Raymond Chandler - Poodle Springs

Garcia looked at me with a faint smile. "Mr. Black-stone was here now you'd be dead," he said.

"He'd kill me?"

"He'd have me kill you," Eddie said.

"Yeah," I said. "I can feel my lips quivering."

"Where'd you get that photo?"

"Doesn't matter," I said. The rain was starting to come harder, the nickel-sized drops coming more and more closely together. "Does Blackstone know about her?"

Garcia was silent, thinking. I stood and waited while he thought.

Finally he said, "Yeah. He knows. Kid's been wrong since she was little. Booze, creeps, dope. When she was younger I spent a lot of my time straightening out her life."

"Like what?" I said.

"Like she's shacking up with some Hollywood heartthrob up at Zuma Beach and I go up and have a talk with him and he leaves her alone. Lake there was a magazine, nothing you ever heard of, the kind that puts out two issues and folds and opens up under another name. Anyway, they had a photo spread on her." Garcia grinned savagely. " Blueblood Nymphet it was going to be called. I went around and talked with the publisher. Like that."

"She met Victor when he took this photo," I said.

Garcia nodded. "Yeah. Blackstone took her to doctors, hell, we went over to Switzerland with her. Exhibitionism, they said. And a lot of other crap that don't mean anything to me. Didn't cure her, though, just talked a lot."

"You been with Blackstone a long time?" I said.

"Thirty-one years," Garcia said.

"That's more than just working for a man," I said.

"So where'd you get the picture, Sailor?" Garcia said. The rain was steady now, stippling the slick surface of the Waves.

"Lola Faithful had it and stashed it in Union Station. I found the receipt in her house."

"How come the cops didn't find it?" Garcia said.

"They weren't looking for it," I said. "I saw the argument in the bar. I knew there was a picture."

"Where'd she get it?"

"I don't know," I said. "She was dead when I met her."

"And she tried to blackmail Larry with it," Garcia said.

I nodded. The rain had soaked Garcia's dark hair and water ran down his face. Garcia didn't seem to notice.

"And he capped her," he said.

I shrugged. "Maybe," I said. "Or maybe she went to others."

"Muffy?" Garcia said.

"Or maybe she went all the way, to the source," I said.

"Mr. Blackstone," Garcia said.

"Which probably means you. You use a small-caliber gun, hot-loaded?"

The top two buttons of Garcia's raincoat were unbuttoned. He made a movement and a gun appeared. He turned and fired, and a seagull spun out of mid-swoop and plummeted into the ocean. Garcia turned back and the gun was laying in his open palm. It was a squat .44 Magnum, nickel-plated with a two-inch barrel. It would have made a hole the size of a baseball in Lola Faithful's head. Garcia moved again and the gun was back inside his coat.

"Not bad," I said, "with that short a barrel."

"Keep it in mind," Garcia said. "I was you, I'd find myself Les Valentine, bring him back to Muffy, take Mr. Blackstone's dough and move on."

The heavy warm rain was hammering down on us like a bad headache. I could feel the wetness where it had seeped in around my collar. The wind had come with it now, hard, and pushed at both of us.

"Mr. Blackstone finally got her married, you understand? The guy's a creep, okay. You know it, I know it, Mr. Blackstone, he knows it. But Muffy don't know it, or if she does, she don't care. And Mr. Blackstone don't care either. He's got her under cover, out in the Springs, off the streets, safe. Comprendez , Sailor? You screw that up and Mr. Blackstone going to be sending me looking for you."

"If he does, Chico, you know where I am," I said.

And we stared at each other for a time in the rain, with the wind shoving at us and no one else in sight, out at the far end of the city pier above the fat grey ocean, a very long way from Poodle Springs.

It was suppertime when I got back from terrifying Eddie Garcia. I took a long shower and put on dry clothes and made myself a stiff Scotch and soda and sat down and called Linda. Tino answered.

"Mr. Marlowe," he said. "I am sorry you are away. I hope you will be back soon."

I murmured something encouraging, and waited while he got Linda. When she came on her voice was as clear as moonlight.

"Darling," she said. "Are you sheltered and warm?"

"I wanted you to have this phone number," I said, and gave it to her. "It's a furnished apartment on Ivar. No houseboy, no pool, no piano bar. I don't know if I can survive."

"It is frightful, isn't it, how people choose to live,"

Linda said. "I hope at least you can get a civilized gimlet there."

"Sure," I said. "Anything you want, you can get in Hollywood, you know that."

"Are you lonely, darling?"

"Lonely, me? As soon as word got out that I was back in town there was a stampede of Paramount contract starlets up Western Ave."

We were both quiet for a moment on the telephone. The wires between us hummed faintly with tension.

"Darling, now don't be angry, but Daddy is opening a plant, something to do with ball bearings, in Long Beach and he suggested you might wish to consider a position there as, ah, director.of security."

"No," I said.

"We could live in La Jolla, we own some property there, and you could drive to work in the morning and be home every evening by six-thirty."

"Can't be that way, Linda."

"I know," she said. "I knew it when I said it, but darling, I miss you so much. I miss you all the time and especially at night. I hate to sleep alone, darling."

"I miss you too," I said, "except when the starlets are here."

"You bastard," she said. "Why are you a bastard, why must you be so hard, why can't you bend a little?"

"It's all I have," I said. "I don't have money. I don't have prospects. All I have is who I am. All I have is a few private rules I've laid down for myself."

"I hear that, but damn it, I don't know what it means.

All I know is that I love you, and I want you with me. Why is that so bad?"

"It isn't, it's good. But you want me to be different than I am. And if I change, I disappear. Because there isn't anything but what I am."

There was a long silence on the line and then Linda said softly, "Damn you, Marlowe, Goddamn you." She hung up softly and I held the receiver at my end for a moment and then put it gently back in the cradle.

I took a long pull at the Scotch and looked around the rented room at the rented furniture. It was as charming as Sears and Roebuck. I got up and walked to the window and looked out. It was dark. There was nothing to see but my own reflection in the black glass, streaked with rain: a 42-year-old man, drinking alone in a rented apartment in Hollywood while above the clouds the universe rolled slowly eastward over the dark plains of the republic.

I turned away from the window and headed for the kitchen to refill my glass.

It was still raining the next morning, the kind of steady rain under solid clouds that makes you think it will never stop. I shook the water off my trench coat and hung it in the corner of my office. I had coffee in a paper cup that I had bought downstairs and, after my coat was put away, I sat down at my desk to sip it. I was wearing my .38 in a shoulder holster. Eddie Garcia had been talking pretty tough and, besides, if it kept raining I might have to shoot my way on board an ark.

The coffee was too hot for more than a shallow sip, and after one I put it on the corner of my desk where I could reach it when it cooled. My outer door opened and closed. There was a brief clack of heels and then Muffy Blackstone came in out of the rain. She was wearing a scarlet raincoat and matching rain hat. Over her shoulder was a large black purse and her feet were protected by shiny black high-heeled boots. Her hands were plunged into the pockets of the coat. She took one of them out to close my inner door behind her, then she marched around in front of my desk and stared down at me.