“Gentlemen,” I said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Keep your hands where I can see them, Mr. Marlowe,” said the driver. “It”s up to you if you get hurt. We want to know what Vanderjack told you and who you told about it.”
“He didn’t drink on the job,” I snapped. “He watched Perry Como. He liked to sleep with his wife. I can’t be sure, but I think he loved his daughters.”
They approached me slowly, the guns leveled at my head. “Funny guy,” grinned the one to my left. I had turned to stare down his partner when white pain blinded me. When my vision cleared, I was on the ground, slumped against my tire. Big hands jerked me into a sitting position. I may have groaned. I tried not to appear too conscious, but how long could I stall with that? I felt the tin of mints under my left hand and tried to conjure up hope, any hope at all. The bumper guy’s workers were going to save me, or the movie guys in Nazi uniforms, anyone, anything at all that might creep out of the desert.
“Hurry up,” said the guy covering me. “It’ll be dark soon.” Slipping his gun into his shoulder holster, the other one squatted. Clumsy hands went into my pockets and under my arms. I slumped forward as if passing out again, then shook the peppermint tin.
“Snake!” I shouted. The searcher toppled on his rear, whipping off his sunglasses and scuffling backwards like a crippled crab. I jumped on him, grabbed his gun, and whirled it on his companion. The .45 flung my hand back with its kick, but his shot shattered my headlight as he spun from my bullet ripping through his hip. My second shot rammed his tie clip into his chest.
I turned just in time to see the second one, still on his rear, pulling a small pistol from his shin. “Don’t,” I said, but he drew the hammer. The force of the .45 swept him flat, a giant hand brushing a rook off the board.
Three hours later, I rang the bell of a mansion the size of the Taj Mahal, though it might have had a little more marble. A tuxedo-ed butler with slicked-back hair opened the door.
“I’d like to see Mr. Oswaldo Blanco,” I said.
“I’d suggest you contact his office.”
My head pounded and I was in no mood. “He isn’t there. It’s late. He’s here.”
“Mr. Blanco doesn’t do business at home.” He moved to close the door.
I stuck my hand in the way. “Tell him Philip Marlowe will see him, whether he likes it or not.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “Follow me,” he said quickly. I was led into a circular office. In front of French doors, there was a desk the size of an aircraft carrier. He went behind it and opened a drawer.
“If there’s a gun in there,” I said, raising the .45 in my pocket, “I wouldn’t.”
He raised a checkbook. “I assume this is blackmail.”
“You assume wrong, Mr. Blanco. I’m only here to find out whether you ordered your goons to kill Jimmy Vanderjack or they did it on their own.”
Blanco dropped into his huge chair and smiled. “Jimmy who?”
I picked up a silver letter opener and stabbed it hard into the desk top. “Cute doesn’t become you. Your goons followed me. The car was a company car. Your company.” I held up the pink card. “Just what exactly do you import and export?”
“More trouble than you need, Mr. Marlowe. I’m certain we can come to a settlement. Obviously, my men misbehaved. Twenty-five thousand?”
“Fifty,” I said. “No checks.”
Calmly, he opened a side drawer. It was full of banded cash. He took five bundles out and stacked them in front of him, evening the pile with both hands. “I have one condition,” he said. “I must know what you know. I must know what Mr. Vanderjack knew. Further, I must know who else knows.”
“So you can kill them, too?”
He leaned forward, breathless. “These are important matters, my friend.”
“Life and death is.” I rounded the desk and grabbed his lapels. “Jimmy Vanderjack worked hard and loved his family. Whatever your secret is didn’t die with him because it never was with him.”
“Shall I take him now, Mr. Blanco?”
I jerked Blanco to his feet and held him in front of me, jamming the .45 under his ear. A man stood in the shadows at the other end of the room, his automatic rifle aimed at us. He flicked off his safety and shifted, but in the end was uncertain what to do.
