“Later on in the day, around four, Gates went back to pick up another load of fieldstone. The Buick was still there. This time he stopped and looked it over. No keys in the lock, but the car wasn’t locked up. No sign of any damage. Just the same, Gates wrote down the license number and the name and address on the registration certificate. When he got back to his ranch he called the substation at Escondido. Of course the deputies knew Los Penasquitos Canyon. One of them went over and looked at the car. Clean as a whistle. The deputy managed to trick the trunk open. Empty except for a spare tire and a few tools. So he went back to Escondido and called in here. I’ve just been talking to him.”
I lit a cigarette and offered one to Captain Alessandro. He shook his head.
“Got any ideas, Marlowe?”
“No more than you have.”
“Let’s hear them anyway.”
“If Mitchell had some good reason to get lost and had a friend who would pick him up—a friend nobody here knew anything about—he would have stored his car in some garage. That wouldn’t have made anyone curious. There wouldn’t be anything to make the garage curious. They would just be storing a car. Mitchell’s suitcases would already have been in his friend’s car.”
“So?”
“So there wasn’t any friend. So Mitchell disappeared into thin air—with his nine suitcases—on a very lonely road that was hardly ever used.”
“Go on from there.” His voice was hard now. It had an edge to it. I stood up.
“Don’t bully me, Captain Alessandro. I haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve been very human so far. Please don’t get the idea that I had anything to do with Mitchell’s disappearance. I didn’t—and still don’t—know what he had on my client. I just know that she is a lonely and frightened and unhappy girl. When I know why, if I do manage to find out, I’ll let you know or I won’t. If I don’t, you’ll just have to throw the book at me. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened to me. I don’t sell out—even to good police officers.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out that way, Marlowe. Let’s hope.”
“I’m hoping with you, Captain. And thanks for treating me the way you have.”
I walked back down the corridor, nodded to the duty officer on the desk and climbed back into my car again. I felt twenty years older.
I knew—and I was pretty damn sure Captain Alessandro knew too—that Mitchell wasn’t alive, that he hadn’t driven his car to Los Penasquitos Canyon, but somebody had driven him there, with Mitchell lying dead on the floor of the back seat.
There was no other possible way to look at it. There are things that are facts, in a statistical sense, on paper, on a tape recorder, in evidence. And there are things that are facts because they have to be facts, because nothing makes any sense otherwise.
22
It is like a sudden scream in the night, but there is no sound. Almost always at night, because the dark hours are the hours of danger. But it has happened to me also in broad daylight—that strange, clarified moment when I suddenly know something I have no reason for knowing. Unless out of the long years and the long tensions, and in the present case, the abrupt certainty that what bullfighters call “the moment of truth” is here.
There was no other reason, no sensible reason at all. But I parked across from the entrance to the Rancho Descansado, and cut my lights and ignition, and then drifted about fifty yards downhill and pulled the brake back hard.
I walked up to the office. There was the small glow of light over the night bell, but the office was closed. It was only ten-thirty. I walked around to the back and drifted through the trees. I came on two parked cars. One was a Hertz rent car, as anonymous as a nickel in a parking meter, but by bending down I could read the license number. The car next to it was Goble’s little dark jalopy. It didn’t seem very long since it was parked by the Casa del Poniente. Now it was here.
I went on through the trees until I was below my room. It was dark, soundless. I went up the few steps very slowly and put my ear to the door. For a little while I heard nothing. Then I heard a strangled sob—a man’s sob, not a woman’s. Then a thin, low cackling laugh. Then what seemed to be a hard blow. Then silence.
I went back down the steps and through the trees to my car. I unlocked the trunk and got out a tire iron. I went back to my room as carefully as before—even more carefully. I listened again. Silence. Nothing. The quiet of the night. I reached out my pocket flash and flicked it once at the window, then slid away from the door. For several minutes nothing happened. Then the door opened a crack.
I hit it hard with my shoulder and smashed it wide open. The man stumbled back and then laughed. I saw the glint of his gun in the faint light. I smashed his wrist with the tire iron. He screamed. I smashed his other wrist. I heard the gun hit the floor.
I reached back and switched the lights on. I kicked the door shut.
He was a pale-faced redhead with dead eyes. His face was twisted with pain, but his eyes were still dead. Hurt as he was, he was still tough.
“You ain’t going to live long, boy,” he said.
“You’re not going to live at all. Get out of my way.”
He managed to laugh.
“You’ve still got legs,” I said. “Bend them at the knees and lie down—face down—that is, if you want a face.”
He tried to spit at me, but his throat choked. He slid down to his knees, holding his arms out. He was groaning now. Suddenly he crumpled. They’re so goddamn tough when they hold the stacked deck. And they never know any other kind of deck.
Goble was lying on the bed. His face was a mass of bruises and cuts. His nose was broken. He was unconscious and breathing as if half strangled.
The redhead was still out, and his gun lay on the floor near him. I wrestled his belt off and strapped his ankles together. Then I turned him over and went through his pockets. He had a wallet with $670 in it, a driver’s license in the name of Richard Harvest, and the address of a small hotel in San Diego. His pocketbook contained numbered checks on about twenty banks, a set of credit cards, but no gun permit.
I left him lying there and went down to the office. I pushed the button of the night bell, and kept on pushing it. After a while a figure came down through the dark. It was Jack in a bathrobe and pajamas. I still had the tire iron in my hand.
He looked startled. “Something the matter, Mr. Marlowe?”
“Oh, no. Just a hoodlum in my room waiting to kill me. Just another man beaten to pieces on my bed. Nothing the matter at all. Quite normal around here, perhaps.”
“I’ll call the police.”
“That would be awfully damn nice of you, Jack. As you see, I am still alive. You know what you ought to do with this place? Turn it into a pet hospital.”
He unlocked the door and went into the office. When I heard him talking to the police I went back to my room. The redhead had guts. He had managed to get into a sitting position against the wall. His eyes were still dead and his mouth was twisted into a grin. I went over to the bed. Goble’s eyes were open.
“I didn’t make it,” he whispered. “Wasn’t as good as I thought I was. Got out of my league.”
“The cops are on their way. How did it happen?”
“I walked into it. No complaints. This guy’s a life-taker. I’m lucky. I’m still breathing. Made me drive over here. He cooled me, tied me up, then he was gone for a while.”
“Somebody must have picked him up, Goble. There’s a rent car beside yours. If he had that over at the Casa, how did he get back there for it?”
Goble turned his head slowly and looked at me. “I thought I was a smart cookie. I learned different. All I want is back to Kansas City. The little guys can’t beat the big guys—not ever. I guess you saved my life.”
Then the police were there.
First two prowl car boys, nice cool-looking serious men in the always immaculate uniforms and the always deadpan faces. Then a big tough sergeant who said his name was Sergeant Holzminder, and that he was the cruising sergeant on the shift. He looked at the redhead and went over to the bed.