Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel

by Lawrence Osborne

  But he sensed me at once and half turned in his baronial chair.

  He was in his high eighties, I would have said, with the speckled head of a thrush egg, in his best duds for the soirée in his own living room. He wore a black-velvet smoking jacket and matching Albert slippers with embroidered gold crowns. On the table in front of him were Talavera plates piled with enough food for ten people, including a roast hen and pieces of a suckling pig, and a glass half-filled with red wine. A second place was set, though there was no sign of a second guest other than myself.

  When I came to his side, however, he fumbled for a pair of eyeglasses lying at his side, put them onto his nose, and then glared at me.

  “Who the hell are you?” he said in Spanish.

  “I’m in the room upstairs.”

  “Are you now? Well, you should sit down and eat. Why are you walking around in a dressing gown?”

  I pulled out the chair in front of the place that had been set and sat down.

  “I was asleep, and when I woke up I felt like putting it on.”

  “Is that so? And how did you get upstairs?”

  “I have no idea at all.”

  It seemed to be coming back to him now.

  “Ah, now I remember. You’re the gringo from Cuastecomates.”

  “I guess I must be.”

  “A man brought you in. I’m Dr. Quiñones.”

  I extended my hand: “Barry Waldstein. I’m very grateful to you.”

  Ignoring the hand, he suggested I eat something.

  “I was expecting someone, but I’ve forgotten who it was. Maybe it was you. But then again, maybe not. My memory’s shot to pieces.”

  “Maybe it was me, then.”

  “By God I think it was.”

  How long had it been? I kept thinking.

  “I must have been in a bad way when I came in.”

  “You were sliced up with a carving knife.”

  He chuckled and turned abruptly to the French windows.

  “Ana! Are you bringing out that decanter?”

  “Someone put me back together again,” I said. “Humpty Dumpty that I was.”

  “It was me, Waldstein. You may as well know you had a fair amount of dollars on your person and this was deducted. You won’t mind, I know.”

  “I’d say it was fair all round. May I ask how much you took?”

  “A couple hundred.”

  Well, it’s a good private clinic, I thought.

  There was a long knife lying next to the roasted hen and I reached out for it.

  “No, no,” he cried. “The maid does all that. You’d only ruin it. With one arm and all—”

  She was soon back, decanter armed, knife ready. She carved up the hen and I felt myself slowly coming back to life.

  “That’s a very pretty bandage,” he said. “Normally I’m retired, but the circumstances were unusual. I had to obey the oath. You have a five-inch cut that went almost to the bone. I considered getting you a blood transfusion.”

  The maid poured me a glass of wine and the doctor and I touched glasses. The old goat in him was all too alive. It glittered with mischief and puns and the rebellion against boredom that makes the old so anarchic.

  It was me who was boringly earnest.

  “Was it the driver who brought me here?”

  “Not a driver. A friend of mine. A young doctor who lives nearby. He took a cut, too, for his trouble.”

  “I see, so he brought me here himself.”

  “He wasn’t going to throw you back in the street.”

  “But when was this?”

  “Today’s Wednesday. Two days ago. If you’re in pain I can give you another injection.”

  “I’m not writhing yet.”

  “So I see. You won’t be able to use your arm for a little while. The sling will have to stay on too.”

  “I’ll miss playing Rachmaninoff on the piano. But otherwise I’ll manage.”

  “Let’s drink to your left arm.”

  We did so, and the doctor watched me eat one-handed. He was not curious; he was not incurious. He was notational.

  “It’s a wild story. Mr. Waldstein. A man is found unconscious in a popular hotel that only Mexicans go to. There’s no reason you should be there. And you’re cut up like a side of beef. There’s no weapon and no other person has been found. But we know you come from the other side in a boat.”

  “Do the police know?”

  “No one told them. But who was on the other side of the bay? You don’t have to tell. But, then again, it’s just between you and me.”

  I said, reluctantly, “A business associate with a grudge.”

  “Oh, so that’s it. It’s always that.”

  “Nine times out of ten. They’re the ones who want to take a bite out of you.”

  “Mexican?”

  “American.”

  But the eyes didn’t believe me and so I cooked up a feeble story. He took it in as if it was his duty to be polite.

  “God knows why you people come down here,” he said eventually. “What are you looking for? There’s nothing you can’t find in your own country.”

  “Except the chance to disappear. You can’t disappear in the States.”

  “Well, there’s that. But you’re not trying to disappear.”

  “I might if I could.”

  It was then that I stopped and looked up at the sky. The Pleiades visible to the naked eye. Where were we?

  “A few miles inland,” was all he said in answer to this. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m a respectable man around here. As you can see—”

  “It’s a fine house. Are you married?”

  “No, sir. Only the maid. She doesn’t have much of a life here, but she can save up and abandon me whenever she wants.”

  “Well, either way I owe you an immense favor. It wasn’t something you had to do, oath or no oath.”

  “Nothing to thank me for. I thought you’d been mugged on the road. But then again, why were you on the road anyway? And how did you get to Cuastecomates?”

  “I drove there from Las Hadas. It wasn’t hard.”

