The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel

by Benjamin Black

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Then you’re a lucky man.”

  “There’s luck and there’s luck, Mr. Canning.” I glanced down at the ropes. “Mine doesn’t seem to be much in operation just now.”

  My mind was foggy again, probably due to a drop in circulation because of the ropes. But my strength was coming back, I could feel it, unless it was just the effect of the nicotine. I wondered how long all this was likely to go on for. I wondered too—again—how it might be going to end. I thought of López’s bulging eye and the blood on his shirtfront. Wilber Canning was playing the part of the soft old boy, but I knew there was nothing soft about him, except maybe in his regard for his dead daughter.

  “Listen,” I said, “can I take it that if Lynn was your daughter, then Nico is your son?”

  “They were both my offspring, yes,” he said, not looking at me.

  “Then I’m sorry,” I said. “Your son I never met, but like I said, Lynn seemed all right to me. How come you weren’t at her funeral?”

  He shrugged. “She was a tramp.” He spoke without emphasis. “And Nico was a gigolo, when he wasn’t being worse. They both had a lot of their mother in them.” Now he did look in my direction. “You’re shocked by my attitude toward my son and daughter, Mr. Marlowe, even though I’ve lost them both?”

  “I’m hard to shock.”

  He wasn’t listening. He had started pacing again, and it made me feel dizzy, watching him. “I can’t complain,” he said. “I wasn’t exactly a perfect father. First they ran wild, then they ran off. I didn’t try to find them. Afterward, it was too late to make it up to them. Lynn hated me. Nico probably did, too, only there were things he needed from me.”

  “What sort of things?” He didn’t bother to answer that. “Maybe you weren’t as bad as you thought,” I said. “Fathers often judge themselves too harshly.”

  “You have children, Marlowe?” I shook my head, and again what felt like a set of big wooden dice rattled together inside my skull. “Then you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, sounding more sad than anything else.

  Though the day must have been waning, the heat in the big, high-ceilinged room was rising. It felt a little like an August afternoon in Savannah. Plus the dampness in the air seemed to have a tightening effect on the ropes around my chest and my wrists. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the feeling back in my upper arms.

  “Look, Mr. Canning,” I said, “either tell me what you want from me or let me go. I don’t care a damn about the Mexicans—they deserved all they got from your man Jeeves. Rough justice is enough justice, in their case. But you’ve got no reason to keep me trussed up here like a Sunday chicken. I’ve done nothing to you, or to your son or daughter. I’m just a gumshoe bent on making a living, and not doing too well at it.”

  If nothing else, my words had the effect of getting Canning to stop pacing, which was a relief. He walked up and stood in front of me with his hands on his hips and his swagger stick clamped under his arm. “The thing is, Marlowe,” he said, “I know who you’re working for.”

  “You do?”

  “Come on—what do you take me for?”

  “I don’t take you for anything, Mr. Canning. But I have to say, I very much doubt you know the identity of my client.”

  He leaned forward and held out to me the amulet that was hanging on the string around his neck. “Know what this is? It’s the eye of a Cahuilla god. Very interesting tribe, the Cahuilla. They have powers of divination that are scientifically attested to. No point in lying to these folks—they see right through you. I was privileged to be inducted as an honorary brave. Part of the ceremony was the presentation of this precious image, this all-seeing eye. So don’t try telling me lies or try to sidetrack me by playing the innocent. Talk.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to talk about.”

  He shook his head sadly. “My man Jeeves, as you call him, is going to be back here shortly. You saw what he did to the Mexicans. I wouldn’t want to be forced to have him do the same to you. Despite the circumstances, I have a certain respect for you. I like a man who keeps a cool head.”

  “The problem is, Mr. Canning,” I said, “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “No?”

  “Really, I don’t. I was hired to find Nico Peterson. My client thought, like everybody else, that Nico was dead but then saw him on the street and came to me and asked me to track him down. It’s a private matter.”

  “Where is he supposed to have seen Nico, your client, as you call him?”

