Perchance to Dream (15 page)

    

    

    I had some toast and drank the rest of my coffee, and in an hour, with my arm still throbbing, but my head feeling better, I was headed downtown.

    Gardenia-Tartabull Insurance and Real Estate was in a building on Bunker Hill near Fourth Street that had impressed everyone when they built it. It was less impressive now, but under the grime you could still see the glamour of its youth. The lobby was an open shaft to the roof through which the iron cage elevators went up and down, and around which a tier of filigreed iron balconies marked the floor levels. Gardenia-Tartabull was on the sixth floor behind a pebbled glass door that had notary public in small black letters under the name of the firm.

    Inside, at a desk with nearly nothing on it, was a redhead with a lot of hair, wearing a tight green dress. She was tilted back in her chair with her legs crossed, working very carefully on getting her nails painted in a shade of flame to match her hair. I waited for a minute until there seemed a break in the process. She didn't look up.

    I said, "Do you have another job here, or is that it?"

    "Wait a sec," she said. Her forehead was wrinkled with concentration and the tip of her tongue showed between her bright lips. I hooked a straight chair from against the wall beside the door and turned it around and sat on it with my forearms resting on the back. I put my chin on my arms and watched her paint.

    "How long does this usually take you?" I said.

    She didn't answer, just shook her head and frowned a little harder as she put a smooth swipe of lacquer on the nail of her second finger. She had eight to go.

    "You don't have to look up," I said. "And you don't have to speak. Just nod or shake your head. Is Gardenia or Tartabull in?"

    She nodded. Her little nailbrush was poised over the second nail. It was clear that she could nod or she could paint her nails, but she couldn't do both.

    "Tartabull?"

    She shook her head.

    "Gardenia?"

    She nodded. I glanced around the room. There were four or five green metal file cabinets along the walls, and in the wall behind her desk were two doors, each with a pebbled glass window. One said charles gardenia and the other said vincent tartabull. I stood up.

    "Thank you for your help," I said, and went past her desk toward Gardenia's office. She almost spoke then, but I had opened the door to Gardenia's office before she could and then it was too late. As I closed the door behind me I saw her lower her head again and stare at her nails.

    Behind his desk with a copy of the
Los Angeles Times
spread out in front of him, munching a cruller, was the fat guy in the seersucker suit I'd seen getting out of the black Buick in the Neville Valley Trust parking lot up north. He had on the same suit. There was a cup of coffee on the desk beside the paper. A little spiral of steam drifted up from it. On the hand that held the cruller was a diamond pinkie ring. Gardenia gazed at me without expression while he finished chewing the bite he'd taken from his cruller. Then he took a sip of his coffee.

    When he had swallowed the coffee he said, "Whaddya want?"

    "My name's Marlowe," I said. It didn't seem to impress him. "I'm a private detective working on a case and I keep bumping into a couple of businesses, yours being one of them."

    "And what do you think my business is?" Gardenia said.

    "I know you do business as Rancho Springs Development Corporation."

    "That right?" Gardenia said. He seemed a lot more interested in his cruller than in anything I had to say.

    "And I know you are connected with the Neville Valley Realty Trust."

    "Yeah?"

    "Yeah."

    I felt like I was in a second-feature movie. Gardenia finished his cruller, drank some more coffee.

    "So what's this case you're working on?" he said.

    "I'm looking for a girl."

    "Is that all?" Gardenia said. "Hell, you can have the one out front, you want. She doesn't do me any damn good."

    "Paints a nice nail though."

    "Yeah." Gardenia rummaged in a paper sack and came out with another cruller. He took a bite and chewed it happily.

    "So who's this girl you're looking for?" "Carmen Sternwood, her father was General Guy Sternwood. Maybe you Ve heard of him. He was in the oil business."

    Gardenia shook his head. "Nope. Can't say I have. How come you're looking around me? I don't know any broads that are missing."

    "I think she's with Randolph Simpson."

    "So?" Gardenia shrugged. "I don't know Randolph Simpson."

    "He connected to Rancho Springs? He lives out there."

    "What I hear, he lives a lot of places," Gardenia said. The conversation didn't interest him. He examined his hand where he'd held the cruller and licked a crumb off the index finger.

    "A couple of hard boys in a car registered to Neville Valley Realty Trust stopped me on the street one night and told me to stay away from Randolph Simpson."

    Gardenia shrugged.

    "They told me to stay away from Dr. Bonsentir too. And not to look for Carmen Sternwood."

    Gardenia dusted his hands off to get rid of any crumbs his tongue had missed. Then he leaned a little forward over his desk, and got a cigar out of a leather humidor and stuck it in his mouth and got a desk-top lighter going and lit the cigar.

    "Look, what did you say your name was?"

    "Marlowe."

    "Well, Marlowe, I appreciate you got a problem. But to tell you the truth, it's not my problem, if you see what I mean, and I figure that I give it about all the time I owe it."

    "You wouldn't just happen to know where Carmen Sternwood is?"

    "Marlowe, I give you an A for trying hard, but I don't know where she is, or who she is, or, for that matter, how she is. You think she's with this guy Randolph Simpson, then whyn't you chase over to his house and ask him about it."

    I took a business card out of my pocket and laid it on his desk.

    "I think you overplayed it a little with the this guy Simpson line," I said.

    Gardenia shrugged and spread his hands. The palms were clean and pink and soft. The nails had been manicured and buffed.

    "You think of anything, you might call me," I said.

    "Sure thing," Gardenia said. He stood up heavily, his white shirt stretched very tight over his belly. He put out his hand.

    "Thanks for stopping by."

    I shook my head at his outstretched hand.

    "I'm too old for horse crap," I said.