  “Would you like to be taken back to the Las Hadas?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, if you don’t mind. I checked out and I had everything with me.”

  “Which is to say, nothing at all. You don’t even have a passport on you. Just a lot of money and a cane. They’re both in my safe.”

  “I must’ve been robbed, as you can see. I don’t remember anything about it, to tell you the truth.”

  “Isn’t amnesia wonderful?”

  He laughed, but his eyes didn’t lose their mark for a moment.

  “I couldn’t live without it,” I said.

  “You can say that again, young man. Amnesia is the only thing worth looking forward to.”

  I had no idea what time it was, or what the date was. Everything had slipped away between my fingers. The Pleiades were fixed and the tree frogs around the swimming pool wrapped us in their song. The candle flames flickered for a second and then restabilized. The doctor crossed his legs, the two gold crowns of his Albert slippers stacked on top of each other. Maybe later that night I wouldn’t remember any of this either. It was all a dream and I had walked into it in slippers.

  I ate for a while and then noticed that the doctor had fallen silent. Looking up, I saw that he had nodded off.

  The maid crept up to the table and nudged him, but he didn’t awake. We exchanged a merry look and she reached out to his glass, lifted it off the table. and took a sip. A moment later Quiñones came to.

  “May I ask,” he said, as if his stream of thought had merely been broken by a nap and had suddenly come back to him, “what you intend to do now? You can stay for a few extra d
ays if you like. But I imagine you will want to go home. We can call your family, but we had no idea who they are. Do you?”

  “It’s a good question.”

  “Or are you all alone, traveling through Mexico? You said you had business dealings—”

  I thought the time had come for a bit of honesty. The doctor might be able to help, and I couldn’t pretend I was on holiday.

  I said, “I’m looking for someone.”

  At this his curiosity and liveliness returned.

  “Naturally. A fellow American—a man who ran away from his debts. I read detective novels, too, as you see.”

  “He’s a man who has been around here for the last few months. Maybe you ran into him?”

  But the name Paul Linder had not touched his ears. I filled him in. The husband-and-wife team, the jilt, the near-miss at Las Hadas, the real estate deals not only along the coast but also as it happened around the Salton Sea. I came clean about myself as well. I had nothing to lose and I was sure he would sympathize.

  And so he did.

  “You should have said earlier. There’s something I should tell you. The boatman took two men from the hotel across the bay and up the path to the top. They found a lot of blood in the abandoned house there. I can’t say if they told the police about it, but nobody from the delegación showed up.”

  So they kept their mouths shut, I thought.

  But there was something else. The same boatman had gone back because a signal from the flashlight had summoned him. He had returned and picked up the other man and brought him over to the mainland as well, but an hour later—a comedy of sorts. By then, of course, I was long gone. The boatman had helped the man to his car although he had difficulty walking. It had been another American, also badly cut. The boatman had put him in the driving seat and asked him if he could drive. He had almost passed out. The boatman, however, took down the plate number in case the police asked him. The doctor had sent his secretary down to Cuastecomates to bribe him the following day and had obtained the plate number and a description of the wounded man as well as the car itself, the white Pontiac Grand Am. Quiñones had wanted to wait to talk to me before he did anything. But a plate number could be traced if he asked his friends in the Mexican police to help him. It wouldn’t take more than a day or two for something to come in. Since no one had pressed any charges and no witnesses had come forward, and since there was no evidence of any wrongdoing in these dealings between two unknown gringos, there was no urgency on the police side. He could arrange to make it a private inquiry if I liked. I did like. All I wanted to know was where Topper had gone in his vulgar chariot. I didn’t know who he was or what his real name was.

  An hour later, as we were playing chess, Quiñones nodded off again. This time I got up and made my way back into the house. When he woke again he probably wouldn’t remember that I’d ever been there, but I hoped he’d at least remember our arrangement with regard to the license plate. I went into the kitchen to find the maid. She was sitting there at a stainless-steel table gorging on a round cheese with a penknife. She must have assumed the old men were out for the night and had reverted to her post-official-duties state. She stared at me in shock for a moment and then burst out laughing. She was still barefoot and I was still in my sling and dressing gown. I told her that I needed her help, for which I’d slip her a nice tip.

  “What kind of help?”

  “I don’t know yet. Do you know the code to the safe?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t want anything of his. Just my things.”

  “Now?”

  “No, when the time comes.”

  I told her to come up to my room in five minutes and get the tip. She could keep it until I called in the favor.

  When she arrived at my door I gave her three twenty-dollar bills from the money she had returned to me from the safe and told her not to tell the doctor. I locked the door behind me and waited. The doctor did not call out or come looking for me. Probably, I thought, the maid took him to bed every night after he had emptied one of his bottles of Duhart-Milon and then amused herself alone in the house as if she were its nocturnal mistress. It made no difference to me either way; it was none of my business. Who was Hansel and who was Gretel? The only reason to get married would be to avoid a lingering twilight with a contemptuous maid—but then again it was what he wanted and I couldn’t argue with that. He had not adequately explained why he had taken me in, and the longer I thought about it the less I was able to believe his own expressions of doctorly duty. The Hippocratic Oath didn’t usually extend to strangers found in hammocks. Maybe he was just amusing himself: a random meeting on the road and he had done it on a whim. But then, why the safe? It was then that I saw that a small container of Valium tablets had been set on my night table next to a glass of water. It was a thoughtful touch, as casual as bedside chocolate mints, and I took two to numb the pain in my arm and try to sleep. But in the end, I hardly slept at all. In the hills behind us, the calls of the coyotes swept as echoes down the valleys and the ravine until they filled my room with a sound of bedlam.