  Him. So he didn’t know what he thought he knew. It was a relief. I wouldn’t have wanted to think of Clare Cavendish here, tied to a chair with this murderous little madman strutting up and down in front of her.

  “In San Francisco,” I said.

  “So he’s up here, is he?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who. What was he doing in San Francisco? Was he looking for Nico? What made him suspect Nico wasn’t dead?”

  “Mr. Canning,” I said, as patiently and gently as I could, “none of what you’re saying makes sense to me. You’ve got it wrong. It was a chance sighting of Nico—if it was Nico.”

  Canning was again standing in front of me with his fists planted on his hips. He gazed at me in silence for a long time. “What do you think?” he said finally. “Do you think it was Nico?”

  “I don’t know—I can’t say.”

  There was another silence. “Floyd tells me you mentioned Lou Hendricks. Why did you?”

  “Hendricks picked me up on the street and took me for a drive in his fancy car.”

  “And?”

  “He’s looking for Nico too. Popular boy, your son.”

  “Hendricks thinks Nico is alive?”

  “He didn’t seem to know one way or the other. Like you, he’d heard I was sniffing around, trying to pick up Nico’s trail.” I didn’t mention the suitcase, which to my regret I had mentioned to Hendricks. “There was nothing I could tell him, either.”

  Canning sighed. “All right, Marlowe, have it your way.”

  The door at the other end of the pool opened then, right on cue, and Bartlett and Floyd Hanson came back in. Hanson was looking more troubled than ever. His face was gray with tinges of green. He had bloodstains on his nice linen jacket and on his previously spotless white pants, too. Disposing of a couple of badly roughed-up corpses—I thought it a pretty fair assumption that the second Mexican was dead by the time he got to wherever it was he was taken—would be hell on your clothes, especially if you were as natty a dresser as Floyd Hanson. Clearly he wasn’t used to the sight of gore, at least not in the quantities shed by the two Mexicans. But hadn’t he said he had fought in the Ardennes? I should have known to take that with a shovelful of salt.

  Bartlett came forward. “That’s all fixed then, Mr. Canning,” he said in his Cockney voice.

  Canning nodded. “Two down,” he said, “one to go. Mr. Marlowe here isn’t being cooperative. Maybe a good soaking would clear his head. Floyd, give Mr. Bartlett a hand, will you?”

  Bartlett went behind me again and began untying the ropes. When he got them off, he had to help me stand since my legs were too numb to support me. He had released my hands, too, and I flexed my arms to get the blood flowing in them. Now he walked me to the edge of the pool and put a hand on my shoulder and made me kneel on the marble tiles. The water level was only an inch or two below the edge. Bartlett held one of my arms, and Hanson came forward and took the other. I thought they were going to tip me into the pool, but instead they yanked my arms behind my back and Bartlett grabbed my hair again and pushed my head forward and plunged it into the water. I hadn’t taken a deep enough breath, and right away I began to experience the panic of a drowning man. I tried to get my face turned sideways so I could snatch some air, but Bartlett’s fingers were as strong as a pit bull’s jaws, and I couldn’t move. Very soon I felt as if my lungs were about to burst. Then at last I was hauled upright
again, with water streaming in under my collar. Canning came and stood beside me, leaning down with his hands braced on his knees and his face close to mine. “Now,” he said, “are you ready to tell us what you know?”

  “You’re making a mistake, Canning,” I said between gasps. “I don’t know anything.”

  He sighed again and nodded to Bartlett, and once more I was underwater. Funny the things you notice, even in the most desperate circumstances. I had my eyes open and could see, far down, on the pale blue bottom of the pool, a small ring, a plain gold band, that must have slipped off some woman bather’s finger without her noticing. At least this time I had been smart enough to fill my lungs, but it didn’t make much difference, and after a minute or so I was a drowning man all over again. I’d never gone in the water much and certainly had never learned to hold my breath the way champion swimmers do. I wondered if maybe that ring down there would be the last thing I’d ever see. I could think of worse sights to have your eye fixed on while you were breathing—or, in my case, not breathing—your last.

