The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel

by Benjamin Black

  I saw her to the elevator, where she gave me a last quick smile and was gone.

  * * *

  Back in my office, I took up my station at the window. Miss Remington was tap-tappeting still, diligent girl that she was. I willed her to look up and see me, but in vain. What would I have done, anyway—waved, like an idiot?

  I thought about Clare Cavendish. Something didn’t add up. As a private eye I’m not completely unknown, but why would a daughter of Dorothea Langrishe of Ocean Heights and who knew how many other swell spots choose me to find her missing man? And why, in the first place, had she got herself involved with Nico Peterson, who, if her description of him was accurate, would turn out to be nothing but a cheap grifter in a sharp suit? Long and convoluted questions, and hard to concentrate on while remembering Clare Cavendish’s candid eyes and the amused, knowing light that shone in them.

  When I turned, I saw the cigarette holder on the corner of my desk, where she had left it. The ebony was the same glossy blackness as her eyes. She’d forgotten to pay me my retainer, too. It didn’t seem to matter.

  2

  She was right: Napier Street didn’t exactly advertise itself, but I saw it in time and swung in off the boulevard. The road was on a slight rise, heading up toward the hills that stood in a smoke-blue haze way off at the far end. I cruised along slowly, counting off the house numbers. Peterson’s place looked a bit like a Japanese teahouse, or what I imagined a Japanese teahouse would look like. It consisted of a single story and was built of dark red pine, with a wraparound porch and a shingled roof that rose in four shallow slopes to a point in the middle with a weather vane on it. The windows were narrow and the shades were drawn. Everything about it told me no one had lived here for quite a while, though the newspapers had stopped piling up. I parked the car and climbed three wooden steps to the porch. The walls with the sun on them were giving off an oily smell of creosote. I pressed the bell but it didn’t ring inside the house, so I tried the knocker. An empty house has a way of swallowing sounds, like a dry creek sucking down water. I put an eye to the glass panel in the door, trying to see through the lace curtain behind it. I couldn’t make out much—just an ordinary living room, with ordinary things in it.

  A voice spoke behind me. “He ain’t home, brother.”

  I turned. He was an old guy, in faded blue overalls and a collarless shirt. His head was shaped like a peanut shell, a big skull and big chin with caved-in cheeks in between, and a toothless mouth that hung open a little. On his jaw was a week’s silvery stubble, the tips of it glittering in the sunlight. Sort of a Gabby Hayes gone badly to seed. One eye was shut and with the other he was squinting up at me, moving that hanging jaw slowly from side to side like a cow working on a piece of cud.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Peterson,” I said.

  He turned his head aside and spat drily. “And I told you, he ain’t home.”

  I came down the steps. I could see him waver a bit, wondering who I was and how much trouble I might represent. I brought out my cigarettes and offered him one. He took it eagerly and stuck it to his lower lip. I lit a match on my thumbnail and passed him the flame.

  A cricket soared out of the dry grass beside us like a clown being shot from the mouth of a cannon. The sun was strong and there was a hot dry breeze blowing, and I was glad of my hat. The old boy was bareheaded but seemed not to notice the heat. He took in a big draw of cigarette smoke, held it, and expelled a few gray wisps.

  I tossed the spent match into the grass. “You didn’t ought to do that,” the old man said. “Start a fire here, the whole of West Hollywood goes up in smoke.”

  “You know Mr. Peterson?” I asked.

  “Sure do.” He gestured behind him to a tumbledown shack on the far side of the street. “That’s my place there. He used to come over sometimes, pass the time of day, give me a smoke.”

  “How long’s he been gone?”

  “Let me see.” He thought about it, doing some more squinting. “I guess I last seen him six, seven weeks ago.”

  “Didn’t mention where he was off to, I suppose.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t even see him go. Just one day I noticed he was gone.”

  “How?”

  He peered up at me and gave his head a shake, as if he had water in his ear. “How what?”

  “How did you know he was gone?”

  “He wasn’t there anymore, is all.” He paused. “You a cop?”

  “Sort of.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Private dick.”

