The speedboat pulled up to the side of the yacht where a boarding ladder had been lowered and Bonsentir and the Mex went aboard. The speedboat eased around to the stern.
When the Caddy was out of sight I headed down toward the shack on the pier. From behind the bushes I had seen the telephone line running down to it. The guy that ran the shack had straggly white hair and a big belly pushing at his undershirt. His skinny arms were badly sunburned as were his shoulders where the undershirt exposed them. One of his front teeth was missing and he smoked a thin brown cigarette, hanging from the corner of his mouth. Half an inch of ash had accumulated on the cigarette.
I said, “Use your phone?”
He said, “It ain’t a pay phone. It’s a private phone.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t get paid for its use.”
“Where you want to call?” he said.
“Local,” I said. “Las Olindas.”
“That ain’t a local call,” he said.
I took a ten-dollar bill from my wallet. “This cover it, you think?”
I could see the grayish tip of his tongue as he touched his lips with it near where the cigarette smoldered. The movement dislodged the ash and it fell onto his undershirt. He brushed it absently while he looked at the ten.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess that’ll be okay if you don’t talk long.”
“Okay if I pause to take a breath?”
He took the ten and stuffed it unfolded into the side pocket of his khaki pants and walked to the door of the shack and leaned on the doorjamb with his back to me. That was supposed to give me privacy. I dialed the Cypress Club and got Eddie Mars.
“Marlowe,” I said. “I’m down around Palos Verdes on a pier maybe ten miles south of Redondo, and I think I’ve found Simpson.”
“He going to stay put?”
“I don’t know, he’s on a yacht about a quarter mile offshore. Right now it’s anchored.”
“Stay there, soldier,” Mars said. “I’ll come down.”
“You got a boat?” I said.
“I can get one,” Mars said.
“Good.” I said. “Hold on.”
I got off the phone. “What’s the name of this place?” I said.
The geezer at the door turned, trying to look startled, like I’d interrupted his thoughts.
“This place?”
“Yeah. I’m giving my friend directions.”
“Fair Harbor,” he said.
I repeated it to Mars.
“Sit tight, soldier, I’m on my way.”
“I’ll be here, Eddie, inflating my water wings.”
Mars hung up and so did I. Through the window of the shack I could see the speedboat pull away from the yacht again and head in toward the pier. I turned back and leaned on the counter, letting my jacket fall open so the geezer could see my gun.
“Listen,” I said. “Name’s Armstrong, undercover, U. S. Government. I can’t give you details, but we’re onto something big involving that yacht out there and I don’t want you to mention anything about that phone call.”
The geezer’s eyes fastened on the gun butt under my coat. And he thought about the tenspot in his pocket.
“Sure thing.” He nodded his head hard up and down. “Sure thing, Captain. Hell, I was regular Navy for ten years. You can count on me.”
“Good,” I said. Then I added, “Mum’s the word,” because I’d always wanted to say it and I was never going to get a better chance. The geezer nodded vigorously again, and I went and leaned against the doorjamb and tried for that bored efficient tough-guy look that G-men affect.
The speedboat curved in to the pier and the sailor boy cut the throttle and let it drift expertly in against the landing. When he had it moored he hopped out and came up the pier toward the shack. He was a big one, and tough looking with big hands and a coiling blue sea serpent tattooed on his right forearm. He looked at me hard. I stepped aside to let him pass and he went on into the shack.
“Need some ice,” he said to the geezer.
“Yes, sir,” the geezer said. “Got it right outside in the freezer. Ten-pound block? Twenty?”
“Two twenties,” the sailor boy said. “Load ’em into the speedboat.”
“This is, ah, usually cash and carry,” the geezer said.
“Fine. I give you cash and you carry the ice down to the boat,” the sailor boy said. There was a pause and then the geezer said, “Sure thing” and came out of the shack and went around to the big icebox on the ocean side. Sailor boy ambled out after him and stood near me leaning his back against the shack while the geezer got out tongs and a rubberized shawl and carried the ice down to the speedboat.
“Nice breeze,” the sailor boy said.
“Aye,” I said.
“Do any sailing?” he said.
“No.”
“From around here?”
“You with the census bureau?”
“Hey, pally, I asked you a civil question.”
“I love being called pally,” I said. “Almost as much as I like being asked civil questions.”
“It wouldn’t be a good idea to get too wise with me, pally.”
“The hell it wouldn’t,” I said.
Sailor boy thought about it for a while and decided it wasn’t worth the time. He shrugged and sauntered off down the pier to his boat. He sat in it while the geezer struggled down with the second block of ice, then he cranked it up and left the dock at full throttle, heading back toward the yacht.
The geezer came back up from the landing. His face was red and he was puffing.
I gave him a nod and a conspiratorial wink. He went on inside the shack. I waited. I’d been doing a lot of that lately. I hadn’t done much of anything else lately, except occasionally to get whacked with a sap or threatened with a gun. Counting the ten I’d given the geezer to use his phone, I was at least nine dollars in the hole on this job. It wasn’t the way to get rich.
Five hundred yards away, Randolph’s Ranger rode quietly at anchor, moving very slightly with the slow swells out beyond the surf line. The answers to a lot of questions rode out there on the swells. Maybe Carmen Sternwood, five hundred yards away, cute as a ladybug but far dumber, with the moral sense of an hyena. And here’s Marlowe to the rescue. And Randolph Simpson, whom I’d never met but who appeared to be a mutilation murderer and a thief on a monumental scale, not to mention Bonsentir, and his Mexican and probably six pit vipers. A fine group, can’t wait to join you. Perfect company. Marlowe the all-purpose guest, fits in easily with murderers and psychopaths, friend to all, close associate of Eddie Mars, gambler, gunman, all-around crook. The sky and sea were taking turns being bluer and the sun skipping off the whitecapped onshore waves made the air seem effervescent. A small yacht, a ketch, came around the point to the south and pulled in close to the shore and dropped anchor. A slender girl with a smooth tan and very blonde hair got into the dinghy they were towing and rowed toward shore. She had on white shorts and sneakers and a blue and white striped top and her sunglasses were so big they covered half her face. On the deck of the ketch I could see a blond young man dressed about the same, coiling the excess anchor rope and furling the mainsail. The girl bought some ice and a loaf of bread and other sundries and came back out carrying the purchases in a brown paper bag. The geezer nearly fell over himself carrying the ten-pound block of ice down to the dinghy for her. Her legs were perfectly smooth and the color of good sherry. She flashed a smile at the geezer that would have melted the ice if he’d still been carrying it. He made a ridiculous snaggle-toothed smile back, and she cast off from the landing and rowed back to her boat with short effortless strokes. The geezer and I both watched her until she was back aboard and the mainsail went up. The ketch moved slowly on, up the cove and around the point north of us and out of sight. We were alone again. Me, the geezer, and Randolph’s Ranger.