The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel (13 page)

“Jesus!” the woman said, rearing back and in her fright stamping a heel down hard on the wooden threshold. “Who are you?”

Straight off I knew two things about her: first, that this was the woman Mandy Rogers had seen with Peterson. I couldn’t say how I knew it. Sometimes these things just come to you, and you have to accept them. The second thing I realized was that I’d seen her before somewhere. She was a big-jawed, slouchy brunette, with wide hips and a heavy bust. She wore a tight white blouse and a red skirt that was even tighter, and white mules with a high square heel. She looked like the kind of girl who’d have a dinky little pistol in her purse.

“It’s all right,” I said, holding up what was meant to be a reassuring hand. “I’m a friend of Nico’s.”

“How did you get in?”

“Back door was unlocked.”

I could see her trying to decide whether to stay or get out of there quick. “What’s your name?” she demanded, acting tough. “Who are you?”

“Philip Marlowe,” I said. “I’m in security.”

“What sort of security?”

I gave her one of my lopsided, aw-shucks-it’s-only-little-me smiles. “Look, why don’t you step inside and shut the door. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The smile must have worked. She did step in, she did shut the door. All the same, she didn’t take her eyes off me for a second.

“You’re Nico’s sister, right?” I said.

It was a shot in the dark. I’d recalled Floyd Hanson mentioning that Peterson’s sister had identified his body at the morgue. This had to be her. Of course, it could have been one of the many girlfriends I’d heard so much talk about, but somehow I didn’t think so. Also at that moment I remembered where I’d seen her before: coming through the door from the swimming pool at the Cahuilla Club, in a terry-cloth robe with a towel wrapped around her head. Same wide face, same green eyes. That was why Hanson had been thrown for a second when she’d appeared. She was Peterson’s sister, and he hadn’t wanted me to meet her.

She took a couple of steps sideways now, still watching me, cautious as a cat, and stopped by an armchair and laid a hand on the back of it. She was beside a window, so I got a good look at her. Her hair was almost black, with bronze tints in its depths. There was something vague and undefined about her, as if whoever made her got interrupted before adding the finishing touches and never came back to complete the job. She was one of those women whose sister would be beautiful though she’d just missed it herself. “Marlowe,” she said, “is that what you say your name is?”

“That’s right.”

“And what are you doing here?”

I had to think about that one. “I was looking through Nico’s things,” I said weakly.

“Oh, yeah? For what? He owe you money?”

“No. He had something of mine.”

She curled a lip. “What was that? Your stamp collection?”

“No. Just a thing I need to get back.” I knew how lame it sounded, but I was improvising as I went along, and it wasn’t easy. I moved away from the bureau. “Mind if I smoke? You’re making me nervous.”

“Go ahead, I’m not stopping you.”

I wished I had my pipe; getting that filled would have given me time to think. I fumbled around with my cigarette case and a box of matches, got out a pill, and lit up, doing it all as slowly as I could. She was still standing there by the armchair, still with her hand on the back of it, still watching me.

“You
are
Nico’s sister, aren’t you?” I said.

“I’m Lynn Peterson. I don’t believe any of this stuff you’re telling me. How about you come clean and say who you really are?”

I had to hand it to her, she had guts. I was the intruder, after all, and she had stumbled on me nosing around in her brother’s house. I could have been a robber. I could have been a maniac escaped from the loony bin. I could have been anybody. And I could have been armed. But there she was, standing her ground and taking no guff from me. In any other circumstances, I’d probably have asked her to come out with me to some shady bar and see what might have happened after. “All right,” I said. “My name is Marlowe, that much is true. I’m a private investigator.”

“Sure you are. And I’m Little Red Riding Hood.”

“Here,” I said, taking one of my cards out of my wallet and passing it to her. She read it, frowning. “I’ve been hired to look into your brother’s death.”

She wasn’t really listening. Now she started to nod. “I’ve seen you,” she said. “You were with Floyd, at the club.”

“Yes,” I said, “I was.”

“Floyd have something of yours too, that you needed to get back?”

“I was talking to him about Nico.”

“Talking to him what about Nico?”

“About the night your brother died. You were there that night, weren’t you, at the club?” She said nothing. “Did you see your brother’s body?”