  He chuckled, stirring up the phlegm. “A private dick ain’t a sort of cop, except in your dreams, maybe.”

  I sighed. When they hear you’re private, they think they can say anything to you. I guess they can, too. The old man was grinning at me, smug as a hen that’s just laid an egg.

  I looked up and down the street. Joe’s Diner. Kwik Kleen launderers. A body shop where a grease monkey was tinkering in the innards of a very unwell-looking Chevy. I imagined Clare Cavendish stepping out of something low and sporty and wrinkling her nose at all this. “What sort of people did he bring here?” I asked.

  “People?”

  “Friends. Drinking buddies. Associates from the world of the movies.”

  “Movies?”

  He was beginning to sound like Little Sir Echo. “What about lady friends?” I said. “He have any?”

  This produced a full-blown laugh. It was not a pleasant thing to hear. “Any?” he crowed. “Listen, mister, that guy had more broads than he knew what to do with. Every night, nearly, he come home with a different one.”

  “You must have been keeping a sharp eye on him and his comings and goings.”

  “I seen him, that’s all,” he said, in a sulkily defensive tone. “They used to wake me up, with all the ruckus they made. One of them dropped a bottle of something on the sidewalk one night—champagne, I think it was. Sounded like a shell exploding. The broad just laughed.”

  “The neighbors didn’t complain about these shenanigans?”

  He gave me a pitying look. “What neighbors?” he said with contempt.

  I nodded. The sun wasn’t getting any cooler. I took out a handkerchief and swabbed the back of my neck. Around here there are days in high summer when the sun works on you like a gorilla peeling a banana.

  “Well, thanks anyway,” I said and stepped past him. The air rippled above the roof of my car. I was thinking how hot to the touch the steering wheel was going to be. Sometimes I tell myself I’ll move to England, where they say it’s cool even in the dog days.

  “You ain’t the first one asking after him,” the old man said behind me.

  I turned. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Pair of wetbacks come ’round last week.”

  “Mexicans?”

  “That’s what I said. Two of them. They was all gussied up, but a wetback in a suit and a fancy necktie is still a wetback, right?”

  The sun had been shining on my back and was now shining on my front. I could feel my upper lip getting damp. “You speak to them?” I asked.

  “Naw. They drove up in some kind of car I never seen the likes of before, must have been made down there. High and wide as a whorehouse bed, and a canvas roof with holes in it.”

  “When was this?”

  “Two, three days ago. They prowled around the place for a while, looking in the windows like you did, then got in the car again and moseyed off.” Another dry spit. “I don’t care for wetbacks.”

  “You don’t say.”

  He gave me a surly look, then sniffed.

  I turned away again and started toward my hot car. Again he spoke—“You think he’s coming back?”—and again I stopped. I felt like the wedding guest trying to unhook himself from the Ancient Mariner.

  “Doubt it,” I said.

  He gave another sniff. “Well, he ain’t much missed, I guess. Still, I liked him.”

  He had smoked the cigarette down to about a quarter inch of stub, which n
ow he dropped into the grass. “You didn’t ought to do that,” I said, getting into the car.

  When my fingers touched the steering wheel, I was surprised they didn’t sizzle.

  3

  Instead of going back to the office, I tootled around the corner to Barney’s Beanery in search of something cool to pour into myself. Barney’s was a bit too self-consciously bohemian for my taste—too many folks hanging about there with artist written all over them. That tired old sign reading, “Fagots—Stay Out” was still behind the bar. That’s a thing I’ve noticed about Barney’s kind of people: they’re not very good at spelling. Barney must have been thinking of some other word with one g, like bigot. But the barkeep was a decent guy who had lent a tolerant ear to my late-night grousings on more occasions than I cared to remember. He called himself Travis, but whether that was his first name or his last I couldn’t say. Big fellow with hairy forearms and an elaborate tattoo on his left bicep showing a blue anchor entwined with red roses. I doubted he was ever a seaman, though. He was very popular with the “fagots,” who, despite the warning sign, kept on coming here—because of the sign, maybe. He used to tell a funny story about Errol Flynn and something he did here at the bar one night with a pet snake he kept in a bamboo box, but I can’t remember the punch line.

