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TWENTY

A man named Fred Pope who ran a small motel had once told me his views on Esmeralda. He was elderly, talkative, and it always pays to listen. The most unlikely people sometimes drop a fact or two that means a lot in my business.

“I been here thirty years,” he said. “When I come here I had dry asthma. Now I got wet asthma. I recall when this town was so quiet dogs slept in the middle of the boulevard and you had to stop your car, if you had a car, and get out and push them out of the way. The bastards just sneered at you. Sundays it was like you was already buried. Everything shut up as tight as a bank vault. You could walk down Grand Street and have as much fun as a stiff in the morgue. You couldn’t even buy a pack of cigarettes. It was so quiet you could of heard a mouse combin’ his whiskers. Me and my old woman—she’s been dead fifteen years now—used to play cribbage in a little place we had down on the street that goes along the cliff, and we’d listen in case something exciting would happen—like an old geezer taking a walk and tapping with a cane. I don’t know if the Hellwigs wanted it that way or whether old man Hellwig done it out of spite. In them years he didn’t live here. He was a big shot in the farm equipment business.”

“More likely,” I said, “he was smart enough to know that a place like Esmeralda would become a valuable investment in time.”

“Maybe,” Fred Pope said. “Anyhow, he just about created the town. And after a while he came to live here—up on the hill in one of them great big stucco houses with tile roofs. Pretty fancy. He had gardens with terraces and big green lawns and flowering shrubs, and wrought iron gates—imported from Italy, I heard, and Arizona fieldstone walks, and not just one garden, half a dozen. And enough land to keep the neighbors out of his hair. He drank a couple bottles of hooch a day and I heard he was a pretty rough customer. He had one daughter, Miss Patricia Hellwig. She was the real cream and still is.

“By that time Esmeralda had begun to fill up. At first it was a lot of old women and their husbands, and I’m tellin’ you the mortician business was real good with tired old men that died and got planted by their loving widows. The goddam women last too long. Mine didn’t.”

He stopped and turned his head away for a moment, before he went on.

“There was a streetcar from San Diego by then, but the town was still quiet—too quiet. Not hardly anybody got born here. Child-bearing was thought kind of too sexy. But the war changed all that. Now we got guys that sweat, and tough school kids in levis and dirty shirts, and artists and country club drunks and them little gifte shoppes that sell you a two-bit highball glass for eight-fifty. We got restaurants and liquor stores, but we still don’t have no billboards or poolrooms or drive-ins. Last year they tried to put in a dime-in-the-slot telescope in the park. You ought to of heard the town council scream. They killed it for sure, but the place ain’t no bird refuge any more. We got as smart stores as Beverly Hills. And Miss Patricia, she spent her whole life working like a beaver to give things to the town. Hellwig died five years ago. The doctors told him he would have to cut down on the booze or he wouldn’t live a year. He cussed them out and said if he couldn’t take a drink when he wanted to, morning, noon or night, he’d be damned if he’d take one at all. He quit—and he was dead in a year.

“The docs had a name for it—they always have—and I guess Miss Hellwig had a name for them. Anyway, they got bumped off the staff of the hospital and that knocked them loose from Esmeralda. It didn’t matter a whole lot. We still got about sixty doctors here. The town’s full of Hellwigs, some with other names, but all of the family one way or another. Some are rich and some work. I guess Miss Hellwig works harder than most. She’s eighty-six now, but tough as a mule. She don’t chew tobacco, drink, smoke, swear or use no make-up. She give the town the hospital, a private school, a library, an art center, public tennis courts, and God knows what else. And she still gets driven in a thirty-year-old Rolls-Royce that’s about as noisy as a Swiss watch. The mayor here is two jumps from a Hellwig, both downhill. I guess she built the municipal center too, and sold it to the city for a dollar. She’s some woman. Of course we got Jews here now, but let me tell you something. A Jew is supposed to give you a sharp deal and steal your nose, if you ain’t careful. That’s all bunk. A Jew enjoys trading; he likes business, but he’s only tough on the surface. Underneath a Jewish businessman is usually real nice to deal with. He’s human. If you want cold-blooded skinning, we got a bunch of people in this town now that will cut you down to the bone and add a service charge. They’ll take your last dollar from you between your teeth and look at you like you stole it from them.”

TWENTY-ONE

The cop house was part of a long modernistic building at the corner of Hellwig and Orcutt. I parked and went into it, still wondering how to tell my story, and still knowing I had to tell it.

