He pulled the handkerchief taut by two opposite corners, then crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it in a pocket.
“And then?” he asked shortly.
“That’s all there is, there isn’t any more. You don’t care who murdered your daughter, Mr. Potter. You wrote her off as a bad job long ago. Even if Terry Lennox didn’t kill her, and the real murderer is still walking around free, you don’t care. You wouldn’t want him caught, because that would revive the scandal and there would have to be a trial and his defense would blow your privacy as high as the Empire State Building. Unless, of course, he was obliging enough to commit suicide, before there was any trial. Preferably in Tahiti or Guatemala or the middle of the Sahara Desert. Anywhere where the County would hate the expense of sending a man to verify what had happened.”
He smiled suddenly, a big rugged smile with a reasonable amount of friendliness in it.
“What do you want from me, Marlowe?”
“If you mean how much money, nothing, I didn’t ask myself here. I was brought. I told the truth about how I met Roger Wade. But he did know your daughter and he does have a record of violence, although I haven’t seen any of it. Last night the guy tried to shoot himself. He’s a haunted man. He has a massive guilt complex. If I happened to be looking for a good suspect, he might do. I realize he’s only one of many, but he happens to be the only one I’ve met.”
He stood up and standing up he was really big. Tough too. He came over and stood in front of me.
“A telephone call, Mr. Marlowe, would deprive you of your license. Don’t fence with me. I won’t put up with it.”
“Two telephone calls and I’d wake up kissing the gutter—with the back of my head missing.”
He laughed harshly. “I don’t operate that way. I suppose in your quaint line of business it is natural for you to think so. I’ve given you too much of my time. I’ll ring for the butler to show you out.”
“Not necessary,” I said, and stood up myself. “I came here and got told. Thanks for the time.”
He held his hand out. “Thank you for coming. I think you’re a pretty honest sort of fellow. Don’t be a hero, young man. There’s no percentage in it.”
I shook hands with him. He had a grip like a pipe wrench. He smiled at me benignantly now. He was Mr. Big, the winner, everything under control.
“One of these days I might be able to throw some business your way,” he said. “And don’t go away thinking that I buy politicians or law enforcement officers. I don’t have to. Goodbye, Mr. Marlowe. And thank you again for coming.”
He stood there and watched me out of the room. I had my hand on the front door when Linda Loring popped out of a shadow somewhere.
“Well?” she asked me quietly. “How did you get on with Father?”
“Fine. He explained civilization to me. I mean how it looks to him. He’s going to let it go on for a little while longer. But it better be careful and not interfere with his private life. If it does, he’s apt to make a phone call to God and cancel the order.”
“You’re hopeless,” she said.
“Me? I’m hopeless? Lady, take a look at your old man. Compared with him I’m a blue-eyed baby with a brand new rattle.”
I went on out and Amos had the Caddy there waiting. He drove me back to Hollywood. I offered him a buck but he wouldn’t take it. I offered to buy him the poems of T. S. Eliot. He said he already had them.
THIRTY-THREE
A week went by and I heard nothing from the Wades. The weather was hot and sticky and the acid sting of the smog had crept as far west as Beverly Hills. From the top of Mulholland Drive you could see it leveled out all over the city like a ground mist. When you were in it you could taste it and smell it and it made your eyes smart. Everybody was griping about it. In Pasadena, where the stuffy millionaires holed up after Beverly Hills was spoiled for them by the movie crowd, the city fathers screamed with rage. Everything was the fault of the smog. If the canary wouldn’t sing, if the milkman was late, if the Pekinese had fleas, if an old coot in a starched collar had a heart attack on the way to church, that was the smog. Where I lived it was usually clear in the early morning and nearly always at night. Once in a while a whole day would be clear, nobody quite knew why.
It was on a day like that—it happened to be a Thursday—that Roger Wade called me up. “How are you? This is Wade.” He sounded fine.
