My drink was gone. I went to the kitchen and rinsed out the glass and put it away. I looked at my chess puzzle again, shook my head, went back to the window and stared down for a while at the black Buick. And the phone rang.
The voice I heard belonged to Vincent Norris.
'Mr. Marlowe, Mrs. Regan would like very much to see you this evening, if you could stop by at your first convenience.'
'Cops been there?' I said.
'I dare say they have, sir. And Mrs. Regan seems visibly upset by their visit. I do urge you to come and visit, sir.'
'You're my employer, Norris. You urge, I comply.'
'Quite so, sir. Thank you, sir.'
'Tell Mrs. Regan I'll be there as soon as I break my date with the Countess of Columbia,' I said.
'I hope the Countess will understand, sir.'
'Yeah,' I said. 'I'm sure she will.'
I hung up and got a gun out of the desk drawer and slipped on a shoulder holster. Then I went down and got in my car and headed west on Franklin past the Buick. By the time I reached Normandie the Buick was behind me, and it stayed behind me all the way to Alta Brea Crescent.
It was a competent tail job by a guy who didn't seem to care if I made him. He stayed up close, no more than two cars away, and didn't try to get any closer. It appeared that he just wanted to know where I was going. After Alta Brea Crescent, I didn't know either.
CHAPTER 16
Vivian Sternwoods room was still too white and too high and too big. And the drapes still spilled onto the floor as if the interior decorator had measured wrong. She was in white silk pajamas this evening and was drinking scotch. She might have drunk quite a lot of it from the hard bright look in her eyes. But her speech was clear. When I came in she was sprawled on some kind of white satin fainting couch, one white satin slipper hung from her foot, the other was on the floor.
'Well, Marlowe,' she said when the maid had shut the door behind me, 'the bargain basement Lancelot. How's the maiden rescuing going?'
I let that ride, there was nothing in it for me.
'Have a drink,' Vivian said. She made a fluttering hand gesture at a silver ice bucket and a bottle of scotch and some glasses and tongs. I mixed up a light one and squirted some seltzer in from the silver filigreed siphon. I made a slight here's-to-you gesture with the glass and took a swallow. It was better scotch than I was used to.
'Tired of drinking alone?' I said.
'Tired of not getting drunk,' she said. 'I've been trying for the last couple of hours.'
'Boys with the steel-toed shoes been tramping around on your rug?' I said.
She nodded and took a long drink. I could tell from the color that it was mostly scotch and very little soda. She nodded slowly.
'My God, Marlowe, that woman…'
'Yeah.'
'You saw her?'
'Yeah.'
'Carmen…' she said and let it trail off. She took a cigarette from a lacquer box beside her and put it in her mouth and leaned slightly toward me. I got up and put a match to it for her and shook the match out and dropped it in the silver ashtray beside the lacquer box.
'What about Carmen?' I said.
'The woman had her phone number.'
'Or yours,' I said.
'Marlowe, people do not walk around with my phone number written on the inside of matchbooks. It had to be Carmen.'
'Any ideas?' I said.
Vivian shook her head and drank again and took a deep lungful of smoke and let it drift out slowly. We were quiet. Vivian drank the rest of her drink and held the empty glass out toward me. I got up and took it and mixed her a fresh one.
'Lots of scotch, please,' she said. 'I need to get drunk awfully damned badly.'
I gave her the new drink and waited, nursing mine.
'You don't think…' She stopped and looked into her glass for a moment before she drank. Then she tried again.
'You don't think Carmen… could have…'
'Could have killed the woman?'
'Or helped someone.'
The room ached with silence as the question hung there between us.