  Bartlett could feel when I began to panic and was close to opening my mouth and letting my lungs fill up, and he wasn’t ready to let me die, not yet. He and Hanson pulled me up again. Canning leaned down, peering into my face. “You ready to talk, Marlowe? You know what they say about going down for the third time. You don’t want to join those two spics on the rubbish heap, now do you?”

  I said nothing, only hung my dripping head. Hanson was on my right, holding my arm twisted behind me; I could see his nifty loafers and the cuffs of his white linen pants. Bartlett was on the other side, grasping my left arm and with his right hand still clutching the back of my head. I reckoned they would probably drown me this time. I had to do something. I thought I’d rather be beaten to death than die underwater. But what could I do?

  I’ve never been much of a fighter—when you’re past forty, you’re past it. I’ve been in fights, quite a few, but only when I was forced. There’s a big difference between defending yourself against an assault and launching an assault yourself. One thing I have learned, though, is the importance of balance. Even the hardest of cases—and Bartlett, despite his age and his low stature, was as hard as they come—can be knocked off their feet if you get them at just the right moment, in just the right position. Bartlett, as he prepared to push me under again, was concentrating his strength in his right hand, the one that was grasping the back of my head, and for a second he relaxed his grip on my arm. Pushing me toward the water, he had to rise up on his toes. I whipped my arm free of his grasp and flexed my elbow and rammed it into his ribs. He gave a low grunt and let go of my head. Hanson still had hold of my right arm, but his heart wasn’t in it, and I pulled away from him and he took a step back, afraid that I would do to him what I’d already done to Bartlett.

  Behind me Canning shouted something, I don’t know what. I was concentrating on Bartlett. Rising from my knees, I brought my left fist around in a wide arc and caught him square on the side of the neck, and with another muffled grunt he teetered on the side of the pool, waving his arms in a way that would have been funny if this were the movies, then toppled over backward, headfirst, into the water. The splash he made was amazing, the water rising up in a great transparent funnel and falling back again with strange slowness—my brain must still have been sluggish from the dope.

  I turned. It had all taken no more than a couple of seconds. I knew I’d probably have even less time than that before Canning and Hanson recovered enough to throw themselves on me. But they didn’t need to. Hanson, I saw, had a gun in his hand, a pistol, a big black job with a long barrel—a Webley, I thought. Where had it come from? It was probably Canning’s; he’d favor a British-made weapon, the sort of gun employed by your superior English gentleman.

  “Stop right where you are,” Hanson said, just like all the baddies he’d seen in so many B pictures.

  I studied him carefully. He didn’t have the eyes of a killer. I stepped forward. The gun barrel wavered.

  “Shoot him!” Canning yelled. “Go on, pull the damned trigger!” He could shout, all right, but still he held back.

  “You’re not going to kill me, Hanson,” I said. “We both know it.”

  I could see the sweat glistening on his forehead and on his upper lip. It doesn’t make you a coward that you won’t shoot a man. Killing is never easy. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Bartlett hauling himself out of the pool. I took another step. The gun was pointing at my breastbone. I grabbed the barrel and wrenched it sideways. Maybe Hanson was too surprised to resist, or maybe he just wanted to be rid of the weapon, but he let go of it and stepped back, lifting his hands and extending them toward me as if they would ward off a bullet. That crazy gun weighed about as much as an anvil, and I had to hold it in both hands. It wasn’t a Webley, and it wasn’t British. In fact, it was German-made, a Weihrauch .38. An ugly weapon, but awfully effective.

  I turned and shot Bartlett in the right knee. I don’t know if it was his knee I was aiming at, but that was what I hit. He made a strange mewling noise and toppled over on his side and lay there hunched over and squirming. A big bloodstain was spreading down the leg of his sodden trousers. There was a sound behind me. I stepped quickly to one side and Canning stumbled past, cursing, his arms reaching out helplessly in front of him. He stopped and spun around and seemed about to lunge at me again. I thought of shooting him, too, but didn’t. “I don’t want to kill you, Canning,” I said, “but I will if I have to.” I waved the gun in Hanson’s direction. “Get over here, Floyd,” I said.

