Perchance to Dream (5 page)

    "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?"

    "What I need from you is understanding. You must have some idea of what it is like to try and protect Carmen?"

    "I have an idea what it's like to try to protect the rest of the world from Carmen," I said.

    Vivian's face was dramatically hurt.

    "I was hoping for better from you, Marlowe. I was hoping that the something that sparked between us before hasn't gone away completely."

    I laughed and drank a little more of my rye.

    "What went between us, Mrs. Regan, was you showing me your legs and trying to get me to do whatever you said because I'd seen your legs."

    "And nothing more?"

    I shrugged. Maybe there had been something more. I was after all getting drunk in the middle of the day.

    "I don't know," I said. "Was there?"

    "Yes," she said.

    I wanted to believe her. Up close her eyes were nearly coal black and full of heat. She was wearing a lilac scent, an expensive one. And her wide mouth was soft looking with a full lower lip that seemed specifically meant to be nibbled on. I nodded and didn't say anything.

    "I'm not as tough as I look, Marlowe," she said.

    "If you were as tough as you look," I said, "you'd probably have to be licensed."

    "I'm nowhere near as tough as you are," she said. "Oh, I know the smart mouth and the dark handsome looks and all of that. Just a lovable gumshoe. But I know what's inside that. I know that inside it's all iron and ice."

    She leaned forward toward me, showing me a white lace bra and a good deal of breast as well. "But I'm betting that there's something else in there too."

    "Don't bet your life on it, lady," I said. "I appreciate you showing me what you've got. But don't bet everything that you can melt the iron and ice."

    She got up slowly and walked around the desk and sat quite carefully on my lap. She put her arms around my neck and leaned her face close to me. I could feel the heat of her breath on my face.

    "Let's see," she said and pressed her mouth against mine, open. We explored that for a while, and when we finally broke, both of us were breathing harder than we had been. Vivian looked into my eyes from very close, so close that her eyes blurred as I'm sure mine must have to her.

    "Maybe just a little melting?" she said.

    "You found Carmen yet?" I said.

    She stiffened and then stood up and walked back around the desk to her chair.

    "Damn you," she said. "Goddamn you, Marlowe. Don't you change? Can't you ever change?"

    Her voice shook a little and she had to look down and breathe a bit to get her composure. When she finally spoke her voice was a little hoarse.

    "I know she's all right, Marlowe. I don't know where she is, but I know that Dr. Bonsentir knows and it's all right."

    "That doesn't make any sense," I said.

    "Please," she said. "You want to hear me beg, okay, listen. Please leave this alone. I know you don't care about money. But I'll pay you twice what Norris is paying, three times. If you will please just leave this alone."

    "Have you spoken to Norris?" I said.

    She shook her head.

    "I cannot speak to Norris as I can speak to you."

    "Why not," I said. "You could show him your legs…" I finished it off with a hand flip.

    "He's the butler, for God's sake, Marlowe. Do you enjoy humiliating me?"

    "I'm not humiliating you," I said. "You're doing that yourself. I'm just after the truth."

    "Truth," she said and laughed without even a hint of humor. "What the hell is the truth? And what difference does it ever make? You're like so many men. You have these things you think are so important. Truth.
My Word
. Honor. Right. Pride." She shook her head and laughed again. A laugh more painful than any scream. "You probably believe in love, for God's sake."

    "What I believe in right now, Mrs. Regan, is finding Carmen."

    "Why? In the name of God, why do you care? What difference can she ever make?"

    "It's what I do for a living," I said. "Somebody hired me to do it."

    "You will cause more trouble than you understand," Vivian said.

    I didn't have anything to say to that, so I let it pass. We looked at each other for a while. Then Vivian sighed and stood up.

    "I'm sorry, Marlowe," she said.

    "Sure," I said. "I'm sorry too."

    She turned and headed for the door. She opened it and turned for a moment and looked back as if she were going to say something. Then she shook her head and turned away.

    "Vivian," I said.

    She paused and looked back.

    "I enjoyed the kiss," I said.

    She stared at me for a moment and then shook her head again.

    "That's the hell of it," she said. "I did too."

    Then she turned and closed the door behind her. I sat and looked at it and sipped the rest of the rye. She must have left the outside door open. Because I didn't hear it close.

    

    

    After Vivian left I corked the office bottle and put it back in the drawer. I went to the sink, rinsed out the glasses, washed my hands and face, and went back to my desk. I got out the phone book and looked up some numbers and made some calls. The L. A. County medical board had no registration of Dr. Claude Bonsentir.

    The licensing board had never heard of him.

    That taken care of, I went down on the boulevard and sat at a counter and had some late lunch. Never-at-a-loss Marlowe, the hungry detective. After lunch I strolled back up the boulevard toward my office. The movie executives were coming out of Musso & Frank's, telling each other how much they loved each other's last picture. The tourists walked along the sidewalk, heads down, staring at the stars in the pavement. If a real star had happened by they'd have never seen him. Near the Chinese theater a group of tourists stood and looked at the footprints in the concrete and listened to some sort of guide telling them about it. Outside the Roosevelt Hotel the prostitutes waited. They'd come from Keokuk and Great Falls, planning to start as starlets and become stars. It hadn't worked out. Some had started maybe as starlets, but they'd ended up as whores and as the afternoon began to wane, with its promise of evening, they gathered with the desperation in their eyes. Hollywood the town of sex and money and hokum for the tourists. A town where guys like Bonsentir could make a handsome living without a license, without any trace in the medical board records, without any interference from the buttons. Hooray.

    Having been told by everyone but Daisy Duck to butt out, and having earned a total of one dollar on the case so far, the smart thing to do would have been to go back to the office and have another couple of pulls at my bottle of rye and think long thoughts about how glamorous it was to be in Hollywood. That being the smart thing to do, I got in my car and drove down to Las Olindas to see Eddie Mars. Which is how smart I am.

