Spink took his hand off the phone. He got up slowly and went out with the photograph. I waited. Outside on Sunset Boulevard traffic went by distantly, monotonously. The minutes dropped silently down a well. The smoke of Spink’s freshly lit cigar played in the air for a moment, then was sucked through the vent of the air-conditioning apparatus. I looked at the innumerable inscribed photos on the walls, all inscribed to Sherry Ballou with somebody’s eternal love. I figured they were back numbers if they were in Spink’s office.
18
After a while Spink came back and gestured to me. I followed him along the corridor through double doors into an anteroom with two secretaries. Past them towards more double doors of heavy black glass with silver peacocks etched into the panels. As we neared the doors they opened of themselves.
We went down three carpeted steps into an office that had everything in it but a swimming pool. It was two stories high, surrounded by a balcony loaded with book shelves. There was a concert grand Steinway in the corner and a lot of glass and bleached-wood furniture and a desk about the size of a badminton court and chairs and couches and tables and a man lying on one of the couches with his coat off and his shirt open over a Charvet scarf you could have found in the dark by listening to it purr. A white cloth was over his eyes and forehead and a lissome blond girl was wringing out another in a silver bowl of ice water at a table beside him.
The man was a big shapely guy with wavy dark hair and a strong brown face below the white cloth. An arm dropped to the carpet and a cigarette hung between fingers, wisping a tiny thread of smoke.
The blond girl changed the cloth deftly. The man on the couch groaned. Spink said: “This is the boy, Sherry. Name of Marlowe.”
The man on the couch groaned. “What does he want?”
Spink said: “Won’t spill.”
The man on the couch said: “What did you bring him in for then? I’m tired.”
Spink said: “Well you know how it is, Sherry. Sometimes you kind of got to.”
The man on the couch said: “What did you say his beautiful name was?”
Spink turned to me. “You can tell us what you want now. And make it snappy, Marlowe.”
I said nothing.
After a moment the man on the couch slowly raised the arm with the cigarette at the end of it. He got the cigarette wearily into his mouth and drew on it with the infinite languor of a decadent aristocrat moldering in a ruined chateau.
“I’m talking to you, pal,” Spink said harshly. The blonde changed the cloth again, looking at nobody. The silence hung in the room as acrid as the smoke of the cigarette. “Come on, lug. Snap it up.”
I got one of my Camels out and lit it and picked out a chair and sat down. I stretched my hand out and looked at it. The thumb twitched up and down slowly every few seconds.
Spink’s voice cut into this furiously: “Sherry don’t have all day, you.”
“What would he do with the rest of the day?” I heard myself asking. “Sit on a white satin couch and have his toenails gilded?”
The blonde turned suddenly and stared at me. Spink’s mouth fell open. He blinked. The man on the couch lifted a slow hand to the corner of the towel over his eyes. He removed enough so that one seal-brown eye looked at me. The towel fell softly back into place.
“You can’t talk like that in here,” Spink said in a tough voice.
I stood up. I said: “I forgot to bring my prayer book. This is the first time I knew God worked on commission.”
Nobody said anything for a minute. The blonde changed the towel again.
From under it the man on the couch said calmly: “Get the Jesus out of here, darlings. All but the new chum.”
Spink gave me a narrow glare of hate. The blonde left silently.
Spink said: “Why don’t I just toss him out on his can?” The tired voice under the towel said: “I’ve been wondering about that so long I’ve lost interest in the problem. Beat it.”
“Okay, boss,” Spink said. He withdrew reluctantly. He paused at the door, gave me one more silent snarl and disappeared.
The man on the couch listened to the door close and then said: “How much?”
“You don’t want to buy anything.”
He pushed the towel off his head, tossed it to one side and sat up slowly. He put his bench-made pebble-grain brogues on the carpet and passed a hand across his forehead. He looked tired but not dissipated. He fumbled another cigarette from somewhere, lit it and stared morosely through the smoke at the floor.
“Go on,” he said.
“I don’t know why you wasted all the build-up on me,” I said. “But I credit you with enough brains to know you couldn’t buy anything, and know it would stay bought.”
Ballou picked up the photo that Spink had put down near him on a long low table. He reached out a languid hand. “The piece that’s cut out would be the punch line no doubt,” he said.
I got the envelope out of my pocket and gave him the cut out corner, watched him fit the two pieces together.
“With a glass you can read the headline,” I said.
“There’s one on my desk. Please.”
