Then a laugh. It was a girls laugh. Strained, taut as a mandolin wire. A strange sound in that place. The white beam shot under the car again and settled on my feet.
The voice said, not quite shrilly: All right, you. Come out of there with your hands up and very damned empty. Youre covered.
I didnt move.
The light wavered a little, as though the hand that held it wavered. It swept slowly along the hood once more. The voice stabbed at me again.
Listen, stranger. Im holding a ten shot automatic. I can shoot straight. Both your feet are vulnerable. What do you bid?
Put it up or Ill blow it out of your hand! I snarled. My voice sounded like somebody tearing slats off a chicken coop.
Oh a hardboiled gentleman. There was a quaver in the voice, a nice little quaver. Then it hardened again. Coming out? Ill count three. Look at the odds Im giving you twelve fat cylinders, maybe sixteen. But your feet will hurt. And ankle bones take years and years to get well and sometimes they never do really
I straightened up slowly and looked into the beam of the flashlight.
I talk too much when Im scared too, I said.
Dont dont move another inch! Who are you?
I moved around the front of the car towards her. When I was six feet from the slim dark figure behind the flash I stopped. The flash glared at me steadily.
You stay right there, the girl snapped angrily, after I had stopped. Who are you?
Lets see your gun.
She held it forward into the light. It was pointed at my stomach. It was a little gun, it looked like a small Colt vest pocket automatic.
Oh, that, I said. That toy. It doesnt either hold ten shots. It holds six. Its just a little gun, a butterfly gun. They shoot butterflies with them. Shame on you for telling a deliberate lie like that.
Are you crazy?
Me? Ive been sapped by a holdup man. I might be a little goofy.
Is that is that your car?
Who are you?
What were you looking at back there with your spotlight?
I get it. You ask the answers. He-man stuff. I was looking at a man.
Does he have blond hair in waves?
Not now, she said quietly. He might have had once.
That jarred me. Somehow I hadnt expected it. I didnt see him, I said lamely. I was following the tire marks with a flashlight down the hill. Is he badly hurt? I went another step towards her. The little gun jumped at me and the flash held steady.
Take it easy, she said quietly. Very easy. Your friend is dead.
I didnt say anything for a moment. Then I said: All right, lets go look at him.
Lets stand right here and not move and you tell me who you are and what happened. The voice was crisp. It was not afraid. It meant what it said.
Marlowe. Philip Marlowe. An investigator. Private.
Thats who you are if its true. Prove it.
Im going to take my wallet out.
I dont think so. Just leave your hands where they happen to be. Well skip the proof for the time being. Whats your story?
This man may not be dead.
Hes dead all right. With his brains on his face. The story, mister. Make it fast.
As I said he may not be dead. Well go look at him. I moved one foot forward.
Move and Ill drill you! she snapped.
I moved the other foot forward. The flash jumped about a little. I think she took a step back.
You take some awful chances, mister, she said quietly. All right, go on ahead and Ill follow. You look like a sick man. If it hadnt been for that
Youd have shot me. Ive been sapped. It always makes me a little dark under the eyes.
A nice sense of humor like a morgue attendant, she almost wailed.
I turned away from the light and immediately it shone on the ground in front of me. I walked past the little coup, an ordinary little car, clean and shiny under the misty starlight. I went on, up the dirt road, around the curve. The steps were close behind me and the flashlight guided me. There was no sound anywhere now except our steps and the girls breathing. I didnt hear mine.
11
Halfway up the slope I looked off to the right and saw his foot. She swung the light. Then I saw all of him. I ought to have seen him as I came down, but I had been bent over, peering at the ground with the fountain pen flash, trying to read tire marks by a light the size of a quarter.
Give me the flash, I said and reached back.
She put it into my hand, without a word. I went down on a knee. The ground felt cold and damp through the cloth.
He lay smeared to the ground, on his back, at the base of a bush, in that bag-of-clothes position that always means the same thing. His face was a face I had never seen before. His hair was dark with blood, the beautiful blond ledges were tangled-with blood and some thick grayish ooze, like primeval slime.
The girl behind me breathed hard, but she didnt speak. I held the light on his face. He had been beaten to a pulp. One of his hands was flung out in a frozen gesture, the fingers curled. His overcoat was half twisted under him, as though he had rolled as he fell. His legs were crossed. There was a trickle as black as dirty oil at the corner of his mouth.
Hold the flash on him, I said, passing it back to her. If it doesnt make you sick.
She took it and held it without a word, as steady as an old homicide veteran. I got my fountain pen flash out again and started to go through his pockets, trying not to move him.
You shouldnt do that, she said tensely. You shouldnt touch him until the police come.
Thats right, I said. And the prowl car boys are not supposed to touch him until the K-car men come and theyre not supposed to touch him until the coroners examiner sees him and the photographers have photographed him and the fingerprint man has taken his prints. And do you know how long all that is liable to take out here? A couple of hours.
All right, she said. I suppose youre always right. I guess you must be that kind of person. Somebody must have hated him to smash his head in like that.
I dont suppose it was personal, I growled. Some people just like to smash heads.
Seeing that I dont know what its all about, I couldnt guess, she said tartly.
I went through his clothes. He had loose silver and bills in one trouser pocket, a tooled leather keycase in the other, also a small knife. His left hip pocket yielded a small billfold with more currency, insurance cards, a drivers license, a couple of receipts. In his coat loose match folders, a gold pencil clipped to a pocket, two thin cambric handerchiefs as fine and white as dry powdered snow. Then the enamel cigarette case from which I had seen him take his brown gold-tipped cigarettes. They were South American, from Montevideo. And in the other inside pocket a second cigarette case I hadnt seen before. It was made of embroidered silk, a dragon on each side, a frame of imitation tortoiseshell so thin it was hardly there at all. I tickled the catch open and looked in at three oversized Russian cigarettes under the band of elastic. I pinched one. They felt old and dry and loose. They had hollow mouthpieces.
He smoked the others, I said over my shoulder. These must have been for a lady friend. He would be a lad who would have a lot of lady friends.
The girl was bent over, breathing on my neck now. Didnt you know him?
I only met him tonight. He hired me for a bodyguasd.
Some bodyguard.
I didnt say anything to that.
Im sorry, she almost whispered. Of course I dont know the circumstances. Do you suppose those could be jujus? Can I look?