“Registration,” the chief said. “Rita couldn’t remember if you give her a name.”
I nodded. There was a moment of silence.
“We asked you a question, city boy.”
“I’m a private detective on a case,” I said.
“What case?” the chief said.
“Confidential,” I said.
The chief made a little nod of his head and the fat cop hit me on the right shoulder with a blackjack. The pain went the length of my arm and up into my head. The fat cop was very quick with his blackjack, I hadn’t seen him take it out.
“He makes another move with that sap,” I said to the chief, “and I’m going to feed it to him.”
The chief made a small move with his right hand and the frontier Colt was in it and pointing up under my chin.
“Let’s just all stop fiddling around with this thing,” he said. “You out here asking questions about Rancho Springs Development Corporation. We don’t like that. We don’t like big-time hotshot city private detectives come weasling into our town and asking questions about our businesses. Vern here, he hates that especially.”
“I guessed that,” I said. The muzzle of the Colt was pressing firmly into the soft area under my jawbone.
“So we don’t want you to do it no more, smart boy. We want you to get in your car and haul it out of Rancho Springs and not come back. ’Cause if you do come back we got a cell, way down back with no windows and one bright light where you and Vern can sort of cha cha cha until everything’s clear. Comprende?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I can follow that.”
The tall chief turned my head toward the car with the muzzle of his Colt.
“Dust,” he said.
My right arm was numb and throbbing. I could barely move it. I tried not to let it show. I opened the car door with my left hand, just as if I always opened it with my left hand, and got in and started up. The two cops got in their car and pulled up and I went past them and headed out of town. They followed me all the way to the town line and then U-turned and headed back toward Rancho Springs, leaving a low pall of dust behind them as they dwindled in the rearview mirror. Every day some new friends.
23
I woke up with an idea. I also woke up with one arm throbbing like a toothache, and some soreness left in my jaw, and a dull tenderness behind my ear. But mostly it was the idea. I remembered something Vivian had said about Simpson having a place in the desert. I rolled out of bed and called her while the coffee dripped.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said sleepily. “Somewhere out past Pasadena.”
“It got a name?”
“Springs, some kind of springs,” she said. “I’ve never been there. I just know Daddy used to go out there when he was well.”
“Rancho Springs?”
“That sounds right. Will I see you soon, Phil?”
“I hope so,” I said, and hung up the phone. Phil?
I called Pauline Snow.
“Marlowe,” I said. “Do you know if a guy named Randolph Simpson lives anywhere around Rancho Springs?”
“A guy named Randolph Simpson? Marlowe, where the hell have you been living the last thirty years? Randolph Simpson is not a ‘guy.’ That’s like saying ‘a guy named John D. Rockefeller,’ for God’s sake.”
“Does he live there?”
“Sure. Everybody knows that.”
“Do you have any access to him?”
“Of course not. No one has access to Randolph Simpson. Why?”
“I think he’s hooked into the business with the water rights and the land development.”
“Simpson?”
“Dr. Bonsentir is his doctor.”
“That doesn’t mean he is involved in some scheme.”
“Few nights ago,” I said, “a couple of hard numbers leaned on me pretty good on a rainy street in Hollywood. They told me to stay away from Randolph Simpson and Dr. Bonsentir.”
“Because you were poking around in the water rights thing?”
“Because I have been looking for a young woman who went from Bonsentir’s clinic to Simpson. The hard boys that poured it to me were driving a Buick sedan registered to the Neville Valley Realty Trust.”
“The people buying water rights up north.”
“Un huh.”
“Doesn’t prove Simpson’s involved in it. Could be just about the girl.”
“Why are they driving a car registered to the Neville Valley Trust? And how much of a coincidence is it that Neville Valley seems to be connected to Rancho Springs, and Simpson has a place in Rancho Springs, and his doctor is on the board of the development company buying land in Rancho Springs?”
“Okay,” Pauline Snow said. “You got a point. It’s not something you can take to court, or even something I can print — yet. But it’s something.”
“How about Chuck and Vinnie,” I said. “You have anything on them?”
“Just addresses,” she said. “You want them?”
I did. She rummaged off the phone for a couple of minutes while I put some cream and sugar in my coffee and sipped it. Then she came back and gave me an address in Los Angeles.
“Business address, I assume,” she said. “I don’t know L. A. that well, but that sounds like downtown.”
“It is,” I said. “I’ll go call on them. Anything you can find out about Randolph Simpson is welcome.”
“What are we trying to do, Marlowe? Exactly?”
“How the hell do I know?” I said. “I was hired to find the girl. I guess we’re trying to do that.”
I had some toast and drank the rest of my coffee, and in an hour, with my arm still throbbing, but my head feeling better, I was headed downtown.
Gardenia-Tartabull Insurance and Real Estate was in a building on Bunker Hill near Fourth Street that had impressed everyone when they built it. It was less impressive now, but under the grime you could still see the glamour of its youth. The lobby was an open shaft to the roof through which the iron cage elevators went up and down, and around which a tier of filigreed iron balconies marked the floor levels. Gardenia-Tartabull was on the sixth floor behind a pebbled glass door that had notary public in small black letters under the name of the firm.
Inside, at a desk with nearly nothing on it, was a redhead with a lot of hair, wearing a tight green dress. She was tilted back in her chair with her legs crossed, working very carefully on getting her nails painted in a shade of flame to match her hair. I waited for a minute until there seemed a break in the process. She didn’t look up.
I said, “Do you have another job here, or is that it?”
“Wait a sec,” she said. Her forehead was wrinkled with concentration and the tip of her tongue showed between her bright lips. I hooked a straight chair from against the wall beside the door and turned it around and sat on it with my forearms resting on the back. I put my chin on my arms and watched her paint.
“How long does this usually take you?” I said.
She didn’t answer, just shook her head and frowned a little harder as she put a smooth swipe of lacquer on the nail of her second finger. She had eight to go.
“You don’t have to look up,” I said. “And you don’t have to speak. Just nod or shake your head. Is Gardenia or Tartabull in?”
She nodded. Her little nailbrush was poised over the second nail. It was clear that she could nod or she could paint her nails, but she couldn’t do both.
“Tartabull?”
She shook her head.
“Gardenia?”
She nodded. I glanced around the room. There were four or five green metal file cabinets along the walls, and in the wall behind her desk were two doors, each with a pebbled glass window. One said CHARLES GARDENIA and the other said VINCENT TARTABULL. I stood up.
“Thank you for your help,” I said, and went past her desk toward Gardenia’s office. She almost spoke then, but I had opened the door to Gardenia’s office before she could and then it was too late. As I closed the door behind me I saw her lower her head again and stare at her nails.