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Raymond Chandler: Poodle Springs

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Raymond Chandler Poodle Springs

Poodle Springs: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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MARLOWE IS BACK – IN A CLASSIC THRILLER NO CHANDLER AFICIONADO WILL BE ABLE TO RESIST… When Raymond Chandler died in 1959, he left behind an unfinished Philip Marlowe novel. Now, thirty years later,has become a complete work, thanks to the inspired writing of Robert B Parker, the foremost contemporary exponent of the Chandler style. As the novel opens, Marlowe is married and bored. Naturally enough, he starts up a detective agency, and within hours he has alienated solid citizens, tangled with the cops and been hired by a local gangster to find a gambler who's skipped out on a debt. And this is only the beginning. Before Marlowe brings in his man, he discovers another side of- a dark and dangerous place, where desperation makes men and women lead secret lives – and, if that fails, the only alternative is murder…

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"Hard to make all that money," I said, "without getting your hands a little dirty."

"Daddy never said that."

"No, I'll bet he didn't."

"Why do you say that? What are you doing talking to Muffy Blackstone?"

"Valentine."

"Muffy Valentine."

I drank another swallow of the gimlet. The pool glistened blue and still beside me.

"Her husband is into Lippy for a hundred g's."

"Into?"

"Lippy took his marker. Mrs. Valentine had always bailed him out before. This time she won't. Says he's got to grow up, and settle this debt himself."

"Well, good for her. I'm sure he's been a dreadful trial."

"She seems a little trying herself," I said.

"Yes, I suppose she is," Linda said. A beautiful frown wrinkle appeared briefly between her eyebrows. I leaned over and kissed it. "She was single all that time and devoted to Daddy, and all… She drinks a little too much, too."

"Anyway. Guy Lippy works for is unhappy about getting stuck for a hundred g's, told Lippy he had thirty days to get it back. Lippy can't find Les. Mrs. Valentine says he's off doing still work on a picture set. Lippy says if he doesn't get it back his boss will send a couple of hard boys out to see him. So Lippy hired me to find Les and talk him into giving Lippy his hundred thousand."

"Well, if anyone can do it, I'm sure you can. Look how you've been able to talk me right out of my clothes," Linda said.

"As I recall I don't get the chance to," I said. I looked at the pool. "Have you ever…?"

"In a pool?" Linda said. "Darling, you are a beast. Besides, what about Tino?"

"I don't care if Tino's ever done anything in a pool," I said.

We each drank a little bit of our drink. The desert evening was already cooling, and the desert sounds were starting to dwindle. I listened to it for a while, looking at the arch of Linda's foot. Linda listened too.

"Funny thing," I said after a while, "the big boss, guy was going to put the heat on Lippy. His name was Blackstone."

"Clayton Blackstone?"

"I don't know. Probably a different Blackstone."

"Oh, I'm sure," Linda said.

Tino came in a little while with two more drinks on a tray. He took away the empty glasses and was gone as silently as he'd come. Except when he served you it was as if he didn't exist. High up a prairie hawk moved in slow circles, riding the wind's currents, its spread wings nearly motionless.

"Why would you do this, darling? Work for this man Lipshultz?"

"It's my profession," I said.

"Even though you don't need the money?"

I sighed. "You don't need the money. I do. I don't have any put aside."

"But a man like Lipshultz?"

"In my business you don't get all well-bred upper-class people who have good manners and live in safe neighborhoods," I said. "In my kind of work Lipshultz is well above average."

"Then why not get into another business?" Linda said.

"I like my work," I said.

"I'm sure Daddy would…"

I cut her off. "Sure he could, and I could get a grey flannel suit and be the boss's son-in-law, except I'm kind of old to be the boss's son-in-law."

Linda looked away.

"Look," I said, "Mrs. Marlowe. I'm just a lug. There are things I can do. I can shoot, I can keep my word, I can walk into dark narrow places. So I do them. I find work that fits what I do, and who I am. Manny Lipshultz is in trouble, he can pay, he's not hiring me to do something illegal, or even immoral. He's in trouble and he needs help and that's what I do and he's got money and I need some. Would you be happier if I took Mrs. Valentine's money to help her husband welch on his debt?"

"I'd rather we stopped talking about this and went in and had dinner and then retired to our room and…" She shrugged her shoulders in a way that didn't mean I don't know.

"You're very demanding, Mrs. Marlowe."

"Yes," she said, "I am."

We went in and left the glasses where they were. What the hell. Tino would pick them up. Didn't want the help getting bored.

8

There were 55 Valentines in the L.A. phone book. One was a Lester and one was a Leslie. Lester lived in Encino and was a Division Manager for Pacific Bell; Leslie had a place on Hope Street and was a retail florist. I called information. They hadn't any other Les Valentines listed.

I had no office in L.A. anymore. I had to make the calls from a phone booth on the corner of Cahuenga and Hollywood Boulevard across from the old office. I called a local modeling agency and the Chamber of Commerce in San Benedict. They were both civil to me, which is a high average in L.A.

It was January and cool in L.A. Across the valley, the highest peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains were snowcapped. In Hollywood people pretended it was winter and wore furs along the boulevard, and producers wore argyle sweaters under tweed jackets on their way to lunch at Musso and Frank's. I was clean-shaven, smelling of bay rum and back in town for the first time in a month. Fast, tough, and on a case.

I got in the Olds, went south a block to Sunset and then headed west.

The Triton Modeling Agency was in a courtyard off of Westwood Boulevard, just north of Olympic. The center of the courtyard was covered with white pebbles divided into squares with redwood planking. In each square a small palm tree grew in single file down the center of the yard. There were maybe ten commercial establishments in the complex, a rare-book shop, a store selling Mexican jewelry, a leather store, a lawyer. I walked along the low-canopied porch that fronted the entries until I came to Triton. I rang the little brass bell and opened the door. It was a plush, carpeted silver office. Walls and ceiling done in silver paint, the reception desk silver plastic, and behind the desk a blonde with long thighs and flawless nylons. She wore a scarlet dress of some loose knit material, and as I entered she was reapplying scarlet color to her lips. She kept carefully at it while I stood in front of her desk.

"Yippie I oh chi yea," I said.

She finished her last touch and closed her compact mirror and looked at me.

"Yes, Cowboy?"

"I'm easily excited," I said.

"How nice for you," she said.

"Married, too," I said.

"How nice for you," she said.

"Thanks. My name is Marlowe. I called about one of your models, Sondra Lee?"

"Ah, the detective." She looked me over the way a fish examines a worm. "Well, you've certainly got the shoulders for it," she said.

"Can you tell me how to get in touch with Miss Lee?" I said.

"Sure," the blonde said. "I called her. She said you can come see her at her place."

The blonde handed me a piece of paper with an address on it.

"It's off Beverly Glen," the blonde said. "Near the top."

I thanked her and turned to leave.

"If the marriage doesn't work…" she said.

I turned, gave her the gunman's salute with my thumb and forefinger, and left.

I picked up Beverly Glen off of Wilshire. North of Sunset it started to climb. The foliage pressed in close on it and the hills rose on either side waiting for the first heavy rain to wash the houses that rode their flanks down into the roadway. Sondra Lee's place would be one of the first to go. Its back end rested on two 15-foot lally columns that stood on concrete footings in the hillside. The driveway curved around the house and stopped to form a circle in front. There was no yard but the area in front of the house was full of flowering shrubs, and hummingbirds danced and spiraled over them as I pulled the car to a stop near the front door.

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