Poodle Springs

"I don't know. Lola, Lola something. I hardly knew her."

"What were you arguing about?"

"She was drunk."

"What were you arguing about?"

"I used to date her," Victor said.

"Un huh, but you don't know her last name."

He shrugged. "You know how it is, Marlowe."

"No," I said. "I don't."

"You meet a lot of jillies, you sleep with them, they get to thinking it's more serious than you do."

"But not serious enough to tell you their last name," I said.

"Well, I suppose she said, but, hey, I can't remember every name, huh?" He was making a comeback, the fear was shifting back a little, into the shade. I was going to help him, oh, boy.

"Remember this one, pal, or I'll drive you straight downtown."

"Jesus Christ," he said again. The fear was back. "Don't do that. I can remember, her name was, ah…"

He pretended to be thinking hard.

"Her name was Faithful, Lola Faithful. I think maybe she used to hoof it a little."

"Lola Faithful," I said.

"Yeah, probably a stage name, but that's how she was in the book when I used to be dating her. Honest to God."

"And she was mad because you weren't dating her anymore."

"Yeah," Victor said, "right. She was mad as hell, Marlowe."

"How long you been married to Angel?"

"Three years and, ah, seven months."

"Break up with Lola before that?"

"Sure, hell, what kind of guy you think I am?"

"I don't want to know."

"Yeah," Victor said, "broke up with Lola long time before we got married, Soon as I started going with Angel I tossed her over."

"Uh huh," I said. "So like four years ago you ditched Lola Faithful, and a few days ago she braces you in a bar and starts screaming about it?"

"She carries a torch, Marlowe, not my fault."

I puffed a little on my pipe and squinted at him through the smoke. "I've heard sailors tell better stories to Filipino barmaids," I said.

"Well, if you don't believe me then why the hell are you sitting here with me?"

"Two things, maybe three," I said. "One, you're not the type. You're a con man, a booster, a guy that always has a little grift going; I don't think you've got the iron in your bones that it takes to kill a man."

"You ever kill anybody, tough guy?" Victor said.

"Second," I said, "why would you kill her there in your office and leave her there and not even lock the door? You'd be inviting the coppers to come and get you and say you did it."

"Yeah," he said. "I'm not that stupid."

"We'll see," I said.

"You said maybe three reasons," Victor said. "What's the other one?"

He fished the last cigarette out of my pack and crumpled the pack and threw it out the side window. Then he pushed in the car lighter and waited for it to pop.

"Like I said, I'm a romantic."

Victor turned toward me. "I didn't kill her, Marlowe. You've got to believe that."

"I don't have to," I said. "We'll make it a working hypothesis for the moment. You got a place to coop?"

"How about your place?" Victor said.

"My place is occupied," I said.

"Yeah, but, you know, I wouldn't take up a lot of room."

"Occupied," I said, "by my wife, and myself. You're not invited."

"Christ, Marlowe, I got no place to go the cops wouldn't think of."

"They know about Muriel?" I said.

"No, Jesus, nobody knows about her."

"Go there," I said.

"Muriel's?"

"Why not? She's your wife, she thinks. It's your house."

He shook his head. "It's her house," he said. "Her and her old man's."

"You rather spend the night with your back to the wall in the lock-up?"

Victor was silent. The cigarette was down to a stub between his first two fingers. He took another drag, carefully, not burning his lips.

"How'm I going to get there?" he said.

"I'll drive you."

"All the way to Poodle Springs?"

"I live there," I said. "It's on my way home."

"You live in the Springs?" Victor said.

"Sure," I said. "Look at my jawline, the tilt of my chin."

"Marlowe," he said. "Holy Christ, are you the guy that married Harlan Potter's daughter?"

"She married me," I said.

"For chrissake, you live right down the street from me."

"Small world," I said.

18

We rode a lot of the way in silence. Victor said about every 15 minutes that he wished he had a cigarette. As we passed the Bakersfield cutoff I said, "Tell me about Muriel's father."

"Clayton Blackstone?" I could hear Victor take in air and let it out through his nose.

"Yeah."

The sun was gone now and the road cut through the empty desert like a faint ribbon in the headlights.

"Rich," Victor said.

I waited, as the highway spooled underneath us through the stationary dark.

"Rich and mean," Victor said.

"It's how you get rich," I said.

"He got rich a lot of ways," Victor said, "not all of them legal."

I waited some more.

"Most of them not legal," Victor said. "But he did it a while ago so now he's upper class and his daughter is a princess."

"It's a big rough country," I said. "Happens all the time."

"Yeah, but not to me."

"You asked for it," I said, just to be saying something.

"Blackstone made his money out of gambling, ships off the coast, out past the three-mile limit," Victor said. "Get anything you wanted out there, then. Cards, dice, roulette, a horse parlor, rooms for private games. You could get girls, booze, marijuana, coke and this was in the days when high school kids never heard of it."

"Sure," I said, "picked you up in water taxis at the pier in Bay City."

"Now he owns banks, and hotels, and clubs and restaurants, but that's where his money came from. He's still got people around."

"Tough guys?" I said.

"Guys that'll kick out your teeth and then shoot you for mumbling."

"He co

"Naw, Lippy runs that."

"Lippy says his boss is a guy named Blackstone, and that Blackstone is a hard number about the books."

"Jesus," Victor said, "I didn't know that." He rubbed both eyes with the heels of his open hands. "Well, old Clayton isn't going to hack me while I'm married to his daughter."

"Unless he finds out you're also married to Angel," I said.

"Jesus Christ, Marlowe."

The Poodle Springs turn-off loomed out of the night. I turned off into the deeper black of the desert roadway. There were occasional glimmers of light up the canyons where somebody had built into the slagged side of the arroyo and was squatting, doing whatever desert squatters do. I felt a million miles from anywhere, no closer to civilization than to the stars that glimmered without warmth above me. Alone in the darkness listening to the whining litany of a weak man who'd tried to be too cute.

"How do you get along with Blackstone?" I said.

"You don't get along with a guy like Blackstone," Victor said. "He tolerates you or he doesn't. Me he tolerates because I belong to little Muffy."

I could hear the sound of bitterness that tinged his words like the bite of an underripe orange.

"Here's how it looks to me," I said. "Lippy wants you because you owe him money. The cops want you because you might have killed Lola Faithful. Blackstone tolerates you, but if he finds out about Angel he may let some air into your skull."

"Yeah," Victor said. His hands were clenched in front of his chest and he was staring down at his thumbs. "I don't care about myself, Marlowe. But we gotta protect Angel."

"I could tell that," I said. "I could tell just knowing you as I do that your life is a long unbroken sequence of self-sacrifice and concern for others."

"Honest to God, Marlowe. I love that girl. Maybe the only thing I ever loved. Guys would laugh probably, hear me saying something like this, but I'd turn myself in today if it would help her. But I can't because if Blackstone found out about me and Angel he'd have her killed too."