The Big Sleep (16 page)

The teamwork must have been very nice. I saw no signal, no glance of meaning, no gesture that might have a special import. The gaunt man had the stiffened tube high in the air, staring at it. He half turned his body, took one long quick step, and slammed it down over my head and shoulders, a perfect ringer.

He jumped behind me and leaned hard on the rubber. His weight dragged on my chest, pinned my upper arms tight to my sides. I could move my hands, but I couldn’t reach the gun in my pocket.

The brown man came almost dancing towards me across the floor. His hand tightened over the roll of nickels. He came up to me without sound, without expression. I bent forward and tried to heave Art off his feet.

The fist with the weighted tube inside it went through my spread hands like a stone through a cloud of dust. I had the stunned moment of shock when the lights danced and the visible world went out of focus but was still there. He hit me again. There was no sensation in my head. The bright glare got brighter. There was nothing but hard aching white light. Then there was darkness in which something red wriggled like a germ under a microscope. Then there was nothing bright or wriggling, just darkness and emptiness and a rushing wind and a falling as of great trees.

TWENTY-EIGHT

It seemed there was a woman and she was sitting near a lamp, which was where she belonged, in a good light. Another light shone hard on my face, so I closed my eyes again and tried to look at her through the lashes. She was so platinumed that her hair shone like a silver fruit bowl. She wore a green knitted dress with a broad white collar turned over it. There was a sharp-angled glossy bag at her feet. She was smoking and a glass of amber fluid was tall and pale at her elbow.

I moved my head a little, carefully. It hurt, but not more than I expected. I was trussed like a turkey ready for the oven. Handcuffs held my wrists behind me and a rope went from them to my ankles and then over the end of the brown davenport on which I was sprawled. The rope dropped out of sight over the davenport. I moved enough to make sure it was tied down.

I stopped these furtive movements and opened my eyes again and said: “Hello.”

The woman withdrew her gaze from some distant mountain peak. Her small firm chin turned slowly. Her eyes were the blue of mountain lakes. Overhead the rain still pounded, with a remote sound, as if it was somebody else’s rain.

“How do you feel?” It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll’s house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.

“Great,” I said. “Somebody built a filling station on my jaw.”

“What did you expect, Mr. Marlowe—orchids?”

“Just a plain pine box,” I said. “Don’t bother with bronze or silver handles. And don’t scatter my ashes over the blue Pacific. I like the worms better. Did you know that worms are of both sexes and that any worm can love any other worm?”

“You’re a little light-headed,” she said, with a grave stare.

“Would you mind moving this light?”

She got up and went behind the davenport. The light went off. The dimness was a benison.

“I don’t think you’re so dangerous,” she said. She was tall rather than short, but no bean-pole. She was slim, but not a dried crust. She went back to her chair.

“So you know my name.”

“You slept well. They had plenty of time to go through your pockets. They did everything but embalm you. So you’re a detective.”

“Is that all they have on me?”

She was silent. Smoke floated dimly from the cigarette. She moved it in the air. Her hand was small and had shape, not the usual bony garden tool you see on women nowadays.

“What time is it?” I asked.

She looked sideways at her wrist, beyond the spiral of smoke, at the edge of the grave luster of the lamplight. “Ten-seventeen. You have a date?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Is this the house next to Art Huck’s garage?”

“Yes.”

“What are the boys doing—digging a grave?”

“They had to go somewhere.”

“You mean they left you here alone?”

Her head turned slowly again. She smiled. “You don’t look dangerous.”

“I thought they were keeping you a prisoner.”

It didn’t seem to startle her. It even slightly amused her. “What made you think that?”

“I know who you are.”

Her very blue eyes flashed so sharply that I could almost see the sweep of their glance, like the sweep of a sword. Her mouth tightened. But her voice didn’t change.

“Then I’m afraid you’re in a bad spot. And I hate killing.”

“And you Eddie Mars’ wife? Shame on you.”

She didn’t like that. She glared at me. I grinned. “Unless you can unlock these bracelets, which I’d advise you not to do, you might spare me a little of that drink you’re neglecting.”

She brought the glass over. Bubbles rose in it like false hopes. She bent over me. Her breath was as delicate as the eyes of a fawn. I gulped from the glass. She took it away from my mouth and watched some of the liquid run down my neck.

She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.

“Your face looks like a collision mat,” she said.