Blanco seemed mildly amused by all this. “Mr. Marlowe,” he said, “we have no quarrel. Take the money and forget about it.”
“Sorry, it’s a weird thing, but I don’t think I can forget until Mrs. Vanderjack forgets, until his little girls forget. It’s this tic I have. Tell him to put down the rifle.”
“Now I would be a fool to do that, wouldn’t I, Mr. Marlowe?”
I jammed the gun harder against him, and pulled him tighter, choking him with my forearm. “What did Jimmy see? What?!”
I loosened my grip slightly. Blanco gasped. I picked up the scent of cigar on his breath and pomade. He cleared his throat. “This is pointless,” he said. “If you kill me, you will never know. If I am alive, I will never tell you. Take the money, Mr. Marlowe. Go home.”
The man with the rifle stepped forward. “You twitch and I’ll kill him!” I shouted. I felt Blanco take a deep breath and straighten his back, as if he were preparing himself, Then I knew why his man had moved. Someone had slipped in behind me, on the patio behind the French doors. I didn’t dare turn. They were waiting for me to look back.
Someone smashed the glass and Blanco went limp on cue. They didn’t expect me to flop with him. I spun and fired up through the French doors, hoping the desk hid me from the man inside. A crossfire of bullets exploded the lamp and scattered mahogany splinters. The outside man crumpled. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the dark. The inside man had fallen back into the fireplace. The room was filling with the stench of his burning hair. Blanco was on his belly, wetly praying in Spanish. As I crawled toward him through broken glass, “Madre!” sputtered from his lips, along with a final breath. He had made the mistake of dropping into the kneehole of his desk, where only a thin sheet of wood protected him.
Dogs were barking from nearby properties. I stuffed ten bundles of money from the drawer into my coat and shoved the goon’s .45 under the rest of it, then slipped out the back to my car. At least Blanco’s cash would give Jimmy Vanderjack’s girls as decent a life as they could have without a father like Jimmy.
What had he seen? He didn’t know. I still don’t know. It itches me like an infected mosquito bite. Theories keep me awake. The police wrote off Blanco’s shooting as a Communist Plot and never connected me with it. If other government agencies knew anything, they weren’t saying. Blanco had been a Cuban general. He had fled with Batista and a Swiss bank book when Castro took over. He seemed to spend his time gambling and bedding would-be starlets. He had once been seen shaking hands with the gangster Sonny Williams—still missing—at the Brown Derby, but no one has ever said there was anything between them. I’ve seen pictures of his shaking hands with the mayor and Vice President Nixon, too. So what?
I keep coming back to the movie no one knows about. Was Blanco training men to take Cuba back? Where are they? Was it just somebody’s crappy flick that ran out of money and folded without a trace? I can’t buy that, but it happens every Tuesday out here.
Sixty-four squares and sixteen pieces: they’re all there in front of me. If I stare at the board long enough, someday maybe I’ll be able to see it.
But then, maybe not. I still ask around sometimes. It’s not the only case I’ve had I can’t explain, but it’s the one that keeps me awake.
* * *
* * *
Philip Marlowe has all the best qualities of the World War II generation. He knows the world’s not a fragrant place, but he does what he can without prating, takes what licks come his way, and expects little reward for doing the right thing. He doesn’t expect whatever he does to change the world, but he doesn’t complain. It’s his nature. Nothing is more despicable to him than sham—putti
ng on airs, pretending to be fearless, making high-flown pronouncements about God, country, and morality which mean nothing more than a puff of stale breath.
My father was that way. He was headed for the Pittsburgh Pirates as a pitcher when Pearl Harbor was bombed. While serving in Africa, his elbow was cracked and he never pitched again. He bandaged the wounded at the Battle of the Bulge for over 36 hours before collapsing. Yet, when he spoke of all this, it was just something he did: patching a tire, helping a kitten from a tree. Men and women with similar unassuming courage suffered and died horribly, but they saved our civilization.
