Poodle Springs

I nodded.

'For the markers?'

'Un huh.'

'I was trying to build a stake,' he said.

I didn't comment.

'You found out an awful lot awful fast.'

'I'm a curious guy,' I said. 'You trying to build a stake to get out of the Springs?'

'Yeah. The Springs, Muriel, her old man, all of it.'

'You married to Angel?'

'Yeah.'

'Before or after Muriel?'

'Before.'

'Cute,' I said. 'Let me guess, You met Muriel someplace, maybe shooting some pictures.'

'Yeah.'

'Sure,' I said. 'And she liked you and you saw the big burrito all of a sudden, after dancing all your life for dimes. Angel know you married her?'

'No, she thinks I go away on photography assignments.'

'So you were going to get your hand in Muriel's trust fund,' I said, 'and when you had enough you were going to scoot back to L.A. and disappear, with Angel.'

'Something like that,' he said.

'Except you couldn't get the dough.'

He shook his head. 'Not a score,' he said. 'Not a bundle.'

'So you tried to parlay it at the Agony Club, and found out that it's hard to beat the house.'

'I gamble a lot. I'm good. I think the game was rigged.'

'Sure,' I said. 'Otherwise you'd beat the house. I know you would. They don't play against suckers like you more than fifty, hundred times a day.'

'I win a lot.'

'As much as you lose?'

He didn't answer. He looked away from me at the food shoppers in the lot, busy, thinking about whether to get pot roast or lamb chops for dinner. Not thinking about a corpse in their office. Finally he spoke without looking back at me.

'So how come you didn't tell the cops?'

'What's in it for me?' I said.

'Ain't you a law-abiding citizen?'

'Within reason,' I said.

'So how come you didn't tell them? How come you came tearing out here from Hollywood ahead of the cops?'

'I'm a romantic,' I said.

'A what?'

'I saw you and Angel together the other night. You looked happy.'

He stared at me.

'You are a piece of work, Marlowe,' he said.

'Reasonably priced, too,' I said.

17

The sun had moved west toward the beach and slanted in lower so that the shadows in the parking lot were long and rakish. The shopping crowd had thinned as housewives went home to start dinner and get it on the table before hubby got his third Manhattan in. The first trickle of the commuter flood was beginning to slow down on Sepulveda, heading north toward West L.A. and the Valley. Victor was browsing through my cigarettes like a goat through clover. I took the pipe out of my coat pocket and packed it and got it going right and leaned back in my seat against the door.

'I didn't kill her,' Victor said.

'Say you didn't, for the moment. Say you're a shifty bastard and a bigamist and a compulsive gambler and a pornographer and a gigolo, but say I don't see you for murder. Tell me how she ends up in your office sitting at your desk with a bullet hole in her forehead?'

'That's pretty rough, Marlowe.'

'Sure it is, but it's nowhere as rough as it's going to be when you're down in the hall of justice in the back room where the cops sit around with their feet on the railing.'

'If they find me,' he said.

'Find you? You poor simp, I found you in three days on a skipped IOU. You think the cops can't find you on suspicion of murder one? You think I was the only person to see you argue with that blonde in Reno's? What was her name?'

'I don't know. Lola, Lola something. I hardly knew her.'

'What were you arguing about?'

'She was drunk.'

'What were you arguing about?'

'I used to date her,' Victor said.

'Un huh, but you don't know her last name.'

He shrugged. 'You know how it is, Marlowe.'

'No,' I said. 'I don't.'

'You meet a lot of jillies, you sleep with them, they get to thinking it's more serious than you do.'

'But not serious enough to tell you their last name,' I said.

'Well, I suppose she said, but, hey, I can't remember every name, huh?' He was making a comeback, the fear was shifting back a little, into the shade. I was going to help him, oh, boy.

'Remember this one, pal, or I'll drive you straight downtown.'

'Jesus Christ,' he said again. The fear was back. 'Don't do that. I can remember, her name was, ah…'

He pretended to be thinking hard.

'Her name was Faithful, Lola Faithful. I think maybe she used to hoof it a little.'

'Lola Faithful,' I said.

'Yeah, probably a stage name, but that's how she was in the book when I used to be dating her. Honest to God.'

'And she was mad because you weren't dating her anymore.'

'Yeah,' Victor said, 'right. She was mad as hell, Marlowe.'

'How long you been married to Angel?'

'Three years and, ah, seven months.'

'Break up with Lola before that?'

'Sure, hell, what kind of guy you think I am?'

'I don't want to know.'

'Yeah,' Victor said, 'broke up with Lola long time before we got married, Soon as I started going with Angel I tossed her over.'

'Uh huh,' I said. 'So like four years ago you ditched Lola Faithful, and a few days ago she braces you in a bar and starts screaming about it?'

'She carries a torch, Marlowe, not my fault.'

I puffed a little on my pipe and squinted at him through the smoke. 'I've heard sailors tell better stories to Filipino barmaids,' I said.

'Well, if you don't believe me then why the hell are you sitting here with me?'