He passed his horny hand over his face and made it look like the face of a man who wouldn't know.
"He braced me in front of the office of a real estate man named Thorson. Said he was in trouble."
The sergeant stared at me expressionlessly. "Being in trouble belongs with being a man named Lipshultz. Stay away from him. Some of that trouble might rub off on you."
I stood up. "Thanks, Sergeant. I just wanted to check with you."
"You checked in. I'm looking forward to the day you check out."
I went out and closed the door. The pretty policewoman gave me a nice smile. I stopped at the desk and stared at her for a moment without speaking.
"I guess no cop ever liked a private eye," I said.
"You look all right to me, Mr. Marlowe."
"You look more than all right to me. My wife likes me part of the time too."
She leaned her elbows on the desk and clasped her hands under her chin. "What does she do the rest of the time?"
"She wishes I had ten million dollars. Then we could afford a couple more Fleetwood Cadillacs."
I grinned at her fascinatingly and went out of the cop house and climbed into our lonely Fleetwood. I struck out for the mansion.
4
At the end of the main drag the road swings to the left. To get to our place you keep straight on with nothing on the left but a hill and an occasional street on the right. A couple of tourist cars passed me going to see the palms in the State Park-as if they couldn't see all the palms they needed in Poodle Springs itself. A big Buick Roadmaster was behind me taking it easy. At a stretch of road that seemed empty it suddenly put on speed, flashed past and turned in ahead of me. I wondered what I had done wrong. Two men jumped out of the car, both were very sportsclothesy, and trotted back to where I had braked to a stop. A couple of guns flashed into their busy hands. I moved my hand on the indicator enough to shift the pointer to Low. I reached for the glove compartment, but there wasn't time. They were beside the Fleetwood.
"Lippy wants to talk to you," a nasal voice snarled.
He looked like any cheap punk. I didn't bother taking an inventory of him. The other one was taller, thinner but no more delicious. But they held the guns in a casually competent manner.
"And who might Lippy be? And put the heaters away. I don't have one."
"After he spoke to you, you went to the cops. Lippy don't like that."
"Let me guess," I said brightly. "Lippy would be Mr. Lipshultz who runs or owns the Agony Club, which is out of the territory of the Poodle Springs cops and the Agony Club is engaged in extralegal operations. Why does he want to see me so badly that he has to send a couple of shnooks after me?"
"On business, big stuff."
"Naturally, I didn't think we were such close friends that he couldn't eat lunch without me."
One of the boys, the taller one, moved around behind the Fleetwood and reached for the right-hand door. It had to be now if it was going to be at all. I pushed down on the accelerator. A cheap car would have stalled, but not the Fleetwood. It shot forward and sent the taller hood reeling. It smashed hard into the rear end of the Roadmaster. I couldn't see what it did to the Fleet-wood. There might be a small scratch or two on the front bumper. In the middle of the crash I yanked the glove compartment open and grabbed the .38 I had carried in Mexico, not that I had ever needed it. But when you are with Linda you don't take chances.
The smaller hood had started running. The other was still on his sitter. I hopped out of the Fleetwood and fired a shot over his head.
The other hood stopped dead, six feet away.
"Look, darlings," I said, "if Lappy wants to talk to me, he can't do it with me full of lead. And never show a gun unless you are prepared to use it. I am. You're not."
The tall boy climbed to his feet and put his gun away sullenly. After an instant the other did the same. They went to look at their car. I backed the Fleetwood clear and swung it level with the Headmaster.
'Til go see Lippy," I said. "He needs some advice about his staff."
"You got a pretty wife," the little hood said nastily.
"And any punk that lays a hand on her is already half cremated. So long, putrid. See you in the boneyard."
I gave the Fleetwood the gun and was out of sight. I turned into our street which like all the streets in that section was a dead end between high hills bordering the mountains. I pulled up in front of the house and looked at the front of the Fleetwood. It was bent a little-not much, but too much for a lady like Linda to drive it. I went into the house and found her in the bedroom staring at dresses.
