The Lady in the Lake (13 page)

She smiled brightly and nodded. “Of course, Mildred Haviland. Don’t you remember, Eustace?”

He didn’t remember. He looked at us like a horse that has got into the wrong stable. He opened the door and said: “What does it matter?”

“And you said Talley was a small man,” I bored on. “He wouldn’t for instance be a big loud bruiser with an overbearing manner?”

“Oh no,” Mrs. Grayson said. “Mr. Talley is a man of not more than medium height, middle-aged, with brownish hair and a very quiet voice. He had a sort of worried expression. I mean, he looked as if he always had it.”

“Looks as if he needed it,” I said.

Grayson put his bony hand out and I shook it. It felt like shaking hands with a towel rack.

“If you get him,” he said and clamped his mouth hard on his pipe stem, “call back with a bill. If you get Almore, I mean, of course.”

I said I knew he meant Almore, but that there wouldn’t be any bill.

I went back along the silent hallway. The self-operating elevator was carpeted in red plush. It had an elderly perfume in it, like three widows drinking tea.

TWENTY-FOUR

The house on Westmore Street was a small frame bungalow behind a larger house. There was no number visible on the smaller house, but the one in front showed a stencilled 1618 beside the door, with a dim light behind the stencil. A narrow concrete path led along under windows to the house at the back. It had a tiny porch with a single chair on it. I stepped up on the porch and rang the bell.

It buzzed not very far off. The front door was open behind the screen but there was no light. From the darkness a querulous voice said:

“What is it?”

I spoke into the darkness. “Mr. Talley in?”

The voice became flat and without tone. “Who wants him?”

“A friend.”

The woman sitting inside in the darkness made a vague sound in her throat which might have been amusement. Or she might just have been clearing her throat. “All right,” she said. “How much is this one?”

“It’s not a bill, Mrs. Talley. I suppose you are Mrs. Talley ?”

“Oh, go away and let me alone,” the voice said. “Mr. Talley isn’t here. He hasn’t been here. He won’t be here.”

I put my nose against the screen and tried to peer into the room. I could see the vague outlines of its furniture. From where the voice came from also showed the shape of a couch. A woman was lying on it. She seemed to be lying on her back and looking up at the ceiling. She was quite motionless.

“I’m sick,” the voice said. “I’ve had enough trouble. Go away and leave me be.”

I said: “I’ve just come from talking to the Graysons.”

There was a little silence, but no movement, then a sigh. “I never heard of them.”

I leaned against the frame of the screen door and looked back along the narrow walk to the street. There was a car across the way with parking lights burning. There were other cars along the block.

I said: “Yes, you have, Mrs. Talley. I’m working for them. They’re still in there pitching. How about you? Don’t you want something back?”

The voice said: “I want to be let alone.”

“I want information,” I said. “I’m going to get it. Quietly if I can. Loud, if it can’t be quiet.”

The voice said: “Another copper, eh?”

“You know I’m not a copper, Mrs. Talley. The Graysons wouldn’t talk to a copper. Call them up and ask them.”

“I never heard of them,” the voice said. “I don’t have a phone, if I knew them. Go away, copper. I’m sick. I’ve been sick for a month.”

“My name is Marlowe,” I said. “Philip Marlowe. I’m a private eye in Los Angeles, I’ve been talking to the Graysons. I’ve got something, but I want to talk to your husband.”

The woman on the couch let out a dim laugh which barely reached across the room. “You’ve got something,” she said. “That sounds familiar. My God it does! You’ve got something. George Talley had something too—once.”

“He can have it again,” I said, “if he plays his cards right.”

“If that’s what it takes,” she said, “you can scratch him off right now.”

I leaned against the doorframe and scratched my chin instead. Somebody back on the street had clicked a flashlight on. I didn’t know why. It went off again. It seemed to be near my car.

The pale blur of face on the couch moved and disappeared. Hair took its place. The woman had turned her face to the wall.

“I’m tired,” she said, her voice now muffled by talking at the wall. “I’m so damn tired. Beat it, mister. Be nice and go away.”

“Would a little money help any?”

“Can’t you smell the cigar smoke?”

I sniffed. I didn’t smell any cigar smoke. I said, “No.”

“They’ve been here. They were here two hours. God, I’m tired of it all. Go away.”

