“Care for a drink?” I said. “I was just toasting that great healer, Claude Bonsentir.”
“You’re drunk,” she said.
“Probably not,” I said. “But it’s not to say I won’t be.”
I got up and went to the sink in the corner and got the other water glass I kept for company. I rinsed it, brought it back and poured a finger of rye into each glass.
I handed a glass to Vivian and while we stood I raised mine.
“I give you the Hippocrates of the quick needle, Dr. Bonsentir.”
Vivian’s eyes were bright with anger, but she drank a little rye.
“Are you going to ask me to sit down, Marlowe?”
“Certainly,” I said. “Have a chair. Maybe we can have another toast, seated is okay, to the elusive Carmen Sternwood, whom no one seems able to find but everybody says isn’t missing.”
“I know my sister is missing, Mr. Marlowe. I don’t need some piece of drunken sarcasm from the likes of you.” “Who do you need it from,” I said, “if not from me?”
“What I need from you is understanding. You must have some idea of what it is like to try and protect Carmen?”
“I have an idea what it’s like to try to protect the rest of the world from Carmen,” I said.
Vivian’s face was dramatically hurt.
“I was hoping for better from you, Marlowe. I was hoping that the something that sparked between us before hasn’t gone away completely.”
I laughed and drank a little more of my rye.
“What went between us, Mrs. Regan, was you showing me your legs and trying to get me to do whatever you said because I’d seen your legs.”
“And nothing more?”
I shrugged. Maybe there had been something more. I was after all getting drunk in the middle of the day.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Was there?”
“Yes,” she said.
I wanted to believe her. Up close her eyes were nearly coal black and full of heat. She was wearing a lilac scent, an expensive one. And her wide mouth was soft looking with a full lower lip that seemed specifically meant to be nibbled on. I nodded and didn’t say anything.
“I’m not as tough as I look, Marlowe,” she said.
“If you were as tough as you look,” I said, “you’d probably have to be licensed.”
“I’m nowhere near as tough as you are,” she said. “Oh, I know the smart mouth and the dark handsome looks and all of that. Just a lovable gumshoe. But I know what’s inside that. I know that inside it’s all iron and ice.”
She leaned forward toward me, showing me a white lace bra and a good deal of breast as well. “But I’m betting that there’s something else in there too.”
“Don’t bet your life on it, lady,” I said. “I appreciate you showing me what you’ve got. But don’t bet everything that you can melt the iron and ice.”
She got up slowly and walked around the desk and sat quite carefully on my lap. She put her arms around my neck and leaned her face close to me. I could feel the heat of her breath on my face.
“Let’s see,” she said and pressed her mouth against mine, open. We explored that for a while, and when we finally broke, both of us were breathing harder than we had been. Vivian looked into my eyes from very close, so close that her eyes blurred as I’m sure mine must have to her.
“Maybe just a little melting?” she said.
“You found Carmen yet?” I said.
She stiffened and then stood up and walked back around the desk to her chair.
“Damn you,” she said. “Goddamn you, Marlowe. Don’t you change? Can’t you ever change?”
Her voice shook a little and she had to look down and breathe a bit to get her composure. When she finally spoke her voice was a little hoarse.
“I know she’s all right, Marlowe. I don’t know where she is, but I know that Dr. Bonsentir knows and it’s all right.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“Please,” she said. “You want to hear me beg, okay, listen. Please leave this alone. I know you don’t care about money. But I’ll pay you twice what Norris is paying, three times. If you will please just leave this alone.”
“Have you spoken to Norris?” I said.
She shook her head.
“I cannot speak to Norris as I can speak to you.”
“Why not,” I said. “You could show him your legs...” I finished it off with a hand flip.
“He’s the butler, for God’s sake, Marlowe. Do you enjoy humiliating me?”
“I’m not humiliating you,” I said. “You’re doing that yourself. I’m just after the truth.”
“Truth,” she said and laughed without even a hint of humor. “What the hell is the truth? And what difference does it ever make? You’re like so many men. You have these things you think are so important. Truth. My Word. Honor. Right. Pride.” She shook her head and laughed again. A laugh more painful than any scream. “You probably believe in love, for God’s sake.”
“What I believe in right now, Mrs. Regan, is finding Carmen.”
“Why? In the name of God, why do you care? What difference can she ever make?”
“It’s what I do for a living,” I said. “Somebody hired me to do it.”
“You will cause more trouble than you understand,” Vivian said.
I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I let it pass. We looked at each other for a while. Then Vivian sighed and stood up.
“I’m sorry, Marlowe,” she said.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m sorry too.”
She turned and headed for the door. She opened it and turned for a moment and looked back as if she were going to say something. Then she shook her head and turned away.
“Vivian,” I said.
She paused and looked back.
“I enjoyed the kiss,” I said.
She stared at me for a moment and then shook her head again.
“That’s the hell of it,” she said. “I did too.”
Then she turned and closed the door behind her. I sat and looked at it and sipped the rest of the rye. She must have left the outside door open. Because I didn’t hear it close.
7
After Vivian left I corked the office bottle and put it back in the drawer. I went to the sink, rinsed out the glasses, washed my hands and face, and went back to my desk. I got out the phone book and looked up some numbers and made some calls. The L. A. County medical board had no registration of Dr. Claude Bonsentir.
The licensing board had never heard of him.
That taken care of, I went down on the boulevard and sat at a counter and had some late lunch. Never-at-a-loss Marlowe, the hungry detective. After lunch I strolled back up the boulevard toward my office. The movie executives were coming out of Musso & Frank’s, telling each other how much they loved each other’s last picture. The tourists walked along the sidewalk, heads down, staring at the stars in the pavement. If a real star had happened by they’d have never seen him. Near the Chinese theater a group of tourists stood and looked at the footprints in the concrete and listened to some sort of guide telling them about it. Outside the Roosevelt Hotel the prostitutes waited. They’d come from Keokuk and Great Falls, planning to start as starlets and become stars. It hadn’t worked out. Some had started maybe as starlets, but they’d ended up as whores and as the afternoon began to wane, with its promise of evening, they gathered with the desperation in their eyes. Hollywood the town of sex and money and hokum for the tourists. A town where guys like Bonsentir could make a handsome living without a license, without any trace in the medical board records, without any interference from the buttons. Hooray.