The sign on the corner said Descanso Street. Houses were lighted down the block. I listened for sirens. None came. The other sign said Twenty-third Street. I plowed over to Twenty-fifth Street and started towards the eight-hundred block. No. 819 was Anne Riordans number. Sanctuary.
I had walked a long time before I realized that I was still holding the gun in my hand. And I had heard no sirens.
I kept on walking. The air did me good, but the whiskey was dying, and it writhed as it died. The block had fir trees along it, and brick houses, and looked like Capitol Hill in Seattle more than Southern California.
There was a light still in No. 819. It had a white porte-cochere, very tiny, pressed against a tall cypress hedge. There were rose bushes in front of the house. I went up the walk. I listened before I pushed the bell. Still no sirens wailing. The bell chimed and after a little while a voice croaked through one of those electrical contraptions that let you talk with your front door locked.
What is it, please?
Marlowe.
Maybe her breath caught, maybe the electrical thing just made that sound being shut off.
The door opened wide and Miss Anne Riordan stood there in a pale green slack suit looking at me. Her eyes went wide and scared. Her face under the glare of the porchlight was suddenly pale.
My God, she wailed. You look like Hamlets father!
28
The living room had a tan figured rug, white and rose chairs, a black marble fireplace with very tall brass andirons, high bookcases built back into the walls, and rough cream drapes against the lowered venetian blinds.
There was nothing womanish in the room except a full length mirror with a clear sweep of floor in front of it.
I was half-sitting and half-lying in a deep chair with my legs on a footstool. I had had two cups of black coffee, then I had had a drink, then I had had two soft-boiled eggs and a slice of toast broken into them, then some more black coffee with brandy laced in it. I had had all this in the breakfast room, but I couldnt remember what it looked like any more. It was too long ago.
I was in good shape again. I was almost sober and my stomach was bunting towards third base instead of trying for the centerfield flagpole.
Anne Riordan sat opposite me, leaning forward, her neat chin cupped in her neat hand, her eyes dark and shadowy under the fluffed out reddish-brown hair. There was a pencil stuck through her hair. She looked worried. I had told her some of it, but not all. Especially about Moose Malloy I had not told her.
I thought you were drunk, she said. I thought you had to be drunk before you came to see me. I thought you had been out with that blonde. I thought I dont know what I thought.
I bet you didnt get all this writing, I said, looking around. Not even if you got paid for what you thought you thought.
And my dad didnt get it grafting on the cops either, she said. Like that fat slob they have for chief of police nowadays.
Its none of my business, I said.
She said: We had some lots at Del Rey. Just sand lots they suckered him for. And they turned out to be oil lots.
I nodded and drank out of the nice crystal glass I was holding. What was in it had a nice warm taste.
A fellow could settle down here, I said. Move right in. Everything set for him.
If he was that kind of fellow. And anybody wanted him to, she said.
No butler, I said. That makes it tough.
She flushed. But you youd rather get your head beaten to a pulp and your arm riddled with dope needles and your chin used for a backboard in a basketball game. God knows theres enough of it.
I didnt say anything. I was too tired.
At least, she said, you had the brains to look in those mouthpieces. The way you talked over on Aster Drive I thought you had missed the whole thing.
Those cards dont mean anything.
Her eyes snapped at me. You sit there and tell me that after the man had you beaten up by a couple of crooked policemen and thrown in a two-day liquor cure to teach you to mind your own business? Why the thing stands out so far you could break off a yard of it and still have enough left for a baseball bat.
I ought to have said that one, I said. Just my style. Crude. What sticks out?
That this elegant psychic person is nothing but a high-class mobster. He picks the prospects and milks the minds and then tells the rough boys to go out and get the jewels.
You really think that?
She stared at me. I finished my glass and got my weak look on my face again. She ignored it.
Of course I think it, she said. And so do you.
I think its a little more complicated than that.
Her smile was cozy and acid at the same time. I beg your pardon. I forgot for the moment you were a detective. It would have to be complicated, wouldnt it? I suppose theres a sort of indecency about a simple case.
Its more complicated than that, I said.
All right. Im listening.
I dont know. I just think so. Can I have one more drink?
She stood up. You know, youll have to taste water sometime, just for the hell of it. She came over and took my glass. This is going to be the last. She went out of the room and somewhere ice cubes tinkled and I closed my eyes and listened to the small unimportant sounds. I had no business coming here. If they knew as much about me as I suspected, they might come here looking. That would be a mess.
She came back with the glass and her fingers cold from holding the cold glass touched mine and I held them for a moment and then let them go slowly as you let go of a dream when you wake with the sun in your face and have been in an enchanted valley.
She flushed and went back to her chair and sat down and made a lot of business of arranging herself in it.
She lit a cigarette, watching me drink.
Amthors a pretty ruthless sort of lad, I said. But I dont somehow see him as the brain guy of a jewel mob. Perhaps Im wrong. If he was and he thought I had something on him, I dont think Id have got out of that dope hospital alive. But hes a man who has things to fear. He didnt get really tough until I began to babble about invisible writing.
She looked at me evenly. Was there some?
I grinned. If there was, I didnt read it.
Thats a funny way to hide nasty remarks about a person, dont you think? In the mouthpieces of cigarettes. Suppose they were never found.
I think the point is that Marriott feared something and that if anything happened to him, the cards would be found. The police would go over anything in his pockets with a fine-tooth comb. Thats what bothers me. If Amthors a crook, nothing would have been left to find.
You mean if Amthor murdered him or had him murdered? But what Marriott knew about Amthor may not have had any direct connection with the murder.
I leaned back and pressed my back into the chair and finished my drink and made believe I was thinking that over. I nodded.
But the jewel robbery had a connection with the murder. And were assuming Amthor had a connection with the jewel robbery.
Her eyes were a little sly, I bet you feel awful, she said. Wouldnt you like to go to bed?
Here?
She flushed to the roots of her hair. Her chin stuck out. That was the idea. Im not a child. Who the devil cares what I do or when or how?
I put my glass aside and stood up. One of my rare moments of delicacy is coming over me, I said. Will you drive me to a taxi stand, if youre not too tired?
You damned sap, she said angrily. Youve been beaten to a pulp and shot full of God knows how many kinds of narcotics and I suppose all you need is a nights sleep to get up bright and early and start out being a detective again.
I thought Id sleep a little late.
You ought to be in a hospital, you damn fool!