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TWENTY-TWO

It is like a sudden scream in the night, but there is no sound. Almost always at night, because the dark hours are the hours of danger. But it has happened to me also in broad daylight—that strange, clarified moment when I suddenly know something I have no reason for knowing. Unless out of the long years and the long tensions, and in the present case, the abrupt certainty that what bullfighters call “the moment of truth” is here.

There was no other reason, no sensible reason at all. But I parked across from the entrance to the Rancho Descansado, and cut my lights and ignition, and then drifted about fifty yards downhill and pulled the brake back hard.

I walked up to the office. There was the small glow of light over the night bell, but the office was closed. It was only ten-thirty. I walked around to the back and drifted through the trees. I came on two parked cars. One was a Hertz rent car, as anonymous as a nickel in a parking meter, but by bending down I could read the license number. The car next to it was Goble’s little dark jalopy. It didn’t seem very long since it was parked by the Casa del Poniente. Now it was here.

I went on through the trees until I was below my room. It was dark, soundless. I went up the few steps very slowly and put my ear to the door. For a little while I heard nothing. Then I heard a strangled sob—a man’s sob, not a woman’s. Then a thin, low cackling laugh. Then what seemed to be a hard blow. Then silence.

I went back down the steps and through the trees to my car. I unlocked the trunk and got out a tire iron. I went back to my room as carefully as before—even more carefully. I listened again. Silence. Nothing. The quiet of the night. I reached out my pocket flash and flicked it once at the window, then slid away from the door. For several minutes nothing happened. Then the door opened a crack.

I hit it hard with my shoulder and smashed it wide open. The man stumbled back and then laughed. I saw the glint of his gun in the faint light. I smashed his wrist with the tire iron. He screamed. I smashed his other wrist. I heard the gun hit the floor.

I reached back and switched the lights on. I kicked the door shut.

He was a pale-faced redhead with dead eyes. His face was twisted with pain, but his eyes were still dead. Hurt as he was, he was still tough.

“You ain’t going to live long, boy,” he said.

“You’re not going to live at all. Get out of my way.”

He managed to laugh.

“You’ve still got legs,” I said. “Bend them at the knees and lie down—face down—that is, if you want a face.”

He tried to spit at me, but his throat choked. He slid down to his knees, holding his arms out. He was groaning now. Suddenly he crumpled. They’re so goddam tough when they hold the stacked deck. And they never know any other kind of deck.

Goble was lying on the bed. His face was a mass of bruises and cuts. His nose was broken. He was unconscious and breathing as if half strangled.

The redhead was still out, and his gun lay on the floor near him. I wrestled his belt off and strapped his ankles together. Then I turned him over and went through his pockets. He had a wallet with $670 in it, a driver’s license in the name of Richard Harvest, and the address of a small hotel in San Diego. His pocketbook contained numbered checks on about twenty banks, a set of credit cards, but no gun permit.

I left him lying there and went down to the office. I pushed the button of the night bell, and kept on pushing it. After a while a figure came down through the dark. It was Jack in a bathrobe and pajamas. I still had the tire iron in my hand.

He looked startled. “Something the matter, Mr. Marlowe?”

“Oh, no. Just a hoodlum in my room waiting to kill me. Just another man beaten to pieces on my bed. Nothing the matter at all. Quite normal around here, perhaps.”

“I’ll call the police.”

“That would be awfully damn nice of you, Jack. As you see, I am still alive. You know what you ought to do with this place? Turn it into a pet hospital.”

He unlocked the door and went into the office. When I heard him talking to the police I went back to my room. The redhead had guts. He had managed to get into a sitting position against the wall. His eyes were still dead and his mouth was twisted into a grin.

I went over to the bed. Goble’s eyes were open.

“I didn’t make it,” he whispered. “Wasn’t as good as I thought I was. Got out of my league.”

“The cops are on their way. How did it happen?”

“I walked into it. No complaints. This guy’s a lifetaker. I’m lucky. I’m still breathing. Made me drive over here. He cooled me, tied me up, then he was gone for a while.”

“Somebody must have picked him up, Goble. There’s a rent car beside yours. If he had that over at the Casa, how did he get back there for it?”

