Poodle Springs

32

I was back in Venice, where Angel worked as a waitress at a combination cafe and bookstore on the beach. The lunch crowd was gone and there were only a few early lush types sipping drinks at the outdoor tables and trying to look as if one would do them, they were just passing time. I sat and ordered coffee. Angel brought it to me.

"Take a minute," I said. "I need to show you something."

I pushed a chair away from the table with my foot.

"They don't allow me to sit with the customers," Angel said, "but I'm due for my break. You can come in back."

I got up and followed her through the kitchen to a storage room where full gallon-size cans of tomatoes and jugs of olive oil were stacked against the bare cinder-block walls. There was a mop and bucket next to the door.

I took the picture of Muriel out and handed it to Angel.

"You know her?" I said.

Angel shook her head. Her cheeks colored. I'd been looking at so many nude pictures lately I'd forgotten that she might be embarrassed. I liked her for it.

"Sorry," I said. "But it's the only picture I've got."

"It's all right," Angel said. She looked at the picture again. "She does have a wonderful body," she said.

"Sure," I said. "Larry took this picture."

"Larry?"

"I can't prove it, but I know it's the picture that Lola showed to Larry when they had their fight. She was trying to blackmail him with it."

"Because he took a naked picture?"

"Because it's his wife," I said.

Angel smiled tentatively at me.

"I don't understand," she said.

"Larry also goes by the name Les Valentine," I said. "-Under that name he is married to this woman, Muriel Blackstone, now Muriel Valentine."

"Larry's married to me," Angel said.

"Yes," I said, "and Les is married to her and Les and Larry are the same guy."

"I don't believe that," Angel said.

"No reason you should," I said. "But it's the truth and I've kept it from you as long as I'm going to."

"I don't know why you come to me and lie to me like this," Angel said. "You must be very evil or very sick."

"Tired," I said. "Tired of wading around in this swamp. Maybe your husband did kill somebody, maybe he didn't; but he's bolted again and I don't know where he is and I don't care. No more secrets."

"You still don't know where Larry is?" Angel said. It was as if everything else I'd told her had washed off her without a mark.

"No," I said. "Do you?"

"No. Do you think something happened to him?"

"No, I think he did what he knows how to do. He ran away."

"He wouldn't leave me," Angel said.

I just shook my head. I didn't know what the hell Larry/Les would do or where he'd go, and I was begi

"He wouldn't," Angel said again.

I fished a card out of my wallet and handed it to her.

"If you find out where he is," I said, "you can call me."

She took the card without looking at it. I doubted that she'd call. I doubted that anyone would call. Ever.

I went out of the restaurant and back along the beach. The Pacific lumbered in toward me. The swells looked tired as they crested and fell apart on the beach, and gathered themselves and withdrew slowly, and got upright and fell toward the beach again.

Time to go back to the Springs.

33

Linda was pacing in the living room past the Hammond organ built into the bar, past the glass wall with the butterflies and back, past the oversized fireplace. The nude picture of Muriel Blackstone was on the bar. Nobody was looking at it.

"I admit I am astonished," Linda said. "I had no idea that Muffy Blackstone…" She shook her head. – "Maybe most women lead lives of quiet desperation, too," I said.

"Maybe they do, but I must say I don't see why my husband has to be the one to dig that up. I mean, really, Philip," she nodded at the picture, "aren't you embarrassed?"

"It's been a long time," I said, "since I got embarrassed."

"Well, you should be. I am."

"I'm a detective, lady. You knew that when you married me."

"I guess I didn't think you'd always be a detective."

"Or you thought I'd grow a thin moustache and drink port and figure out who killed Mrs. Posselthwait's cousin Sue Sue in Count Boslewick's castle garden, without ever getting bark mulch on my shoes," I said. "And maybe we'd dine occasionally with an amusing inspector of police."

"Damn you, Marlowe, can't you see how it is for me? Can't you budge even a little bit?"

"Depends what you need me to budge on," I said. "I can budge on where we live, or who we entertain, or where we go for our honeymoon. But you want me to budge on who I am. On what I am. And I can't. This is what I am, a guy who ends up with dirty pictures in his possession."

"And two murders," Linda said, "and some story about bigamy?"

"And murder and bigamy, and probably a lot worse to come," I said. "It's the way I make my living. It's the way I got to be the guy you wanted to marry in the first place."

"And if I were poor?"

"You're not poor. I'm poor and you're not," I said. "There's no point talking about things that aren't so."

"What are you going to do with that picture of Muffy?" Linda said.

"I don't know," I said. "I didn't understand this case before and now I understand it a lot less."

Linda stepped to the bar and picked up the picture.

"I could tear it up right now," she said.

"Sure," I said, "but I've made copies."

"You think of everything, don't you," she said.

"Everything that doesn't matter," I said. "I haven't thought of who killed Lola Faithful or Lippy. I haven't thought of where Les Valentine is. I haven't thought of a way to keep the cops from tearing up my license, which I don't have copies made of."

Linda dropped the picture back on the bar.

"Perhaps she had Les take it, you know, just for them," she said.

"Maybe."

"Darling," Linda said, "let's go to Mexico again. Today, right now. I could be packed in an hour."

"You could be packed in two," I said. "And you'd pay for the trip and when we got back I'd still have to make a living."

"Damn you," Linda said. "Goddamn you." She walked to the picture window that looked out onto the -patio and pressed her forehead against it.

"I'm embarrassed with my friends about what you're doing. Can you imagine the talk at the club when I had to get you out of jail? I'm terrified when you're not home and I'm humiliated when there are social occasions and I have to go alone, and I don't even know where you are."

There was nothing to be said. So I said it.

"I know it seems so terribly snobbish and petty to you," Linda said. Her forehead was still against the glass. "But it is my life, the only one I've known. And my life matters to me too."

"I know," I said.

She turned from the window and stared at me.

"So what are we to do?" she said.

"You have to live your life," I said. "I have to live mine."

"And we can't seem to do that together," Linda said.

"No, we can't seem to," I said.

We were silent for a long time.

"I'll ask my attorney to draw up divorce papers," Linda said finally. "I want you to have something."

"No," I said. "I'll never touch it. It's not mine."

"I know," Linda said.

We were silent again. Through the plate glass two swallows darted into the bougainvillaea and disappeared in the leaves.

"I'll stay in the guest room tonight," I said. "Tomorrow I'll move back to L.A."

She nodded. There were tears on her face.

"Damn it, Marlowe," she said. "We love each other."

"I know," I said. "It's what makes it so hard."