    He didn't care. He smiled, sat back down, picked up his coffee cup and began to read the
Times
again, tracing a forefinger along the printed line while the cigar he held in the same hand sent its pleasant ribbon of smoke up toward the ceiling.

    I left and didn't shut the door on my way out. Teach him a lesson.

    

    

    Morris Isaacson had a law office with two secretaries in West Hollywood near the intersection of Horn and Sunset. He sat back in his big swivel chair and put his small feet on the desk and admired the polish on his shoes.

    "Water rights," he said thoughtfully. "It's a Western term. East of the Mississippi they have riparian rights. Means anyone on the shore of a river, say, has limitless rights to the water in the river. West of the Mississippi, it being sorta dry out here, they have water rights in which people abutting a river have discrete rights, defined by how much of the land they own abuts."

    "And you can sell those rights?"

    "Buy or sell," Isaacson said. He had a thin gray moustache and slick silver hair and a strong nose. "Not riparian rights, they go with the land. But water rights, sure, they can be bought and sold."

    "Anything illegal about it?"

    "No more than any other transaction. Obviously there can be no intent to defraud, the usual rules apply. But there's nothing special about water rights."

    "And if I bought up all the water rights to some river somewhere, then I could do whatever I wanted with the water?"

    "Yep."

    "Would the government buy water rights?"

    "Sure, been doing it all over the West."

    "Would they employ a private company to do it for them?"

    "Marlowe, how the hell would I know? Far as I can tell, the government will do about anything at all."

    I was silent.

    "Not to be a kvetch, Marlowe, but sitting here watching you think isn't earning me any money. Explaining water rights to you hasn't earned me a hell of a lot either."

    "I owe you," I said.

    "I know you do," Isaacson said. "But you don't have anything to pay with. Maybe someday, I lose a client, I'll get it back."

    I got up without comment and left. When I got back to my office the pasty-faced blond guy that walked behind Eddie Mars was sitting in the waiting room with his feet stretched out in front of him and his hat tilted forward over his face. I walked past him without comment and unlocked my inner office and opened the window to let the hot air in and sat behind my desk. In a minute he ambled in, tougher than two scorpions.

    "Eddie wants you to come over to the club," he said. His lips barely moved when he spoke and he had to tilt his head back to see out from under his hat brim.

    "So what," I said.

    "It's about the Sternwood cookie," Blondie said.

    "Which one?"

    "Vivian. Eddie says you should come over. She's there. Somebody laid some knuckles on her."

    "Who?"

    "Eddie didn't say. Just said I should bring you."

    "I'll bring myself," I said.

    Blondie shook his head. "Eddie said I should bring you."

    I stood up. "You want to bring me, you can start now. You'll think you walked into a propeller."

    "Tough today," Blondie said.

    "Tough, quick, and sick of almost everybody I've met this week."

    Blondie shrugged. "Eddie didn't say anything about dropping you. See you at the club."

    He turned around and walked out. I followed him a minute later and arrived at the Cypress Club ahead of him.

    

    

    It looked shabbier in daylight, like clubs always do. The threadbare spots that indirect lighting concealed looked sadly real with the sun shining on them. The places where the paint had peeled in the steady Pacific wind stood out in clear relief in the daylight. Things seemed to look better in the shadows.

    Mars was the exception. He looked just as good in daylight with a pearl-gray sport coat and a charcoal shirt with the collar points spilling out over the lapels. He was in the office with Vivian when I went in.

    She didn't look good. Her upper lip was puffy and one eye was nearly closed with the darkening rings of a classic shiner developing. What makeup she may have had was worn away and her hair was messy and she looked haggard and frightened and vulnerable. And beautiful.

    "What happened?" I said.

    She looked at Eddie and he answered for her.

    "She got a call from Bonsentir's clinic, told her Carmen was back and she should come up. She went instead of calling me. Up along Mulholland a couple of sluggers ran her off the road, tossed her around a little, and told her to put a leash on you."

    "Or else?"

    Mars nodded. His face was perfectly calm but his eyes glittered.

    "Leave it alone, Marlowe," Vivian said in a choked voice. "Leave it alone, get the hell out of our lives and let us have some peace."

    "And what?" I said. "And let Carmen go wherever Bonsentir sends her and you do whatever two thugs tell you to do? That's peace?"

    Vivian looked at Eddie and back at me.

    Mars said, "He's right, sugar," in a voice so flat and cold it didn't sound human.

    She stared at him for a moment and at me for a moment and began to cry. "Look at me," she said, "look at me." And she cried harder, but crying hurt her so she got it under control. Mars didn't say anything to her, but walked across the room and put an arm around her. She stood rigid.

    "I called you," she said to me, fighting to keep her voice steady. "You weren't there. So I went and when this happened I came to Eddie."

    "No explanations necessary," I said.

    Mars was looking at me. I don't think he heard any of what was being said. The glitter in his eyes was like ice.

    "What are we going to do about this, soldier?"

    "Something," I said. "We in this together now?"

    Mars nodded. "For now," he said. His mind seemed far away. "Doesn't mean we're pals, soldier. Just means we got a common interest."

    "Yeah," I said.

    "What are you going to do?" Vivian said.

    "Something," I said.

    "Sugar, if you're all right, I'll send a couple of boys home with you," Mars said. "Marlowe and I have to talk."

    "And I just sit by while you men decide my life," Vivian said.

    "You got a better idea?" I said.

    She shook her head and her battered face darkened again as if she were going to cry. But she didn't.

    "No, dammit, it's how women have always lived. Stay home, wait, hope, while the men do 'something.' Maybe I'll get drunk."

    "I'll have a couple of boys stay around you," Mars said. "Nobody's going to hurt you again."

    "The hell they won't," Vivian said and turned and went.