I started towards the exit of the dressing room. “Don’t kid yourself the date can’t be fixed,” I said over my shoulder. “Steelgrave won’t.”
“You’re just building a sand castle, Marlowe.”
“Really?” I looked back at her, not grinning. “You really think that? Oh no you don’t. You went there. The man was murdered. You had a gun. He was a known crook. And I found something the police would love to have me hide from them. Because it must be as full of motive as the ocean is full of salt. As long as the cops don’t find it I have a license. And as long as somebody else doesn’t find it I don’t have an ice pick in the back of my neck. Would you say I was in an overpaid profession?”
She just sat there and looked at me, one hand on her kneecap, squeezing it. The other moving restlessly, finger by finger, on the arm of the chair.
All I had to do was turn the knob and go on out. I don’t know why it had to be so hard to do.
20
There was the usual coming and going in the corridor outside my office and when I opened the door and walked into the musty silence of the little waiting room there was the usual feeling of having been dropped down a well dried up twenty years ago to which no one would come back ever. The smell of old dust hung in the air as flat and stale as a football interview.
I opened the inner door and inside there it was the same dead air, the same dust along the veneer, the same broken promise of a life of ease. I opened the windows and turned on the radio. It came up too loud and when I had it tuned down to normal the phone sounded as if it had been ringing for some time. I took my hat off it and lifted the receiver.
It was high time I heard from her again. Her cool compact voice said: “This time I really mean it.”
“Go on.”
“I lied before. I’m not lying now. I really have heard from Orrin.”
“Go on.”
“You’re not believing me. I can tell by your voice”
“You can’t tell anything by my voice. I’m a detective. Heard from him how?”
“By phone from Bay city.”
“Wait a minute.” I put the receiver down on the stained brown blotter and lit my pipe. No hurry. Lies are always patient. I took it up again.
“We’ve been through that routine,” I said. “You’re pretty forgetful for your age. I don’t think Dr. Zugsmith would like it.”
“Please don’t tease me. This is very serious. He got my letter. He went to the post office and asked for his mail. He knew where I’d be staying. And about when I’d be here. So he called up. He’s staying with a doctor he got know down there. Doing some kind of work for him. I told you he had two years medical.”
“Doctor have a name?”
“Yes. A funny name. Dr. Vincent Lagardie.”
“Just a minute. There’s somebody at the door.”
I laid the phone down very carefully. It might be brittle. It might be made of spun glass. I got a handkerchief out and wiped the palm of my hand, the one that had been holding it. I got up and went to the built-in wardrobe and looked at my face in the flawed mirror. It was me all right. I had a strained look. I’d been living too fast.
Dr. Vincent Lagardie, 965 Wyoming Street. Cattycorners from The Garland Home of Peace. Frame house on the corner. Quiet. Nice neighborhood. Friend of the extinct Clausen. Maybe. Not according to him. But still maybe.
I went back to the telephone and squeezed the jerks out of my voice. “How would you spell that?” I asked.
She spelled it—with ease and precision. “Nothing to do then, is there?” I said. “All jake to the angels—or whatever they say in Manhattan, Kansas.”
“Stop sneering at me. Orrin’s in a lot of trouble. Some—” her voice quivered a little and her breath came quickly, “some gangsters are after him.”
“Don’t be silly, Orfamay. They don’t have gangsters in Bay City. They’re all working in pictures. What’s Dr. Lagardie’s phone number?”
She gave it to me. It was right. I won’t say the pieces were beginning to fall into place, but at least they were getting to look like parts of the same puzzle. Which is all I ever get or ask.
“Please go down there and see him and help him. He’s afraid to leave the house. After all I did pay you.”
“I gave it back.”
“Well, I offered it to you again.”
“You more or less offered me other things that are more than I’d care to take.”
There was silence.
“All right,” I said. “All right. If I can stay free that long. I’m in a lot of trouble myself.”
“Why?”
“Telling lies and not telling the truth. It always catches up with me. I’m not as lucky as some people.”
“But I’m not lying, Philip. I’m not lying. I’m frantic.”
“Take a deep breath and get frantic so I can hear it.”