“Fine, and you?”
“Sober, I’m afraid. Scratching a hard buck. We ought to have a talk. And I think I owe you some dough.”
“Nope.”
“Well, how about lunch today? Could you make it here somewhere around one?”
“I guess so. How’s Candy?”
“Candy?” He sounded puzzled. He must have blacked out plenty that night. “Oh, he helped you put me to bed that night.”
“Yeah. He’s a helpful little guy—in spots. And Mrs. Wade?”
“She’s fine too. She’s in town shopping today.”
We hung up and I sat and rocked in my swivel chair. I ought to have asked him how the book was going. Maybe you always ought to ask a writer how the book is going. And then again maybe he gets damned tired of that question.
I had another call in a little while, a strange voice.
“This is Roy Ashterfelt. George Peters told me to call you up, Marlowe.”
“Oh yes, thanks. You’re the fellow that knew Terry Lennox in New York. Called himself Marston then.”
“That’s right. He was sure on the sauce. But it’s the same guy all right. You couldn’t very well mistake him. Out here I saw him in Chasen’s one night with his wife. I was with a client. The client knew them. Can’t tell you the client’s name, I’m afraid.”
“I understand. It’s not very important now, I guess. What was his first name?”
“Wait a minute while I bite my thumb. Oh yeah, Paul. Paul Marston. And there was one thing more, if it interests you. He was wearing a British Army service badge. Their version of the ruptured duck.”
“I see. What happened to him?”
“I don’t know. I came west. Next time I saw him he was here too—married to Harlan Potter’s somewhat wild daughter. But you know all that.”
“They’re both dead now. But thanks for telling me.”
“Not at all. Glad to help. Does it mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing,” I said, and I was a liar. “I never asked him about himself. He told me once he had been brought up in an orphanage. Isn’t it just possible you made a mistake?”
“With that white hair and that scarred face, brother? Not a chance. I won’t say I never forget a face, but not that one.”
“Did he see you?”
“If he did, he didn’t let on. Hardly expect him to in the circumstances. Anyhow he might not have remembered me. Like I said, he was always pretty well lit back in New York.”
I thanked him some more and he said it was a pleasure and we hung up.
I thought about it for a while. The noise of the traffic outside the building on the boulevard made an unmusical obbligato to my thinking. It was too loud. In summer in hot weather everything is too loud. I got up and shut the lower part of the window and called Detective-Sergeant Green at Homicide. He was obliging enough to be in.
“Look,” I said, after the preliminaries, “I heard something about Terry Lennox that puzzles me. A fellow I know used to know him in New York under another name. You check his war record?”
“You guys never learn,” Green said harshly. “You just never learn to stay on your own side of the street. That matter is closed, locked up, weighted with lead and dropped in the ocean. Get it?”
“I spent part of an afternoon with Harlan Potter last week at his daughter’s house in Idle Valley. Want to check?”
“Doing what?” he asked sourly. “Supposing I believe you.”
“Talking things over. I was invited. He likes me. Incidentally, he told me the girl was shot with a Mauser P.P.K. 7.65 m/m. That news to you???
?
“Go on.”
“Her own gun, chum. Makes a little difference, maybe. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking into any dark corners. This is a personal matter. Where did he get that wound?”
Green was silent. I heard a door close in the background. Then he said quietly, “Probably in a knife fight south of the border.”
“Aw hell, Green, you had his prints. You sent them to Washington like always. You got a report back—like always. All I asked was something about his service record.”
“Who said he had one.”
“Well, Mendy Menendez for one. Seems Lennox saved his life one time and that’s how he got the wound. He was captured by the Germans and they gave him the face he had.”
“Menendez, huh? You believe that son of a bitch? You got a hole in your own head. Lennox didn’t have any war record. Didn’t have any record of any kind under any name. You satisfied?”
