He held his hand out. “Thank you for coming. I think you’re a pretty honest sort of fellow. Don’t be a hero, young man. There’s no percentage in it.”
I shook hands with him. He had a grip like a pipe wrench. He smiled at me benignantly now. He was Mr. Big, the winner, everything under control.
“One of these days I might be able to throw some business your way,” he said. “And don’t go away thinking that I buy politicians or law enforcement officers. I don’t have to. Goodbye, Mr. Marlowe. And thank you again for coming.”
He stood there and watched me out of the room. I had my hand on the front door when Linda Loring popped out of a shadow somewhere.
“Well?” she asked me quietly. “How did you get on with Father?”
“Fine. He explained civilization to me. I mean how it looks to him. He’s going to let it go on for a little while longer. But it better be careful and not interfere with his private life. If it does, he’s apt to make a phone call to God and cancel the order.”
“You’re hopeless,” she said.
“Me? I’m hopeless? Lady, take a look at your old man. Compared with him I’m a blue-eyed baby with a brand new rattle.”
I went on out and Amos had the Caddy there waiting. He drove me back to Hollywood. I offered him a buck but he wouldn’t take it. I offered to buy him the poems of T. S. Eliot. He said he already had them.
33
A week went by and I heard nothing from the Wades. The weather was hot and sticky and the acid sting of the smog had crept as far west as Beverly Hills. From the top of Mulholland Drive you could see it leveled out all over the city like a ground mist. When you were in it you could taste it and smell it and it made your eyes smart. Everybody was griping about it. In Pasadena, where the stuffy millionaires holed up after Beverly Hills was spoiled for them by the movie crowd, the city fathers screamed with rage. Everything was the fault of the smog. If the canary wouldn’t sing, if the milkman was late, if the Pekinese had fleas, if an old coot in a starched collar had a heart attack on the way to church, that was the smog. Where I lived it was usually clear in the early morning and nearly always at night. Once in a while a whole day would be clear, nobody quite knew why.
It was on a day like that—it happened to be a Thursday—that Roger Wade called me up. “How are you? This is Wade.” He sounded fine.
“Fine, and you?”
“Sober, I’m afraid. Scratching a hard buck. We ought to have a talk. And I think I owe you some dough.”
“Nope.”
“Well, how about lunch today? Could you make it here somewhere around one?”
“I guess so. How’s Candy?”
“Candy?” He sounded puzzled. He must have blacked out plenty that night. “Oh, he helped you put me to bed that night.”
“Yeah. He’s a helpful little guy—in spots. And Mrs. Wade?”
“She’s fine too. She’s in town shopping today.”
We hung up and I sat and rocked in my swivel chair. I ought to have asked him how the book was going. Maybe you always ought to ask a writer how the book is going. And then again maybe he gets damned tired of that question.
I had another call in a little while, a strange voice.
“This is Roy Ashterfelt. George Peters told me to call you up, Marlowe.”
“Oh yes, thanks. You’re the fellow that knew Terry Lennox in New York. Called himself Marston then.”
“That’s right. He was sure on the sauce. But it’s the same guy all right. You couldn’t very well mistake him. Out here I saw him in Chasen’s one night with his wife. I was with a client. The client knew them. Can’t tell you the client’s name, I’m afraid.”
“I understand. It’s not very important now, I guess. What was his first name?”
“Wait a minute while I bite my thumb. Oh yeah, Paul. Paul Marston. And there was one thing more, if it interests you. He was wearing a British Army service badge. Their version of the ruptured duck.”
“I see. What happened to him?”
“I don’t know. I came west. Next time I saw him he was here too—married to Harlan Potter’s somewhat wild daughter. But you know all that.”
“They’re both dead now. But thanks for telling me.”
“Not at all. Glad to help. Does it mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing,” I said, and I was a liar. “I never asked him about himself. He told me once he had been brought up in an orphanage. Isn’t it just possible you made a mistake?”
“With that white hair and that scarred face, brother? Not a chance. I won’t say I never forget a face, but not that one.”
“Did he see you?”
“If he did, he didn’t let on. Hardly expect him to in the circumstances. Anyhow he might not have remembered me. Like I said, he was always pretty well lit back in New York.”
I thanked him some more and he said it was a pleasure and we hung up.