    The Cypress Club was half hidden by a grove of wind-twisted cypress trees, which is probably why they called it the Cypress Club. It had once been a hotel and before that a rich man's house. It still looked like a rich man's house, grown a little shabby, and tarnished a bit by the beach fog that hung over it much of the time.

    There was no doorman when I arrived, too early. The big double doors that separated the main room from the entry foyer were open. Inside there was only a barman setting up for the evening, and a Filipino in a white coat dry-mopping the old parquet floor. From somewhere in the dimness to my right a pasty-faced blond man appeared. He was slim and there was no expression in his face. I remembered him from when I first saw him in Arthur Gwynne Geiger's house with the smell of ether still in the air, and blood still on the rug.

    If he remembered me he didn't show it.

    "Place is closed for another couple of hours, bub."

    "I know," I said. "I'm here to see Eddie."

    "He know you're coming?"

    "No."

    "Then you probably aren't going to see him."

    "It's the movies," I said. "All you hard guys think you have to act like some ham you saw in the movies. But he doesn't act that way because he's tough. He acts that way because he can't act. Go tell Eddie I'm here."

    He gave me the same tough-guy blank stare and turned and disappeared back into the gloom to the right. Pretty soon he came and said, "This way."

    His expression hadn't changed. Nothing had changed. He acted like he didn't care about me. Maybe he wasn't acting.

    Eddie Mars was still gray. Fine gray hair, gray eyes, neat gray eyebrows. His double-breasted flannel suit was gray, and his shirt was a lighter gray and his tie a darker gray except for two red diamonds in it. He had a hand in his coat pocket with the thumb out, the nail perfectly manicured, gleaming in the light from the big old bay window that looked out at the sea. The room was paneled, with a fabric frieze above the paneling. A wood fire burned in the deep stone fireplace and the smell of the woodsmoke mingled softly with the smell of the cold ocean. The time-lock safe was still in the corner. The Sevres tea set still sat on its tray. It didn't look like it had been used any more than it had the last time I was here.

    Mars grinned at me sociably. "Nice to see you again, soldier," he said.

    "That's not what everybody else says."

    Mars raised his even gray eyebrows. His face was tanned, and smooth-shaven, and healthy looking.

    "People can be cruel," he said. "Any special reason they're talking to you that way?"

    "I keep asking them where Carmen Sternwood is," I said.

    Mars' face darkened. The smile stayed but it seemed less sociable.

    "It's that kind of a visit, is it?" Mars said.

    "Of course it is," I said. "Why would I come calling on you socially?"

    "I thought we got along, Marlowe."

    "You're a thug, Eddie. You look like a good polo player, and you've got a lot of money, and you know a lot of rich folks. But behind it you're a thug, and you've got goons like Blondie there to follow you around with a rod."

    "And what's that to you?" Mars said. "Supposing what you say is true. What the hell are you? You're packing a rod, right now, under your left arm. You bend the law. You did it on Rusty Regan's death. The difference between me and you, soldier, is I make money and you don't."

    "The difference between you and me, Eddie, is there's things I won't do."

    Mars kept his smile and shrugged.

    "What is it you wanted to ask me?" he said.

    "What do you know about Carmen Sternwood?"

    Mars shrugged again. Distantly I could hear the sound of the Pacific as it roiled against the foot of the cliff below the Cypress Club.

    "Not much," he said. "Except what you know."

    "You know where she is now?"

    Mars shook his head. "Last I knew she was in a sanitarium up the top of Coldwater Canyon."

    "She's not there now," I said.

    "She run off?"

    It was my turn to shrug.

    "Vivian hire you?" Mars said.

    "No," I said. "She's one of the people telling me to butt out."

    "Lot of hard edge to that woman," Mars said.

    "She also told me that you had promised her you'd find Carmen."

    Mars was silent a moment. Then he said, "That a fact?"

    "What she said," I answered.

    "Why would I do that?" Mars said.

    "Same reason you rigged it to look like Rusty Regan ran off with your wife," I said. " 'Cause you're sweet."

    Mars laughed out loud.

    "Sweet," he said. "Soldier, I've got to say I always enjoy you."

    "Like you enjoyed me when I found your wife and Regan wasn't with her. And you were afraid I'd blow the whistle that maybe Regan really was dead. Like you enjoyed me when you told Lash Canino to kill me?"

    Mars shrugged. "I underestimated you, soldier. How'd you take Canino anyway?"

    "Your wife helped me. Mona Mars in the silver wig."

    "Ex-wife," Mars said.

    "Canino's car was parked outside the farmhouse in Rialto." I said, "Empty..."

    

    

    And I was behind it wearing handcuffs, but I had a gun. And big brave Lash came out to get me, pushing your wife in front of him.

    She came down the steps. Now I could see the white stiffness of her face. She started toward the car. A bulwark of defense for Canino, in case I could still spit in his eye. Her voice spoke through the lisp of the rain, saying slowly, without any tone: "I can't see a thing, Lash. The windows are misted."

    He grunted something and the girl's body jerked hard, as though he had jammed a gun into her back. She came on again and drew near the lightless car. I could see him behind her now, his hat, a side of his face, the bulk of his shoulder. The girl stopped rigid and screamed. A beautiful thin tearing scream that rocked me like a left hook.

    "I can see him!" she screamed. "Through the window. Behind the wheel, Lash!"

    He fell for it like a bucket of lead. He knocked her roughly to one side and jumped forward, throwing his hand up. Three more spurts of flame cut the darkness. More glass scarred. One bullet went on through and smacked a tree on my side. A ricochet whined off into the distance. But the motor went quietly on.