Выбрать главу

“Call the hospital,” he said briefly, over his shoulder.

One of the cops went out to the car. The sergeant bent down over Goble. “Want to tell me?”

“The redhead beat me up. He took my money. Stuck a gun into me at the Casa. Made me drive him here. Then he beat me up.”

“Why?”

Goble made a sighing sound and his head went lax on the pillow. Either he passed out again or faked it. The sergeant straightened up and turned to me. “What’s your story?”

“I haven’t any, Sergeant. The man on the bed had dinner with me tonight. We’d met a couple of times. He said he was a Kansas City PI. I never knew what he was doing here.”

“And this?” The sergeant made a loose motion towards the redhead, who was still grinning a sort of unnatural epileptic grin.

“I never saw him before. I don’t know anything about him, except that he was waiting for me with a gun.”

“That your tire iron?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

The other cop came back into the room and nodded to the sergeant. “On the way.”

“So you had a tire iron,” the sergeant said coldly. “So why?”

“Let’s say I just had a hunch someone was waiting for me here.”

“Let’s try it that you didn’t have a hunch, that you already knew. And knew a lot more.”

“Let’s try it that you don’t call me a liar until you know what you’re talking about. And let’s try it that you don’t get so goddamn tough just because you have three stripes. And let’s try something more. This guy may be a hood, but he still has two broken wrists, and you know what that means, Sergeant? He’ll never be able to handle a gun again.”

“So we book you for mayhem.”

“If you say so, Sergeant.”

Then the ambulance came. They carried Goble out first and then the intern put temporary splints on the two wrists of the redhead. They unstrapped his ankles. He looked at me and laughed.

“Next time, pal, I’ll think of something original—but you did all right. You really did.”

He went out. The ambulance doors clanged shut and the growling sound of it died. The sergeant was sitting down now, with his cap off. He was wiping his forehead.

“Let’s try again,” he said evenly. “From the beginning. Like as if we didn’t hate each other and were just trying to understand. Could we?”

“Yes, Sergeant. We could. Thanks for giving me the chance.”

23

Eventually I landed back at the cop house. Captain Alessandro had gone. I had to sign a statement for Sergeant Holzminder.

“A tire iron, huh?” he said musingly. “Mister, you took an awful chance. He could have shot you four times while you were swinging on him.”

“I don’t think so, Sergeant. I bumped him pretty hard with the door. And I didn’t take a full swing. Also, maybe he wasn’t supposed to shoot me. I don’t figure he was in business for himself.”

A little more of that, and they let me go. It was too late to do anything but go to bed, too late to talk to anyone. Just the same I went to the telephone company office and shut myself in one of the two neat outdoor booths and dialed the Casa del Poniente.

“Miss Mayfield, please. Miss Betty Mayfield. Room 1224.”

“I can’t ring a guest at this hour.”

“Why? You got a broken wrist?” I was a real tough boy tonight. “Do you think I’d call if it wasn’t an emergency?”

He rang and she answered in a sleepy voice.

“This is Marlowe. Bad trouble. Do I come there or do you come to my place?”

“What? What kind of trouble?”

“Just take it from me for just this once. Should I pick you up in the parking lot?”

“I’ll get dressed. Give me a little time.”

I went out to my car and drove to the Casa. I was smoking my third cigarette and wishing I had a drink when she came quickly and noiselessly up to the car and got in.

“I don’t know what this is all about,” she began, but I interrupted her.

“You’re the only one that does. And tonight you’re going to tell me. And don’t bother getting indignant. It won’t work again.”

I jerked the car into motion and drove fast through silent streets and then down the hill and into the Rancho Descansado and parked under the trees. She got out without a word and I unlocked my door and put the lights on.

“Drink?”

“All right.”

“Are you doped?”

“Not tonight, if you mean sleeping pills. I was out with Clark and drank quite a lot of champagne. That always makes me sleepy.”

I made a couple of drinks and gave her one. I sat down and leaned my head back.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m a little tired. Once in every two or three days I have to sit down. It’s a weakness I’ve tried to get over, but I’m not as young as I was. Mitchell’s dead.”

Her breath caught in her throat and her hand shook. She may have turned pale. I couldn’t tell.

“Dead?” she whispered. “Dead?”

“Oh, come off it. As Lincoln said, you can fool all of the detectives some of the time, and some of the detectives all the time, but you can’t—”

“Shut up! Shut up right now! Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Just a guy who has tried very hard to get where he could do you some good. A guy with enough experience and enough understanding to know that you were in some kind of jam. And wanted to help you out of it, with no help from you.”

“Mitchell’s dead,” she said in a low breathless voice. “I didn’t mean to be nasty. Where?”

“His car has been found abandoned in a place you wouldn’t know. It’s about twenty miles inland, on a road that’s hardly used. A place called Los Penasquitos Canyon. A place of dead land. Nothing in his car, no suitcases. Just an empty car parked at the side of a road hardly anybody ever uses.”

She looked down at her drink and took a big gulp. “You said he was dead.”

“It seems like weeks, but it’s only hours ago that you came over here and offered me the top half of Rio to get rid of his body.”

“But there wasn’t—I mean, I must just have dreamed—”

“Lady, you came over here at three o’clock in the morning in a state of near-shock. You described just where he was and how he was lying on the chaise on your little porch. So I went back with you and climbed the fire stairs, using the infinite caution for which my profession is famous. And no Mitchell, and then you asleep in your little bed with your little sleeping pill cuddled up to you.”

“Get on with your act,” she snapped at me. “I know how you love it. Why didn’t you cuddle up to me? I wouldn’t have needed a sleeping pill—perhaps?”

“One thing at a time, if you don’t mind. And the first thing is that you were telling the truth when you came here. Mitchell was dead on your porch. But someone got his body out of there while you were over here making a sucker out of me. And somebody got him down to his car and then packed his suitcases and got them down. All this took time. It took more than time. It took a great big reason. Now who would do a thing like that—just to save you the mild embarrassment of reporting a dead man on your porch?”

“Oh, shut up!” She finished her drink and put the glass aside.

“I’m tired. Do you mind if I lie down on your bed?”

“Not if you take your clothes off.”

“All right—I’ll take my clothes off. That’s what you’ve been working up to, isn’t it?”

“You might not like that bed. Goble was beaten up on it tonight—by a hired gun named Richard Harvest. He was really brutalized. You remember Goble, don’t you? The fat sort of man in the little dark car that followed us up the hill the other night.”

“I don’t know anybody named Goble. And I don’t know anybody named Richard Harvest. How do you know all this? Why were they here—in your room?”