'That's correct, Tino.'
Tino smiled widely. I went through the make-believe living room and out onto the patio by the pool. Linda was on a pale blue chaise, wearing a one-piece white bathing suit and a pale blue wide-brimmed hat that matched the chaise. On the low white table next to the chaise a tall narrow glass contained something with fruit in it. Linda looked up from her book.
'Darling, have you had a hard day talking with Mr. Lipshultz?'
I took off my coat and loosened my tie. I sat in the pale blue chair beside the chaise. Linda ran one fingernail along the crease of my pants.
'Did my big detective get all worn out working all day?'
Tino appeared at the patio door.
'May I bring you something, sir?'
I smiled gratefully.
'A gimlet,' I said. 'Make it a double.'
Tino nodded and disappeared.
'I talked to Lipshultz,' I said. 'I also talked to Mrs. Les Valentine.'
Linda raised her eyebrows. 'Muffy Blackstone?'
'Woman maybe forty-five,' I said. 'Looks like someone pasted the head of a schoolteacher on the body of a Varga girl.'
'That's Muffy. Though I'm not sure I like you noticing the body.'
'Just doing my job,' I said.
'She's Clayton Blackstone's daughter. He's a friend of Daddy's. Very wealthy. At forty she married for the first time, a nobody. The Springs was in an uproar.'
'What do you know about Les?'
'Very little. No money, no distinction. It is assumed he married her for her money. Clayton Blackstone is perhaps wealthier than Daddy.'
'Heavens,' I said.
'He seems quite a drab little man,' Linda said.
'Yeah,' I said. 'Probably has a run-down office someplace, over a garage.'
'Oh, darling,' Linda said. 'Don't be such a bastard.'
Tino appeared with a large square glass set on a squat stem. He took it carefully off the tray and set it down on a napkin by my elbow. He looked at Linda's glass, noticed it was nearly full and went silently away.
'What does Clayton Blackstone do?' I said.
'He is wealthy,' she said. 'That's what he does.'
'Like your daddy,' I said.
Linda smiled brightly. I sipped some of the gimlet. It was clean and cold and slid down through the desert parch like a fresh rain.
'Hard to make all that money,' I said, 'without getting your hands a little dirty.'
'Daddy never said that.'
'No, I'll bet he didn't.'
'Why do you say that? What are you doing talking to Muffy Blackstone?'
'Valentine.'
'Muffy Valentine.'
I drank another swallow of the gimlet. The pool glistened blue and still beside me.
'Her husband is into Lippy for a hundred g's.'
'Into?'
'Lippy took his marker. Mrs. Valentine had always bailed him out before. This time she won't. Says he's got to grow up, and settle this debt himself.'
'Well, good for her. I'm sure he's been a dreadful trial.'
'She seems a little trying herself,' I said.
'Yes, I suppose she is,' Linda said. A beautiful frown wrinkle appeared briefly between her eyebrows. I leaned over and kissed it. 'She was single all that time and devoted to Daddy, and all… She drinks a little too much, too.'
'Anyway. Guy Lippy works for is unhappy about getting stuck for a hundred g's, told Lippy he had thirty days to get it back. Lippy can't find Les. Mrs. Valentine says he's off doing still work on a picture set. Lippy says if he doesn't get it back his boss will send a couple of hard boys out to see him. So Lippy hired me to find Les and talk him into giving Lippy his hundred thousand.'
'Well, if anyone can do it, I'm sure you can. Look how you've been able to talk me right out of my clothes,' Linda said.
'As I recall I don't get the chance to,' I said. I looked at the pool. 'Have you ever…?'
'In a pool?' Linda said. 'Darling, you are a beast. Besides, what about Tino?'
'I don't care if Tino's ever done anything in a pool,' I said.
We each drank a little bit of our drink. The desert evening was already cooling, and the desert sounds were starting to dwindle. I listened to it for a while, looking at the arch of Linda's foot. Linda listened too.
'Funny thing,' I said after a while, 'the big boss, guy was going to put the heat on Lippy. His name was Blackstone.'
'Clayton Blackstone?'
'I don't know. Probably a different Blackstone.'
'Oh, I'm sure,' Linda said.
Tino came in a little while with two more drinks on a tray. He took away the empty glasses and was gone as silently as he'd come. Except when he served you it was as if he didn't exist. High up a prairie hawk moved in slow circles, riding the wind's currents, its spread wings nearly motionless.
'Why would you do this, darling? Work for this man Lipshultz?'
'It's my profession,' I said.
'Even though you don't need the money?'
I sighed. 'You don't need the money. I do. I don't have any put aside.'
'But a man like Lipshultz?'
'In my business you don't get all well-bred upper-class people who have good manners and live in safe neighborhoods,' I said. 'In my kind of work Lipshultz is well above average.'
'Then why not get into another business?' Linda said.
'I like my work,' I said.
'I'm sure Daddy would…'
I cut her off. 'Sure he could, and I could get a grey flannel suit and be the boss's son-in-law, except I'm kind of old to be the boss's son-in-law.'
Linda looked away.
'Look,' I said, 'Mrs. Marlowe. I'm just a lug. There are things I can do. I can shoot, I can keep my word, I can walk into dark narrow places. So I do them. I find work that fits what I do, and who I am. Manny Lipshultz is in trouble, he can pay, he's not hiring me to do something illegal, or even immoral. He's in trouble and he needs help and that's what I do and he's got money and I need some. Would you be happier if I took Mrs. Valentine's money to help her husband welch on his debt?'
'I'd rather we stopped talking about this and went in and had dinner and then retired to our room and…' She shrugged her shoulders in a way that didn't mean
'You're very demanding, Mrs. Marlowe.'
'Yes,' she said, 'I am.'
We went in and left the glasses where they were. What the hell. Tino would pick them up. Didn't want the help getting bored.
8