  I sidled onto a stool and ordered a Mexican beer. There was a bowl of hard-boiled eggs on the bar; I took one and ate it with a lot of salt. The salt and the dryness of the egg yolk left my tongue feeling like a piece of chalk, so I called for a refill of Tecate.

  It was a slow early evening and there were few customers in the place. Travis, not being an overly familiar sort, had given me the barest nod when I came in. I wondered if he knew my name. Probably not. He knew what I did for a living, I was pretty sure of that, though I didn’t remember him ever mentioning it. When the place wasn’t busy, he had a way of standing with his hands spread on the bar and his big square head lowered, gazing out through the open doorway into the street with a far-off look in his eye, as if he were remembering a long-lost love or a fight one time that he won. He didn’t say much. He was either dumb or very wise, I could never decide which. Either way, I liked him.

  I asked him if he knew Peterson. I didn’t think Barney’s would be Peterson’s kind of place, but I thought it was worth a try anyway. “Lives over on Napier,” I said. “Or did, until recently.”

  Travis slowly came back from whatever section of memory lane he had been wandering down. “Nico Peterson?” he said. “Sure, I know him. Used to come in in the afternoon sometimes, drink a beer and eat an egg, just like you.”

  This was the second time I had been linked with Peterson—Clare Cavendish had said he was tall like me—and however weak the link was, I didn’t welcome it. “What sort of guy is he?” I asked.

  Travis flexed his muscleman’s shoulders in a shrug. He was wearing a tight black sweatshirt, out of which his thick short neck stuck up like a fireplug. “Playboy type,” he said. “Or that’s how he presents himself. Ladies’ man, with that mustache and the oiled hair combed in a nice wave. Funny, too—he can always make them laugh.”

  “He brought his girls here?”

  Travis heard the skepticism in my voice; Barney’s was hardly the place to romance stylish ladies in. “Now and then,” he said, with a wry half-smile.

  “One of them tallish, blond hair, black eyes, a particularly memorable mouth?”

  Travis gave me his cautious smile again. “That could be any of them.”

  “Has an air, this one. Nicely spoken and very elegant—too elegant for Peterson, probably.”

  “Sorry. If they’re as good-looking as you make her sound, I don’t look too close. It’s distracting.”

  He was a real professional, Travis. But it occurred to me that maybe there was a reason he didn’t notice women, and that he too didn’t much like the sign behind the bar, for his own, private reasons.

  “When was he last in?” I asked.

  “Haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “A while being…?”

  “Couple of months. Why? Is he missing?”

  “He seems to have gone off somewhere.”

  Travis’s eye took on a faintly merry light. “That a crime nowadays?”

  I studied my beer glass, rotating it on its base. “Somebody is looking for him,” I said.

  “The lady with the memorable mouth?”

  I nodded. As I said, I liked Travis. Despite his size, there was something clean and neat about him, something trim and shipshape; maybe he had been a sailor, after all. I’d never felt I could ask. “I was over at his house,” I said. “Nothing there.”

  A customer was signaling from the far end of the bar, and Travis went off to serve him. I sat and thought about this and that. For instance, why was the first sip of beer always so much better than the second? This was the kind of philosophical speculation I was prone to, hence my reputation as the thinking man’s detective. I thought a bit about Clare Cavendish, too, but, like Travis said, I found her distracting and instead went back to the beer question. Maybe temperature was the answer. It wasn’t that the second sip was going to be all that much warmer than the first, but that the mouth, having had that first cool rinse, knew what to expect the second time around and adjusted accordingly, so the element of surprise was absent, with a consequent falling off in the pleasure principle. Hmm. It seemed a reasonable explanation, but was it sufficiently comprehensive to satisfy a stickler like me? Then Travis came back and I was able to take off my thinking cap.

  “I just realized,” he said, “you’re not the first to ask after our friend Peterson.”

  “Oh?”

  “A week or two ago, a couple of Mexicans were in here wanting to know if I knew him.”

  That same two again, no doubt, in their car with the holes in the roof. “What sort of Mexicans?” I asked.

