“Will you take me back to the hotel? I want to speak to Clark.”
“You in love with him?”
“I thought I was in love with you.”
“It was a cry in the night,” I said. “Let’s not try to make it more than it was. There’s more coffee out in the kitchen.”
“No, thanks. Not until breakfast. Haven’t you ever been in love? I mean enough to want to be with a woman every day, every month, every year?”
“Let’s go.”
“How can such a hard man be so gentle?” she asked wonderingly.
“If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.”
I held her coat for her and we went out to my car. On the way back to the hotel she didn’t speak at all. When we got there and I slid into the now familiar parking slot, I took the five folded traveler’s checks out of my pocket and held them out to her.
“Let’s hope it’s the last time we pass these back and forth,” I said. “They’re wearing out.”
She looked at them, but didn’t take them. “I thought they were your fee,” she said rather sharply.
“Don’t argue, Betty. You know very well that I couldn’t take money from you.”
“After last night?”
“After nothing. I just couldn’t take it. That’s all. I haven’t done anything for you. What are you going to do? Where are you going? You’re safe now.”
“I’ve no idea. I’ll think of something.”
“Are you in love with Brandon?”
“I might be.”
“He’s an ex-racketeer. He hired a gunman to scare Goble off. The gunman was ready to kill me. Could you really love a man like that?”
“A woman loves a man. Not what he is. And he may not have meant it.”
“Goodbye, Betty. I gave it what I had, but it wasn’t enough.”
She reached her hand out slowly and took the checks. “I think you’re crazy. I think you’re the craziest man I ever met.” She got out of the car and walked away quickly, as she always did.
26
I gave her time to clear the lobby and go up to her room, and then I went into the lobby myself and asked for Mr. Clark Brandon on a house phone. Javonen came by and gave me a hard look, but he didn’t say anything.
A man’s voice answered. It was his all right.
“Mr. Brandon, you don’t know me, although we shared an elevator the other morning. My name is Philip Marlowe. I’m a private detective from Los Angeles, and I’m a friend of Miss Mayfield. I’d like to talk to you a little, if you’ll give me the time.”
“I seem to have heard something about you, Marlowe. But I’m all set to go out. How about a drink around six this evening?”
“I’d like to get back to Los Angeles, Mr. Brandon. I won’t keep you long.”
“All right,” he said grudgingly. “Come on up.”
He opened the door, a big, tall, very muscular man in top condition, neither hard nor soft. He didn’t offer to shake hands. He stood aside, and I went in.
“You alone here, Mr. Brandon?”
“Sure. Why?”
“I wouldn’t want anyone else to hear what I have to say.”
“Well say it and get done.”
He sat in a chair and put his feet up on an ottoman. He flicked a gold lighter at a gold-tipped cigarette. Big deal.
“I first came down here on the instructions of a Los Angeles lawyer to follow Miss Mayfield and find out where she went, and then report back. I didn’t know why and the lawyer said he didn’t either, but that he was acting for a reputable firm of attorneys in Washington. Washington, D.C.”
“So you followed her. So what?”
“So she made contact with Larry Mitchell, or he with her, and he had a hook of some sort into her.”
“Into a lot of women from time to time,” Brandon said coldly. “He specialized in it.”
“He doesn’t any more, does he?”
He stared at me with cool blank eyes. “What’s that mean?”
“He doesn’t do anything any more. He doesn’t exist any more.”
“I heard he left the hotel and went off in his car. What’s it to do with me?”