"You've been loafing," I said. "You haven't rearranged the furniture yet."
"Darling!" She threw herself at me like a medium fast pitch, high and inside. "What have you been doing?"
"I bumped your car into the back of another one. You'd better telephone for a few more Fleetwoods."
"What on earth happened? You're not a sloppy driver."
"I did it on purpose. A man named Lapshultz who runs the Agony Club braced me as I came out of a realtor's office. He wanted to talk business, but I didn't have the time then. So on my way home he had a couple of morons with guns try to persuade me to do it now. I bashed them."
"Of course you did, darling. Quite right, too. What is a realtor?"
"A real estate man with a carnation. You didn't ask me how badly damaged your car is."
"Stop calling it my car. It's our car. And I don't suppose it's damaged enough to notice. Anyhow we need a sedan for evenings. Have you had lunch?"
"You take it awfully goddamned calmly that I might have been shot."
"Well, I was really thinking about something else. I'm afraid Father will pop in soon and start buying up the town. You know how he is about publicity."
"How right he is! I've been called by name by half a dozen people already-including an exquisitely pretty blonde policewoman."
"She probably knows judo," Linda said casually.
"Look, I don't get my women by violence."
"Well, perhaps. But I seem to remember being forced into somebody's bedroom."
"Force, my foot. You could hardly wait."
"Ask Tino to give you some lunch. Any more of this conversation and I'll forget I'm arranging my dresses."
5
I found an office finally, as close to a dump as Poodle Springs gets, south of Ramon Drive, upstairs over a filling station. It was the usual two-story fake adobe with make-believe ridge poles sticking out through it at the roof line. There was an outside stairway along the right wall that led to one room with a sink in the corner and a cheap deal desk left over from the previous tenant, a guy who maybe sold insurance, and maybe other stuff. Whatever he sold he didn't make enough to pay the rent and the geezer who owned the building and ran the filling station had booted him out a month ago. Besides the desk there was a squeaky swivel chair and a grey metal file cabinet and a calendar that had a picture on it of a dog tugging down a little girl's bathing suit bottom.
"Darling, this is appalling," Linda said when she saw it.
"You should see some of my clients," I said.
"I could just have someone come in…"
"This is what I can afford," I said.
Linda nodded. "Well, I'm sure it will do very nicely," she said. "Now let's go out to lunch."
The phone rang. Linda picked it up.
"Philip Marlowe's office," she said. Then she listened, and wrinkled her nose and handed the phone to me. "It must be a client, darling. He sounds appalling."
I said "Yeah" into the mouthpiece, and a voice I'd heard before said, "Marlowe, this is Manny Lipshultz."
"How nice for you," I said.
"Okay, sending a couple of hard boys after you was a mistake. I've made bigger."
I let that slide.
"If you're open for business I'd like to talk to you."
"Go ahead," I said.
"Can you come here?"
"The Agony Club?"
&nb
sp; "Yeah. You know where it is?"
"Just out of Poodle Springs jurisdiction," I said. "When?"
"Now."
"I'll be out in half an hour," I said and hung up.
Linda was looking at me with her arms folded across her chest. I let my chair squeak back and put my hands behind my head and smiled at her. She had on a ridiculous little white hat with the hint of a veil, and a sleeveless little white dress and sling strap high-heeled white shoes, the right toe of which was tapping the floor.
"I'll be out in half an hour?" she said.
"First client," I said. "I have to earn a living."
"And our lunch?"
"Call Tino, maybe he'd like to join you."
"I can't go to lunch with the houseboy."
I stood. "I'll drop you off at home."
She nodded and turned and went out of the office ahead of me. When I dropped her off she didn't kiss me good-bye, even though I went around and opened the door for her. A charmer, Marlowe. A model of courtliness.
