The Big Sleep (12 page)

TWENTY-THREE

Light steps, the steps of a woman, came along the invisible pathway and the man in front of me moved forward and seemed to lean against the fog. I couldn’t see the woman, then I could see her indistinctly. The arrogant carriage of her head seemed familiar. The man stepped out very quickly. The two figures blended in the fog, seemed to be part of the fog. There was dead silence for a moment. Then the man said:

“This is a gun, lady. Gentle now. Sound carries in the fog. Just hand me the bag.”

The girl didn’t make a sound. I moved forward a step. Quite suddenly I could see the foggy fuzz on the man’s hat brim. The girl stood motionless. Then her breathing began to make a rasping sound, like a small file on soft wood.

“Yell,” the man said, “and I’ll cut you in half.”

She didn’t yell. She didn’t move. There was a movement from him, and a dry chuckle. “It better be in here,” he said. A catch clicked and a fumbling sound came to me. The man turned and came towards my tree. When he had taken three or four steps he chuckled again. The chuckle was something out of my own memories. I reached a pipe out of my pocket and held it like a gun.

I called out softly: “Hi, Lanny.”

The man stopped dead and started to bring his hand up. I said: “No. I told you never to do that, Lanny. You’re covered.”

Nothing moved. The girl back on the path didn’t move. I didn’t move. Lanny didn’t move.

“Put the bag down between your feet, kid,” I told him. “Slow and easy.”

He bent down. I jumped out and reached him still bent over. He straightened up against me breathing hard. His hands were empty.

“Tell me I can’t get away with it,” I said. I leaned against him and took the gun out of his overcoat pocket. “Somebody’s always giving me guns,” I told him. “I’m weighted down with them till I walk all crooked. Beat it.”

Our breaths met and mingled, our eyes were like the eyes of two tomcats on a wall. I stepped back.

“On your way, Lanny. No hard feelings. You keep it quiet and I keep it quiet. Okey?”

“Okey,” he said thickly.

The fog swallowed him. The faint sound of his steps and then nothing. I picked the bag up and felt in it and went towards the path. She still stood there motionless, a gray fur coat held tight around her throat with an ungloved hand on which a ring made a faint glitter. She wore no hat. Her dark parted hair was part of the darkness of the night. Her eyes too.

“Nice work, Marlowe. Are you my bodyguard now?” Her voice had a harsh note.

“Looks that way. Here’s the bag.”

She took it. I said: “Have you a car with you?”

She laughed. “I came with a man. What are you doing here?”

“Eddie Mars wanted to see me.”

“I didn’t know you knew him. Why?”

“I don’t mind telling you. He thought I was looking for somebody he thought had run away with his wife.”

“Were you?”

“No.”

“Then what did you come for?”

“To find out why he thought I was looking for somebody he thought had run away with his wife.”

“Did you find out?”

“No.”

“You leak information like a radio announcer,” she said. “I suppose it’s none of my business—even if the man was my husband. I thought you weren’t interested in that.”

“People keep throwing it at me.”

She clicked her teeth in annoyance. The incident of the masked man with the gun seemed to have made no impression on her at all. “Well, take me to the garage,” she said. “I have to look in at my escort.”

We walked along the path and around a corner of the building and there was light ahead, then around another corner and came to a bright enclosed stable yard lit with two floodlights. It was still paved with brick and still sloped down to a grating in the middle. Cars glistened and a man in a brown smock got up off a stool and came forward.

“Is my boy friend still blotto?” Vivian asked him carelessly.

“I’m afraid he is, miss. I put a rug over him and run the windows up. He’s okey, I guess. Just kind of resting.”

We went over to a big Cadillac and the man in the smock pulled the rear door open. On the wide back seat, loosely arranged, covered to the chin with a plaid robe, a man lay snoring with his mouth open. He seemed to be a big blond man who would hold a lot of liquor.

“Meet Mr. Larry Cobb,” Vivian said. “Mister Cobb—Mister Marlowe.”

I grunted.

