Роберт Паркер - Perchance to Dream

“Money,” she croaked. “I suppose you want money.”

“How much money?” I tried not to sneer.

“Fifteen thousand dollars.”

I nodded. “That would be about right. That would be the established fee. That was what he had in his pockets when she shot him. That would be what Mr. Canino got for disposing of the body when you went to Eddie Mars for help. But that would be small change to what Eddie expects to collect one of these days, wouldn’t it?”

She was as silent as a stone woman.

“All right,” I went on heavily. “Will you take her away? Somewhere far off from here where they can handle her type, where they will keep guns and knives and fancy drinks away from her? Hell, she might even get herself cured, you know. It’s been done.”

She got up slowly and walked to the windows. The drapes lay in heavy ivory folds beside her feet. She stood among the folds and looked out toward the quiet darkish foothills. She stood motionless, almost blending into the drapes. Her hands hung loose at her sides. Utterly motionless hands. She turned and came back along the room and walked past me blindly. She was behind me when she caught her breath sharply and spoke.

“He’s in the sump,” she said. “A horrible decayed thing. I did it. I did just what you said. I went to Eddie Mars. She came home and told me about it, just like a child. She’s not normal. I knew the police would get it all out of her. In a little while she would even brag about it. And if Dad knew, he would call them instantly and tell them the whole story. And sometime in that night he would die. It’s not his dying — it’s what he would be thinking just before he died. Rusty wasn’t a bad fellow. I didn’t love him. He was all right, I guess. He just didn’t mean anything to me, one way or another, alive or dead, compared with keeping it from Dad.”

“So you let her run around loose,” I said, “getting into other jams.”

“I was playing for time. Just for time. I played the wrong way, of course. I thought she might even forget it herself. I’ve heard they do forget what happens in those fits. Maybe she has forgotten it. I knew Eddie Mars would bleed me white, but I didn’t care. I had to have help and I could only get it from somebody like him. — There have been times when I hardly believed it all myself. And other times when I had to get drunk quickly — whatever time of day it was. Awfully damned quickly.”

“You’ll take her away,” I said. “And do that awfully damned quickly.”

She still had her back to me. She said softly now, “What about you?”

“Nothing about me. I’m leaving. I’ll give you three days. If you’re gone by then — okay. If you’re not, out it comes. And don’t think I don’t mean that.”

She turned suddenly. “I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know how to begin...”

“Yeah. Get her out of here and see that she’s watched every minute. Promise?”

“I promise...”

“Does Norris know?”

“He’ll never tell.”

“I thought he knew.”

I went quickly away from her down the room and out and down the tiled staircase to the front hall I didn’t see anybody when I left I found my hat alone this time. Outside, the bright gardens had a haunted look, as though small wild eyes were watching me from behind the bushes, as though the sunshine itself had something mysterious in its light. I got in my car and drove off down the hill What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn’t have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep...

The water looped out of the hose in a long lazy silver sluice as the Japanese gardener played it over the emerald lawn. The Sternwood house looked the same.

The general had died. Which was too bad. And Eddie Mars hadn’t died, which was also too bad. And Carmen had been put away. But Vivian was still there. And Norris the butler was still there. He had called me and asked me to come out.

The place was full of remembrance. The same low solid foothills rose behind the house. The same terraced lawn dropped the long easy drop down to the barely visible oil derricks where a few barrels a day still creaked out of the ground. The sun shone on the olive trees and vivified the birds that fluttered among the leaves. The birds sang as if the world were still young.

Which it wasn’t.

Norris answered my ring. He was tall and silver-haired, a vigorous sixty with the pink skin of a man whose circulation was good.

“Mr. Marlowe,” he said. “Good of you to come.”

The hallway was the same as it had been the first time I saw it. The portrait of the hot-eyed ancestor over the mantel. The knight and the lady forever still in the stained-glass window. The knight always trying to untie her. The lady always captive. The lady was still naked. The hair still conveniently long. It had been a while since I had first stood here and Carmen Sternwood had told me I was tall and pitched into my arms. Only yesterday.

She was twenty or so, small and delicately put together, but she looked durable. She wore pale blue slacks and they looked well on her. She walked as if she were floating. Her hair was a fine tawny wave cut much shorter than the current fashion of pageboy tresses curled in at the bottom. Her eyes were slate gray, and had almost no expression when they looked at me. She came over near me and smiled with her mouth and she had little sharp predatory teeth, as white as fresh orange pith and as shiny as porcelain. They glistened between her thin too taut lips. Her face lacked color and didn’t look too healthy.

“Tall, aren’t you?” she said.

“I didn’t mean to be.”

Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

“Handsome too,” she said. “And I bet you know it.”

I grunted.

“What’s your name?”

“Reilly,” I said. “Doghouse Reilly.”

“That’s a funny name.” She bit her lip and turned her head a little and looked at me along her eyes. Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theater curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.

“Are you a prizefighter?” she asked, when I didn’t.

“Not exactly. I’m a sleuth.”

“A... a—” She tossed her head angrily, and the rich color of it glistened in the rather dim light of the big hall. “You’re making fun of me.”

“Uh-uh.”

“What?”

“Get on with you,” I said. “You heard me.”

“You didn’t say anything. You’re just a big tease.” She put a thumb up and bit it. It was a curiously shaped thumb, thin and narrow like an extra finger, with no curve in the first joint. She bit it and sucked it slowly, turning it around in her mouth like a baby with a comforter.