  Travis gave me a sort of wistful smile. “Just Mexicans,” he said. “Businessmen, they looked like.”

  Businessmen. Right. Like my man from New York with the pinkie ring. “They say why they were looking for him?”

  “Nope. Just asked if he was a customer here, when he’d last been in, and so on. I couldn’t tell them any more than I’ve told you. It didn’t improve their mood.”

  “A gloomy pair, were they?”

  “You know Mexicans.”

  “Yes—not the most scrutable people in the world. They stay around long?”

  He gestured at my glass. “One of them drank a beer, the other had a glass of water. I had the impression they were men on a mission.”

  “Oh? What sort of mission?”

  Travis considered the ceiling for a moment. “Can’t say. But they had that serious look that made their eyes shine—you know what I mean?”

  I didn’t, but nodded anyway. “You think this mission they were on might have had serious consequences for our Mr. Peterson?”

  “Yeah,” Travis said. “One of them kept on toying with a pearl-handled six-shooter while the other picked his teeth with his knife.”

  I wouldn’t have taken Travis for the ironic type. “Funny, though,” I said. “Peterson doesn’t seem the kind of guy to be involved with Mexican businessmen, somehow.”

  “Lot of opportunities, south of the border.”

  “You’re right, there are.”

  Travis picked up my empty glass. “You want another?”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to go wild.”

  I paid the man and climbed down from the stool and went out into the evening. It was a little cooler now, but the air tasted of car exhaust, and the day’s grit had laid down a grainy deposit between my teeth. I had passed Travis my card and asked him to give me a call if he happened to hear any news of Peterson. I wouldn’t be waiting by the phone, but at least now Travis knew my name.

  * * *

  I drove home. The lights in the houses up in the hills were coming on, making it seem later than it was. A sickle moon hung low on the horizon, e
mbroiled in a bank of mud-blue murk.

  I still had the house in Laurel Canyon. The woman who owned it had gone on an extended visit to her widowed daughter in Idaho and decided to stay there—for the potatoes, maybe. She had written to say I could have the house for as long as I liked. It left me feeling pretty settled on Yucca Avenue, in my hillside roost with the eucalyptus trees across the street. I didn’t know how I felt about that. Did I really want to spend the rest of my days in a rented house where about the only things I could call my own were my trusty coffeepot and a chess set of faded ivory? There was a woman who wanted to marry me and take me away from all this, a beautiful woman, like Clare Cavendish, and rich like her, too. But I was bent on staying footloose and fancy-free, even if it didn’t feel quite like that. Yucca Avenue is not exactly Paris, which is where the poor little rich girl was nursing her bruised heart, last time I’d heard from her.

  The house was about the right size for me, but on certain evenings, such as this one, it felt like the White Rabbit’s place. I brewed a strong pot of coffee and drank a cup of it and prowled around the living room for a while, trying not to carom off the walls. Then I drank another cup and smoked another cigarette, ignoring the dark blue night gathering in the window. I thought of laying out one of Alekhine’s less terrifying openings and seeing where I could go with it, but I didn’t have the heart. I’m not a chess fiend, but I like the game, the concentrated coolness of it, the elegance of thought it calls for.

  The Peterson business was weighing on my mind, or at least the part of the business that involved Clare Cavendish. I was still convinced there was something fishy in her approach to me. I couldn’t say why, but I had the distinct sense that I was being set up. A beautiful woman doesn’t walk in off the street and ask you to find her missing boyfriend; it doesn’t happen that way. But what way does it happen? For all I knew, there might be offices like mine all over the country that beautiful women walked into every other day and asked poor saps like me to do exactly that. I didn’t believe it, though. For a start, the country surely couldn’t boast many women the likes of Clare Cavendish. In fact, I doubted there was even one more like her. And if she was really on the level, how come she was involved with a lowlife like Peterson? And if she was involved with him, why wasn’t she the slightest bit embarrassed about throwing herself on the mercies—I was going to say “into the arms” but stopped myself in time—of a private detective and imploring him to find the flown bird? All right, she didn’t implore.