“Mr. Cobb was my escort,” she said. “Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten—when Larry Cobb was sober.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’ve even thought of marrying him,” she went on in a high strained voice, as if the shock of the stick-up was just beginning to get to her. “At odd times when nothing pleasant would come into my mind. We all have those spells. Lots of money, you know. A yacht, a place on Long Island, a place at Newport, a place at Bermuda, places dotted here and there all over the world probably—just a good Scotch bottle apart. And to Mr. Cobb a bottle of Scotch is not very far.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Does he have a driver to take him home?”

“Don’t say ‘yeah.’ It’s common.” She looked at me with arched eyebrows. The man in the smock was chewing his lower lip hard. “Oh, undoubtedly a whole platoon of drivers. They probably do squads right in front of the garage every morning, buttons shining, harness gleaming, white gloves immaculate—a sort of West Point elegance about them.”

“Well, where the hell is this driver?” I asked.

“He drove hisself tonight,” the man in the smock said, almost apologetically. “I could call his home and have somebody come down for him.”

Vivian turned around and smiled at him as if he had just presented her with a diamond tiara. “That would be lovely,” she said. “Would you do that? I really wouldn’t want Mr. Cobb to die like that—with his mouth open. Someone might think he had died of thirst.”

The man in the smock said: “Not if they sniffed him, miss.”

She opened her bag and grabbed a handful of paper money and pushed it at him. “You’ll take care of him, I’m sure.”

“Jeeze,” the man said, pop-eyed. “I sure will, miss.”

“Regan is the name,” she said sweetly. “Mrs. Regan. You’ll probably see me again. Haven’t been here long, have you?”

“No’m.” His hands were doing frantic things with the fistful of money he was holding.

“You’ll get to love it here,” she said. She took hold of my arm. “Let’s ride in your car, Marlowe.”

“It’s outside on the street.”

“Quite all right with me, Marlowe. I love a nice walk in the fog. You meet such interesting people.”

“Oh, nuts,” I said.

She held on to my arm and began to shake. She held me hard all the way to the car. She had stopped shaking by the time we reached it. I drove down a curving lane of trees on the blind side of the house. The lane opened on De Cazens Boulevard, the main drag of Las Olindas. We passed under the ancient sputtering arc lights and after a while there was a town, buildings, dead-looking stores, a service station with a light over a nightbell, and at last a drugstore that was still open.

“You better have a drink,” I said.

She moved her chin, a point of paleness in the corner of the seat. I turned diagonally into the curb and parked. “A little black coffee and a smattering of rye would go well,” I said.

“I could get as drunk as two sailors and love it.”

I held the door for her and she got out close to me, brushing my cheek with her hair. We went into the drugstore. I bought a pint of rye at the liquor counter and carried it over to the stools and set it down on the cracked marble counter.

“Two coffees,” I said. “Black, strong and made this year.”

“You can’t drink liquor in here,” the clerk said. He had a washed-out blue smock, was thin on top as to hair, had fairly honest eyes and his chin would never hit a wall before he saw it.

Vivian Regan reached into her bag for a pack of cigarettes and shook a couple loose just like a man. She held them towards me.

“It’s against the law to drink liquor in here,” the clerk said.

I lit the cigarettes and didn’t pay any attention to him. He drew two cups of coffee from a tarnished nickel urn and set them in front of us. He looked at the bottle of rye, muttered under his breath and said wearily: “Okey, I’ll watch the street while you pour it.”

He went and stood at the display window with his back to us and his ears hanging out.

“My heart’s in my mouth doing this,” I said, and unscrewed the top of the whiskey bottle and loaded the coffee. “The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars’ place was a night club and they had two uniformed men in the lobby every night—to see that the guests didn’t bring their own liquor instead of buying it from the house.”

The clerk turned suddenly and walked back behind the counter and went in behind the little glass window of the prescription room.

We sipped our loaded coffee. I looked at Vivian’s face in the mirror back of the coffee urn. It was taut, pale, beautiful and wild. Her lips were red and harsh.

“You have wicked eyes,” I said. “What’s Eddie Mars got on you?”

She looked at me in the mirror. “I took plenty away from him tonight at roulette—starting with five grand I borrowed from him yesterday and didn’t have to use.”

