022

It was so quiet in Victor's that you almost heard the temperature drop as you came in at the door, On a bar stool a woman in a black tailormade, which couldn't at that time of year have been anything but some synthetic fabric like orlon, was sitting alone with a pale greenishcolored drink in front of her and smoking a cigarette in a long jade holder. She had that fine-drawn intense look that is sometimes neurotic, sometimes sex-hungry, and sometimes just the result of drastic dieting. I sat down two stools away and the barkeep nodded to me, but didn't smile. "A gimlet," I said. "No bitters." He put the little napkin in front of me and kept looking at me. "You know something," he said in a pleased voice. "I heard you and your friend talking one night and I got me in a bottle of that Rose's Lime Juice. Then you didn't come back any more and I only opened it tonight." "My friend left town," I said, "A double if it's all right with you. And thanks for taking the trouble." He went away. The woman in black gave me a quick glance, then looked down into her glass. "So few people drink them around here," she said so quietly that I didn't realize at first that she was speaking to me. Then she looked my way again. She had very large dark eyes. She had the reddest fingernails I had ever seen. But she didn't look like a pickup and there was no trace of come-on in her voice. "Gimlets I mean." "A fellow taught me to like them," I said. "He must be English." "Why?" "The lime juice. It's as English as boiled fish with that awful anchovy sauce that looks as if the cook had bled into it. That's how they got called limeys. The English—not the fish." "I thought it was more a tropical drink, hot weather stuff. Malaya or some place like that." "You may be right." She turned away again. The bartender set the drink in front of me. With the lime juice it has a sort of pale greenish yellowish misty look. I tasted it. It was both sweet and sharp at the same time. The woman in black watched me, Then she lifted her own glass towards me. We both drank. Then I knew hers was the same drink. The next move was routine, so I didn't make it. I just sat there. "He wasn't English," I said after a moment. "I guess maybe he had been there during the war. We used to come in here once in a while, early like now. Before the mob started boiling." "It's a pleasant hour," she said. "In a bar almost the only pleasant hour." She emptied her glass. "Perhaps I knew your friend," she said. "What was his name?" I didn't answer her right away. I lit a cigarette and watched her tap the stub of hers out of the jade holder and fit another in its place. I reached across with a lighter. "Lennox," I said. She thanked me for the light and gave me a brief searching glance. Then she nodded. "Yea, I knew him very well. Perhaps a little too well." The barkeep drifted over and glanced at my glass. "A couple more of the same," I said. "In a booth." I got down off the stool and stood waiting. She might or might not blow me down. I didn't particularly care. Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk without dragging bedrooms into it. This could be it, or she could just think I was on the make. If so, the hell with her. She hesitated, but not for long. She gathered up a pair of black gloves and a black suede bag with a gold frame and clasp and walked across into a corner booth and sat down without a word. I sat down across the small table. "My name is Marlowe." "Mine is Linda Loring," she said calmly. "A bit of a sentimentalist, aren't you, Mr. Marlowe?" "Because I came in here to drink a gimlet? How about yourself?" "I might have a taste for them." "So might I. But it would be a little too much coincidence." She smiled at me vaguely. She had emerald earrings and an emerald lapel pin. They looked like real stones because of the way they were cut —flat with beveled edges. And even in the dim light of a bar they had an inner glow. "So you're the man," she said. The bar waiter brought the drinks over and set them down. When he went away I said: "I'm a fellow who knew Terry Lennox, liked him, and had an occasional drink with him. It was kind of a side deal, an accidental friendship. I never went to his home or knew his wife. I saw her once in a parking lot." "There was a little more to it than that, wasn't there?" She reached for her glass. She had an emerald ring set in a nest of diamonds. Beside it a thin platinum band said she was married. I put her in the second half of the thirties, early in the second half. "Maybe," I said, "The guy bothered me. He still does. How about you?" She leaned on an elbow and looked up at me without any particular expression. "I said I knew him rather too well. Too well to think it mattered much what happened to him. He had a rich wife who gave him all the luxuries. All she asked in return was to be let alone." "Seems reasonable," I said. "Don't be sarcastic, Mr. Marlowe. Some women are like that. They can't help it. It wasn't as if he didn't know in the beginning. If he had to get proud, the door was open. He didn't have to kill her." "I agree with you." She straightened up and looked hard at me. Her lip curled. "So he ran away and, if what I hear is true, you helped him. I suppose you feel proud about that." "Not me," I said. "I just did it for the money." "That is not amusing, Mr. Marlowe. Frankly I don't know why I sit here drinking with you." "That's easily changed, Mrs. Loring." I reached for my glass and dropped the contents down the hatch. "I thought perhaps you could tell me something about Terry that I didn't know. I'm not interested in speculating why Terry Lennox beat his wife's face to a bloody sponge." "That's a pretty brutal way to put it," she said angrily. "You don't like the words? Neither do I. And I wouldn't be here drinking a gimlet if I believed he did anything of the sort." She stared. After a moment she said slowly: "He killed himself and left a full confession. What more do you want?" "He had a