Goble turned his head slowly and looked at me. “I thought I was a smart cookie. I learned different. All I want is back to Kansas City. The little guys can’t beat the big guys—not ever. I guess you saved my life.”

Then the police were there.

First two prowl car boys, nice cool-looking serious men in the always immaculate uniforms and the always deadpan faces. Then a big tough sergeant who said his name was Sergeant Holzminder, and that he was the cruising sergeant on the shift. He looked at the redhead and went over to the bed.

“Call the hospital,” he said briefly, over his shoulder.

One of the cops went out to the car. The sergeant bent down over Goble. “Want to tell me?”

“The redhead beat me up. He took my money. Stuck a gun into me at the Casa. Made me drive him here. Then he beat me up.”

“Why?”

Goble made a sighing sound and his head went lax on the pillow. Either he passed out again or faked it. The sergeant straightened up and turned to me. “What’s your story?”

“I haven’t any, Sergeant. The man on the bed had dinner with me tonight. We’d met a couple of times. He said he was a Kansas City PI. I never knew what he was doing here.”

“And this?” The sergeant made a loose motion towards the redhead, who was still grinning a sort of unnatural epileptic grin.

“I never saw him before. I don’t know anything about him, except that he was waiting for me with a gun.”

“That your tire iron?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

The other cop came back into the room and nodded to the sergeant. “On the way.”

“So you had a tire iron,” the sergeant said coldly. “So why?”

“Let’s say I just had a hunch someone was waiting for me here.”

“Let’s try it that you didn’t have a hunch, that you already knew. And knew a lot more.”

“Let’s try it that you don’t call me a liar until you know what you’re talking about. And let’s try it that you don’t get so goddam tough just because you have three stripes. And let’s try something more. This guy may be a hood, but he still has two broken wrists, and you know what that means, Sergeant? He’ll never be able to handle a gun again.”

“So we book you for mayhem.”

“If you say so, Sergeant.”

Then the ambulance came. They carried Goble out first and then the intern put temporary splints on the two wrists of the redhead. They unstrapped his ankles. He looked at me and laughed.

“Next time, pal, I’ll think of something original—but you did all right. You really did.”

He went out. The ambulance doors clanged shut and the growling sound of it died. The sergeant was sitting down now, with his cap off. He was wiping his forehead.

“Let’s try again,” he said evenly. “From the beginning. Like as if we didn’t hate each other and were just trying to understand. Could we?”

“Yes, Sergeant. We could. Thanks for giving me the chance.”

TWENTY-THREE

Eventually I landed back at the cop house. Captain Alessandro had gone. I had to sign a statement for Sergeant Holzminder.

“A tire iron, huh?” he said musingly. “Mister, you took an awful chance. He could have shot you four times while you were swinging on him.”

“I don’t think so, Sergeant. I bumped him pretty hard with the door. And I didn’t take a full swing. Also, maybe he wasn’t supposed to shoot me. I don’t figure he was in business for himself.”

A little more of that, and they let me go. It was too late to do anything but go to bed, too late to talk to anyone. Just the same I went to the telephone company office and shut myself in one of the two neat outdoor booths and dialed the Casa del Poniente.

“Miss Mayfield, please. Miss Betty Mayfield. Room 1224.”

“I can’t ring a guest at this hour.”

“Why? You got a broken wrist?” I was a real tough boy tonight. “Do you think I’d call if it wasn’t an emergency?”

He rang and she answered in a sleepy voice.

“This is Marlowe. Bad trouble. Do I come there or do you come to my place?”

“What? What kind of trouble?”

“Just take it from me for just this once. Should I pick you up in the parking lot?”

“I’ll get dressed. Give me a little time.”

I went out to my car and drove to the Casa. I was smoking my third cigarette and wishing I had a drink when she came quickly and noiselessly up to the car and got in.

“I don’t know what this is all about,” she began, but I interrupted her.

“You’re the only one that does. And tonight you’re going to tell me. And don’t bother getting indignant. It won’t work again.”

I jerked the car into motion and drove fast through silent streets and then down the hill and into the Rancho Descansado and parked under the trees. She got out without a word and I unlocked my door and put the lights on.