  He came and stood beside his boss. “You lousy milksop!” Canning hissed at him.

  I laughed. I didn’t think I’d ever heard anyone actually say the word milksop before, in real life. Then I kept on laughing. I suppose I was in some sort of shock. All the same, the events of the past half minute or so, seen from a certain angle, would have looked as comical, and as grotesque, as a Charlie Chaplin routine.

  Bartlett was clutching his leg just below his shattered knee and moving the other leg in a circle around and around on the tiles, like a slow-motion cyclist. He was still making those mewling sounds. No matter how tough you are, a smashed kneecap can only hurt like hell. It would be quite a while, I thought, before he got back to serving afternoon tea.

  My arms, still tingling with pins and needles, ached from holding up the weight of that kraut cannon and keeping the barrel in a more or less horizontal plane. Canning was watching me with a nasty gleam of contempt. “Well, Marlowe,” he said, “what are you going to do now? I guess you’ll have to kill me, after all. Not to mention my loyal majordomo here.” Hanson threw him a look of rancid hatred.

  “Get in the pool,” I said to the two of them. They both stared at me. “Now,” I said, gesturing with the gun. “Get in the water.”

  “I—I can’t swim,” Hanson said.

  “Here’s your chance to learn,” I said, and laughed again. It was more of a giggle. I wasn’t myself. Hanson swallowed hard and began to ease off his shiny shoes. “No,” I said, “leave them on—leave everything on.”

  Canning was still glaring at me. His little mad eyes were icy with rage, yet there was something fixed and almost dreamy in his look. I suppose he was lovingly picturing the things he would have Bartlett—or, more likely, Bartlett’s successor—do to me if he ever got the chance.

  “Come on, Canning,” I said, “into the water, unless you want me to do to you what I did to jolly old Jeeves here. And drop the cane, by the way.”

  Canning threw the swagger stick on the marble, like a kid throwing down someone else’s toy he’s been told to give back, and turned and set off walking toward the other, shallow end of the pool. I hadn’t noticed before how bowlegged he was. He had his fists clenched at his sides. Fellows like him don’t quite know how to behave, how to carry themselves, when suddenly they’re the ones being told what to do and are powerless not to do it.

  Hanson gave me a pleading look and started to say s
omething. I waved the gun barrel in his face to shut him up—I was tired of listening to his voice, so jaded and cool before, so thin and whiny now. “Go on in, Floyd,” I said, “the water’s lovely.” He nodded miserably and turned away and followed Canning. “Atta boy,” I said to his back.

  When Canning got to the far end of the pool, he turned and looked at me along the length of it. I could almost hear him asking himself if there might still be a way to get the jump on me. “I can shoot you just as well from here,” I called to him, my voice making watery echoes under the high glass dome of the roof. He hesitated another moment, then stepped into the pool, stumping with his bandy gait down the white steps that led under the water. “Now keep going,” I said, “right out into the middle.” Floyd Hanson had reached the end of the pool now, and after hanging back for a few seconds, he too descended gingerly into the water. “Keep walking till you’re in it up to your chin,” I said to him, “then you can stop. We wouldn’t want you to drown.”

  Canning waded toward me until the water had reached his chest, then breaststroked forward and swam the rest of the way to the center of the pool, where he stopped and bobbed up and down, moving his arms and treading water. Hanson too waded out, halting when his shoulders were covered. “Come on, Floyd,” I called. “Like I said, till it’s up to your chin.” He advanced another agonized step. Even at that distance I could see the panic in his eyes. At least he hadn’t claimed it was the navy he’d been in. “That’s right,” I said. “Now stop.” It looked eerie, the way his bodiless head seemed to float there on the water. I thought of John the Baptist.

  There are moments in life that you know you’ll never forget, that you’ll remember ever afterward in bright, hard-edged, hallucinatory detail.