Poodle Springs

"I've got my car," I said.

"Monson will ride in with you," Fox said.

26

We were in an interrogation room at the Poodle Springs cop house. I was the special guest. Others included a female stenographer with hair the color of pink grapefruit, Sgt. Whitestone from the Springs, Fox, Lt. Wilton Crump, who was the Riverside County Chief Investigator, and as a surprise treat, Bernie Ohls. Crump was round shouldered and long armed. His neck was short. He had piggy eyes separated by a wide flat nose. The backs of his hands were hairy. He had on a black suit and vest and a Borsalino hat. He wore the hat tilted back on his head.

"Let's understand each other, Marlowe," Crump said. He was chewing tobacco and holding a paper cup to spit into. "I know you're Harlan Potter's son-in-law and it don't impress me a goddamned bit."

"Oh darn," I said. "I was hoping you'd want to dance with me."

Crump had the tobacco juice cup in his left hand. He reached around under his coat flap with his right hand and came out with a woven leather sap. He showed it to me and smiled, a big mean tobacco-stained smile, and slapped the blackjack softly against his right thigh.

"I don't have much time, Marlowe. I don't have much time for fu

"Just lucky, I guess."

Crump slapped the blackjack again against his thigh and bent toward me. His breath smelled like he might have drunk some Scotch and then eaten Sen-Sen. I could see the red streaking in the whites of his eyes.

"Careful, Marlowe," he said. His voice sounded clotted. "Be goddamned careful."

I gave him a polite smile.

"Now we're just dumb coppers," Crump said, still close to my face, "and so a smart rich private eye like you probably knows stuff that we don't see."

"I'm not rich," I said. "My wife's rich."

Crump talked on as if I hadn't spoken.

"But we were wondering if there might not be some sort of co

Ohls was leaning against the wall across the room, with his hat tilted forward over his eyes and his arms folded across his chest.

"We might be wondering, too, before Crump frightens us both to death, if you might care to talk a little about how come you were chasing around Western and Sunset at three-thirty in the a.m. with Angel Victor, who is, for the record, the wife of the chief suspect in the murder of Lola Faithful."

"If he don't give me an answer I like," Crump said, "I'll do a hell of a lot more than frighten him." He glanced over at Ohls and then glared in my face.

I said to Bernie, "If you can get Buzzard Breath, here, out of my face, maybe we can talk."

Still leaning in close to me, Crump hit me on the side of the left knee with the blackjack. The pain ran the length of my leg both ways and into my groin. The leg started to throb immediately. There was a hint of tobacco juice at the corner of Crump's mouth.

He snarled at me, "Buzzard Breath, Smart Boy?"

Still leaning on the wall with his arms folded, Ohls said, "Put the sap away, Crump."

Crump straightened and stared across at Ohls.

"The hell with you," he said. "He's my prisoner."

Ohls took out one of his little cigars and put it in his mouth and got it lit. Then he straightened from the wall and walked easily across the room and stood directly in front of Crump with his face maybe a half inch away from Crump's. He let a little smoke drift out as he spoke.

"You either put the sap away," Ohls said in a soft and pleasant voice, "or I will strain it through your teeth."

Crump jerked a little, as if someone had jabbed him. No one said anything for a moment. The two men stood close together.

Then Crump said, "Aw, the hell with this," and stuffed the sap in his back pocket and turned and left the room. Ohls smiled as if at some private joke and turned and went back and leaned on the wall.

"Whyn't you talk about all this, Marlowe, take your time," he said. "We got all night. Fox here can represent Riverside."

I got out a cigarette and lit it and took in some smoke. Maybe it was time to dump this thing, to tell them the thing they didn't know and let them run with it and go home and drink gimlets with my wife. When they knew that Les owed Lippy dough, and that Les was also Larry, the one Lola had argued with before she ended up dead in his office, then the whole thing would go away. Larry would be gone and Muriel would be alone and Angel, with her big eyes and her smile…

"Lippy always had a couple of Roscoes with him," I said. "Whoever murdered him had to get around them first."

Ohls didn't move, or speak.

"I'd guess a woman," I said. "Small gun, whoever did it got close to him. He had his back turned. Scotch was out as if there was going to be a drink. But only one glass. Maybe he had a romantic rendezvous that went bang in the night."

Ohls took his hat off and held it down by his side, holding it by the brim. He had the little cigar in his mouth and he spoke around it.

"We've done this before, Marlowe. We can guess that sort of stuff without you."

I shrugged. "It's all I've got, Bernie."

Ohls tapped the hat against his thigh softly, took the cigar out of his mouth with his other hand, dislodged a bit of tobacco from under his upper lip with his tongue and spit the tobacco delicately toward the corner.

"You discover two homicides in a week," Ohls said. "That could be a coincidence. But in thirty-two years of police work I've never seen a coincidence like that."

There didn't seem much worth saying to that. I let it pass.

"Coincidences don't do anything for us, Marlowe. They don't take us anywhere. Believing in coincidences is believing in dead ends. Cops hate dead ends, Marlowe."

"I know," I said. "I worry about that. Some nights I can't sleep."

"Not only do you find two stiffs in a week, but you do so in the course of looking for a deadbeat named Les Valentine, who, it turns out, is Clayton Blackstone's son-in-law."

"And Clayton Blackstone worries you?"

"Yeah, I stay up nights too," Ohls said. He walked over to one of the scarred maple desks and put his cigar out in a half-empty paper cup of coffee. He turned back toward me.

"You got no client, Marlowe. You got nobody to protect. Unless you're protecting yourself."

"There's nothing more I can tell you, Bernie," I said.

"Maybe you shoulda let Crump have him, Lieutenant," Fox said.

"Crump is a thug with a badge," Ohls said. "I don't like him."

We were all quiet then. The pink-haired stenographer was poised and ready to record more. Except there wasn't any more.

Ohls sighed. "Okay, Marlowe," he said. He turned to Sgt. Whitestone. "Use your jail?"

"Sure," Whitestone said.

"Book him," Ohls said. "Stick him in a cell. Maybe a co

"What charge, Lieutenant?"

"Your choice," Ohls said. "You'll think of something."

Then he put on his hat and walked out of the room.