“Look, Mrs. Talley—”

She rolled on the couch and the blur of her face showed again. I could almost see her eyes, not quite.

“Look yourself,” she said. “I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. I have nothing to tell you. I wouldn’t tell it, if I had. I live here, mister, if you call it living. Anyway it’s the nearest I can get to living. I want a little peace and quiet. Now you get out and leave me alone.”

“Let me in the house,” I said. “We can talk this over. I think I can show you—”

She rolled suddenly on the couch again and feet struck the floor. A tight anger came into her voice. “If you don’t get out,” she said, “I’m going to start yelling my head off. Right now. Now!”

“Okay,” I said quickly. “I’ll stick my card in the door. So you won’t forget my name. You might change your mind.”

I got the card out and wedged it into the crack of the screen door. I said: “Well goodnight, Mrs. Talley.”

No answer. Her eyes were looking across the room at me, faintly luminous in the dark. I went down off the porch and back along the narrow walk to the street.

Across the way a motor purled gently in the car with the parking lights on it. Motors purl gently in thousands of cars on thousands of streets, everywhere.

I got into the Chrysler and started it up.

TWENTY-FIVE

Westmore was a north and south street on the wrong side of town. I drove north. At the next corner I bumped over disused interurban tracks and on into a block of junk yards. Behind wooden fences the decomposing carcasses of old automobiles lay in grotesque designs, like a modern battlefield. Piles of rusted parts looked lumpy under the moon. Roof high piles, with alleys between them.

Headlights glowed in my rear view mirror. They got larger. I stepped on the gas and reached keys out of my pocket and unlocked the glove compartment. I took a .38 out and laid it on the car seat close to my leg.

Beyond the junk yards there was a brick field. The tall chimney of the kiln was smokeless, far off over waste land. Piles of dark bricks, a low wooden building with a sign on it, emptiness, no one moving, no light.

The car behind me gained. The low whine of a lightly touched siren growled through the night. The sound loafed over the fringes of a neglected golf course to the east, across the brickyard to the west. I speeded up a bit more, but it wasn’t any use. The car behind me came up fast and a huge red spotlight suddenly glared all over the road.

The car came up level and started to cut in. I stood the Chrysler on its nose, swung out behind the police car, and made a U-turn with half an inch to spare. I gunned the motor the other way. Behind me sounded the rough clashing of gears, the howl of an infuriated motor, and the red spotlight swept for what seemed miles over the brickyard.

It wasn’t any use. They were behind me and coming fast again. I didn’t have any idea of getting away. I wanted to get back where there were houses and people to come out and watch and perhaps to remember.

I didn’t make it. The police car heaved up alongside again and a hard voice yelled:

“Pull over, or we’ll blast a hole in you!”

I pulled over to the curb and set the brake. I put the gun back in the glove compartment and snapped it shut. The police car jumped on its springs just in front of my left front fender. A fat man slammed out of it roaring.

“Don’t you know a police siren when you hear one? Get out of that car!”

I got out of the car and stood beside it in the moonlight. The fat man had a gun in his hand.

“Gimme your license!” he barked in a voice as hard as the blade of a shovel.

I took it out and held it out. The other cop in the car slid out from under the wheel and came around beside me and took what I was holding out. He put a flash on it and read.

“Name of Marlowe,” he said. “Hell, the guy’s a shamus. Just think of that, Cooney.”

Cooney said: “Is that all? Guess I won’t need this.” He tucked the gun back in his holster and buttoned the leather flap down over it. “Guess I can handle this with my little flippers,” he said. “Guess I can at that.”

The other one said: “Doing fifty-five. Been drinking, I wouldn’t wonder.”

“Smell the bastard’s breath,” Cooney said.

Theother one leaned forward with a polite leer. “Could I smell the breath, shamus?”

I let him smell the breath.

“Well,” he said judiciously, “he ain’t staggering. I got to admit that.”

“ ’S a cold night for summer. Buy the boy a drink, Officer Dobbs.”

“Now that’s a sweet idea,” Dobbs said. He went to the car and got a half pint bottle out of it. He held it up. It was a third full. “No really solid drinking here,” he said. He held the bottle out. “With our compliments, pal.”

