I drove on through Hollywood and swung up Ken-more to Lola's house. I had a thought.
The lawn looked a little more unkempt, but everything else seemed the same. People die, hearts break, dynasties fall on their kisser, and the grass keeps growing a little at a time, and the fronts of houses weather very slowly. I parked out front and walked up the front steps and stood under the cooling overhang. The mailbox was stuffed with mail that Lola would never read; some catalogues and advertising flyers had collected on the floor under the mailbox. Clearly no one had notified the post office. I took the envelopes out of the mailbox. Most of them were bills; there was nothing personal among them. I opened the door again the same way I had last time and went in, again. It was as I had left it. I put the mail on the hall table and looked around the house. Last time I'd been looking for a picture. This time I was looking for something else, a key, a receipt, something to tell me where she hid the picture. It had to be there. And it was. After an hour I found it. In among the unpaid bills stuffed into a pigeonhole in the old desk in her den was a receipt from the parcel room at Union Station.
It took me half an hour to get to Union Station and park and find the checked-luggage office and present my receipt. A black man of many years shuffled back into the catacombs of storage and emerged after maybe three weeks with a flat manila envelope sealed with transparent tape along the flap. Lola Faithful was scrawled in a big flowery hand across the face of the envelope. The I in Faithful was dotted with a big circle. I took the envelope and went and sat in the waiting room on an empty bench and opened the envelope. There was an 8 X 10 glossy, and a small glassine envelope with a negative. The glossy was a picture of Muriel Blackstone Valentine wearing high-heeled leather boots and nothing else. Naked, the body was all it promised to be. She was smiling a seductive smile that was skewed a little and her eyes were glassy. I held the negative up and looked at it against the light. It matched. I put the negative and the print back in the manila envelope and headed out under the arches, past the cab stand toward where I'd parked my car.
32
I was back in Venice, where Angel worked as a waitress at a combination cafe and bookstore on the beach. The lunch crowd was gone and there were only a few early lush types sipping drinks at the outdoor tables and trying to look as if one would do them, they were just passing time. I sat and ordered coffee. Angel brought it to me.
"Take a minute," I said. "I need to show you something."
I pushed a chair away from the table with my foot.
"They don't allow me to sit with the customers," Angel said, "but I'm due for my break. You can come in back."
I got up and followed her through the kitchen to a storage room where full gallon-size cans of tomatoes and jugs of olive oil were stacked against the bare cinder-block walls. There was a mop and bucket next to the door.
I took the picture of Muriel out and handed it to Angel.
"You know her?" I said.
Angel shook her head. Her cheeks colored. I'd been looking at so many nude pictures lately I'd forgotten that she might be embarrassed. I liked her for it.
"Sorry," I said. "But it's the only picture I've got."
"It's all right," Angel said. She looked at the picture again. "She does have a wonderful body," she said.
"Sure," I said. "Larry took this picture."
"Larry?"
"I can't prove it, but I know it's the picture that Lola showed to Larry when they had their fight. She was trying to blackmail him with it."
"Because he took a naked picture?"
"Because it's his wife," I said.
Angel smiled tentatively at me.
"I don't understand," she said.
"Larry also goes by the name Les Valentine," I said. "-Under that name he is married to this woman, Muriel Blackstone, now Muriel Valentine."
"Larry's married to me," Angel said.
"Yes," I said, "and Les is married to her and Les and Larry are the same guy."
"I don't believe that," Angel said.
"No reason you should," I said. "But it's the truth and I've kept it from you as long as I'm going to."
"I don't know why you come to me and lie to me like this," Angel said. "You must be very evil or very sick."
"Tired," I said. "Tired of wading around in this swamp. Maybe your husband did kill somebody, maybe he didn't; but he's bolted again and I don't know where he is and I don't care. No more secrets."
"You still don't know where Larry is?" Angel said. It was as if everything else I'd told her had washed off her without a mark.
"No," I said. "Do you?"
"No. Do you think something happened to him?"
"No, I think he did what he knows how to do. He ran away."
"He wouldn't leave me," Angel said.
I just shook my head. I didn't know what the hell Larry/Les would do or where he'd go, and I was beginning to doubt that I ever would.
"He wouldn't," Angel said again.
I fished a card out of my wallet and handed it to her.
"If you find out where he is," I said, "you can call me."
She took the card without looking at it. I doubted that she'd call. I doubted that anyone would call. Ever.
I went out of the restaurant and back along the beach. The Pacific lumbered in toward me. The swells looked tired as they crested and fell apart on the beach, and gathered themselves and withdrew slowly, and got upright and fell toward the beach again.
Time to go back to the Springs.
33
Linda was pacing in the living room past the Hammond organ built into the bar, past the glass wall with the butterflies and back, past the oversized fireplace. The nude picture of Muriel Blackstone was on the bar. Nobody was looking at it.
"I admit I am astonished," Linda said. "I had no idea that Muffy Blackstone…" She shook her head. – "Maybe most women lead lives of quiet desperation, too," I said.
"Maybe they do, but I must say I don't see why my husband has to be the one to dig that up. I mean, really, Philip," she nodded at the picture, "aren't you embarrassed?"