The business office was small but very clean, and the duty officer on the desk had two sharp creases in his shirt, and his uniform looked as if it had been pressed ten minutes before. A battery of six speakers on the wall was bringing in police and sheriff’s reports from all over the county. A tilted plaque on the desk said the duty officer’s name was Griddell. He looked at me the way they all look, waiting.

“What can we do for you, sir?” He had a cool pleasant voice, and that look of discipline you find in the best ones.

“I have to report a death. In a shack behind the hardware store on Grand, in an alley called Polton’s Lane, there’s a man hanging in a sort of privy. He’s dead. No chance to save him.”

“Your name, please?” He was already pressing buttons.

“Philip Marlowe. I’m a Los Angeles private detective.”

“Did you notice the number of this place?”

“It didn’t have one that I could see. But it’s right smack behind the Esmeralda Hardware Company.”

“Ambulance call, urgent,” he said into his mike. “Possible suicide in a small house behind the Esmeralda Hardware Store. Man hanging in a privy behind the house.”

He looked up at me. “Do you know his name?”

I shook my head. “But he was the night garage man at the Casa del Poniente.”

He flicked some sheets of a book. “We know him. Has a record for marijuana. Can’t figure how he held the job, but he may be off it now, and his sort of labor is pretty scarce here.”

A tall sergeant with a granite face came into the office, gave me a quick glance and went out. A car started.

The duty officer flicked a key on a small PBX. “Captain, this is Griddell on the desk. A Mr. Philip Marlowe has reported a death in Polton’s Lane. Ambulance moving. Sergeant Green is on his way. I have two patrol cars in the vicinity.”

He listened for a moment, then looked at me. “Captain Alessandro would like to speak to you, Mr. Marlowe. Down the hall, last door on the right, please.”

He was on the mike again before I was through the swinging door.

The last door on the right had two names on it. Captain Alessandro in a plaque fastened to the wood, and Sergeant Green on a removable panel. The door was half open, so I knocked and went in.

The man at the desk was as immaculate as the desk officer. He was studying a card through a magnifying glass, and a tape recorder beside him was telling some dreary story in a crumpled, unhappy voice. The captain was about six feet three inches tall and had thick dark hair and a clear olive skin. His uniform cap was on the desk near him. He looked up, cut off the tape recorder and put down the magnifying glass and the card.

“Have a seat, Mr. Marlowe.”

I sat down. He looked at me for a moment without speaking. He had rather soft brown eyes, but his mouth was not soft.

“I understand you know Major Javonen at the Casa.”

“I’ve met him, Captain. We are not close friends.”

He smiled faintly. “That’s hardly to be expected. He wouldn’t enjoy private detectives asking questions in the hotel. He used to be in the CIC. We still call him Major. This is the politest goddam town I was ever in. We are a goddam smooth bunch around here, but we’re police just the same. Now about this Ceferino Chang?”

“So that’s his name. I didn’t know.”

“Yes. We know him. May I ask what you are doing in Esmeralda?”

“I was hired by a Los Angeles attorney named Clyde Umney to meet the Super Chief and follow a certain party until that party came to a stop somewhere. I wasn’t told why, but Mr. Umney said he was acting for a firm of Washington attorneys and he didn’t know why himself. I took the job because there is nothing illegal in following a person, if you don’t interfere with that person. The party ended up in Esmeralda. I went back to Los Angeles and tried to find out what it was all about. I couldn’t, so I took what I thought was a reasonable fee, two hundred and fifty, and absorbed my own expenses. Mr. Umney was not very pleased with me.”

The captain nodded. “That doesn’t explain why you are here or what you have to do with Ceferino Chang. And since you are not now working for Mr. Umney, unless you are working for another attorney you have no privilege.”

“Give me a break, if you can, Captain. I found out that the party I was following was being blackmailed, or there was an attempt at blackmail, by a man named Larry Mitchell. He lives or lived at the Casa. I have been trying to get in touch with him, but the only information I have is from Javonen and this Ceferino Chang. Javonen said he checked out, paid his bill, and a week in advance for his room. Chang told me he left at seven
A.M.
this morning with nine suitcases. There was something a bit peculiar about Chang’s manner, so I wanted to have another talk with him.”

“How did you know where he lived?”

“He told me. He was a bitter man. He said he lived on a rich man’s property, and he seemed angry that it wasn’t kept up.”

“Not good enough, Marlowe.”

“Okay, I didn’t think it was myself. He was on the weed. I pretended to be a pusher. Once in a while in my business a man has to do a good deal of faking.”

“Better. But there’s something missing. The name of your client—if you have one.”

“Could it be in confidence?”

