29
I spent the night in the guest room. In the morning I was out of the house early. I got coffee in a place on Riverside that also sold stuffed burros, and little key chains with genuine gold nuggets attached. The desert looked harsher than I'd ever seen it as I drove over to Muriel Valentine's house. The earth had a harsh eroded look like an angry dowager, and the cactus plants seemed more loutish than I remembered them yesterday. The hard disinterested sky was cloudless and the heat was dry and unyielding as I got out and walked up Muriel's walk again. The houseboy answered my ring and let me stand in the hall while he went to fetch Mrs. Valentine. When she appeared she seemed as bleak as the desert. Her eyes looked as if she'd cried and her mouth was thin. "He's not here," she said.
"Your husband," I said.
"Yes. I don't know where he is."
The tip of her tongue appeared and touched her lower lip and disappeared.
"When did he leave?"
"He's been gone since the day after you left him here," she said.
"You know Lipshultz is dead," I said.
"Yes."
"Did you know he worked for your father?" I said.
She stepped back as if I had poked a live snake at her.
"Your father owns the Agony Club," I said.
She didn't say anything. She kept looking at me, her face tight, the tip of her tongue darting occasionally out over her lower lip. I looked back at her. Nothing else happened. Finally I turned and walked out and closed the door behind me. She felt worse than I did. I got in the Olds and sat for a moment staring at nothing, then I put the Olds in gear and headed for L.A.
I found Angel sitting on her front porch looking at the beach. There was toast grown cold on a saucer and a cup of tea turned dark with the tea bag sitting in it. Angel sat in the rocker with her knees up, her arms around them, her chin resting on them. The rocker shifted slightly but she wasn't really rocking.
"He's not here," she said.
"You waiting for him?" I said.
"Yes. I didn't go to work. I can't. I have to be here in case he comes."
"I've lost him," I said. "He's not where I left him."
The rocker moved a little. Angel didn't say anything.
The sound of the surf, muffled as it rolled over the sand, was a white sound behind us. There were people on the beach moving past us in both directions. Up the beach a bulldozer was moving sand around near a new playground.
"He's not worth this, Angel," I said. "He's got no spine."
"I love him," she said and shrugged. The rocker moved a little again and then stopped.
I thought about Muriel, her face scraped bare of anything but hurt. I looked at Angel. Would Angel forgive that too, another woman. Hell, another wife. This creep had two wives crazy about him. I was on my way to having none. "You wouldn't have a guess where he might be?" I said.
She shook her head.
"He'll come back here, though," she said. "Sooner or later."
"I'm not so sure, Angel," I said, "that he didn't kill Lippy."
"He wouldn't," she said.
"And if he killed Lippy he might have killed Lola."
Angel simply shook her head, grimly, and stared at the beach.
There wasn't anything else to say. If he'd killed Lola and I'd helped him get away then I was on the hook for Lippy as much as he was. I tried a wry smile at her and turned and went away from there. When I glanced back she was still staring at the beach, motionless.
I drove from Venice downtown to see Bernie Ohls. He was in his cubicle. Empty desk with a phone on it, swivel chair, hat on a hook on the back of the door.
"Harlan Potter spring you?" he said when I came in. "Or you tunnel out of the Springs jail?"
"Potter," I said.
"Bet he and his daughter were happy about that," Ohls said.
"Like spawning salmon," I said. I sat in the plain chair opposite the desk. There were no pictures on the walls, no citation, not even a window. Ohls had killed at least nine men that I knew of, several when they thought he was covered.
The office was as blank as a waiter's stare.
"You're not looking too good, Marlowe," Ohls said. "You look like a man who didn't sleep well, who had a lousy breakfast."
"Les Valentine and Larry Victor are the same guy," I said.
Ohls was sitting with one foot cocked on the open lower drawer of his desk. He took his foot off the drawer and swiveled the chair around and slowly placed both feet on the ground.
"Is that a fact?" he said. I could see him turning this over in his mind.
"Aren't they both married?" Ohls said.
"Yeah."
"You've known this for a while."
"I've known it since before Lola Faithful got killed," I said.
"You said something to us, maybe Lipshultz wouldn't have gone down," Ohls said.
"Yeah."
Ohls shifted his seat around and put one foot back up on the open drawer. He clasped both hands behind his neck.
"Marlowe of the desert," he said. "Hawkshaw to the stars."
I let that pass. I'd earned what was coming.
"You think that maybe you played it a little too tight this time, cutie? And a guy gets buzzed that didn't have to? Say Lippy deserved it more than some. He didn't deserve it this time, from this guy."
"Nobody deserves it, Bernie."
"Sure, Marlowe, let your heart bleed a little. And while you're at it why don't you explain to me why you held out on us."
"I didn't think he did it," I said.
"You didn't think he did it," Ohls said. "Who appointed you? This is cop business, friend."
"He's a loser, he's a spineless creep, but he's got a nice little girl who loves everything about him."
"Only one?" Ohls said.
I shrugged. "I'll get to that. I still don't know if he did it, but I have to admit he looks more likely every time you turn it around."
"You covered for some guy you barely know because he's got a nice wife."