“Make the most of it. It won’t last long even this good.”

She swung her head sharply and listened. For an instant her face was pale. The sounds were only the rain drifting against the walls. She went back across the room and stood with her side to me, bent forward a little, looking down at the floor.

“Why did you come here and stick your neck out?” she asked quietly. “Eddie wasn’t doing you any harm. You know perfectly well that if I hadn’t hid out here, the police would have been certain Eddie murdered Rusty Regan.”

“He did,” I said.

She didn’t move, didn’t change position an inch. Her breath made a harsh quick sound. I looked around the room. Two doors, both in the same wall, one half open. A carpet of red and tan squares, blue curtains at the windows, a wallpaper with bright green pine trees on it. The furniture looked as if it had come from one of those places that advertise on bus benches. Gay, but full of resistance.

She said softly: “Eddie didn’t do anything to him. I haven’t seen Rusty in months. Eddie’s not that sort of man.”

“You left his bed and board. You were living alone. People at the place where you lived identified Regan’s photo.”

“That’s a lie,” she said coldly.

I tried to remember whether Captain Gregory had said that or not. My head was too fuzzy. I couldn’t be sure.

“And it’s none of your business,” she added.

“The whole thing is my business. I’m hired to find out.”

“Eddie’s not that sort of man.”

“Oh, you like racketeers.”

“As long as people will gamble there will be places for them to gamble.”

“That’s just protective thinking. Once outside the law you’re all the way outside. You think he’s just a gambler. I think he’s a pornographer, a blackmailer, a hot car broker, a killer by remote control, and a suborner of crooked cops. He’s whatever looks good to him, whatever has the cabbage pinned to it. Don’t try to sell me on any high-souled racketeers. They don’t come in that pattern.”

“He’s not a killer.” Her nostrils flared.

“Not personally. He has Canino. Canino killed a man tonight, a harmless little guy who was trying to help somebody out. I almost saw him killed.”

She laughed wearily.

“All right,” I growled. “Don’t believe it. If Eddie is such a nice guy, I’d like to get to talk to him without Canino around. You know what Canino will do—beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.”

She put her head back and stood there thoughtful and withdrawn, thinking something out.

“I thought platinum hair was out of style,” I bored on, just to keep sound alive in the room, just to keep from listening.

“It’s a wig, silly. While mine grows out.” She reached up and yanked it off. Her own hair was clipped short all over, like a boy’s. She put the wig back on.

“Who did that to you?”

She looked surprised. “I had it done. Why?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Why, to show Eddie I was willing to do what he wanted me to do—hide out. That he didn’t need to have me guarded. I wouldn’t let him down. I love him.”

“Good grief,” I groaned. “And you have me right here in the room with you.”

She turned a hand over and stared at it. Then abruptly she walked out of the room. She came back with a kitchen knife. She bent and sawed at my rope.

“Canino has the key to the handcuffs,” she breathed. “I can’t do anything about those.”

She stepped back, breathing rapidly. She had cut the rope at every knot.

“You’re a kick,” she said. “Kidding with every breath—the spot you’re in.”

“I thought Eddie wasn’t a killer.”

She turned away quickly and went back to her chair by the lamp and sat down and put her face in her hands. I swung my feet to the floor and stood up. I tottered around, stiff-legged. The nerve on the left side of my face was jumping in all its branches. I took a step. I could still walk. I could run, if I had to.

“I guess you mean me to go,” I said.

She nodded without lifting her head.

“You’d better go with me—if you want to keep on living.”

“Don’t waste time. He’ll be back any minute.”

“Light a cigarette for me.”

I stood beside her, touching her knees. She came to her feet with a sudden lurch. Our eyes were only inches apart.

“Hello, Silver-Wig,” I said softly.

She stepped back, around the chair, and swept a package of cigarettes up off the table. She jabbed one loose and pushed it roughly into my mouth. Her hand was shaking. She snapped a small green leather lighter and held it to the cigarette. I drew in the smoke, staring into her lake-blue eyes. While she was still close to me I said:.

“A little bird named Harry Jones led me to you. A little bird that used to hop in and out of cocktail bars picking up horse bets for crumbs. Picking up information too. This little bird picked up an idea about Canino. One way and another he and his friends found out where you were. He came to me to sell the information because he knew—how he knew is a long story—that I was working for General Sternwood. I got his information, but Canino got the little bird. He’s a dead little bird now, with his feathers ruffled and his neck limp and a pearl of blood on his beak. Canino killed him. But Eddie Mars wouldn’t do that, would he, Silver-Wig? He never killed anybody. He just hires it done.”

