Poodle Springs

"What the hell do you want?" he said.

"I can't take time to explain," I said. "You'll have to take my word. There's a dead woman in your office, Victor, and the cops are on the way."

Angel's eyes widened. Victor said, "A dead woman?"

I said, "Come on, get in my car. Angel, tell the cops you don't know where he is." Everyone stood stock still. I took Victor's arm.

"It's me or a long night downtown," I said. "Angel, dump the glass and drinks. We'll be back."

I pulled Victor with me and went out the front door.

"Larry," Angel yelled after us, "call me."

"Get rid of the two glasses," I said. Then I had Victor in my car and we were rolling out onto Lincoln Ave and onto Venice Boulevard, heading east.

"What the hell is this, Marlowe?" Victor said. I offered him a cigarette. He took it and lit it from the lighter in my dashboard. The car filled with the srnell that cigarettes only smell when you light them with a car lighter.

He took in a deep inhale and let it out in two streams through his nostrils.

"Okay," he said, "what's going on?"

I told him, all of it.

"I didn't kill her," Victor said. "I don't even know what she was doing in my office."

"But you knew her," I said.

"The hell you say."

"She was the blonde you had a fight with the other day in Reno's Bar," I said.

Victor stared at me for a moment. His mouth opened and closed like a tropical fish.

"How'd you…" he said and let it hang.

"I followed you," I said.

"Followed me?"

"Try not to say everything I say. I followed you to Reno's, and then I followed you home. Is Angel your wife?"

"Yes," he said.

"And is Muriel Valentine your wife?"

"Muriel Valentine?"

"I told you not to do that," I said.

"Who's Muriel Valentine?"

"Les Valentine's wife," I said. "I saw a picture of him in her house. If you put on your glasses and took off your rug you'd look just like him."

He was silent for a moment, while he sucked on his cigarette. A long red coal began to form on the end, the way it does when several people pass one around. He shook his head and opened the window of my car and threw the glowing snipe out onto the pavement. A few sparks shook loose as we drove away from it. I could feel his stare.

"So what's the deal?" he said. His voice was heavy.

"Do I call you Larry or Les?" I said.

He didn't answer.

"You legally married to Angel?"

He still didn't answer.

"This is certainly pleasant," I said, "talking to myself. No smart guy remarks, no lies, just the soothing sound of my own questions." I got the picture of Sondra Lee out of my inside pocket and slipped the band off and unrolled it with one hand while I drove. It was nothing compared to brain surgery.

"I assume when you took this she was just starting out," I said. I handed the picture to him. He took it, still silent. Then he said, "Jesus Christ, Marlowe."

"So tell me about things," I said.

Again he said, "Jesus Christ."

"Things fall apart," I said. "Murder does that. You have it all rolled up and folded away neat and then there's a murder and everything unravels."

"What am I going to do?" Larry said.

"You're going to tell me what's going on," I said. "Maybe I can work something out."

"The cops know about me?" he said.

"Not from me," I said. "When I left them they just had the corpse in your office."

"I discovered the body."

We were heading north now, on Sepulveda.

"You?"

"Stiff-a-minute Marlowe," I said. "I went there to talk with you about being Larry Victor and Les Valentine. I'll call you Larry around here. Door was open, she was there. In your chair. Somebody had shot her from close up with a small-caliber gun."

"And you took that picture from my files?"

"No, I took it last time I was there. This time your files were empty."

"No pictures?"

"No pictures," I said.

"Got another cigarette?" he said.

I handed him the pack. On the right was a Von's Supermarket. The lot was full of station wagons and women and market carriages. I pulled off Sepulveda and parked in among them.

Victor had a cigarette going. He handed me back the pack and I put it on the dashboard.

"What's your racket, Marlowe? You a grifter?"

I shook my head.

"Private License," I said. "I was hired to find you."

"Who? Muriel?"

"Lipshultz," I said.

His eyes widened. "Lippy?"

I nodded.

"For the markers?"

"Un huh."

"I was trying to build a stake," he said.

I didn't comment.

"You found out an awful lot awful fast."

"I'm a curious guy," I said. "You trying to build a stake to get out of the Springs?"

"Yeah. The Springs, Muriel, her old man, all of it."

"You married to Angel?"

"Yeah."

"Before or after Muriel?"

"Before."

"Cute," I said. "Let me guess, You met Muriel someplace, maybe shooting some pictures."

"Yeah."

"Sure," I said. "And she liked you and you saw the big burrito all of a sudden, after dancing all your life for dimes. Angel know you married her?"

"No, she thinks I go away on photography assignments."

"So you were going to get your hand in Muriel's trust fund," I said, "and when you had enough you were going to scoot back to L.A. and disappear, with Angel."

"Something like that," he said.

"Except you couldn't get the dough."

He shook his head. "Not a score," he said. "Not a bundle."

"So you tried to parlay it at the Agony Club, and found out that it's hard to beat the house."

"I gamble a lot. I'm good. I think the game was rigged."

"Sure," I said. "Otherwise you'd beat the house. I know you would. They don't play against suckers like you more than fifty, hundred times a day."

"I win a lot."

"As much as you lose?"

He didn't answer. He looked away from me at the food shoppers in the lot, busy, thinking about whether to get pot roast or lamb chops for di

"So how come you didn't tell the cops?"

"What's in it for me?" I said.

"Ain't you a law-abiding citizen?"

"Within reason," I said.

"So how come you didn't tell them? How come you came tearing out here from Hollywood ahead of the cops?"

"I'm a romantic," I said.

"A what?"

"I saw you and Angel together the other night. You looked happy."

He stared at me.

"You are a piece of work, Marlowe," he said.

"Reasonably priced, too," I said.

17

The sun had moved west toward the beach and slanted in lower so that the shadows in the parking lot were long and rakish. The shopping crowd had thi

"I didn't kill her," Victor said.

"Say you didn't, for the moment. Say you're a shifty bastard and a bigamist and a compulsive gambler and a pornographer and a gigolo, but say I don't see you for murder. Tell me how she ends up in your office sitting at your desk with a bullet hole in her forehead?"

"That's pretty rough, Marlowe."

"Sure it is, but it's nowhere as rough as it's going to be when you're down in the hall of justice in the back room where the cops sit around with their feet on the railing."

"If they find me," he said.

"Find you? You poor simp, I found you in three days on a skipped IOU. You think the cops can't find you on suspicion of murder one? You think I was the only person to see you argue with that blonde in Reno's? What was her name?"