knife. For a second I saw Lynn again in my mind, standing by the sink in Peterson’s house with the ice tray in her hands and turning to tell me where to look for the bottles of Canada Dry.

  “Who found her?” I asked.

  “Couple of kids in a car looking for a quiet place to do some serious necking.”

  “How did she die?”

  Bernie gave a sort of laugh. “Look at her—what do you think?”

  The guy in the white coat spoke: “There’s a deep continuous transverse wound to the anterior triangles of the neck, cutting both venous and arterial structures, not compatible with life.”

  I stared at him. He was an old guy; he’d seen it all and seemed tired, like me.

  “Sorry,” Bernie said offhandedly, “this is Dr.— What’d you say it was?”

  “Torrance.”

  “This is Dr. Torrance. Doc, meet Philip Marlowe, ace detective.” He turned to me. “What he means is, her throat was cut. By the time it happened, I’d say it was a mercy.” He put an arm through mine, turned me with him, an
d we walked off a little ways. “Tell me the truth, Marlowe,” he said quietly. “This dame mean something to you?”

  “I met her today—yesterday—for the first time. Why?”

  “The doc says these guys had a lot of fun with her. You know what I mean? That was before they started on her with the lit cigarettes and the knuckle-dusters and the knife. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too, Bernie. But it’s no good—you’re not going to get anywhere with this line. I never met her but the once, and we’d barely exchanged a dozen words before the Mexicans burst in.”

  “You were having a drink with her.”

  I rescued my arm from his. “That wouldn’t have put us in the market for an engagement ring. I have drinks with all kinds of people, all the time. I bet you do, too.”

  He stood back and looked at me. “She must have been a fine-looking broad, before the Mexes got at her.”

  “Bernie, leave it.” I sighed. “I didn’t know Lynn Peterson, not in the way you’re suggesting.”

  “Okay, you didn’t know her. She walks in on you while you’re shaking down her brother’s house—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Bernie, I wasn’t ‘shaking it down’!”

  “Anyway, she walks in on you, next thing two Mexes come in after her, bop you on the head, and hightail it with her in their evil clutches. Now she’s dead on the side of a lonely road in Encino. If you were me, you think you’d say, ‘It’s fine, Phil, don’t worry about it, toddle off about your business, I’m sure you’re not connected in any way with this unfortunate lady’s murder, even though you were searching for her supposed-to-be-dead brother’? Well, would you?”

  I sighed again. It wasn’t just because I’d had my fill of Ohls’s insinuations—I was bone tired. “All right, Bernie,” I said. “I know you’re only doing your job, it’s what they pay you for. But you’re going to waste a whole lot of time, and make yourself annoyed and upset, if you keep on trying to link me with this.”

  “You are linked with it,” Bernie almost shouted. “You’re the one who went snooping around looking for this Peterson party, and now his sister is dead. What’s that if not a link?”