“Floyd wouldn’t let me.”

“But you identified it the next day, at the morgue, right? Your brother’s body, I mean. That must have been rough.”

“It wasn’t much fun.”

We let a silence follow that. We were like a pair of tennis players taking a breather between sets. Then she came forward and went to the bureau and picked up the framed photograph of the sour old lady in the wire-rimmed spectacles. “This can’t be what you were looking for,” she said. She turned to me with a cold smile. “It’s Aunt Margie. She reared us. Nico hated her—I don’t know why he’s got her picture on his bureau.” She put the photo down. “I need a drink,” she said, and walked past me, out to the kitchen.

I followed her. She’d got a bottle of Dewar’s down from a cabinet on the wall and was searching in the freezer for ice cubes. “What about you,” she said over her shoulder, “you want a belt?”

I took a couple of tall glasses from a shelf and set them on the counter beside the gas stove. She brought a tray of ice to the sink and ran water on the back of it, and a handful of cubes came loose. She piled them into the glasses. “See if there’s a mixer under there,” she said. I opened the cupboard she had pointed to and found a couple of miniatures of Canada Dry. I like the
glug-glug-glug
that the soda makes as it tumbles over ice; it’s a sound that always cheers me up. I could smell Lynn Peterson’s perfume, a sharp, feline scent. That was cheery, too. This chance encounter was turning out not so bad after all.

“Mud in your eye, buster,” Lynn said, and clinked the rim of her glass against mine. Then she leaned back with her behind against the sink and gave me the once-over. “You don’t look like a shamus,” she said, “private or otherwise.”

“What
do
I look like?”

“Hard to say. Gambler, maybe.”

“I’ve been known to sit in on the odd game.”

“Did you win?”

“Not often enough.”

The hooch was spreading its warmth inside me slowly, like sunlight flowing across a summer hillside. “You know Clare Cavendish?” I asked, though perhaps I shouldn’t have. “Nico’s girlfriend.”

She laughed so suddenly she almost choked on her drink. “The ice maiden?” she said hoarsely, staring at me with a disbelieving smile. “His
girlfriend
?”

“So I’m told.”

“Well, it must be true then, I suppose.” She laughed again, shaking her head.

“She was there that night, too, at the club—the night Nico died.”

“Was she? I don’t remember.” Now she frowned. “She hire you to stick your nose into what happened that night?”

I took another go of Mr. Dewar’s best. That inner sunshine was getting sunnier by the minute. “Tell me what happened at the morgue,” I said.

She was watching me again, just as she had when she’d first laid eyes on me. “What do you mean, what happened? They brought me into a white room, they lifted back the sheet, and there was Nico, dead as a Thanksgiving turkey. I shed a tear, the cop patted my shoulder, I was led out, and that was that.”

“What cop?” I asked.

She lifted her shoulders and let them fall again. “I don’t know what cop. He was there, he asked me if this was my brother, I said yes, he nodded, I left. Cops are cops. They all look alike to me.”

I half heard, very faintly, a car pulling up in the street out front. I took no notice of it, though I should have. “He didn’t give you his name?”

“If he did, I’ve forgotten. Look, Marlowe, what’s this all about?”

I looked away from her. I wondered if I should tell her what Clare Cavendish had told me, about seeing Nico hurrying through the crowds on Market Street up in San Francisco that day? Could I risk it? I was about to speak, not really knowing what I was going to say, when I noticed that she was looking past my shoulder with an odd expression. I turned, just as the back door opened and a guy with a gun in his hand stepped into the room. A Mexican guy. Behind him there was a second Mexican. He had no gun. He looked like he wouldn’t need one.

11

I never did find out their names. For the sake of convenience, in my mind I called them Gómez and López. Not that my convenience, or anyone else’s, was going to be high on their list of priorities; I knew that straight off. Gómez was the brains, such as they were, and López was the muscle. Gómez was short and squarely built, and on the heavy side, for a Mexican, while López was as lean as a rattlesnake. The old guy across the street had said they were stylish dressers, but his sartorial judgment, I could see, wasn’t to be trusted. Gómez wore a powder-blue double-breasted suit with boxy shoulders and a tie with a half-naked bathing beauty painted on it, not very expertly. López’s Hawaiian shirt was about the loudest I’ve ever seen. His white deck pants would have been clean when they were bought, a long time ago. He wore open-toed sandals, and his toes were filthy.