"They looked happy, Bernie. You don't see too much of that. And I figured if you got him you'd like him for it so much he'd be in Q before the public defender got his briefcase open."
"I don't railroad people, Marlowe."
"Sure you don't, Bernie, and you don't turn down a likely suspect either. This guy had argued with the victim earlier, he's got to have a shaky record. He's got the gumption of a popsicle…" I turned my palms up and spread my hands.
"Bartender says the beef with Lola started when she showed him a picture. You know anything about that?"
"Larry had a file full of nude photos," I said. "I checked the files when I found his office."
"They're not there now," Ohls said. "Nude pictures of who?"
"Women, explicit, kind of stuff worth some money twenty-five years ago."
"Not much of a living in it now," Ohls said. "Unless you want it for blackmail."
I shrugged.
"Okay, Marlowe," Ohls said, "you can tell me everything, from the beginning real slow, lotta small words, so as not to confuse me. And once I've heard it all, and I'm satisfied that you're not being cute, then we'll have a stenographer in and we'll go through it all for her."
He put both feet up on his desk and leaned farther back in his chair, his hands laced across his solar plexus.
"Go," he said.
I told him pretty much everything, leaving out the fact that I had a picture of Sondra Lee in the trunk of my car. When I came to the part about Blackstone, Ohls whistled silently to himself. When I was finished he said, "And you still think Larry, Les, whatever the hell his name is, didn't do it?"
"I don't know, Bernie. I'm here. I've told you what I know. You and I both know how long this guy will be around if Clayton Blackstone finds out his daughter's married to a bigamist."
"A little work for fast Eddie," Ohls said.
"Damn little," I said.
"We could charge you with obstructing justice," Ohls said. "Interfering with an officer i
n the performance of his duty, aiding and abetting the escape of a felon, accessory after the fact of homicide, obtaining motor vehicle information dishonestly, impersonating a police officer and being stupider than three sheep."
"I got an overdue library book, too," I said. "May as well make a clean breast of it."
"Get out of here," Ohls said.
"What about the stenographer?" I said.
"The hell with the stenographer," Ohls said. "If you so much as walk on a posted lawn, Marlowe…" He waved his hand, dismissing me with the back of it. The way a man shoos away a gnat.
I got up and went.
30
Movement is sometimes an adequate substitute for action. I had nothing else to do, and no one else to see, so I drove out to West L.A. looking for Sondra Lee. The blonde receptionist with the long thighs was there again. She told me that Sondra Lee was expected in the next half hour, and I sat on one of the silver tweed couches with no arms that curved along the left wall of the office. On the walls, in silver frames, were fashion shots of their clients, black and white theatrically lit, with the archness that only fashion photographers can capture. Sondra was one of them, in profile, gazing into some ethereal beyond, wearing an enormous black and white hat. Which was much more than she was wearing in the picture I had rolled up in my pocket. Time edged past like a clumsy inchworm. A tall, thin, overdressed woman came in and picked up some messages from the receptionist and went back out. Another woman, raven hair, pale skin, carmine lipstick, came in and spoke to the receptionist and passed on into one of the inner offices. I looked around, spotted an ashtray on a silver pedestal, dragged it close to me, got out a cigarette and lit it. I dropped the empty match into the ashtray and took in some smoke. There was a big clock shaped like a banjo on the wall back of the receptionist. It ticked so softly it took me a while to hear it. Occasionally the phone made a soft murmur and the receptionist said brightly, "Triton Agency, good afternoon." While I was there she said it maybe 40 times, without variation. My cigarette was down to the stub. I put it out in the ashtray and arched my back, and while I was arching it in came Sondra Lee. She was wearing a little yellow dress and a big yellow hat. She didn't recognize me, even when I stood up and said, "Miss Lee."
She turned her head with that impersonal friendly look that people get who are used to being recognized.
"Marlowe," I said. "We had a talk at your home the other day about Les Valentine, among other things."
The smile stayed just as impersonal, but it got less friendly.
"And?" she said.
"And we had such fun that I wanted to talk a little longer."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Marlowe, I'm afraid I can't. I have a shoot this afternoon."
I walked across to her, and as I went I took the naked picture of her from my inside pocket and unrolled it. I held it so that she could see and the receptionist couldn't.
"Just a few moments," I said. "I thought you might be able to help me with this picture."
She looked at it, and her faced showed nothing.
"Oh, all right," she said. "We can talk in here."
She led me into a small dressing room with a big mirror ringed with lights. There was a make-up table full of jars and tubes and powders and brushes, a tool in front of it, a daybed against the wall to the right of the door, and a tall director's chair. On the back of the black canvas was written Sandra in white script. She sat in the chair, her long legs carelessly stretched in front of her.
"So you are just another little nasty blackmailer," she said evenly.
"I'm not so little," I said.
"For your information, you roach, I'll give you exactly nothing for those pictures. That's what they're worth. Send them to the magazines, post them in the bus terminal, I don't care. It's thirty years past the time when pictures like that could hurt me."
"So they weren't much good to Larry Victor," I said.