“If you say so,” I said. “But I don’t see why Menendez would bother to come up here and tell me a yarn and warn me to keep my nose clean on account of Lennox was a pal of him and Randy Starr in Vegas and they didn’t want anybody fooling around. After all Lennox was already dead.”
“Who knows what a hoodlum figures?” Green asked bitterly. “Or why? Maybe Lennox was in a racket with them before he married all that money, and got respectable. He was a floor manager at Starr’s place in Vegas for a while. That’s where he met the girl. A smile and a bow and a dinner jacket. Keep the customers happy and keep an eye on the house players. I guess he had class for the job.”
“He had charm,” I said. “They don’t use it in police business. Much obliged, Sergeant. How is Captain Gregorius these days?’
“Retirement leave. Don’t you read the papers?”
“Not the crime news, Sergeant. Too sordid.”
I started to say goodbye but he chopped me off. “What did Mr. Money want with you?”
“We just had a cup of tea together. A social call. He said he might put some business my way. He also hinted—just hinted, not in so many words—that any cop that looked cross-eyed at me would be facing a grimy future.”
“He don’t run the police department,” Green said.
“He admits it. Doesn’t even buy commissioners or D.A.’s, he said. They just kind of curl up in his lap when he’s having a doze.”
“Go to hell,” Green said, and hung up in my ear.
A difficult thing, being a cop. You never know whose stomach it’s safe to jump up and down on.
THIRTY-FOUR
The stretch of broken-paved road from the highway to the curve of the hill was dancing in the noon heat and the scrub that dotted the parched land on both sides of it was flour-white with granite dust by this time. The weedy smell was almost nauseating. A thin hot acrid breeze was blowing. I had my coat off and my sleeves rolled up, but the door was too hot to rest an arm on. A tethered horse dozed wearily under a clump of live oaks. A brown Mexican sat on the ground and ate something out of a newspaper. A tumbleweed rolled lazily across the road and came to rest against a piece of granite outcrop, and a lizard that had been there an instant before disappeared without seeming to move at all.
Then I was around the hill on the blacktop and in another country. In five minutes I turned into the driveway of the Wades’ house, parked and walked across the flagstones and rang the bell. Wade answered the door himself, in a brown and white checked shirt with short sleeves, pale blue denim slacks, and house slippers. He looked tanned and he looked good. There was an inkstain on his hand and a smear of cigarette ash on one side of his nose.
He led the way into his study and parked himself behind his desk. On it there was a thick pile of yellow typescript. I put my coat on a chair and sat on the couch.
“Thanks for coming, Marlowe. Drink?”
I got that look on my face you get when a drunk asks you to have a drink, I could feel it. He grinned.
“I’ll have a Coke,” he said.
“You pick up fast,” I said. “I don’t think I want a drink right now. I’ll take a Coke with you.”
He pressed something with his foot and after a while Candy came. He looked surly. He had a blue shirt on and an orange scarf and no white coat. Two-tone black and white shoes, elegant high-waisted gabardine pants.
Wade ordered the Cokes. Candy gave me a hard stare and went away.
“Book?” I said, pointing to the stack of paper.
“Yeah. Stinks.”
“I don’t believe it. How far along?”
“About two thirds of the way—for what it’s worth. Which is damn little. You know how a writer can tell when he’s washed up?”
“Don’t know anything about writers.” I filled my pipe.
“When he starts reading his old stuff for inspiration. That’s absolute. I’ve got five hundred pages of typescript here, well over a hundred thousand words. My books run long. The public likes long books. The damn fool public thinks if there’s a lot of pages there must be a lot of gold. I don’t dare read it over. And I can’t remember half of what’s in it. I’m just plain scared to look at my own work.”
“You look good yourself,” I said. “From the other night I wouldn’t have believed it. You’ve got more guts than you think you have.”
“What I need right now is more than guts. Something you don’t get by wishing for it. A belief in yourself. I’m a spoiled writer who doesn’t believe any more. I have a beautiful home, a beautiful wife, and a beautiful sales record. But all I really want is to get drunk and forget.”