"It's been a long time," I said, "since I got embarrassed."
"Well, you should be. I am."
"I'm a detective, lady. You knew that when you married me."
"I guess I didn't think you'd always be a detective."
"Or you thought I'd grow a thin moustache and drink port and figure out who killed Mrs. Posselthwait's cousin Sue Sue in Count Boslewick's castle garden, without ever getting bark mulch on my shoes," I said. "And maybe we'd dine occasionally with an amusing inspector of police."
"Damn you, Marlowe, can't you see how it is for me? Can't you budge even a little bit?"
"Depends what you need me to budge on," I said. "I can budge on where we live, or who we entertain, or where we go for our honeymoon. But you want me to budge on who I am. On what I am. And I can't. This is what I am, a guy who ends up with dirty pictures in his possession."
"And two murders," Linda said, "and some story about bigamy?"
"And murder and bigamy, and probably a lot worse to come," I said. "It's the way I make my living. It's the way I got to be the guy you wanted to marry in the first place."
"And if I were poor?"
"You're not poor. I'm poor and you're not," I said. "There's no point talking about things that aren't so."
"What are you going to do with that picture of Muffy?" Linda said.
"I don't know," I said. "I didn't understand this case before and now I understand it a lot less."
Linda stepped to the bar and picked up the picture.
"I could tear it up right now," she said.
"Sure," I said, "but I've made copies."
"You think of everything, don't you," she said.
"Everything that doesn't matter," I said. "I haven't thought of who killed Lola Faithful or Lippy. I haven't thought of where Les Valentine is. I haven't thought of a way to keep the cops from tearing up my license, which I don't have copies made of."
Lin
da dropped the picture back on the bar.
"Perhaps she had Les take it, you know, just for them," she said.
"Maybe."
"Darling," Linda said, "let's go to Mexico again. Today, right now. I could be packed in an hour."
"You could be packed in two," I said. "And you'd pay for the trip and when we got back I'd still have to make a living."
"Damn you," Linda said. "Goddamn you." She walked to the picture window that looked out onto the -patio and pressed her forehead against it.
"I'm embarrassed with my friends about what you're doing. Can you imagine the talk at the club when I had to get you out of jail? I'm terrified when you're not home and I'm humiliated when there are social occasions and I have to go alone, and I don't even know where you are."
There was nothing to be said. So I said it.
"I know it seems so terribly snobbish and petty to you," Linda said. Her forehead was still against the glass. "But it is my life, the only one I've known. And my life matters to me too."
"I know," I said.
She turned from the window and stared at me.
"So what are we to do?" she said.
"You have to live your life," I said. "I have to live mine."
"And we can't seem to do that together," Linda said.
"No, we can't seem to," I said.
We were silent for a long time.
"I'll ask my attorney to draw up divorce papers," Linda said finally. "I want you to have something."
"No," I said. "I'll never touch it. It's not mine."
"I know," Linda said.
We were silent again. Through the plate glass two swallows darted into the bougainvillaea and disappeared in the leaves.
"I'll stay in the guest room tonight," I said. "Tomorrow I'll move back to L.A."
She nodded. There were tears on her face.
"Damn it, Marlowe," she said. "We love each other."
"I know," I said. "It's what makes it so hard."
34
I found a furnished apartment in front on Ivar north of the boulevard, in a stucco building built around a courtyard in the days when Hollywood had more screen stars and fewer hookers. My old office in the Cahuenga Building was still empty, so I moved back in. The desk, the two file cabinets, the old calendar remained, the outer office was still empty. Two dead flies lay on the floor just inside the door that still said Philip Marlowe, Investigation. I put a fresh bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer and rinsed out the two glasses on the sink in the corner, and I was ready for business.
Except there wasn't any business. A cousin to the dead flies in the outer office was buzzing lethargically against the window pane behind my desk. I put my feet up on the desk. The fly paused in his buzzing and looked at the impenetrable transparent space before him. He rubbed his face with his front feet, then buzzed again, but there wasn't much pizzazz in the buzz. It was a losing battle. He rattled for a minute against the window pane, then settled back down to the sill again and stood with his legs spraddled. I got up and carefully opened the window. The fly stayed motionless for a time, then he buzzed once and soared lazily out through the window and into the traffic fumes, three stories above Hollywood Boulevard. And then he was gone. I closed the window and sat back down. No one came in, no one called. No one cared if I got rabies or went to Paris.
At noon I went out and got a ham sandwich and some coffee at a joint on the boulevard and went back to my office to try sitting with my feet on the other corner. I still had my naked pictures of Muffy in the middle drawer of my desk. I still didn't know what to do with them. The negative was locked in the old floor safe behind the inner office door. I still didn't know where Les/Larry was and I didn't have a client.
I heard the outer door open and shut. And then Eddie Garcia came into my office and glanced around once and stepped aside and Clayton Blackstone came in behind him. Eddie went over and leaned blankly against one of the file cabinets. Blackstone sat down in my client chair. He had on a double-breasted grey pinstripe that cost more than my car.
"You've left the desert," he said.
"Word travels fast," I said.
Clayton smiled. "I'm sorry for your marital failure."
