Роберт Паркер - Perchance to Dream

“Whaddya need?” he said.

“You remember Carmen Sternwood?” I said.

“The General’s daughter,” Gregory said without emotion, “the nympho.”

“She was in a sanitarium,” I said, “being treated, and she disappeared.”

“Resthaven,” Gregory said. “The butler called us.”

“You looked into it?”

“I gave them a call,” Gregory said.

“And?”

“And they say the butler is misinformed and there’s no problem, and I ask to speak to her, and they say she’s not well enough to speak to anyone, and I suggest we send a nurse over from the county health association to take a look at her, and they say that will not be acceptable and they hang up.”

“Who’d you talk to?” I said.

“Guy in charge, Bonsentir.”

“And you left it?” I said. “Just like that?”

“I called the sister, what’s her name?”

“Vivian,” I said.

“Right. The frail that’s been toe dancing around town with Eddie Mars. I call her and she says nothing to worry about. That she is not looking for her sister and feels that the butler was out of line calling us.”

Gregory moved his hands from his stomach to lace them behind his head. He took in some smoke and blew it out easily around the pipestem in his mouth.

“And?” I said.

“And nothing. I got enough people that are actually missing to keep most of us pretty busy down here.”

I couldn’t see the sky outside Gregory’s window. All I could see was a part of the hall of justice. As I stared out at it, a cloud must have floated past the sun, because a shadow fell on the building and then, almost as soon as it fell, it disappeared, and the hall was in sunshine again. Gregory sat in heavy silence while I observed this phenomenon. He was in no hurry. He had forever. Something would turn up.

I got a cigarette out and got it going and blew a little smoke at the window.

“Something wrong here,” I said. “I know that most coppers aren’t looking for a bigger caseload. But most coppers don’t let some quack tell them to take the breeze either.”

“What’s your interest in this?” Gregory said.

“I’m looking for Carmen,” I said.

“Got a client?”

“Norris,” I said. “The butler.”

“I figured Vivian fired him.”

“I figure she can’t,” I said. “I figure the General left things that way.”

“In the will,” Gregory said.

“Sure.”

Gregory nodded. He took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at the bowl and nodded again and put the pipe back in his mouth.

“Lot of different people are cops,” Gregory said. “Some of them are better, some worse.” He puffed some more smoke. “A lot of them are worse. But mostly, better or worse, when they do things that you don’t expect them to do it’s coming from above.”

“Bonsentir’s connected,” I said.

Gregory shrugged. He took the pipe out of his mouth again, leaned forward slowly, and spat carefully into his wastebasket. Then he sat back slowly and just as carefully put the pipe back in his mouth.

“Bonsentir is a dead issue, Marlowe. He’s fenced off, wrapped up. You can’t get close enough to see him clearly.”

“And if Carmen Sternwood is missing?” I said.

Gregory shrugged a slow shrug.

“Or in trouble?” I said.

“Marlowe, you’re a big boy. I try to help because last time we did business you played it pretty straight for a peeper, and Ohls in the sheriff’s department says you’re jake. But don’t sit in my office and talk fairy tales we’re both too old to believe in. If I tell you Claude Bonsentir has got juice, you can believe it. I’m not going to say this again, and outside this office I’ll deny I said it. But you go up against Bonsentir you’re a dead man, and I can’t help you and Ohls can’t help you.”

I stood up.

“Nice talking to you, Captain,” I said. “If Bonsentir calls, tell him I’m home filing the front sight on my machine gun.”

Gregory didn’t speak. He sat perfectly still, with a narrow blue ribbon of smoke wavering up from his pipe. I turned and went out and closed the door gently.

I still had my office that year in the Cahuenga Building. I was in it with the windows open and the hot Santa Ana wind pushing the grit around on my desk top. I had the office bottle of rye out and was having myself a midday bracer while I let my feet dangle. I was pretty sure Carmen was missing from Bonsentir’s sanitarium. And I was very sure that everyone I talked with knew it, and didn’t want me to find her. What I couldn’t figure was why. Bonsentir might want to cover up some incompetence and I figured a guy like Bonsentir had a lot of things under the covers up there that he might not want the cops to start looking into. But why would Vivian cover it up? And what kind of clout did Bonsentir have that a good cop like Gregory would walk away from it and tell me to do the same? It was one thing to buy off the local health inspector. Or the local precinct captain, for that matter, but when a downtown cop like Gregory said it was locked up, that meant real juice and a lot of it way up the line.

It meant that people whom Gregory would call “Sir” were on the payroll, and how much would that cost? How could Bonsentir have that kind of money? It made me tired to think about it, so I bought myself a second drink. Maybe it wasn’t money. A guy like Bonsentir would know where there were bodies buried. That was how he flourished. I knew doctors like Bonsentir with the smooth faces and the radio voices. They had big sanitariums off somewhere, out of sight, where wealthy people could store their embarrassments: the dipsomaniac nephew, the nymphomaniac sister, the aging mother who liked to show her underwear, the eccentric brother-in-law who kept stealing things from Woolworth’s. The wives of movie stars went to sanitariums like Resthaven, the sons of politicians went there. They were quiet.

Dr. Bonsentir had needles and pills and he used them. No one complained at Resthaven. Everyone smiled their gooney smiles and wandered about like sleepwalkers, and if they dreamed, who knew it, and who cared what they dreamed? Ah yes, good Doctor Bonsentir, I know you well.

I knew Dr. Bonsentir so well that I thought it best to toast him, so I poured out a last small splash of rye into the water glass I was using and sipped it in his honor. While I was doing this I heard the door to my outer office open and close. There was silence then as if someone were standing out there trying to make up his mind. Or maybe as if someone were admiring my collection of ten-year-old National Geographics. Then the door opened and in came Vivian Sternwood in a polka-dot dress, big blue dots on a white background. Her hat and gloves were white and her big purse was the color of her dots.

“Care for a drink?” I said. “I was just toasting that great healer, Claude Bonsentir.”

“You’re drunk,” she said.

“Probably not,” I said. “But it’s not to say I won’t be.”

I got up and went to the sink in the corner and got the other water glass I kept for company. I rinsed it, brought it back and poured a finger of rye into each glass.

I handed a glass to Vivian and while we stood I raised mine.

“I give you the Hippocrates of the quick needle, Dr. Bonsentir.”

Vivian’s eyes were bright with anger, but she drank a little rye.

“Are you going to ask me to sit down, Marlowe?”

“Certainly,” I said. “Have a chair. Maybe we can have another toast, seated is okay, to the elusive Carmen Sternwood, whom no one seems able to find but everybody says isn’t missing.”

“I know my sister is missing, Mr. Marlowe. I don’t need some piece of drunken sarcasm from the likes of you.” “Who do you need it from,” I said, “if not from me?”