Raymond Chandler: Poodle Springs

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end and then the voice said, "What's the number on the violation?"

I read her the ticket number and said, "Hubba hubba, Sis. I don't have all day."

The line was silent for a few minutes and then she was back on, very distant. "The violation occurred in front of 1254 Western Avenue," she said. "And I must say I don't appreciate your manner."

I said, "Whyn't you go kiss a walrus, Sis," and hung up.

1254 Western Avenue was on the west side of the block between Hollywood and Sunset boulevards, next to a taco stand. It was a three-story building of the kind they built out there right after the war, before they knew that Hollywood would turn into a sleaze bucket and they thought they were at the avant edge of modern architecture. It was square and full of glass that needed to be washed. The facing was some kind of brushed aluminum in big squares, so that the place looked like an ugly bread box fallen on hard times. On the first floor, behind a plate-glass window, was an office that sold real estate and insurance. An old guy who looked like he might be brother to the lady at the parking clerk's office was sitting in his shirtsleeves bent over an old-fashioned ledger. A redhead who would look like the parking clerk's sister in maybe ten years was sitting at her desk doing her nails.

The entry hall was to the left of the real estate office and a stairway led up along the left wall. There was no elevator. On the wall beside the door to the real estate office was a directory, one of those black felt numbers with slots where white letters were inserted. The glass that covered it was flyspecked and stained with years of smog. There was no Les Valentine listed. Of the ten tenants on three floors, there was one photographer.

Larry Victor , it said, Photoportraits . Same initials, I thought. Why not?

I went up two flights. The building smelled as if cats lived in the stairwells. Larry Victor was on the third floor, at the back. There was some light showing through the pebbled glass on his door. It had the white look of daylight, as if there were a window opposite, or a skylight. The lettering said Larry Victor, Photographer, Advertising, Industrial. Portraits a Specialty . I knocked; no answer. I tried the knob; locked. I didn't have my collection of passkeys, but I did carry in my inside pocket a tool I'd taken from a safe and loft guy once. It looked something like one of those dental tools that technicians use to scrape your teeth. Only the needle nose was longer. I edged the nose inside the jamb overlap and turned it so that it put pressure on the lock tongue. It was a spring type and popped right back. I was in. I closed the door behind me and looked around.

The place looked like the kind of office I'd spent half my life in. An old rolltop desk, a wobbly swivel chair with a worn pillow on the seat, an oak filing cabinet, and against one wall a big sheet of white paper taped up, and a couple of still cameras on tripods and some photographer's lamps grouped in front of it. I looked at the cameras. There was a Rolleiflex on one tripod and a Canon 35 mm on the other. The daylight poured in through a dirty skylight webbed with chicken wire. There was a phone on the desk and an onyx pen and pencil set.

I went around and sat in the swivel chair. It didn't have to be this building, of course. The car could have been parked here and Valentine could have gone up to Hollywood Boulevard looking for movie stars. Or down to Sunset looking for excitement. Or he could have caught a cab to Bakersfield where he had about as much chance for either.

Still, the car was tagged outside this building and here was a photographer with the same initials. I inventoried the desk. On top was a picture of a pretty black-haired woman, maybe 25, with big dark eyes. The cubbyholes were stuffed mostly with bills, a lot of them unpaid, including three more traffic tickets. The middle drawer had a Greater L.A. street map, the lower left drawer held L.A. phone directories, the lower right drawer had a bottle of cheap Scotch with maybe five ounces gone. I got up and went across to the file cabinet. The top drawer contained a car insurance policy, an unopened bottle of the same Scotch, a package of paper cups and a big manila envelope with a small metal clasp at the top. I opened the envelope. In it was a collection of 8 X 10 glossy prints of naked women doing a variety of tricks, some of them quite old. The other two file drawers were empty.

I took the big envelope over to the desk and sat back down and began to look a little more carefully at what there was. What there was was porn, a lot of it, pretty good quality, some of it maybe shot in front of the very white paper backdrop that stood to my right. It had been quite some time since pictures of people copulating had stimulated my libido, and this stuff was no different. Even if it had been stimulating it was so much that overkill would have suffocated randiness in the simple mass of overindulgence that it represented.

In addition to being pretty well lit, and in good focus, the pictures were of generally attractive models. Actresses no doubt, come to Hollywood, soon to be stars, or maybe starlets, waiting for the right part. The men in the pictures were props for the women, obscure, generally faceless, no more noticeable than the lamp in the background, or the bare metal leg of the daybed on which the action took place.

I flipped through the pictures and stopped. There, looking younger, as naked as she had been only a few days earlier, was Sondra Lee, posing alone, suggestively, with the same empty-eyed smile. I slipped it out of the pack, rolled it the short way, put a rubber band around it and slipped it into my inside coat pocket. I riffled through the rest of the pictures without encountering anyone else I knew and got up and put the folder back into the file drawer. I went back and sat down in the swivel and put my feet up and thought about it a little. The coincidences were piling up, photographer, same initials, picture of Sondra Lee.

While I was thinking about these things, I heard a key scratch on the lock, then go into the keyhole. There was no place to hide. So I kept sitting, with my feet up. The key turned, the door opened and in came a guy who looked like a finalist in the Mr. Southern California pageant. He had longish blond hair, combed straight back. His face was tanned, he was slim, medium height, medium build. He wore a cream sport coat and white pants, and a black shirt with a big collar that spilled out over his lapels.

When he saw me, he stopped, pulled his head back an inch, raised his eyebrows and stared at me.

"Don't be confused," I said. "I am not you."

"I can see that, Chappy," he said, "but who the hell are you?"

"You first," I said.

"Me first? This is my office."

"Ah ha," I said. "You must be Larry Victor."

"Yes, I must," he said. "But I still don't know you. Or why you're sitting in my chair, or how you got in."

"Kind of like a nursery rhyme, isn't it?" I said.

Victor stood with the door still open, in case he needed to run.

"Are you going to tell me?" he said.

"Marlowe," I said. "I'm looking for a guy named Les Valentine."

"You a cop?"

"Nope," I said. "I met Valentine at a card game, I stayed pat with two pair. He had a flush. He took my marker for half a g and gave me this address."

"And the door?" Victor said. "I suppose it was open?"

"Yeah," I said, "as a matter of fact it was."

Victor nodded. "Mind if I sit at my desk, Marlowe?"

I stood, stepped aside, and he sat.

"I think I'll have a short one," Victor said. "Join me?"

"Sure," I said. He rummaged the cheap Scotch out of the drawer and poured some into a couple of paper cups. I had a swallow. It tasted like something you'd take for mange. Victor guzzled it down and poured another couple of inches into the paper cup. Then he leaned back in his swivel and tried to look easy. While he was looking easy he edged a glance at the file cabinet. Then he looked back at me.