“He’s tight with Bonsentir?”
“Simpson? Yes. He’s more than that — he’s, ah, he’s dependent on him, I think.”
“Dependent?”
“He’s his doctor, but more than that he seems to be like a confessor, some sort of priest, as well as physician.”
“And Eddie wouldn’t talk to me about any of this when I asked him because you’d told him it was hush-hush.”
“Yes. If Randolph’s confidence is violated he is very unpredictable. It’s not even that he’s cruel, though he probably is. It’s that he is so rich, so indescribably wealthy, that he does whatever he will, without thought, simply because he can.”
“I’m glad for him,” I said. “I’ll settle for just ordinary riches, like yours. Shall we fly off to Tahiti and build a fairy-tale castle?”
“I wish we could,” Vivian said. “It would be very attractive to think about it.”
“You don’t know who might be tailing me in a black Buick sedan, do you?”
Her whole body stiffened.
“My God,” she said. “What if it’s Randolph?”
“I’ll take care of Randolph,” I said. “He’ll think he was in an avalanche.”
“Maybe it’s not Randolph,” she said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe it’s Eddie. Or maybe it’s the cops, though they don’t usually do tail jobs in Buicks. Or maybe kindly Dr. Claude is having me followed. Or maybe it’s a member of the Philip Marlowe Fan Club trying to get up her courage to ask for my autograph.”
“Will you take care of me, Marlowe?”
“Sure thing,” I said. “And I’ll find Carmen too. I was tired of chess puzzles anyway.”
17
The Cypress Club was hopping. A doorman that was dressed like an admiral in the Yugoslavian navy opened the doors for me and I went into the hushed tension of the gambling club. I shook my head at the hat check girl and kept my hat on my head. In the main room there were people gathered under lowered lights around the tables. Everyone looked as if they were watching surgery. No one talked loudly, the bored voices of the dealers droned their dealer patter, the sound of chips and the whir of the roulette wheel was as loud as any human voice. It was never clear to me why people gambled since they seemed to enjoy it so little.
I drifted into the bar and ordered a Bacardi cocktail.
“Eddie around?” I said to the bartender.
“Don’t know no Eddie, pal.”
“Sure you don’t,” I said. “You never heard of Eddie Mars. He doesn’t own this clip joint. You don’t know who owns it. You just work here.”
“If it turned out that I did know this Eddie guy, who should I say was asking?”
“Marlowe,” I said.
The bartender polished the bartop vigorously.
“I see anybody might know this Eddie, I’ll make mention of your name.”
“That’d be dandy,” I said.
The bartender moved on down the bar. I turned and looked out at the main room. A tall jasper with a pencil moustache was making thousand-dollar bets at the baccarat table and losing them. He was obviously drunk and his face was very flushed. A silver-blonde lady with a mink stole and a long cigarette holder was tugging at his arm and crying. He paid her no mind. Just kept laying down the big pictures and losing them and taking another one out of the slim ostrich-skin wallet he took from his inside pocket. Finally the blonde swore at him and released his arm and stalked out of the place. The tall thin guy never looked at her, or after her when she left.
The bartender moved back down the bar toward me.
“Be easier if he just mailed Mars a check,” I said, nodding at the tall drunk losing his money.
“Ain’t that the truth,” the bartender said. He nodded past my shoulder. “Mr. Mars will see you now,” he said.
I turned and Eddie Mars was there, a different gray suit and shirt. This time with a sapphire tie pin in a different gray tie.
“Heard you were asking about me, soldier.”
“Yeah. We need to talk.”
Mars nodded and slid onto the barstool next to me. He waited.
“I talked with Vivian tonight,” I said.
Mars’ face showed nothing.
“She told me what she knows about Carmen and Bonsentir and Simpson and how you said you’d help her because you love her.”
“She told you a lot, soldier.”
“Yeah. She’s in trouble and she knows it,” I said. “She’s looking for help.”
“So why you telling me this?” Mars said. He took a cigarette out of a silver case and put it in his mouth. The bartender appeared and lit it and moved away.
“I figure we’re both working the same side of the street this time. I want to know what you know.”
Mars smiled.
“You and me, huh soldier? What a pair.”
“I don’t like it, Eddie. And I don’t like you. But if you got anything I can use, I’ll take it.”
“Fair enough, soldier. Nice to know where we stand.”
“What do you know?” I said.
“What do I get from telling you?”
“I tell people you’re nice,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“And I won’t be stepping all over you and your boys while I’m looking for Carmen.”
“Stepping on anything of mine will get you a slow ride in a pine box, soldier.”
“One of the things I don’t like about you, Eddie,” I said. “Inside the hand-tailored suits and the fancy manners you’re a goon, just like you were when you started.”
“Calling each other names isn’t going to get this deal done, soldier. And it could get you a bad case of bruises.”
“I’ve had bruises before,” I said. “I love bruises. Bruises are my friends. What do you know about Carmen? Remind yourself you’re doing this for Vivian.”
“You don’t believe it, do you, Marlowe? That a guy like me could go soft for a dame like Vivian Sternwood.”
“I believe you could go soft, Eddie. I don’t believe you could go generous. An angle will turn up in here somewhere. Like it did before.”
Mars shook his head.
“You’re hard to like, Marlowe. I’ll say that for you.”
I waited.
“Carmen’s with Simpson all right. He took her from the sanitarium. Bonsentir’s a high-priced pimp. He runs this clinic for people with sex problems, and then he rents out the juicy ones to a list of very high-priced clients.”
“Like Simpson,” I said.
“Like Simpson,” Mars said.
“He’s the one sent her there in the first place,” I said.
Mars shook his head again and took a long drag on his cigarette.
“Christ,” Mars said, “it’s not like Carmen was hard. Why go through all that rigmarole of sending her through his pimp?”
“So she’d be medically certified,” I said.
Mars looked startled.
“Medically?”
“Disease free,” I said. “Simpson’s phobic about venereal diseases.”
“Creep,” Mars said.
“So he gets her committed to a sanitarium where she’ll be examined and found healthy and passed on to him.”
“How you know so much about Simpson?”
“Vivian told me,” I said.
“Funny she didn’t tell me.”
“I don’t think Vivian tells anybody everything,” I said. “I think she’s learned not to be too trusting.”
“She can trust me,” Mars said.
“Sure she can, Eddie. I can too, everybody can.”
Mars wasn’t listening to me. He was thinking about other things. Things I wouldn’t ever get to hear. Maybe he did love her. Maybe I did too.
“I don’t know much about Simpson. But I know you can’t take him.”
“I’ll take him,” I said.
Mars stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray on the bar.
“Sure you will, soldier. You keep thinking that.”