Raymond Chandler: Poodle Springs

"Funny thing," Victor said. "I know Les Valentine."

"Amazing," I said.

"Not so amazing, really. We're both in the same line. Both do a lot of movie still work, publicity stuff, that sort of thing. Do a lot of high-fashion stuff too."

I glanced around the office.

"Hey," he said, "don't waste money on fancy front stuff, you understand? You got the goods, you don't need all that floss and gloss stuff, you know, all that Hollywood flash."

"I can see that you're not wasting time on that," I said. I swished a little more of his Scotch around in my mouth. If I was going to drink it I might as well try to prevent cavities while I was at it. Victor didn't seem to be having any problem with it. He was already pouring out a third slug. Maybe he was tougher than he looked.

"So I know Les, like I was saying. Good photographer."

"Where is he now?" I said.

"I heard he was out of the country," Victor said.

I believed that like I believed I was drinking Chivas Regal.

"Some kind of work for the government. China, I think."

He leaned back and savored his drink, just a breezy guy, passing the time, having a drink with a guy who'd broken into his office. He was as authentic as a starlet's smile.

"Know a model named Sondra Lee?" I said.

"Sonny? Of course, any photographer would know Sonny. She's the top model on the coast."

"Ever photograph her?"

"Naw, never had the pleasure myself. I mean, I've been approached, but you know how it is, Marlowe. You got commitments, she's got commitments. We've never been able to get together."

"Even when she was younger?" I said. I had no idea where I was going. I just wanted to keep it going. Something might surface.

He shook his head. "When she was young, pal, I wasn't in the business. Sonny's no coed, you know."

I nodded, and eased another small sip of the Scotch into my mouth, sort of sneaking around on it from the side. It was still putrid.

"How about Manny Lipshultz?" I said.

If it hit him oddly he didn't show anything. He pursed his lips slightly and looked up at the corner of the room. Then he shook his head.

"Nope, no Manny Lipshultz," he said. "Swell name though, ain't it."

I agreed that it was swell. We were all swell. He and I were especially swell, just a couple of swell guys sitting around lying to each other on a pleasant afternoon.

I went out onto Western Avenue and sat in my car and waited. While I waited I tried to figure out what I thought I was doing. I knew I was getting ready to tail a guy who wasn't the man I was looking for, but he had a picture of Sondra Lee and an office in a building where the guy I was looking for had gotten a ticket. There was no reason to do it except the guy was all wrong. You walk into your office and find a guy there you don't sit down and drink with him. You call the buttons.

About twenty minutes after I started sitting and waiting, Victor came out of his office building and headed down Western on foot. I waited until he got to the corner, and when he turned right on Sunset I got out of the Olds and hot-footed it after him, slowing to a casual walk when I reached Sunset. I crossed to the south side of Sunset and headed west. Victor was across the street from me, maybe fifty yards ahead. He had a furtive quality to his walk, but it was probably instinctive. He didn't look around. Halfway down the next block he turned into a bar called Reno's. I let him settle in, then I sidled in myself and slid into a booth near the front. The waitress scowled at me, one guy in a booth for four.

"I'm part of the Southern Cal backfield," I said. "My teammates will be joining me soon."

"Everybody's funny as hell, out here," she said. "You want a drink?"

I ordered a gimlet, on the rocks, and sipped it slowly, letting it work against the taste of Victor's deadly Scotch. Victor was at the bar, on a stool, shoulders hunched over a shot of something which, judging from his Scotch, probably tasted like an old pipe cleaner.

Beside him was a blonde in a very short skirt, her legs crossed, sitting sideways on the bar stool, leaning toward Victor. She had on green eye shadow and very bright red lipstick, and her green and red tank top gaped a little at the back of her skirt as she leaned forward. The only other person at the bar was an aging redhead with a big chest confined by a white sequined sweater that was raveled at the sleeve. She was drinking Manhattans, and while I watched, the bartender brought her one and gestured toward Larry Victor. She took it, nodded her thanks at Victor and dipped into it.

Larry made a little salute back at her with two fingers touching his forehead and turned his attention to La Blondie.

La Blondie was demanding it. I couldn't hear her, but from the intensity of her movements and the speed with which her mouth moved it was clear that she was mad as hell. Victor kept shaking his head and muttering back at her.

The inside of Reno's was fake knotty pine, with a few longhorns mounted on the wall, and some old Frederic Remington prints framed here and there around the room. It was not very bright inside, and the brightness of the Southern California sun outside made it seem even dimmer. It was cool, and would probably have been quiet if the redhead at the end hadn't kept feeding the jukebox. A cool bar on a hot afternoon is a very comfortable place sometimes.

The blonde took something that looked like a photo from her purse and shoved it toward him. Victor took a pair of rimless glasses from the breast pocket of his shapeless sport coat and put them on to look at the picture. When he saw the picture he quickly put his hand over it, palm flat, and looked around the room, uncomfortably. Then he shoved the picture back at the blonde, took his glasses off and put them away. The blonde picked up the photograph and put it back in her purse. The whole exchange probably hadn't lasted more than twenty seconds, but it had been enough, when he had looked around the bar with his rimless glasses on, for me to realize what bothered me about him. Except for the hair, he looked like the picture I'd seen of Les Valentine. And hair can be arranged.

Victor stood up suddenly, slammed a ten on the bar and walked out of the bar like a man leaving his wife for good. The blonde sat staring after him. I got up and went after Victor, being careful not to step into the blonde's gaze. It would have punched holes in my rib cage.

He was halfway to the corner of Western when I came out of the bar. By the time he got his car from the curb near his office I was in my Olds with the motor idling. He went west on Sunset until he hit the freeway and south to Venice Boulevard. It was the middle of a bright afternoon and traffic was easy. I kept two or three cars between me and Victor, and shifted lanes from time to time. He wasn't expecting to be tailed, and he had other things on his mind. I could have followed him in a ferris wheel.

I followed him down to the beach. And when he pulled into the narrow parking slot behind a beachfront bungalow, I went on past and parked under an olive tree between two trash barrels under a sign that said Private Parking , This Means You. I walked back to the beach bungalow, past the backs of dank little clapboard houses, each with a car rammed up against its back wall, squeezed in off the street. Once, someone had planted olive trees along this road, and here and there where the salt wind hadn't killed them they grew stunted and misshapen, littering the ground with incomplete black olives that looked like human droppings. The harsh smell of their leaves mingled with the sea smell and the scent of cooking, and under it the rich evasive smell of decaying garbage from the overfilled trash cans that shared the tiny back space with the cars.

Behind Victor's house, at the little cement pad path that led around the house to the front door, was a mailbox. The lettering on it said Larry and Angel Victor . I went on, two houses down, and cut through another narrow cement pad path with weeds forcing up through the sand beneath the pads. In front of the houses was the beach walk and then the beach and then the fat Pacific Ocean waddling in onto the coastline.