“Depends. We never disclose the names of blackmail victims, unless they come out in court. But if this party has committed or been indicted for a crime, or has crossed a state line to escape prosecution, then it would be my duty as an officer of the law to report her present whereabouts and the name she is using.”

“Her? So you know already. Why ask me? I don’t know why she ran away. She won’t tell me. All I know is she is in trouble and in fear, and that somehow Mitchell knew enough to make her say uncle.”

He made a smooth gesture with his hand and fished a cigarette out of a drawer. He stuck it in his mouth but didn’t light it.

He gave me another steady look.

“Okay, Marlowe. For now I’ll let it lay. But if you dig anything up, here is where you bring it.”

I stood up. He stood up too and held his hand out.

“We’re not tough. We just have a job to do. Don’t get too hostile with Javonen. The guy who owns that hotel draws a lot of water around here.”

“Thanks, Captain. I’ll try to be a nice little boy—even to Javonen.”

I went back along the hail. The same officer was on the desk. He nodded to me and I went out into the evening and got into my car. I sat with my hands tight on the steering wheel. I wasn’t too used to cops who treated me as if I had a right to be alive. I was sitting there when the desk officer poked his head out of the door and called that Captain Alessandro wanted to see me again.

When I got back to Captain Alessandro’s office, he was on the telephone. He nodded me to the customer’s chair and went on listening and making quick notes in what looked like the sort of condensed writing that many reporters use. After a while he said: “Thanks very much. We’ll be in touch.”

He leaned back and tapped on his desk and frowned.

“That was a report from the sheriff’s substation at Escondido. Mitchell’s car has been found—apparently abandoned. I thought you might like to know.”

“Thanks, Captain. Where was this?”

“About twenty miles from here, on a country road that leads to Highway 395, but is not the road a man would naturally take to get to 395. It’s a place called Los Penasquitos Canyon. Nothing there but outcrop and barren land and a dry river bed. I know the place. This morning a rancher named Gates went by there with a small truck, looking for fieldstone to build a wall. He passed a two-tone Buick hardtop parked off the side of the road. He didn’t pay much attention to the Buick, except to notice that it hadn’t been in a wreck, so somebody just parked it there.

“Later on in the day, around four, Gates went back to pick up another load of fieldstone. The Buick was still there. This time he stopped and looked it over. No keys in the lock, but the car wasn’t locked up. No sign of any damage. Just the same, Gates wrote down the license number and the name and address on the registration certificate. When he got back to his ranch he called the substation at Escondido. Of course the deputies knew Los Penasquitos Canyon. One of them went over and looked at the car. Clean as a whistle. The deputy managed to trick the trunk open. Empty except for a spare tire and a few tools. So he went back to Escondido and called in here. I’ve just been talking to him.”

I lit a cigarette and offered one to Captain Alessandro. He shook his head.

“Got any ideas, Marlowe?”

“No more than you have.”

“Let’s hear them anyway.”

“If Mitchell had some good reason to get lost and had a friend who would pick him up—a friend nobody here knew anything about—he would have stored his car in some garage. That wouldn’t have made anyone curious. There wouldn’t be anything to make the garage curious. They would just be storing a car. Mitchell’s suitcases would already have been in his friend’s car.”

“So?”

“So there wasn’t any friend. So Mitchell disappeared into thin air—with his nine suitcases—on a very lonely road that was hardly ever used.”

“Go on from there.” His voice was hard now. It had an edge to it. I stood up.

“Don’t bully me, Captain Alessandro. I haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve been very human so far. Please don’t get the idea that I had anything to do with Mitchell’s disappearance. I didn’t—and still don’t—know what he had on my client. I just know that she is a lonely and frightened and unhappy girl. When I know why, if I do manage to find out, I’ll let you know or I won’t. If I don’t, you’ll just have to throw the book at me. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened to me. I don’t sell out—even to good police officers.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out that way, Marlowe. Let’s hope.”

“I’m hoping with you, Captain. And thanks for treating me the way you have.”

I walked back down the corridor, nodded to the duty officer on the desk and climbed back into my car again. I felt twenty years older.

I knew—and I was pretty damn sure Captain Alessandro knew too—that Mitchell wasn’t alive, that he hadn’t driven his car to Los Penasquitos Canyon, but somebody had driven him there, with Mitchell lying dead on the floor of the back seat.

There was no other possible way to look at it. There are things that are facts, in a statistical sense, on paper, on a tape recorder, in evidence. And there are things that are facts because they have to be facts, because nothing makes any sense otherwise.