The Agony Club was northeast of Poodle Springs, just over the line in Riverside County. A famous actor had set out to build himself a castle in the desert and then a reversal of fortune based on an incident with a 15-year-old girl, and the castle was a casualty. It looked like a bordello for wealthy Mexicans, all white stucco and red tile, with fountains in the courtyard and bougainvillaea creeping along its flanks. In the middle of the day it had a slightly tarnished look, like an overaged screen star. There were no cars in the big crushed stone circular driveway. I could hear the hum of the air conditioner somewhere out of sight, like a locust behind the building.
I parked the Olds under the portcullis at the back of the courtyard and walked in through the cooler darkness of the entry. There were two big carved mahogany doors, one slightly ajar. I pushed through it into the suddenly cool indoors. It felt good after the hard desert heat, but it felt artificial too, like the soothing touch of an embalmer. The two hoods who'd braced me the other day appeared from somewhere to the right.
The taller one said, "You carrying?"
"Yeah," I said, "you never know when there might be something to shoot out here."
The smaller hood was only half visible, hanging back in the gloomy doorway to the right. I could see the light from the main room glint off the gun in his hand.
"Can't see Lippy with a gun," the tall one said.
I shrugged and opened my coat and the tall one took the gun smoothly from under my arm. He looked at it.
"Two-inch barrel," he said. "Not much good at a distance."
"I only work close up," I said.
The tall one led the way across the open central space. There were tables set up for blackjack, there were roulette wheels, and tables for dice. Along the far left wall was a polished mahogany bar, with bottles arranged artfully in front of a mirrored wall behind it. The only light now came from a series of tall narrow windows near the ceiling which had probably been designed to look like firing ports in the original. I could see a series of crystal chandeliers hanging unlit from the ceiling. The little hood walked five steps behind me. I didn't think he had his gun out anymore but I didn't want him to catch me looking.
At the far end of the bar three steps led up to a low landing, and a door opened off of that into a big office that belonged to Manny Lipshultz. He was in, sitting behind a desk the size of a shuffleboard court.
"Marlowe," he said. "Sit down. You want a drink?"
He got up, went around a rosewood sideboard, took a decanter from it and filled two thick chunky glasses half full. He handed me one and went around behind his desk.
"It's okay, Leonard," he said to the tall hood. "Beat it."
Leonard and his little buddy disappeared silently into the dimness. I sipped my drink, Scotch, better than I was used to, even if my wife did have ten million bucks.
"Glad you could make it, Marlowe," Lipshultz said.
"Me too," I said. "Got to make a living."
"Married to Harlan Potter's daughter?"
"That means she doesn't have to make a living," I said.
Lipshultz nodded. "I got a problem, Marlowe."
I waited.
"What we do here ain't, you know, quite legal."
"I know," I said.
"Ever wonder why we don't get the arm laid on us?"
"No," I said, "but if I did, I'd figure you had backing, and the backing had the kind of money which keeps people from getting the arm laid on them."
Lipshultz smiled. "Smart, Marlowe. I knew you was smart even before I had you checked out."
"So with that kind of connection, what do you need me for?"
Lipshultz shook his head sadly. He had a thick nose to go with his red face, and slick black hair parted in the middle and combed tight on each side of his bullet head.
"Can't use that backing in this," he said. "Fact if you don't help me out, the backing is going to maybe send some people out to see me, you follow?"
"If they do you should get better help than the two yahoos you got following you around now."
"That's the truth," Lippy said. "Hard to get people to come out here, I mean this ain't Los Angeles. Not everybody likes the desert. Why I was so glad when I found out you was here. I heard about you when you were operating out of Hollywood."
"Your lucky day," I said. "What do you want me to do?"
He handed me an IOU for $100,000, with the signature Les Valentine across the bottom in a neat, very small hand. Then he sat back to let that sink in.
"Me," Lippy said, "taking a guy's marker for a hundred g's. I must be getting old."
"How come you did?" I said.
"He had money in the family. Always made good before."