“Drink?”

“All right.”

“Are you doped?”

“Not tonight, if you mean sleeping pills. I was out with Clark and drank quite a lot of champagne. That always makes me sleepy.”

I made a couple of drinks and gave her one. I sat down and leaned my head back.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m a little tired. Once in every two or three days I have to sit down. It’s a weakness I’ve tried to get over, but I’m not as young as I was. Mitchell’s dead.”

Her breath caught in her throat and her hand shook. She may have turned pale. I couldn’t tell.

“Dead?” she whispered. “Dead?”

“Oh, come off it. As Lincoln said, you can fool all of the detectives some of the time, and some of the detectives all the time, but you can’t—”

“Shut up! Shut up right now! Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Just a guy who has tried very hard to get where he could do you some good. A guy with enough experience and enough understanding to know that you were in some kind of jam. And wanted to help you out of it, with no help from you.”

“Mitchell’s dead,” she said in a low breathless voice. “I didn’t mean to be nasty. Where?”

“His car has been found abandoned in a place you wouldn’t know. It’s about twenty miles inland, on a road that’s hardly used. A place called Los Penasquitos Canyon. A place of dead land. Nothing in his car, no suitcases. Just an empty car parked at the side of a road hardly anybody ever uses.”

She looked down at her drink and took a big gulp. “You said he was dead.”

“It seems like weeks, but it’s only hours ago that you came over here and offered me the top half of Rio to get rid of his body.”

“But there wasn’t—I mean, I must just have dreamed—”

“Lady, you came over here at three o’clock in the morning in a state of near-shock. You described just where he was and how he was lying on the chaise on your little porch. So I went back with you and climbed the fire stairs, using the infinite caution for which my profession is famous. And no Mitchell, and then you asleep in your little bed with your little sleeping pill cuddled up to you.”

“Get on with your act,” she snapped at me. “I know how you love it. Why didn’t
you
cuddle up to me? I wouldn’t have needed a sleeping pill—perhaps?”

“One thing at a time, if you don’t mind. And the first thing is that you were telling the truth when you came here. Mitchell
was
dead on your porch. But someone got his body out of there while you were over here making a sucker out of me. And somebody got him down to his car and then packed his suitcases and got them down. All this took time. It took more than time. It took a great big reason. Now who would do a thing like that—just to save you the mild embarrassment of reporting a dead man on your porch?”

“Oh, shut up!” She finished her drink and put the glass aside. “I’m tired. Do you mind if I lie down on your bed?”

“Not if you take your clothes off.”

“All right—I’ll take my clothes off. That’s what you’ve been working up to, isn’t it?”

“You might not like that bed. Goble was beaten up on it tonight—by a hired gun named Richard Harvest. He was really brutalized. You remember Goble, don’t you? The fat sort of man in the little dark car that followed us up the hill the other night.”

“I don’t know anybody named Goble. And I don’t know anybody named Richard Harvest. How do you know all this? Why were they here—in your room?”

“The hired gun was waiting for me. After I heard about Mitchell’s car I had a hunch. Even generals and other important people have hunches. Why not me? The trick is to know when to act on one. I was lucky tonight—or last night. I acted on a hunch. He had a gun, but I had a tire iron.”

“What a big strong unbeatable man you are,” she said bitterly. “I don’t mind the bed. Do I take my clothes off now?”

I went over and jerked her to her feet and shook her. “Stop your nonsense, Betty. When I want your beautiful white body, it won’t be while you’re my client. I want to know what you are afraid of. How the hell can I do anything about it if I don’t know? Only you can tell me.”

She began to sob in my arms.

Women have so few defenses, but they certainly perform wonders with those they have.

I held her tight against me. “You can cry and cry and sob and sob, Betty. Go ahead, I’m patient. If! wasn’t that—well, hell, if I wasn’t that—”

That was as far as I got. She was pressed tight to me trembling. She lifted her face and dragged my head down until I was kissing her.

“Is there some other woman?” she asked softly, between my teeth.

“There have been.”

“But someone very special?”

“There was once, for a brief moment. But that’s a long time ago now.”

“Take me. I’m yours—all of me is yours. Take me.”