Poodle Springs

36

I called Eddie Garcia at the number Blackstone had given me, and he agreed to meet me at the Bay City Pier. He was there when I got there, at the far end leaning on the rail watching the sea birds swoop over the waves looking for fish, and circle over the pier looking for garbage. The clouds had moved out of the basin now and the ocean was grey and sleek looking, the swells moving sluggishly under the overcast. A wind had moved in with the thunderheads and was whipping the tips of the swells and tearing a little spray loose from them. Garcia was wearing a light trench coat against the wind, the collar turned up.

As I approached Garcia he rolled around with his back against the railing and his elbows resting on it and looked at me.

"Nice day you brought me out on, Sailor," he said.

"You picked the pier," I said.

"Good place to talk alone," he said.

I nodded. "Lot of open space so you can't be ambushed," I said.

In the daylight, up close, I could see the crows' feet around Garcia's eyes, the depth of the lines around his mouth. He didn't look tired, just older than I'd realized.

"So what'll it be, Sailor?"

"Tell me about Muriel Blackstone," I said.

Something seemed to move behind Garcia's eyes. His face remained blank.

"Why?" he said.

"I'm in a bind, Eddie," I said. "I can probably find Victor okay, and when I do I can see to it that he goes home to Muriel, but I don't know for sure that it's the best idea for anybody."

"Why not?" Garcia said.

"He's not a hell of a guy," I said.

Garcia barked his short laugh.

"We all know that," he said.

"There's other people involved," I said.

"I work for Blackstone," Garcia said. "So do you."

"Doesn't mean he owns me," I said. It didn't mean anything. I was just making noise, buying time, trying to figure out what I even wanted out of this.

"Doesn't mean he owns me either," Garcia said. "So what?"

"Does Blackstone know she's hinky?" I said.

Eddie straightened a little from his lounge on the railing. His eyes narrowed.

"Hinky," he said.

I had on a trench coat too; every well-dressed toughie had one. I reached inside it and brought out one of my pictures of Muriel. I felt like a man selling French postcards. Garcia took the picture and looked at it without expression. As he handed it back to me a raindrop splattered on it-one raindrop, a fat one, the size of a nickel. Around me on the pier I could hear other drops like that, spattering sporadically. I wiped the picture against my chest and slipped it back inside my coat.

Garcia looked at me with a faint smile. "Mr. Black-stone was here now you'd be dead," he said.

"He'd kill me?"

"He'd have me kill you," Eddie said.

"Yeah," I said. "I can feel my lips quivering."

"Where'd you get that photo?"

"Doesn't matter," I said. The rain was starting to come harder, the nickel-sized drops coming more and more closely together. "Does Blackstone know about her?"

Garcia was silent, thinking. I stood and waited while he thought.

Finally he said, "Yeah. He knows. Kid's been wrong since she was little. Booze, creeps, dope. When she was younger I spent a lot of my time straightening out her life."

"Like what?" I said.

"Like she's shacking up with some Hollywood heartthrob up at Zuma Beach and I go up and have a talk with him and he leaves her alone. Lake there was a magazine, nothing you ever heard of, the kind that puts out two issues and folds and opens up under another name. Anyway, they had a photo spread on her." Garcia gri

"She met Victor when he took this photo," I said.

Garcia nodded. "Yeah. Blackstone took her to doctors, hell, we went over to Switzerland with her. Exhibitionism, they said. And a lot of other crap that don't mean anything to me. Didn't cure her, though, just talked a lot."

"You been with Blackstone a long time?" I said.

"Thirty-one years," Garcia said.

"That's more than just working for a man," I said.

"So where'd you get the picture, Sailor?" Garcia said. The rain was steady now, stippling the slick surface of the Waves.

"Lola Faithful had it and stashed it in Union Station. I found the receipt in her house."

"How come the cops didn't find it?" Garcia said.

"They weren't looking for it," I said. "I saw the argument in the bar. I knew there was a picture."

"Where'd she get it?"

"I don't know," I said. "She was dead when I met her."

"And she tried to blackmail Larry with it," Garcia said.

I nodded. The rain had soaked Garcia's dark hair and water ran down his face. Garcia didn't seem to notice.

"And he capped her," he said.

I shrugged. "Maybe," I said. "Or maybe she went to others."

"Muffy?" Garcia said.

"Or maybe she went all the way, to the source," I said.

"Mr. Blackstone," Garcia said.

"Which probably means you. You use a small-caliber gun, hot-loaded?"

The top two buttons of Garcia's raincoat were unbuttoned. He made a movement and a gun appeared. He turned and fired, and a seagull spun out of mid-swoop and plummeted into the ocean. Garcia turned back and the gun was laying in his open palm. It was a squat .44 Magnum, nickel-plated with a two-inch barrel. It would have made a hole the size of a baseball in Lola Faithful's head. Garcia moved again and the gun was back inside his coat.

"Not bad," I said, "with that short a barrel."

"Keep it in mind," Garcia said. "I was you, I'd find myself Les Valentine, bring him back to Muffy, take Mr. Blackstone's dough and move on."

The heavy warm rain was hammering down on us like a bad headache. I could feel the wetness where it had seeped in around my collar. The wind had come with it now, hard, and pushed at both of us.

"Mr. Blackstone finally got her married, you understand? The guy's a creep, okay. You know it, I know it, Mr. Blackstone, he knows it. But Muffy don't know it, or if she does, she don't care. And Mr. Blackstone don't care either. He's got her under cover, out in the Springs, off the streets, safe. Comprendez, Sailor? You screw that up and Mr. Blackstone going to be sending me looking for you."

"If he does, Chico, you know where I am," I said.

And we stared at each other for a time in the rain, with the wind shoving at us and no one else in sight, out at the far end of the city pier above the fat grey ocean, a very long way from Poodle Springs.

37

It was suppertime when I got back from terrifying Eddie Garcia. I took a long shower and put on dry clothes and made myself a stiff Scotch and soda and sat down and called Linda. Tino answered.

"Mr. Marlowe," he said. "I am sorry you are away. I hope you will be back soon."

I murmured something encouraging, and waited while he got Linda. When she came on her voice was as clear as moonlight.

"Darling," she said. "Are you sheltered and warm?"

"I wanted you to have this phone number," I said, and gave it to her. "It's a furnished apartment on Ivar. No houseboy, no pool, no piano bar. I don't know if I can survive."

"It is frightful, isn't it, how people choose to live,"

Linda said. "I hope at least you can get a civilized gimlet there."

"Sure," I said. "Anything you want, you can get in Hollywood, you know that."

"Are you lonely, darling?"

"Lonely, me? As soon as word got out that I was back in town there was a stampede of Paramount contract starlets up Western Ave."

We were both quiet for a moment on the telephone. The wires between us hummed faintly with tension.

"Darling, now don't be angry, but Daddy is opening a plant, something to do with ball bearings, in Long Beach and he suggested you might wish to consider a position there as, ah, director.of security."