It’s a sorry thing there have never been enough men and women like that, and there seems a particular shortage right now. People like that couldn’t be suckered by hype, could look through a fog of verbiage and smell the rank motives of the rascals cooking it up. It often seems we have nothing in our universe other than PR, loopholes, spin, and meaningless awards. We could use a lot more of that rude with that levels pretension with a “Says who?” Oh, yes, a lot of blocks need knocking off. And, oh, yes, the world would be a better place with more people like Marlowe. No question. It’s already a better world because Marlowe is in it—but he would never permit anything like this to be said in his presence.
J. Madison Davis
SUMMER IN IDLE VALLEY
* * *
* * *
ROGER L. SIMON
LOS ANGELES WAS the kind of town most people wanted to get out of as often as possible and I was no exception. Usually I made my escape by high-tailing it to the mountains for a few days’ breathable air and a slice of apple pie that didn’t taste like it was synthesized with some kid’s chemistry set. But this time, maybe it was the siren call of the worm at the bottom of the mescal bottle; I was heading for the border, determined to spend an extra-long weekend in Ensenada, B. C. Maybe a few extra-long weekends.
I was slightly more than halfway there when I saw him: a small pinched man in a business suit and bow tie, poised ominously on a rock over the Pacific. He looked like a CPA who’d been caught cheating on somebody’s taxes and was debating whether to deep six himself along with the returns. The way the waves were crashing all around him, it wouldn’t be long before the ocean would make his decision for him.
I don’t know why, normally I’m your typical arrogant bastard who drives by accidents with a smirk and the self-satisfied feeling of not being the one with the steering wheel down his throat, but there was something about this guy that made me want to pull over and help him. So I got out and ran over to him, grabbing his arm just as a large wave seemed about to sweep him into the briny deep.
“What’re you doing?” he asked with a snooty English accent, as if I were a chauffeur who had just usurped his master’s place, jumping in the back seat and snatching his umbrella.
“Saving your life, you idiot!” I yanked him across the short stretch of sand that separated the rock from the Coast Highway.
“What if I don’t want it saved?”
“You don’t have a choice in the matter,” I replied. “Anyway, you’ve got eternity to be dead. So what’s the hurry? You could win the lottery or something. This way you’ll never know.” I blocked his way as he stared at me, giving my paltry arguments more consideration than they were worth.
“All right . . . but if you had any idea what I’ve been through,” he finally answered. He grunted and shuffled over to his car, reluctantly opening the door as if he were a five-year old whose mother had just told him he couldn’t go to the candy store. He stopped and looked at me. “I suppose I should buy you a drink.”
“Not necessary. I’m on my way to mananaland where the booze costs a nickel a shot.”
He smiled. “My gin joint’s pretty cheap too. Come on. It’ll do you good. You could use a break in the drive . . . Besides, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life thinking I owe it to someone I don’t even know.”
I saw his point. So I got in my car and followed the blighter south along the water. He was driving a brand new Buick with a fresh set of whitewalls which were worth more than my jalopy by themselves. Soon we were cruising into La Jolla, the tony San Diego suburb populated by aging refugees from Southampton and Grosse Pointe spending their golden years clipping coupons by the California sand. The downtown buildings were a sanitized version of Old Mexico with red tile roofs and cute little bird baths in the courtyards in case the swallows got dirty.
The blighter turned left after a couple of blocks and I followed him into the parking lot of a pricey hotel called “La Paloma” where he parked between a Rolls and a midnight blue Eldorado. I wondered if he was a CPA after all, or if he was, whether he did his accounting for Standard Oil or the Mob.
“So why the blue mood?” I asked him after we had sunk into one of the posh leather booths in the hotel bar and ordered a couple of Bombay martinis, extra dry. If this was his idea of a cheap gin joint, I wondered if he had ever seen a real one.
“It’s not important,” he said. “I detest people who wallow in self pity.”
“Seemed like a lot more than self pity ten minutes ago on that rock.”
