Raymond Chandler: Poodle Springs

"You covered for some guy you barely know because he's got a nice wife."

"They looked happy, Bernie. You don't see too much of that. And I figured if you got him you'd like him for it so much he'd be in Q before the public defender got his briefcase open."

"I don't railroad people, Marlowe."

"Sure you don't, Bernie, and you don't turn down a likely suspect either. This guy had argued with the victim earlier, he's got to have a shaky record. He's got the gumption of a popsicle…" I turned my palms up and spread my hands.

"Bartender says the beef with Lola started when she showed him a picture. You know anything about that?"

"Larry had a file full of nude photos," I said. "I checked the files when I found his office."

"They're not there now," Ohls said. "Nude pictures of who?"

"Women, explicit, kind of stuff worth some money twenty-five years ago."

"Not much of a living in it now," Ohls said. "Unless you want it for blackmail."

I shrugged.

"Okay, Marlowe," Ohls said, "you can tell me everything, from the beginning real slow, lotta small words, so as not to confuse me. And once I've heard it all, and I'm satisfied that you're not being cute, then we'll have a stenographer in and we'll go through it all for her."

He put both feet up on his desk and leaned farther back in his chair, his hands laced across his solar plexus.

"Go," he said.

I told him pretty much everything, leaving out the fact that I had a picture of Sondra Lee in the trunk of my car. When I came to the part about Blackstone, Ohls whistled silently to himself. When I was finished he said, "And you still think Larry, Les, whatever the hell his name is, didn't do it?"

"I don't know, Bernie. I'm here. I've told you what I know. You and I both know how long this guy will be around if Clayton Blackstone finds out his daughter's married to a bigamist."

"A little work for fast Eddie," Ohls said.

"Damn little," I said.

"We could charge you with obstructing justice," Ohls said. "Interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty, aiding and abetting the escape of a felon, accessory after the fact of homicide, obtaining motor vehicle information dishonestly, impersonating a police officer and being stupider than three sheep."

"I got an overdue library book, too," I said. "May as well make a clean breast of it."

"Get out of here," Ohls said.

"What about the stenographer?" I said.

"The hell with the stenographer," Ohls said. "If you so much as walk on a posted lawn, Marlowe…" He waved his hand, dismissing me with the back of it. The way a man shoos away a gnat.

I got up and went.

Movement is sometimes an adequate substitute for action. I had nothing else to do, and no one else to see, so I drove out to West L.A. looking for Sondra Lee. The blonde receptionist with the long thighs was there again. She told me that Sondra Lee was expected in the next half hour, and I sat on one of the silver tweed couches with no arms that curved along the left wall of the office. On the walls, in silver frames, were fashion shots of their clients, black and white theatrically lit, with the archness that only fashion photographers can capture. Sondra was one of them, in profile, gazing into some ethereal beyond, wearing an enormous black and white hat. Which was much more than she was wearing in the picture I had rolled up in my pocket. Time edged past like a clumsy inchworm. A tall, thin, overdressed woman came in and picked up some messages from the receptionist and went back out. Another woman, raven hair, pale skin, carmine lipstick, came in and spoke to the receptionist and passed on into one of the inner offices. I looked around, spotted an ashtray on a silver pedestal, dragged it close to me, got out a cigarette and lit it. I dropped the empty match into the ashtray and took in some smoke. There was a big clock shaped like a banjo on the wall back of the receptionist. It ticked so softly it took me a while to hear it. Occasionally the phone made a soft murmur and the receptionist said brightly, "Triton Agency, good afternoon." While I was there she said it maybe 40 times, without variation. My cigarette was down to the stub. I put it out in the ashtray and arched my back, and while I was arching it in came Sondra Lee. She was wearing a little yellow dress and a big yellow hat. She didn't recognize me, even when I stood up and said, "Miss Lee."

She turned her head with that impersonal friendly look that people get who are used to being recognized.

"Marlowe," I said. "We had a talk at your home the other day about Les Valentine, among other things."

The smile stayed just as impersonal, but it got less friendly.

"And?" she said.

"And we had such fun that I wanted to talk a little longer."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Marlowe, I'm afraid I can't. I have a shoot this afternoon."

I walked across to her, and as I went I took the naked picture of her from my inside pocket and unrolled it. I held it so that she could see and the receptionist couldn't.

"Just a few moments," I said. "I thought you might be able to help me with this picture."

She looked at it, and her faced showed nothing.

"Oh, all right," she said. "We can talk in here."

She led me into a small dressing room with a big mirror ringed with lights. There was a make-up table full of jars and tubes and powders and brushes, a tool in front of it, a daybed against the wall to the right of the door, and a tall director's chair. On the back of the black canvas was written Sandra in white script. She sat in the chair, her long legs carelessly stretched in front of her.

"So you are just another little nasty blackmailer," she said evenly.

"I'm not so little," I said.

"For your information, you roach, I'll give you exactly nothing for those pictures. That's what they're worth. Send them to the magazines, post them in the bus terminal, I don't care. It's thirty years past the time when pictures like that could hurt me."

"So they weren't much good to Larry Victor," I said.

"No more than they are to you, cheapie," she said. She took out a pastel filtered cigarette and put it in her mouth and lit it with a transparent lighter that showed you how much fluid was left.

"But he tried," I said.

"Sure he tried, don't all the scum balls try?"

"And you told him to breeze," I said.

"Tommy did," she said.

"And maybe you put a little something behind it," I said.

Sondra shrugged. "You're lucky Tommy's not here now," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "I barely escaped with my life last time."

Her face said she didn't remember too much about last time.

"I was at your house," I said, "asking you about a photographer named Les Valentine."

"I was on a toot," she said.

"Yeah. You suggested, as I recall, that I might want to toot along with you."

If she remembered she didn't show it. There was no sign of embarrassment.

"Tommy hates that," she said. She didn't sound like she cared if Tommy hated that or not. "So what do you want, Marlowe? Or are you one of those guys gets his rocks off talking to a woman while you look at her nude picture?"

"That's one of my favorites," I said. "But this time I'm trying to get a handle on Larry Victor."

She cocked her head and looked at me for a moment.

"Larry? How come?"

"Case I'm working on," I said.

"You're not trying to shake me down?"

"I wouldn't dare," I said. "What can you tell me about Larry?"

"A full-fledged creepster," Sondra said. "Took third-rate pictures and couldn't make a living except doing nudes for skin magazines and adult bookstores. He shot a lot of us when we were new, trying to make a living, trying to get noticed. He had a nice line, scored a lot of the models. God knows why-he wore a toupee and his hands sweated all the time. But…" She shrugged. "Takes all kinds."