gun," I said. "In Mexico that might be enough excuse for some jittery cop to pour lead into him. Plenty of American police have done their killings the same way — some of them through doors that didn't open fast enough to suit them. As for the confession, I haven't seen it." "No doubt the Mexican police faked it," she said tartly. "They wouldn't know how, not in a little place like Otatoclán. No, the confession is probably real enough, but it doesn't prove he killed his wife. Not to me anyway. All it proves to me is that he didn't see any way out. In a spot like that a certain sort of man — you can call him weak or soft or sentimental if it amuses you — might decide to save some other people from a lot of very painful publicity." "That's fantastic," she said. "A man doesn't kill himself or deliberately get himself killed to save a little scandal. Sylvia was already dead. As for her sister and her father—they could take care of themselves very efficiently. People with enough money, Mr. Marlowe, can always protect themselves." "Okay, I'm wrong about the motive. Maybe I'm wrong all down the line. A minute ago you were mad at me. You want me to leave now—so you can drink your gimlet?" Suddenly she smiled. "I'm sorry. I'm beginning to think you are sincere. What I thought then was that you were trying to justify yourself, far more than Terry. I don't think you are, somehow." "I'm not. I did something foolish and I got the works for it. Up to a point anyway. I don't deny that his confession saved me a lot worse. If they had brought him back and tried him, I guess they would have hung one on me too. The least it would have cost me would have been far more money than I could afford." "Not to mention your license," she said dryly. "Maybe. There was a time when any cop with a hangover could get me busted. It's a little different now. You get a hearing before a commission of the state licensing authority. Those people are not too crazy about the city police." She tasted her drink and said slowly: "All things considered, don't you think it was best the way it was? No trial, no sensational headlines, no mud-slinging just to sell newspapers without the slightest regard for truth or fairplay or for the feelings of innocent people." "Didn't I just say so? And you said it was fantastic." She leaned back and put her head against the upper curve of the padding on the back of the booth. "Fantastic that Terry Lennox should have killed himself just to achieve that. Not fantastic that it was better for all parties that there should be no trial." "I need another drink," I said, and waved at the waiter. "I feel an icy breath on the back of my neck. Could you by any chance be related to the Potter family, Mrs. Loring?" "Sylvia Lennox was my sister," she said simply. "I thought you would know." The waiter drifted over and I gave him an urgent message. Mrs. Loring shook her head and said she didn't want anything more, When the waiter took off I said: "With the hush old man Potter—excuse me, Mr. Harlan Potter—put on this affair, I would be lucky to know for sure that Terry's wife even had a sister." "Surely you exaggerate. My father is hardly that powerful, Mr. Marlowe —and certainly not that ruthless. I'll admit he does have very old-fashioned ideas about his personal privacy. He never gives interviews even to his own newspapers. He is never photographed, he never makes speeches, he travels mostly by car or in his own plane with his own crew. But he is quite human for all that. He liked Terry. He said Terry was a gentleman twenty-four hours a day instead of for the fifteen minutes between the time the guests arrive and the time they feel their first cocktail." "He slipped a little at the end. Terry did." The waiter trotted up with my third gimlet. I tried it for flavor and then sat there with a finger on the edge of the round base of the glass. "Terry's death was quite a blow to him, Mr. Marlowe. And you're getting sarcastic again. Please don't. Father knew it would all look far too neat to some people. He would much rather Terry had just disappeared. If Terry had asked him for help, I think he would have given it." "Oh no, Mrs. Loring. His own daughter had been murdered." She made an irritable motion and eyed me coldly. "This is going to sound pretty blunt, I'm afraid. Father had written my sister off long ago. When they met he barely spoke to her. If he expressed himself, which he hasn't and won't, I feel sure he would be just as doubtful about Terry as you are. But once Terry was dead, what did it matter? They could have been killed in a plane crash or a fire or a highway accident. If she had to die, it was the best possible time for her to die. In another ten years she would have been a sex-ridden hag like some of these frightful women you see at Hollywood parties, or used to a few years back. The dregs of the international set." All of a sudden I got mad, for no good reason. I stood up and looked over the booth. The next one was still empty. In the one beyond a guy was reading a paper all by himself, quietly. I sat down with a bump, pushed my glass out of the way, and leaned across the table. I had sense enough to keep my voice down. "For hell's sake, Mrs. Loring, what are you trying to sell me? That Harlan Potter is such a sweet lovely character he wouldn't dream of using his influence on a political D.A. to drop the blanket on a murder investigation so that the murder was never really investigated at all? That he had doubts about Terry's guilt but didn't let anyone lift a finger to find out who was really the killer? That he didn't use the political power of his newspapers and his bank account and the nine hundred guys who would trip over their chins trying to guess what he wanted done before he knew himself? That he didn't arrange it so that a tame lawyer and nobody else, nobody from the D.A.'s office or the city cops, went down to Mexico to make sure Terry actually had put a slug in his head instead of being knocked off by some Indian with a hot gun just for kicks? Your old man is worth a hundred million bucks, Mrs. Loring. I wouldn't know just -how he got it, but I know damn well he didn't get it without building himself a pretty far-reaching organization. He's no softie. He's a bard tough man, You've got to be in these days to make that kind of money. And you do business with some funny people. You may not meet them or shake hands with them, but they are there on the fringe doing business with you." "You're a fool," she said angrily. "I've had enough of you." "Oh sure. I don't make the kind of music you like to hear. Let me tell you something. Terry talked to your old man the night Sylvia died. What about? What did your old man say to him? 