  SEVENTEEN

  Late in the afternoon the following day, as I lay in my room, I heard the front bell ring and the maid making her way quietly down the path to the gates. She had let in a visitor, I assumed, and from the window I could see a section of the path that snaked through the garden.

  Down this path came a uniformed policeman. He took off his hat and tucked it under one arm. They went into the house and soon the sound of the male voices echoed up to my corridor. There was some polite laughter and a music of glasses. He only stayed about ten minutes, and at the end of his term he was escorted back up the garden path by the maid. A heavyset middle-aged official whom the doctor had obviously been socially lubricating for many years. A man likely easy to sway and charm, willing to share a shot and a bit of gossip. As the gate closed behind him I heard his car start up—a driver had been waiting for him—and a puff of road dust rose up slowly above the wall.

  I was already thinking of getting out that morning. You always know when you are being held against your will, even if the people doing it are nice as nuns. It wasn’t a strong sense of duty toward my clients; I no longer much believed in their indignation or the worthiness of their cause. All I felt now was a need to confront the Zinns and make them pay for their arrogance. It was the arrogance of the age, it seemed to me, the insolence of easy money, and a little bit of vengeance would do them both good. The thought of it suddenly made me feel better. A kick in the teeth, a comeuppance was what they needed, and tracking them down from now on would be pure pleasure. May you watch the bodies of your enemies float past you on the river.

  I went down for a walk in the garden and to my surprise couldn’t find the doctor anywhere. I wandered as far as the back wall, behind which the mountains rose into a sky that made me think of the high-altitude atmosphere over Mexico City back in the days when the air was clear. The air seven thousand feet up that makes Popocatépetl seem closer than it is.

  At dusk the maid found me still sitting in the garden. She was sly and discreet now that money had changed hands between us.

  “We had a visit earlier,” she said, after offering to bring me some tea. “A state policeman whom El Doctor plays cards with on Sunday nights. They talked about you.”

  “I’ll bet they did.”

  “But nothing will happen. Relax.”

  She seemed to be wondering what I would do. Jump over the wall—dance flamenco…

  “You and El Doctor will eat outside at six. Do you want to go for a swim? You’ll have to keep your arm dry.”

  “If I do, I’ll drown.”

  At dinner the doctor was in a wheelchair for some reason, and although he complained about his decaying legs he was in good spirits and ready to tease me with his new information.

  “You’ll be interested
to know,” he said with some baffling grandness, “that the car you are looking for has been traced to an owner in San Miguel de Allende. I suppose you’d like to know what the owner’s name is?”

  Jesús Aguayo. He was domiciled in a small town near San Miguel called Atotonilco el Grande.

  “I can’t say who he is, but this is who the car belongs to. I wouldn’t advise you to go looking for it, though.”

  “It’s very good advice.”

  “The police, I’m afraid, have gotten wind of what happened down in Cuastecomates. I am going to have to ask you to stay in the house for a few days while we sort it out. I can’t be party to a crime while it’s being investigated, can I? There’s no need to get excited. You can stay here and get better while it’s being looked into.”

  This was bad news, but I kept a lid on my alarm. It was a form of house arrest, then, but there was no one to enforce it but the maid. I had done well to bribe her and bring her over to my side.

  “It’s very kind of you. I’m feeling better already.”

  “You’re a very curious man, Waldstein. What kind of name is that, anyway? Are you German?”

  “I might have been in a previous life.”

  “Oh, that might have been unpleasant. You should go to a clairvoyant.”

  “It has crossed my mind.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’re so tough?”

  We ate on and the subject was gradually dropped. But now I had to rethink. I needed to hunt down Jesús Aguayo and I needed to do it slyly. I played chess with the doctor after dinner and the hours went by in quiet talk about gardens and investments and some of our old cases. He brought up the latter and I told him, on the spur of the moment, that every case felt, in some ways, like a fairy tale. A story being concocted by a higher power that sucked one in, forcing one to obey its demented laws. The maid then wheeled him out to a terrace at the back of the garden and we sat there in a summer house smoking cigars and looking down at a primeval landscape of manzanilla oaks and trees I didn’t know spread across canyons and thorned hillsides. There was so sign of a road or of the sea. We took our coffee there and the doctor apologized for asking me not to leave the house. As I could see, he added, there would be nowhere for me to go anyway, and now I understood why he had brought me to that spot. He explained mildly that a dirt track went to the bottom of the mountain and it was about five miles on rough stones. The local people walked it, but I was not a local person.