“Get out,” she said harshly. “Get out of here quick.”

Her hand clutched in midair on the green lighter. The fingers strained. The knuckles were as white as snow.

“But Canino doesn’t know I know that,” I said. “About the little bird. All he knows is I’m nosing around.”

Then she laughed. It was almost a racking laugh. It shook her as the wind shakes a tree. I thought there was puzzlement in it, not exactly surprise, but as if a new idea had been added to something already known and it didn’t fit. Then I thought that was too much to get out of a laugh.

“It’s very funny,” she said breathlessly. “Very funny, because, you see—I still love him. Women—” She began to laugh again.

I listened hard, my head throbbing. Just the rain still. “Let’s go,” I said. “Fast.”

She took two steps back and her face set hard. “Get out, you! Get out! You can walk to Realito. You can make it—and you can keep your mouth shut—for an hour or two at least. You owe me that much.”

“Let’s go,” I said. “Got a gun, Silver-Wig?”

“You know I’m not going. You know that. Please, please get out of here quickly.”

I stepped up close to her, almost pressing against her. “You’re going to stay here after turning me loose? Wait for that killer to come back so you can say so sorry? A man who kills like swatting a fly. Not much. You’re going with me, Silver-Wig.”

“No.”

“Suppose,” I said thinly, “your handsome husband
did
kill Regan? Or suppose Canino did, without Eddie’s knowing it. Just suppose. How long will
you
last, after turning me loose?”

“I’m not afraid of Canino. I’m still his boss’s wife.”

“Eddie’s a handful of mush,” I snarled. “Canino would take him with a teaspoon. He’ll take him the way the cat took the canary. A handful of mush. The only time a girl like you goes for a wrong gee is when he’s a handful of mush.”

“Get out!” she almost spit at me.

“Okey.” I turned away from her and moved out through the half-open door into a dark hallway. Then she rushed after me and pushed past to the front door and opened it. She peered out into the wet blackness and listened. She motioned me forward.

“Good-bye,” she said under her breath. “Good luck in everything but one thing. Eddie didn’t kill Rusty Regan. You’ll find him alive and well somewhere, when he wants to be found.”

I leaned against her and pressed her against the wall with my body. I pushed my mouth against her face. I talked to her that way.

“There’s no hurry. All this was arranged in advance, rehearsed to the last detail, timed to the split second. Just like a radio program. No hurry at all. Kiss me, Silver-Wig.”

Her face under my mouth was like ice. She put her hands up and took hold of my head and kissed me hard on the lips. Her lips were like ice, too.

I went out through the door and it closed behind me, without sound, and the rain blew in under the porch, not as cold as her lips.

TWENTY-NINE

The garage next door was dark. I crossed the gravel drive and a patch of sodden lawn. The road ran with small rivulets of water. It gurgled down a ditch on the far side. I had no hat. That must have fallen in the garage. Canino hadn’t bothered to give it back to me. He hadn’t thought I would need it any more. I imagined him driving back jauntily through the rain, alone, having left the gaunt and sulky Art and the probably stolen sedan in a safe place. She loved Eddie Mars and she was hiding to protect him. So he would find her there when he came back, calm beside the light and the untasted drink, and me tied up on the davenport. He would carry her stuff out to the car and go through the house carefully to make sure nothing incriminating was left. He would tell her to go out and wait. She wouldn’t hear a shot. A blackjack is just as effective at short range. He would tell her he had left me tied up and I would get loose after a while. He would think she was that dumb. Nice Mr. Canino.

The raincoat was open in front and I couldn’t button it, being handcuffed. The skirts flapped against my legs like the wings of a large and tired bird. I came to the highway. Cars went by in a wide swirl of water illuminated by headlights. The tearing noise of their tires died swiftly. I found my convertible where I had left it, both tires fixed and mounted, so it could be driven away, if necessary. They thought of everything. I got into it and leaned down sideways under the wheel and fumbled aside the flap of leather that covered the pocket. I got the other gun, stuffed it up under my coat and started back. The world was small, shut in, black. A private world for Canino and me.

