Raymond Chandler: Poodle Springs

Blackstone shook his head. "No, Muffy," he said. "You're too shaky now, you need to calm down for a while."

"You sit there and make up lies," she said. Her voice was still deep but her breath was coming short and she spoke in basso profundo gasps. "You want to… ruin my marriage." She was moving slowly across the room, her hands back in her pockets. Eddie stood in the doorway as if he were observing the Big Dipper. "You won't let anyone… have me. Never. You… ruin it."

"Muffy," Blackstone said. There was more sharpness in his voice.

She turned suddenly. Her hands came out of her pockets, the gun in her right. She clasped her left hand over the right and dropped into her shooter's stance and put two bullets into Blackstone's forehead. I was half turned in my seat when the side of her head spurted blood and the heavy thump of Garcia's big magnum sounded and Muriel spun halfway round and fell facedown on the floor.

I checked both of them in the resonant silence that followed the gunfire, smelling the cordite in the room. They were both dead. Garcia was still holding his gun, standing by the door. "Half a.second," he said. "I was half a second late."

I nodded.

"Ten years ago," Garcia said softly. "Ten years ago I could have saved him."

"Cops will pour it on you, Eddie, if they make you for this," I said.

"They won't find me, Marlowe."

"Still pretty fair shooting," I said. "She had the jump."

"Half second," Garcia said again, "half second slow." Then he opened the door and closed it and was gone.

I went slowly to Blackstone's desk and picked up the phone and dialed a number I knew a lot better than I wanted to.

The cops turned me loose in the middle of the afternoon. They didn't want to, but there was nothing to hold me for, except being a lousy detective, and they had their own problems with that. As I drove down the coast highway toward Venice I tried to sort out how bad a detective I'd been. By the time I reached Santa Monica I had decided I couldn't sort it out and might as well think I'd been a good detective for all the difference it made.

I parked behind the restaurant where Angel worked and went and said, "Tell the boss there's an emergency, and come with me."

Her eyes widened, but she didn't ask questions. In five minutes we were in my Olds heading for Hollywood.

"There's no emergency," I said in the car. "I made that up to get you away."

"Have you found Larry?"

"Yeah, I have," I said. "I'm taking you to him."

"Oh my God," she said. "Is he all right?"

"Sure," I said. Though I wasn't sure Larry Victor would ever be all right.

We drove in silence then. The rain had tapered to a drizzle, just enough to engage the wipers.

"About being married to another woman," I said.

"I know that's not true," she said.

"Yeah, that's right," I said. "I was wrong about that."

By the time we pulled up in front of the motel where Larry was stashed the rain had stopped altogether.

The motel was one of those two-story affairs with each door painted a different color and a balcony running across the second floor. There were stairs at each end of the balcony. The office at the far end jutted out at right angles and was faced with some sort of artificial stone.

Angel and I went up the stairs to Victor's room. I knocked on the door.

"It's Marlowe," I said.

And in a moment I heard footsteps and then the door opened about three inches and Victor peeked out. I stepped aside and he saw Angel.

"Larry," she said. "Larry, it's me."

He closed the door, took the chain off and opened it again, and Angel seemed to elevate into his arms.

"Larry," she said. "Oh my God, Larry."

I leaned against the wall outside the door for a few minutes and smoked a cigarette and looked at the movement of the rain clouds as they began to break up. Then I went into the room. Angel and Larry were sitting on the bed holding hands. She was looking at him as if he were King of all the Persians.

I said, "Muriel Blackstone is dead. So is her father. Being who he was there's going to be a mess. How you handle it is your problem."

"How?" Victor said. "Who?"

"Doesn't matter," I said. "Wasn't you, and it wasn't me."

"That's the woman you said Larry was married to," Angel said.

"I was deceived by appearances," I said.

"Yeah, that's right," Victor said. "Appearances will deceive you sometimes."

"I don't know you're here," I said. "I don't know where you are."

I took the remaining four hundreds that Blackstone had given me out of my wallet and laid them on the cheap desk by the door.

"Don't call me up," I said. "Don't come see me."

I turned and went out the door. Victor followed me.

"Wait a minute," he said and came out on the balcony. "What if the cops come?"

"They will," I said. "If they can find you."

"But what should I do?"

"Stay away from me," I said. "And take care of that girl. If I ever hear you weren't good to her, I will track you down and stomp on your face."

"Hey, Marlowe, no need to talk like that. Hell, we've been through a lot together."

"Yeah," I said. "Remember what I told you."

I turned and went. Behind me I heard Victor say, "Marlowe? For chrissake, Marlowe."

I kept going.

I heard Angel say, "Good-bye, Mr. Marlowe. Thank you."

I waved without looking back. Then I was in my car and out on Wilcox Ave.

It was too late to go back to the office and too early to go back to my furnished apartment and count the walls. Maybe later. I'd set up a chess problem, have a couple of drinks, smoke my pipe. But not yet. If I started now the evening would be too long.

So I cruised slowly around Hollywood looking at the hustlers and pimps, the tourists and hookers, the people from Plainfield, New Jersey, looking for stars, the prom queens from Shakopee, Minnesota, veterans already of the casting couches. They were all there on the boulevard, frightened, eager, angry, desperate, just and unjust; mingling, hurrying, hanging around, trying to get ahead, get a stake, get a chance, a kind word; looking for money, for love, for a place to sleep, trying to score some dope, some booze, something to eat; most of them alone, almost all of them lonely.

I found a spot to park across the street and got out and went into the bar at the Roosevelt. I had a double vodka gimlet and sat at the end of the bar to drink.it. The after-office crowd was beginning to drift in. I looked at the bar light coming through the nearly straw-colored gimlet. It had been a long time since I'd sat in this bar and had a gimlet with Terry Lennox, a long time since I'd first met Linda Loring. Harlan Potter's daughter: gold and diamonds and silk, and perfume that cost more than my weekly wage. A long time, and I was still at the end of the bar when it was over, drinking alone.

Too bad, Marlowe. Too bad there wasn't any other way.

I drank the rest of my gimlet and got up and went out, and drove home.

My apartment had the musty, closed-up smell that they get when nothing human is in them all day. I left the hall door open and went and threw up a couple of windows in the living room to let the air blow through. The clouds were broken now and off to the west colored with the sun as it began to set. I left the windows and door open and went to the kitchen to make a drink. I put ice and soda in a glass with a shot of Scotch and carried it back to the living room. Linda was there. She had come in and closed the door. Beside her on the floor was a small overnight case. She wore a little pink suit and a silly pink hat the size of a throw rug and white gloves and shoes. Her overnight case was pink with white trim and had her initials on it. L.M.

"In town for long?" I said.