"Sure," I said.
"Have you gotten to the bottom of this mess yet?" Blackstone's hands were motionless on the arms of my chair. His nails were buffed. He wore a large diamond on the ring finger of his right hand.
"Maybe it doesn't have a bottom," I said.
"Which means no, I take it," Blackstone said.
"Yeah," I said.
'Tell me what you know."
"Why?"
Garcia laughed, a short barking sound.
Blackstone shook his head without looking at him. He reached inside his suit jacket and came out with a pigskin leather wallet, the long kind that is too big to fit into your pants pocket. He took out five hundred-dollar bills and laid them one beside the other on the desk.
'That's why," he said.
"You wish to employ me?" I said.
Eddie laughed his harsh bark again. "See, Mr. Black-stone, I told you he was a smart guy."
Blackstone nodded.
"Yes," he said. "I wish to employ you. I want you to find out where my son-in-law is. I wish you to bring these two murder investigations to a satisfactory conclusion. I wish my daughter's life to be orderly and pleasant again."
"What if the orderly conclusion is that your son-in-law buttoned both of them?" I said.
Blackstone shrugged.
I looked at the five hundred. "I don't need this much retainer," I said.
"Take your usual retainer, keep the rest as advance against expenses."
I nodded. "Why me?" I said. "Why not buy a couple of cops or maybe a judge or a D.A. and have the whole thing called off?"
"My daughter wants her husband back," Blackstone said. "Your suggestion doesn't lead to that."
"Okay," I said. I leaned over and picked up the hundreds and put them in my wallet. There was nothing in there to crowd them.
"If you wish to reach me, call Eddie. He will put us in touch. He has my complete confidence." He leaned forward again and placed a small white card on my desk. It was blank, except that a phone number was written on it in black ink.
I looked at Eddie. "Mine too," I said.
"My only condition, Marlowe, is that you report everything to me. I am not employing you to gossip to the police."
"You get first look at everything," I said. "But there may be things that I'll have to report. I'm a licensed private investigator. There's only so far I can go for a client."
"As long as I'm first," Blackstone said. "We'll deal with any other eventualities as they arise."
"Dandy," I said.
He got up and turned. Eddie Garcia moved ahead of him and went out the door first. Blackstone followed. Neither of them said good-bye.
35
I was working again. Except for the fact there was money in my wallet I didn't feel much different than not working. I still didn't have any idea what to do to earn my retainer and advance against expenses. For a change of pace I swiveled my chair around and stared out the window at Hollywood Boulevard for a while. The first idea I had was that it was time to change the grease in the fryolator in the coffee shop downstairs. In the L.A. basin to the south, hard-looking thunderheads were building. The towers of downtown L.A. were in a grey overcast that stopped short of Hollywood. Here the sun still shone. But that was temporary. In a while the thunderheads would roll north and bump into the hills and the rain would come hard. I'd seen it before.
I watched the thunderheads move up toward me for a while, and then I swiveled around and got out one of the pictures of Muriel and slid it in a manila envelope. I put one of my cards in with it, and on the card I wrote, "Do you wish to tell me about this picture?" I put the Hollywood Boulevard address on the card, slipped the card in with the picture, sealed and addressed the envelope. Then I got up, went down to the post office and mailed it, special delivery,
and went back to the office.
To pass time I bought myself the first drink from the new office bottle. I was finishing the next to last swallow and debating whether to have a second when I heard my outer door open again. Maybe I'd have to hire an assistant. I put the last swallow of bourbon down and got a confident smile on my face and in walked Les Valentine/Larry Victor.
"That was easy," I said.
"Huh?"
"Someone just hired me to find you," I said.
"Who?"
I shook my head.
"I called your office in Poodle Springs, and they said it was disconnected and so I called your wife, I hope you don't mind, and she said you were back here working."
I nodded. Larry looked like he'd been sleeping in bus terminals and washing in the men's room.
"Mind if I sit down?" he said.
I nodded toward the client chair. He sat, brushing his trousers as he did, as if he could put a crease back in them with his hands. He got seated and patted his breast pockets.
"Damn," he said, "I forgot to get some. You got a smoke?"
I slid the pack across the deck, a book of matches slipped inside between the package and the cellophane. He got one out and lit it and took in the smoke as if it were oxygen. He was wearing fawn-colored gabardine slacks and a yellow checked shirt buttoned to the neck and a cream-colored silk tweed sport coat with a pocket display handkerchief the color of a tequila sunrise. Or that's what everything had started out as. Now the clothes were rumpled and there were stains on the shirtfront. The show hankie had been used as a towel and was crumpled in the pocket of the coat so that only a scraggly end hung out. He hadn't shaved in several days and the beard that had emerged was patchy with a spattering of grey. The balding head looked mottled and he needed a haircut.
He saw me looking at him.
"Been on the go," he said. "Haven't gotten a chance to clean up today."
I nodded. The office bottle was still there. He was gazing at it the way a cow looks at a meadow.
"Want a drink?" I said.
"Sure could use one," he said. "Sun's over the yard-arm somewhere, right?"
Poodle Springs (philip marlowe) Page 14