"And when Mr. Big that runs you audited the books one day he noticed you were 100,000 short."
"His bookkeeper," Lipshultz said. "And Mr. Black-stone came to see me."
The air-conditioned room was full of cold, but Lipshultz was sweating. He pulled the silk show handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his neck with it.
"Drove right out here himself and sat where you're sitting and told me I had thirty days to cover the loss," Lipshultz said.
"Or?"
"There ain't no 'or' with Mr. Blackstone, Marlowe."
"So you want me to find the guy who stuck you."
Lipshultz nodded.
"I find people, Lipshultz, I don't shake them down."
"That's all I'm asking you, Marlowe. I'm out a hundred grand. I don't get it back and I'm dead. You find the guy. Talk to him."
"What if he doesn't have it? Guys that lose a hundred g's at the tables don't usually have it for long," I said.
"He's got it. His wife's worth twenty, thirty million."
"So why not ask her?"
"I have, she don't believe me. She says her Lester wouldn't do that. And I say ask Lester, and she says he's away now, doing stills for some movie shooting north of L.A."
"How come you didn't shake her down?"
Lipshultz shook his head. "She's a lady," he said.
"And you're a gentleman," I said.
Lipshultz shrugged. "What the hell," he said.
I believed that like I believed you should draw to an inside straight, but there didn't seem to be anything for me in arguing about it.
"I'll pay you ten percent if you get the money," Lipshultz said.
"I get a hundred dollars a day and expenses," I said.
Lipshultz nodded. "Heard you was a boy scout."
"There's some people doing twenty to life in San Quentin thought the same thing," I said.
Lipshultz grinned. "Heard you thought you was tough, too."
"Where do I find this guy?" I said.
"Valentine, Les Valentine. Lives with his wife somewhere in Poodle Springs, out near the Racquet Club. Want me to look it up?"
"I'm a trained sleuth," I said. "I'll look it up. Can I keep the IOU?"
"Sure," Lipshultz said. "I got copies."
Lipshultz gave me $100 as a
retainer and pushed a button somewhere because Leonard and his alter ego showed up. Leonard gave me back my gun, alter ego stayed far enough away so I wouldn't bite him and followed me out through the gambling layout and into the hot bright daylight at the front door. He and Leonard watched while I got into the Olds and drove away with the hot wind washing over me through the open windows.
6
Les Valentine's house was off Racquet Club Road, on one of those curvy little streets created to make an instant neighborhood. There were giant cactus plants at regular intervals, and jacaranda trees for a touch of color. The bungalows with their wide roofs were set close to the drive so that there was room for the pool in back, and the patio, which represented the ultimate advancement of civilization in the desert. No one was in sight. The only movement was the soft sluice of water sprinklers. Everybody was probably inside trying on outfits for the party at the Racquet Club Saturday night.
I parked the Olds in front and walked up the crushed white stone path to the porch. On either side of the Spanish oak door there were bull's-eye glass panels which went with the Spanish architecture like a Scotch Margarita. A Japanese houseboy opened the door and took my hat and put me in the front parlor to sit while he went for Madame.
The room was all white stucco. In one corner was a conical stucco fireplace in case the temperature dropped below ninety after the sun went down. The hearth was red Mexican tile. On the front wall was a large oil painting of a mean-looking guy in a three-piece suit with big white eyebrows, and the mouth of a man who tips people a nickel. On the end wall, to the left of the fireplace, was a series of photographs, full of arty lighting from below and odd over-the-shoulder poses of women. Black and white stuff, framed expensively as if they were important. On an easel near the doors to the patio was a big blow-up of a man and a woman. She was in her mid-30s, serious-looking, with the same kind of mouth as the mean-looking old guy in the oil on the front wall. Even though he was balding, the man with her seemed younger. He wore rimless glasses in the picture and a smile that said, Don't pay attention to me.
Poodle Springs (philip marlowe) Page 2
