She looked blank. She also looked pained and bored and tighter than a Methodist deacon.
'Who?'
'Dr. Claude Bonsentir,' I said. 'I was hoping to find him here.'
'Never heard of him,' she said.
She was chewing gum and her jaws moved slowly and with iron regularity on it. Occasionally she would open her mouth to stretch some of the gum into a thin grayish membrane with her tongue. Then her lips would close and the gum would disappear.
'This is Rancho Springs Development Corporation?' I said.
'Ann huh.' She was busy with the gum.
'What exactly is it you develop?'
She tucked the gum away into some corner of her mouth and looked at me as if I had wriggled up from the kitchen drain.
'Listen, Jack,' she said, 'they hire me to sit here and answer the phone and take messages and if they want something typed I type it. You want to leave a message?'
'Who're 'they'?'
'Guys that run this place. Vinnie and Chuck.'
'Vinnie and Chuck who?' I said.
She shook her head.
'You wanna leave a message?' she said.
'When you see Vinnie and Chuck,' I said.
She got out a little note pad and a pencil.
'Yeah?' she said.
'Give them a big kiss for me,' I said, and turned and went back out and down the stairs and over the cat and into the main street. The main street was maybe 100 yards long and didn't need to be, it only supported about six buildings. Between the buildings were vacant lots, mostly sand and a few weeds and here and there tumbleweed resting still in the windless heat.
I strolled down toward a gray, weathered clapboard building where a sign out front read rancho springs gazette and chronicle. It was a single-storied storefront with a wide front window and a screen door. Inside was a counter running across the room. Behind it was a printing press and two desks.
A big woman in a man's white shirt and gabardine slacks smiled easily at me when I came in. She wore her white hair short, and her face had the dark-tanned look of a desert person who spends a lot of time outdoors. She seemed in excellent health and fine spirits.
'Hello, stranger,' she said. 'Come to place an ad? Report something interesting? Either case this is the spot for it.'
'Information,' I said.
'Got that too,' she said. 'Name's Pauline Snow. Only thing in this godforsaken wasteland ain't hot is my name.'
'Marlowe,' I said. Guile hadn't done anything for me. I decided to try truth. 'I'm a private detective from Los Angeles working on a case, and the name of the Rancho Springs Development Corporation has popped up in it.'
Pauline Snow said 'Humph,' with a lot of feeling.
'I've been to the office and talked with the young woman who works there. I would have done better to talk with the cat, which doesn't chew gum.'
'Rita,' Pauline Snow said with as much feeling as she'd said humph.
'Yes,' I said, 'that's what I thought.'
'Rancho Springs Development Corporation is a fancy name for a back-shanty operation in which two bozos come in and start buying up any land they can get,' she said. 'You got a cigarette?'
I got the pack out and gave it to her, she shook one loose, put it in her mouth, gave me back the pack. I held a match for her. She took a long inhale and let the smoke out in two streams through her nostrils. She looked me over.
'Private eye, is it?'
I nodded modestly.
'Well, you got the build for it, I'll give you that.'
'Why are they buying up land?' I said. 'Is there something about Rancho Springs Fm missing?'
'Only thirty miles,' she said, 'east of Pasadena.'
'Perfect for fans of the Rose Parade,' I said. 'Anything else?'
'I don't know, Marlowe. It doesn't make any sense at all. This is hardscrabble dry land. No farming, no industry, damned little of anything. A few people still prospect out here, and a few damn fools like me and my husband come out here thinking about clean air and freedom. Then the son of a bitch up and died on me and left me to run this paper myself for the last seven years.'
'Thoughtless,' I said. 'Maybe Vinnie and Chuck know something we don't.'