He leaned his chin in his cupped hands and stared across the desk.
“Eileen said I tried to shoot myself. Was it that bad?”
“You don’t remember?”
He shook his head. “Not a damn thing except that I fell down and cut my head. And after a while I was in bed. And you were there. Did Eileen call you?”
“Yeah. Didn’t she say?”
“She hasn’t been talking to me very much this week. I guess she’s had it. Up to here.” He put the edge of one hand against his neck just under his chin. “That show Loring put on here didn’t help any.”
“Mrs. Wade said it meant nothing.”
“Well, she would, wouldn’t she? It happened to be the truth, but I don’t suppose she believed it when she said it. The guy is just abnormally jealous. You have a drink or two with his wife in the corner and laugh a little and kiss her goodbye and right off he assumes you are sleeping with her. One reason being that he isn’t.”
“What I like about Idle Valley,” I said, “is that everybody is living just a comfortable normal life.”
He frowned and then the door opened and Candy came in with two Cokes and glasses and poured the Cokes. He set one in front of me without looking at me.
“Lunch in half an hour,” Wade said, “and where’s the white coat?”
“This is my day off,” Candy said, deadpan. “I ain’t the cook, boss.”
“Cold cuts or sandwiches and beer will do,” Wade said. “The cook’s off today, Candy. I’ve got a friend to lunch.”
“You think he is your friend?” Candy sneered. “Better ask your wife.”
Wade leaned back in his chair and smiled at him. “Watch your lip, little man. You’ve got it soft here. I don’t often ask a favor of you, do I?”
Candy looked down at the floor. After a moment he looked up and grinned. “Okay, boss. I put the white coat on. I get the lunch, I guess.”
He turned softly and went out. Wade watched the door close. Then he shrugged and looked at me.
“We used to call them servants. Now we call them domestic help. I wonder how long it will be before we have to give them breakfast in bed. I’m paying the guy too much money. He’s spoiled.”
“Wages—or something on the side?”
“Such as what?” he asked sharply.
I got up and handed him some folded yellow sheets. “You’d better read it. Evidently you don’t remember asking me to tear it up. It was in your ty
pewriter, under the cover.”
He unfolded the yellow pages and leaned back to read them. The glass of Coke fizzed unnoticed on the desk in front of him. He read slowly, frowning. When he came to the end he refolded the sheets and ran a finger along the edge.
“Did Eileen see this?” he asked carefully.
“I wouldn’t know. She might have.”
“Pretty wild, isn’t it?”
“I liked it. Especially the part about a good man dying for you.”
He opened the paper again and tore it into long strips viciously and dumped the strips into his wastebasket.
“I suppose a drunk will write or say or do anything,” he said slowly. “It’s meaningless to me. Candy’s not blackmailing me. He likes me.”
“Maybe you’d better get drunk again. You might remember what you meant. You might remember a lot of things. We’ve been through this before—that night when the gun went off. I suppose the Seconal blanked you out too. You sounded sober enough. But now you pretend not to remember writing that stuff I just gave you. No wonder you can’t write your book, Wade. It’s a wonder you can stay alive.”
He reached sideways and opened a drawer of his desk. His hand fumbled in it and came out with a three-decker check book. He opened it and reached for a pen.
“I owe you a thousand dollars,” he said quietly. He wrote in the book. Then on the counterfoil. He tore the check out, came around the desk with it, and dropped it in front of me. “Is that all right?”
I leaned back and looked up at him and didn’t touch the check and didn’t answer him. His face was tight and drawn. His eyes were deep and empty.
“I suppose you think I killed her and let Lennox take the rap,” he said slowly. “She was a tramp all right. But you don’t beat a woman’s head in just because she’s a tramp. Candy knows I went there sometimes. The funny part of it is I don’t think he would tell. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.”