"No more than they are to you, cheapie," she said. She took out a pastel filtered cigarette and put it in her mouth and lit it with a transparent lighter that showed you how much fluid was left.
"But he tried," I said.
"Sure he tried, don't all the scum balls try?"
"And you told him to breeze," I said.
"Tommy did," she said.
"And maybe you put a little something behind it," I said.
Sondra shrugged. "You're lucky Tommy's not here now," she said.
"Yeah," I said. "I barely escaped with my life last time."
Her face said she didn't remember too much about last time.
"I was at your house," I said, "asking you about a photographer named Les Valentine."
"I was on a toot," she said.
"Yeah. You suggested, as I recall, that I might want to toot along with you."
If she remembered she didn't show it. There was no sign of embarrassment.
"Tommy hates that," she said. She didn't sound like she cared if Tommy hated that or not. "So what do you want, Marlowe? Or are you one of those guys gets his rocks off talking to a woman while you look at her nude picture?"
"That's one of my favorites," I said. "But this time I'm trying to get a handle on Larry Victor."
She cocked her head and looked at me for a moment.
"Larry? How come?"
"Case I'm working on," I said.
"You're not trying to shake me down?"
"I wouldn't dare," I said. "What can you tell me about Larry?"
"A full-fledged creepster," Sondra said. "Took third-rate pictures and couldn't make a living except doing nudes for skin magazines and adult bookstores. He shot a lot of us when we were new, trying to make a living, trying to get noticed. He had a nice line, scored a lot of the models. God knows why-he wore a toupee and his hands sweated all the time. But…" She shrugged. "Takes all kinds."
"And he'd keep prints and if you got to be an important model," I said, "he'd try to blackmail you."
"Or if you got into pictures," she said. "Studios were always worried about that stuff. Kids that got into pictures probably did pay off."
"Not a bad racket, then. Sells the product once and in some cases sells it again for more, later."
"Like a growth stock," Sondra said. She smiled and took a drag on her cigarette and held the smoke for a long moment, then let it slide out through the smile. "Only times changed. Pretty soon no one much cared if you showed your tush in public and Larry's business took a nosedive."
"Outmoded by changing times," I said, "like livery stables. Did you know he'd gotten married?"
"I lost track of Larry a while back, as soon as I climbed out of the gutter he works in."
"And you don't know a photographer named Les Valentine?"
"No."
"Muriel Valentine? Muriel Blackstone? Angel Victor?"
As I did the names, Sondra kept shaking her head.
"Any close friends from the old days you'd remember?" I said.
She laughed shortly. "Friends? Not that you'd notice. If the little creep had any friends they were likely to be women." She shook her head again. "I never understood that," she said.
"You can't remember any names?" I said.
She dragged in some more smoke and blew it out in a big puff. She shook her head.
"No," she said, "I can't."
"And you wouldn't have a guess where he might be now?"
"Is that it? she said. "He's missing?"
I nodded.
"No," she said. "No. I'd have no idea."
I was still holding her picture. I gave it to her. She took it and looked at it.
"I was a piece of work in those days," she said.
"Still are," I said.
She smiled at me. "Thanks," she said. I turned toward the door.
"Marlowe," she said.
I stopped with one hand on the doorknob and turned to look at her.
"I remember every detail of what happened when you visited me last time," she said.
"Me too," I said.
She smil
ed at me. "The offer still holds," she said.
"Thanks," I said and gave her my killer grin and left.
31
I went back up Westwood to the Village and then onto Weyburn and up Hilgard past UCLA to Sunset and drove east.
I barely knew Larry Victor and I was getting very sick of him already. My marriage was in trouble, the cops were in a contest to see who had the best plan for locking me up the longest, Clayton Blackstone and Eddie Garcia were lurking in the corners and everything I learned about Larry Victor made me wonder why I was taking any trouble for him at all. Maybe he had killed Lola, maybe he was stupid enough to kill her in his office. Maybe he killed Lippy too, maybe he was tougher than I thought he was. If a guy was stupid enough to kill a woman in his own office after recently arguing with her in public, was he smart enough to get the two bodyguards out of the way in order to kill Lippy while they had a drink and Lippy looked out the window?
I passed the pink stucco silliness of the Beverly Hills Hotel, half hidden by palm trees. On both sides of Sunset were big homes, expensive and ugly in that special way that Southern California money finds to combine both. Movie stars, directors, producers, agents, people who had found a way to package emptiness and sell it as dreams.
Lola had to have been blackmailing Larry, with a picture. And she wouldn't have been so dumb as to go to the meeting with her only copy. She must have had a back-up. So where was it? I had tossed her house like a Caesar salad and found nothing. Not a crouton. So where would she hide it? Where would I hide something like that?
I was on the strip now, billboards of singers I'd never heard of, boutiques dickied up to look like French country cottages. At Horn Ave a guy with long curly black hair turned onto Sunset driving a two-seater sports car that was longer than my Olds. He squealed rubber as he floored it for fifty yards before he had to brake for a stoplight. The car was ugly, impractical, ostentatious, uneconomical and badly designed for city driving, but it was expensive.
Poodle Springs (philip marlowe) Page 13