'Just run on down to Mexico and shoot yourself, old boy. Let's keep this in the family. I know my daughter is a tramp and that any one of a dozen drunken bastards might have blown his top and pushed her pretty face down her throat for her, But that's incidental, old boy. The guy will be sorry when he sobers up. You've had it soft and now is the time you pay back. What we want is to keep the fair Potter name as sweet as mountain lilac. She married you because she needed a front, She needs it worse than ever now she's dead. And you're it. If you can get lost and stay lost, fine. But if you get found, you check out. See you in the morgue.'" "Do you really think," the woman in black asked with dry ice in her voice, "that my father talks like that?" I leaned back and laughed unpleasantly. "We could polish up the dialogue a little if that helps." She gathered her stuff together and slid along the seat. "I'd like to give you a word of warning," she said slowly and very carefully, "a very simple word of warning. If you think my father is that kind of man and if you go around broadcasting the kind of thoughts you have just expressed to me, your career in this city in your business or In any business is apt to be extremely short and terminated very suddenly." "Perfect, Mrs. Loring, Perfect. I get it from the law, I get it from the hoodlum element, I get it from the carriage trade. The words change, but the meaning is the same. Lay off. I came in here to drink a gimlet because a man asked me to. Now look at me. I'm practically in the boneyard." She stood up and nodded briefly. "Three gimlets. Doubles. Perhaps you're drunk." I dropped too much money on the table and stood up beside her. "You had one and a half, Mrs. Loring. Why even that much? Did a man ask you too, or was it all your own idea? Your own tongue got a little loose." "Who knows, Mr. Marlowe? Who knows? Who really knows anything? There's a man over there at the bar watching us. Would it be anyone you know?" I looked around, surprised that she had noticed. A lean dark character sat on the end stool nearest the door. "His name is Chick Agostino," I said. "He's a gun toter for a gambling boy named Menendez. Let's knock him down and jump on him." "You certainly are drunk," she said quickly and started to walk. I went after her. The man on the stool swung around and looked to his front. When I came abreast I stepped up behind him and reached in under both his arms quickly. Maybe I was a little drunk. He swung around angrily and slid off the stool. "Watch it, kiddo," he snarled. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that she had stopped just inside the door to glance back "No guns, Mr. Agostino? How reckless of you. It's almost dark. What if you should run into a tough midget?" "Scram!" he said savagely. "Aw, you stole that line from the New Yorker." His mouth worked but he didn't move. I left him and followed Mrs. Loring out through the door into the space under the awning. A gray-haired colored chauffeur stood there talking to the kid from the parking lot. He touched his cap and went off and came back with a flossy Cadillac limousine. He opened the door and Mrs. Loring got in. He shut the door as though he was putting down the lid of a jewel box. He went around the car to the driver's seat. She ran the window down and looked out at me, half smiling. "Goodnight, Mr. Marlowe. It's been nice—or has it?" "We had quite a fight." "You mean you had—and mostly with yourself." "It usually is. Goodnight, Mrs. Loring. You don't live around here, do you?" "Not exactly. I live in Idle Valley. At the far end of the lake. My husband is a doctor." "Would you happen to know any people named Wade?" She frowned. "Yes, I know the Wades. Why?" "Why do I ask? They're the only people in Idle Valley that I know." "I see. Well, goodnight again, Mr. Marlowe." She leaned back in the seat and the Cadillac purred politely and slid away into the traffic along the Strip. Turning I almost bumped into Chick Agostino. "Who's the doll?" he sneered. "And next time you crack wise, be missing." "Nobody that would want to know you," I said. "Okay, bright boy. I got the license number. Mendy likes to know little things like that." The door of a car banged open and a man about seven feet high and four feet wide jumped out of it, took one look at Agostino, then one long stride, and grabbed him by the throat with one hand. "How many times I gotta tell you cheap hoods not to hang around where I eat?" he roared. He shook Agostino and hurled him across the sidewalk against the wall. Chick crumpled up coughing. "Next time," the enormous man yelled, "I sure as hell put the blast on you, and believe me, boy, you'll be holding a gun when they pick you up." Chick shook his head and said nothing. The big man gave me a raking glance and grinned. "Nice night," he said, and strolled into Victor's. I watched Chick straighten himself out and regain some of his composure. "Who's your buddy?" I asked him. "Big Willie Magoon," he said thickly. "A vice squad bimbo: He thinks he's tough." "You mean he isn't sure?" I asked him politely. He looked at me emptily and walked away. I got my car out of the lot and drove home. In Hollywood anything can happen, anything at all.