The blighter shrugged. I figured it was either women or money. There wasn’t much else. He didn’t say anything more until his martini came and he downed half of it in one gulp before muttering the words “Bloody Brandt didn’t like it,” almost as an afterthought.
“Didn’t like what?”
“My new book. He said it was too sentimental. Not up to my standard.”
“You’re a writer.” He nodded. I couldn’t say I was completely surprised. “Who’s ‘Bloody Brandt.’ ”
“Editor at Hamish Hamilton, my publishers.”
“Looks like the book business is treating you pretty well.” I gestured around at my surroundings.
“The money’s from Hollywood,” he said dismissively. “The books are for posterity. Only it looks as if old posterity’s going to pass me by.”
“And that’s reason enough to take your own life?”
“You don’t know writers.”
“What kind of books do you write?”
“That’s part of the problem—detective stories. People don’t take them seriously. Most of the time I don’t either.” He took out a pipe and began to stuff it in the way limeys used to do in war movies. “You wouldn’t know I’m a graduate of one of the most respected public schools in Great Britain. What a waste of human potential. I could have been Forster . . . Maddox Ford . . . It’s embarrassing in the end! . . . What do you do, Mr . . . ?”
“I’m a private detective.”
“A real one? What a coincidence.”
“You might say.”
“Maybe you’ve read one of my books.”
“What’s your name?”
“Raymond Chandler.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. But don’t take it personally. I’m strictly a non-fiction guy. Sports pages. ‘Police Gazette.’ That kind of thing.”
“Figures.” He looked at me more carefully. “You know there’s something about you . . . it’s almost as if I’ve met you someplace before. Probably it’s because you resemble . . .”
“That Bogart character!” I said, trying to control my contempt. “Everyone tells me that, but I’ve got at least three-inches on that ratfaced runt. I prefer to think I look more like Cary Grant.”
“Don’t we all,” said Chandler.
Just then another weirdo in horn-rimmed glasses bounced up to our table. At least this one wasn’t wearing a bow tie. His face was flushed and he was breathing heavily as if he had been running. “God, Ray, you’re here. I’ve been looking all over for you!” This bonzo was American. “You’re not going to believe what just happened.” He pulled up a chair and sat down opposite us. “Someone broke into my studio and stole my water colors.”
“Did you call the police?” said Chandler.
“I don’t want to. The only one whose got a key is Roberto, my houseboy. He’s a wetback and they’ll send him packing over
the border before they give him a chance to spell his name. So I thought maybe you could figure it out. I mean you’re a mystery writer and everything.”
“You’ve got better luck. This gentleman here’s an actual private eye.” The other man looked at me with sudden interest. “Ted Geisel, this is . . .”
“Marlowe. Philip Marlowe.” I extended my hand but the other guy cracked up as if it was the funniest thing he ever heard. “You are a joker, Ray,” he said to Chandler who was now staring at me with a stunned expression. “This is the real Marlowe, is it? Well, I must say he’s got the right hat. Is that a Borsalino or a Stetson?”
“A Stetson,” I replied. “I can’t afford the imports.”
“That sounds like Marlowe to me,” said Geisel, grinning. I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.
“I thought you hadn’t read my books,” said Chandler who was now looking suspicious. “If you’re trying to get a part in a movie or something, don’t bother. I’m only the writer.”
“So, Marlowe,” said Geisel. “How much would you charge to take on my case? But I have to warn you, I don’t think there are any blondes involved.”
I didn’t think that was nearly as funny as he did, but I gave him my hourly rate and we all got back in our three cars and drove up to Geisel’s place. It was one of those modern jobs with steel beams and enough picture windows to satisfy all the Peeping Toms in the neighborhood. Only this joker didn’t have a lot of neighbors. He had a mountain top to himself with an ocean view half-way to Maui. The art business was obviously treating him at least as well as the writing game was treating Chandler.
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe Page 45