Halfway there the headlights nearly caught me. They turned swiftly off the highway and I slid down the bank into the wet ditch and flopped there breathing water. The car hummed by without slowing. I lifted my head, heard the rasp of its tires as it left the road and took the gravel of the driveway. The motor died, the lights died, a door slammed. I didn’t hear the house door shut, but a fringe of light trickled through the clump of trees, as though a shade had been moved aside from a window, or the light had been put on in the hall.

I came back to the soggy grass plot and sloshed across it. The car was between me and the house, the gun was down at my side, pulled as far around as I could get it, without pulling my left arm out by the roots. The car was dark, empty, warm. Water gurgled pleasantly in the radiator. I peered in at the door. The keys hung on the dash. Canino was very sure of himself. I went around the car and walked carefully across the gravel to the window and listened. I couldn’t hear any voices, any sound but the swift bong-bong of the raindrops hitting the metal elbows at the bottom of the rain gutters.

I kept on listening. No loud voices, everything quiet and refined. He would be purring at her and she would be telling him she had let me go and I had promised to let them get away. He wouldn’t believe me, as I wouldn’t believe him. So he wouldn’t be in there long. He would be on his way and take her with him. All I had to do was wait for him to come out.

I couldn’t do it. I shifted the gun to my left hand and leaned down to scoop up a handful of gravel. I tossed it against the screen of the window. It was a feeble effort. Very little of it reached the glass above the screen, but the loose rattle of that little was like a dam bursting.

I ran back to the car and got on the running board behind it. The house had already gone dark. That was all. I dropped quietly on the running board and waited. No soap. Canino was too cagey.

I straightened up and got into the car backwards, fumbled around for the ignition key and turned it. I reached with my foot, but the starter button had to be on the dash. I found it at last, pulled it and the starter ground. The warm motor caught at once. It purred softly, contentedly. I got out of the car again and crouched down by the rear wheels.

I was shivering now but I knew Canino wouldn’t like that last effect. He needed that car badly. A darkened window slid down inch by inch, only some shifting of light on the glass showing it moved. Flame spouted from it abruptly, the blended roar of three swift shots. Glass starred in the coupe. I yelled with agony. The yell went off into a wailing groan. The groan became a wet gurgle, choked with blood. I let the gurgle die sickeningly, one choked gasp. It was nice work. I liked it. Canino liked it very much. I heard him laugh. It was a large booming laugh, not at all like the purr of his speaking voice.

Then silence for a little while, except for the rain and the quietly throbbing motor of the car. Then the house door crawled open, a deeper blackness in the black night. A figure showed in it cautiously, something white around the neck. It was her collar. She came out on the porch stiffly, a wooden woman. I caught the pale shine of her silver wig. Canino came crouched methodically behind her. It was so deadly it was almost funny.

She came down the steps. Now I could see the white stiffness of her face. She started towards 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 into a tree on my side. A ricochet whined off into the distance. But the motor went quietly on.

He was low down, crouched against the gloom, his face a grayness without form that seemed to come back slowly after the glare of the shots. If it was a revolver he had, it might be empty. It might not. He had fired six times, but he might have reloaded inside the house. I hoped he had. I didn’t want him with an empty gun. But it might be an automatic.

I said: “Finished?”

He whirled at me. Perhaps it would have been nice to allow him another shot or two, just like a gentleman of the old school. But his gun was still up and I couldn’t wait any longer. Not long enough to be a gentleman of the old school. I shot him four times, the Colt straining against my ribs. The gun jumped out of his hand as if it had been kicked. He reached both his hands for his stomach. I could hear them smack hard against his body. He fell like that, straight forward, holding himself together with his broad hands. He fell face down in the wet gravel. And after that there wasn’t a sound from him.

Silver-Wig didn’t make a sound either. She stood rigid, with the rain swirling at her. I walked around Canino and kicked his gun, without any purpose. Then I walked after it and bent over sideways and picked it up. That put me close beside her. She spoke moodily, as if she was talking to herself.

“I—I was afraid you’d come back.”

I said: “We had a date. I told you it was all arranged.” I began to laugh like a loon.

Then she was bending down over him, touching him. And after a little while she stood up with a small key on a thin chain.

She said bitterly: “Did you have to kill him?”

I stopped laughing as suddenly as I had started. She went behind me and unlocked the handcuffs.

“Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose you did.”