“Suppose I don’t want a drink,” I said.

“Don’t say that,” Cooney whined. “We might get the idea you wanted feetprints on your stomach.”

I took the bottle and unscrewed the cap and sniffed. The liquor in the bottle smelled like whiskey. Just whiskey.

“You can’t work the same gag all the time,” I said.

Cooney said: “Time is eight twenty-seven. Write it down, Officer Dobbs.”

Dobbs went to the car and leaned in to make a note on his report. I held the bottle up and said to Cooney: “You insist that I drink this?”

“Naw. You could have me jump on your belly instead.”

I tilted the bottle, locked my throat, and filled my mouth with whiskey. Cooney lunged forward and sank a fist in my stomach. I sprayed the whiskey and bent over choking. I dropped the bottle.

I bent to get it and saw Cooney’s fat knee rising at my face. I stepped to one side and straightened and slammed him on the nose with everything I had. His left hand went to his face and his voice howled and his right hand jumped to his gun holster. Dobbs ran at me from the side and his arm swung low. The blackjack hit me behind the left knee, the leg went dead and I sat down hard on the ground, gritting my teeth and spitting whiskey.

Cooney took his hand away from his face full of blood.

“Jesus,” he cracked in a thick horrible voice. “This is blood. My blood.” He let out a wild roar and swung his foot at my face.

I rolled far enough to catch it on my shoulder. It was bad enough taking it there.

Dobbs pushed between us and said: “We got enough, Charlie. Better not get it all gummed up.”

Cooney stepped backwards three shuffling steps and sat down on the running board of the police car and held his face. He groped for a handkerchief and used it gently on his nose.

“Just gimme a minute,” he said through the handkerchief. “Just a minute, pal. Just one little minute.”

Dobbs said, “Pipe down. We got enough. That’s the way it’s going to be.” He swung the blackjack slowly beside his leg. Cooney got up off the running board and staggered forward. Dobbs put a hand against his chest and pushed him gently. Cooney tried to knock the hand out of his way.

“I gotta see blood,” he croaked. “I gotta see more blood.”

Dobbs said sharply, “Nothing doing. Pipe down. We got all we wanted.”

Cooney turned and moved heavily away to the other side of the police car. He leaned against it muttering through his handkerchief. Dobbs said to me:

“Up on the feet, boy friend.”

I got up and rubbed behind my knee. The nerve of the leg was jumping like an angry monkey.

“Get in the car,” Dobbs said. “Our car.”

I went over and climbed into the police car.

Dobbs said: “You drive the other heap, Charlie.”

“I’ll tear every god damn fender off’n it,” Cooney roared.

Dobbs picked the whiskey bottle off the ground, threw it over the fence, and slid into the car beside me. He pressed the starter.

“This is going to cost you,” he said. “You hadn’t ought to have socked him.”

I said: “Just why not?”

“He’s a good guy,” Dobbs said. “A little loud.”

“But not funny,” I said. “Not at all funny.”

“Don’t tell him,” Dobbs said. The police car began to move. “You’d hurt his feelings.”

Cooney slammed into the Chrysler and started it and clashed the gears as if he was trying to strip them. Dobbs tooled the police car smoothly around and started north again along the brickyard.

“You’ll like our new jail,” he said.

“What will the charge be?”

He thought a moment, guiding the car with a gentle hand and watching in the mirror to see that Cooney followed along behind.

“Speeding,” he said. “Resisting arrest. H. B. D.” H.B.D. is police slang for “had been drinking.”

“How about being slammed in the belly, kicked in the shoulder, forced to drink liquor under threat of bodily harm, threatened with a gun and struck with a blackjack while unarmed? Couldn’t you make a little something more out of that?”

“Aw forget it,” he said wearily. “You think this sort of thing is my idea of a good time?”

“I thought they cleaned this town up,” I said. “I thought they had it so that a decent man could walk the streets at night without wearing a bulletproof vest.”

“They cleaned it up some,” he said. “They wouldn’t want it too clean. They might scare away a dirty dollar.”

“Better not talk like that,” I said. “You’ll lose your union card.”

He laughed. “The hell with them,” he said. “I’ll be in the army in two weeks.”

The incident was over for him. It meant nothing. He took it as a matter of course. He wasn’t even bitter about it.