Look, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Mexicans. They’re gentle, kindhearted people, most of them. I like their food and their beer and their architecture. I once spent a very pleasant weekend in Oaxaca, in a fine hotel there, in the company of a friendly lady of my acquaintance. The days were warm and the nights were cool, and at twilight we sat in the Zócalo drinking salty margaritas and listening to the mariachi bands. That’s my Mexico. Gómez and López came from a different place. I’d put them down to a barrio in one of the more raucous towns just south of the border. I heard Lynn Peterson catch her breath at the sight of them. I probably caught my own breath. They were quite a sight, after all.

They came through the door in a big hurry. They were impatient fellows in general, as I was to find out. Gómez’s gun was a hefty silver-plated automatic that looked as if it would have the firepower of a small howitzer. A man with a gun like that in his paw is not a man to quibble with over petty details. From the negligent way he held it, I could see that he and the gun were chums from way back. López, though, would be a knife man; he had that nervy, wild-eyed look. I recalled Travis, the bartender at the Beanery, making a joke about this pair—it had to have been them—toying with their gun and knife. Some joke. He didn’t know how right he’d turn out to be.

At first Gómez didn’t even look at Lynn Peterson or me. He stalked straight through the kitchen into the living room, was silent in there for a moment or two, checking the place out, I supposed, then came back. He was a twitchy type, like his partner, and kept sort of throwing himself around inside that roomy suit of his. López meanwhile stood in the open doorway eyeing Lynn Peterson. Gómez gave her his attention too, but it was me he spoke to. “Who are you?”

It was a question I was getting tired of being asked. “Marlowe’s the name,” I said, then added, “I think there must be some mistake here.”

“What kind of mistake?”

“I’m sure we’re not who you think we are, Miss Cavendish and I.” I felt Lynn Peterson’s surprised stare. It was the only name I’d been able to come up with on the spot. “Miss Cavendish is a rental agent. She’s showing me the house.”

“Why?” Gómez asked. I had the impression he was asking just for the sake of asking, while he thought up some sharper questions, ones with more point.

“Well,” I said, “I’m thinking of renting.” This amused López, and he laughed. I noticed he had a harelip, badly stitched. “Are you detectives?” I asked. This made López laugh some more. When the gap opened in his lip, a yellowish tooth glinted in there.

“Sure,” Gómez said, without even a smile, “we’re the cops.” He turned his attention to the woman beside me. “Cavendish,” he said. “That’s not your name. Am I right?” She began to protest, but he waved the barrel of his gun wearily in front of her face, like a huge reproving forefinger. “No, no, no, senorita. You don’t lie to me. You do, you pay for it. What’s your real name?” She said nothing. He shrugged, the padded shoulders of his jacket tilting to the left. “It don’t matter. I know who you are.”

He moved away, and in his place López came forward and stood in front of the woman, smiling into her eyes. She flinched from him. His breath probably wasn’t the sweetest. Gómez said something in Spanish that I didn’t catch, and López scowled. “What’s your name, baby?” he crooned softly. “I bet you got a real nice name.”

He put a hand under her right breast and hefted it, as if guessing its weight. She jerked herself back, out of his reach, but he followed her, still with his hand out. He wasn’t leaving me much choice. I got him by the wrist with one hand and by the elbow with the other and yanked both joints in different directions. It hurt, and he gave a yelp and tore his arm out of my grasp. Sure enough, a knife had appeared in his other hand, the left one. It was a small knife, with a short blade, but I wasn’t fool enough not to know what he’d be able to do with it.

“Look, take it easy,” I said, letting my voice go high-pitched, trying to sound like a guy whose only interest was renting a house at a nice rate and staying out of trouble. “But keep your hands off the lady.”

I could feel Lynn Peterson’s fear; it was in the air, like a fox’s scent. I happened to have my .38 Special in a spring-loaded holster on my belt at the side. I hoped the Mexicans wouldn’t notice it until I had figured out a way to get at it without being shot or sliced first. You see them in the movies, the quick-draw artists; their guns come out like greased lightning, spinning on their index fingers. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works in real life.