The phone rang, Bonsentir picked it up and spoke. Then he listened a moment and looked at Ohls. He held the phone out.
'It's for you, Lieutenant,' he said. His face looked benevolent.
Ohls took the phone and listened. His face didn't change expression. He didn't speak.
Then he said, 'Right,' and hung up the phone and handed it back to Bonsentir.
'Are you satisfied, Lieutenant?' Bonsentir said.
Ohls ignored him.
'Come on, Marlowe,' Ohls said. 'We're leaving.'
I raised my eyebrows.
'Like that,' I said.
'Like that,' Ohls said. 'You got a lot of weight,' he said to Bonsentir. 'But that doesn't mean it's over.'
Bonsentir nodded over his tented fingertips.
'Race,' he said to the beachboy, 'show these gentlemen out.'
The beachboy stepped forward and took Ohls by the arm.
'Come on,' he said, 'let's go.'
Almost negligently Ohls chopped the edge of a right hand against the beachboy's Adam's apple. He turned sort of absentmindedly and took the beachboy's right wrist in his left hand. He put his right hand up under the beachboy's armpit, leaned in with his right shoulder and threw the beachboy into the fireplace.
'We can find the way,' Ohls said and went out of the room. I smiled a friendly smile at Bonsentir. And followed Ohls out.
CHAPTER 14
Taggert Wilde, the DA for whom I had once worked, was a plump man with clear blue eyes that managed to look at the same time friendly and expressionless. He was from an old Los Angeles family and had been DA for quite some time now. Ohls and I sat in his office while Wilde lit a thin, dappled cigar and got his feet in just the right position on the pulled-out lower drawer of his massive oak desk. On the walls around the office were muted paintings of serious-looking men in suits. Probably Wilde's predecessors in office, though they might have been his relatives.
'Doesn't mean that Bonsentir is untouchable, Bernie,' Wilde said. 'There are ways of handling things. But it does mean you can't go up there and roust him whenever you feel like it. None of this should surprise you.'
'It doesn't surprise me,' Ohls said calmly. 'But I don't have to like it.'
'No, you don't,' Wilde said. 'Hell, Bernie, I don't like it all that terribly much either. But it's a big rough wide open country, and it's the way cities are run these days.'
'Who supplies the juice?' I said.
Wilde shook his head.
'You know better, Marlowe,' he said. 'It's not that simple.'
'What do you know about Randolph Simpson?' I said.
Wilde's face got very still. 'What about Randolph Simpson?' he said.
'Mrs. Swayze, who's now supposed to have been discharged, told me that Carmen was with him,' I said. 'Vivian told me she knew him. I went up there and couldn't get in. Every time I mention his name the people I mention his name to get the same look you've got.'
Wilde took his cigar out and looked at the tip and put it back in his mouth. He clasped both hands back of his head and looked up at the ceiling, balancing his spring swivel chair with one oxford shoe tip on the desk drawer, his other leg crossed over it. He allowed himself to teeter back and forth like that.
'Randolph Simpson is Bonsentir's clout,' Wilde said finally.
'I knew that,' I said. 'He lives in some kind of castle up in the Santa Monica Mountains.'
Wilde nodded slowly, still gazing up at the ceiling.
'It doesn't make any sense to say that Simpson is rich,' Wilde said. 'It's a meaningless phrase when you're talking about a man like Simpson. He has more wealth than many countries. He has resources that go with having that kind of money. He can literally buy anything.'
'And has,' I said.
'I'm an elected official, Marlowe. I try to do the job as decently as I'm permitted. But I am also part of a larger government and social entity, and as such am not an entirely free agent.'
'Sure,' I said.
'When you worked here you couldn't tolerate that,' Wilde went on. 'I understand that and I can respect it. But if the community is to function there must also be people who can tolerate working inside a system, however compromised.'
'Do I salute?' I said. 'Maybe stand at attention and sing 'Yankee Doodle'?'
Wilde's feet came off the desk drawer and his chair snapped forward and his eyes came level with mine.
'No,' he snapped, 'but you might sit still and listen and learn whatever there is to learn about Simpson. Lieutenant Ohls is bound by many of the constraints that bind me. But you are not.'
I sat back in my chair and got out a cigarette and got it burning. Ohls grinned at me.