“That might make him sore. You think he sent that loogan after you?”

“What’s a loogan?”

“A guy with a gun.”

“Are you a loogan?”

“Sure,” I laughed. “But strictly speaking a loogan is on the wrong side of the fence.”

“I often wonder if there is a wrong side.”

“We’re losing the subject. What has Eddie Mars got on you?”

“You mean a hold on me of some sort?”

“Yes.”

Her lip curled. “Wittier, please, Marlowe. Much wittier.”

“How’s the General? I don’t pretend to be witty.”

“Not too well. He didn’t get up today. You could at least stop questioning me.”

“I remember a time when I thought the same about you. How much does the General know?”

“He probably knows everything.”

“Norris would tell him?”

“No. Wilde, the District Attorney, was out to see him. Did you burn those pictures?”

“Sure. You worry about your little sister, don’t you—from time to time.”

“I think she’s all I do worry about. I worry about Dad in a way, to keep things from him.”

“He hasn’t many illusions,” I said, “but I suppose he still has pride.”

“We’re his blood. That’s the hell of it.” She stared at me in the mirror with deep, distant eyes. “I don’t want him to die despising his own blood. It was always wild blood, but it wasn’t always rotten blood.”

“Is it now?”

“I guess you think so.”

“Not yours. You’re just playing the part.”

She looked down. I sipped some more coffee and lit another cigarette for us. “So you shoot people,” she said quietly. “You’re a killer.”

“Me? How?”

“The papers and the police fixed it up nicely. But I don’t believe everything I read.”

“Oh, you think I accounted for Geiger—or Brody—or both of them.”

She didn’t say anything. “I didn’t have to,” I said. “I might have, I suppose, and got away with it. Neither of them would have hesitated to throw lead at me.”

“That makes you just a killer at heart, like all cops.”

“Oh, nuts.”

“One of those dark deadly quiet men who have no more feelings than a butcher has for slaughtered meat. I knew it the first time I saw you.”

“You’ve got enough shady friends to know different.”

“They’re all soft compared to you.”

“Thanks, lady. You’re no English muffin yourself.”

“Let’s get out of this rotten little town.”

I paid the check, put the bottle of rye in my pocket, and we left. The clerk still didn’t like me.

We drove away from Las Olindas through a series of little dank beach towns with shack-like houses built down on the sand close to the rumble of the surf and larger houses built back on the slopes behind. A yellow window shone here and there, but most of the houses were dark. A smell of kelp came in off the water and lay on the fog. The tires sang on the moist concrete of the boulevard. The world was a wet emptiness.

We were close to Del Rey before she spoke to me for the first time since we left the drugstore. Her voice had a muffled sound, as if something was throbbing deep under it.

“Drive down by the Del Rey beach club. I want to look at the water. It’s the next street on the left.”

There was a winking yellow light at the intersection. I turned the car and slid down a slope with a high bluff on one side, interurban tracks to the right, a low straggle of lights far off beyond the tracks, and then very far off a glitter of pier lights and a haze in the sky over a city. That way the fog was almost gone. The road crossed the tracks where they turned to run under the bluff, then reached a paved strip of waterfront highway that bordered an open and uncluttered beach. Cars were parked along the sidewalk, facing out to sea, dark. The lights of the beach club were a few hundred yards away.

I braked the car against the curb and switched the headlights off and sat with my hands on the wheel. Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness.

“Move closer,” she said almost thickly.

I moved out from under the wheel into the middle of the seat. She turned her body a little away from me as if to peer out of the window. Then she let herself fall backwards, without a sound, into my arms. Her head almost struck the wheel. Her eyes were closed, her face was dim. Then I saw that her eyes opened and flickered, the shine of them visible even in the darkness.

“Hold me close, you beast,” she said.

I put my arms around her loosely at first. Her hair had a harsh feeling against my face. I tightened my arms and lifted her up. I brought her face slowly up to my face. Her eyelids were flickering rapidly, like moth wings.

I kissed her tightly and quickly. Then a long slow clinging kiss. Her lips opened under mine. Her body began to shake in my arms.