I shrugged. 'It's all I've got, Bernie.'
Ohls tapped the hat against his thigh softly, took the cigar out of his mouth with his other hand, dislodged a bit of tobacco from under his upper lip with his tongue and spit the tobacco delicately toward the corner.
'You discover two homicides in a week,' Ohls said. 'That could be a coincidence. But in thirty-two years of police work I've never seen a coincidence like that.'
There didn't seem much worth saying to that. I let it pass.
'Coincidences don't do anything for us, Marlowe. They don't take us anywhere. Believing in coincidences is believing in dead ends. Cops hate dead ends, Marlowe.'
'I know,' I said. 'I worry about that. Some nights I can't sleep.'
'Not only do you find two stiffs in a week, but you do so in the course of looking for a deadbeat named Les Valentine, who, it turns out, is Clayton Blackstone's son-in-law.'
'And Clayton Blackstone worries you?'
'Yeah, I stay up nights too,' Ohls said. He walked over to one of the scarred maple desks and put his cigar out in a half-empty paper cup of coffee. He turned back toward me.
'You got no client, Marlowe. You got nobody to protect. Unless you're protecting yourself.'
'There's nothing more I can tell you, Bernie,' I said.
'Maybe you shoulda let Crump have him, Lieutenant,' Fox said.
'Crump is a thug with a badge,' Ohls said. 'I don't like him.'
We were all quiet then. The pink-haired stenographer was poised and ready to record more. Except there wasn't any more.
Ohls sighed. 'Okay, Marlowe,' he said. He turned to Sgt. Whitestone. 'Use your jail?'
'Sure,' Whitestone said.
'Book him,' Ohls said. 'Stick him in a cell. Maybe a connection will occur to him.'
'What charge, Lieutenant?'
'Your choice,' Ohls said. 'You'll think of something.'
Then he put on his hat and walked out of the room.
27
It was quiet in the Poodle Springs hoosegow. There were a couple of other prisoners, but it was late and they were asleep. The only noise was the sound of sleeping men, an occasional snore, a mutter, once a brief sob.
I lay on the bunk in the dark. Outside the late night life of the Springs went on. People had midnight snacks and made love and watched movies on TV and slept quietly with the dog at the foot of the bed and the refrigerator humming quietly in the kitchen. The jail was attached to the police station and I could hear the patrol cars come and go: the sound of their radios, indistinct in the night, the crunch of tires on gravel, once the siren as a car pulled out in a hurry. But mostly there was nothing to hear, and nothing to do.
I wondered if Lippy would have been killed if I'd told the cops all I knew. If I'd told them even as much as I'd told Blackstone. Guys like Lippy were always walking on the railing, but dying's a long fall. Blackstone had no reason to kill Lippy, even if he found out that he was chasing Les for money. A word from the boss would have been enough. But Les had a reason, and he had a reason to kill Lola Faithful too, a blackmail reason having to do with a picture. Whoever killed Lola had also cleaned out Larry's files-I smiled to myself in the dark. When he was in Poodle Springs I called him Les, when he was in L.A. I called him Larry. No wonder I was confused-were they looking for the picture? Why would the killer take all the files? Because he was looking for something, or she was, and he didn't have time to look through them all. If Larry killed her he'd know what was in the files. He wouldn't have to take them. But he might because he'd know the cops would find them and maybe he didn't want them known, though there were pictures on sale at any newsstand as graphic as Larry's. Still, he might be embarrassed.
The turnkey strolled down the corridor outside the row of cells, his crepe-soled shoes squeaking. He paused in front of each cell and stared in for a moment before he moved on.
There hadn't been anyone in all those nude photos that I recognized except Sondra Lee. And I had her picture tucked under the floor mat in the trunk of my car. Suppose Larry had agreed to pay Lola blackmail and she came and brought the picture and he killed her and took it. He'd destroy the picture-but would Lola show up with the only print? Would she be that stupid? I didn't believe it. Blackmailers don't give up their leverage that easy. Even stupid blackmailers.
I thought about a cigarette. I didn't have any, or my pipe, or for that matter my shoelaces or my tie or my belt. I got up and walked in a tight circle around the cell a few times. It didn't make me sleepy. I lay back down on the bunk. There was no sheet, but there was a mattress and a blanket. I'd been in jails that had neither. Ah, Marlowe, you glamorous adventurer. Why the hell wasn't it Larry? Even if he did have a pretty, big-eyed little wife who adored him. Was she the legal one? Maybe I should check the bigamy laws when I got out. Hadn't had a lot of bigamy cases lately.
I did some deep breathing.
And where was the picture? Lola would have kept a copy. It wasn't in her house. If the cops had found it, it would have led them somewhere. They were as stuck as I was, stucker because they didn't know the things that I was stuck about. Could be in a safe-deposit box. Except where was the key? And whiskey-voiced old broads like Lola didn't usually keep safe-deposit boxes. Maybe she stashed the negative with a friend. Except whiskey-voiced old broads like Lola didn't usually trust friends with valuable property. The simplest answer was Larry again, and the simplest answer on Lippy was Les. And Les was Larry.
I did some more deep breathing.
Somewhere before morning I dozed off finally and dreamed that I was in love with a huge nude photograph of Linda, and every time I reached it Tweedledum and Tweedledee grabbed it away and ran off in perfect tandem.
28
At six A.M. they brought me some warm coffee and a stale roll. I sat on the bunk and ate. My head ached, my knee throbbed steadily. I touched the spot where Crump had hit me. It was puffy and sore. My stomach felt uneasy as I drank the coffee. I'd had maybe two hours' sleep.
At 10:30 A.M. a new turnkey came on down the corridor and stopped in front of my cell.
'Okay, Marlowe,' he said. 'You're sprung.'
I got up stiffly and limped after him as we went along the corridor and up three stairs and into the lobby of the cop house. Linda was there, and a guy in a white suit and a loud shirt.
The guy in the loud shirt said, 'Mr. Marlowe, Harry
Simpson. Sorry we took so long. I had to wait until court opened this morning to get a writ.'
He had a dark tan and shiny black loafers with a little gold chain across the tongue of each. His shirt was open halfway to the navel and his bare chest looked like a leather washboard. The hair on his chest was grey. He had a little thick moustache and his wiry hair was tinged with more grey. He wore a pinky ring. A Poodle Springs lawyer. In a little while he'd be calling me baby.
Linda stood behind him; she didn't speak. Her eyes rested on me so heavily I could almost feel the weight of her look. I got my stuff back, signed a receipt, and we went out the front door. No alarms sounded. Linda's Cadillac was parked in the
'Where's your car?' Linda said.
'Out back,' I said.
'I'll drive you home and send Tino back to get it,' Linda said. 'You look awful.'
