"I didn't kill her," Victor said.
"Say you didn't, for the moment. Say you're a shifty bastard and a bigamist and a compulsive gambler and a pornographer and a gigolo, but say I don't see you for murder. Tell me how she ends up in your office sitting at your desk with a bullet hole in her forehead?"
"That's pretty rough, Marlowe."
"Sure it is, but it's nowhere as rough as it's going to be when you're down in the hall of justice in the back room where the cops sit around with their feet on the railing."
"If they find me," he said.
"Find you? You poor simp, I found you in three days on a skipped IOU. You think the cops can't find you on suspicion of murder one? You think I was the only person to see you argue with that blonde in Reno's? What was her name?"
"I don't know. Lola, Lola something. I hardly knew her."
"What were you arguing about?"
"She was drunk."
"What were you arguing about?"
"I used to date her," Victor said.
"Un huh, but you don't know her last name."
He shrugged. "You know how it is, Marlowe."
"No," I said. "I don't."
"You meet a lot of jillies, you sleep with them, they get to thinking it's more serious than you do."
"But not serious enough to tell you their last name," I said.
"Well, I suppose she said, but, hey, I can't remember every name, huh?" He was making a comeback, the fear was shifting back a little, into the shade. I was going to help him, oh, boy.
"Remember this one, pal, or I'll drive you straight downtown."
"Jesus Christ," he said again. The fear was back. "Don't do that. I can remember, her name was, ah…"
He pretended to be thinking hard.
"Her name was Faithful, Lola Faithful. I think maybe she used to hoof it a little."
"Lola Faithful," I said.
"Yeah, probably a stage name, but that's how she was in the book when I used to be dating her. Honest to God."
"And she was mad because you weren't dating her anymore."
"Yeah," Victor said, "right. She was mad as hell, Marlowe."
"How long you been married to Angel?"
"Three years and, ah, seven months."
"Break up with Lola before that?"
"Sure, hell, what kind of guy you think I am?"
"I don't want to know."
"Yeah," Victor said, "broke up with Lola long time before we got married, Soon as I started going with Angel I tossed her over."
"Uh huh," I said. "So like four years ago you ditched Lola Faithful, and a few days ago she braces you in a bar and starts screaming about it?"
"She carries a torch, Marlowe, not my fault."
I puffed a little on my pipe and squinted at him through the smoke. "I've heard sailors tell better stories to Filipino barmaids," I said.
"Well, if you don't believe me then why the hell are you sitting here with me?"
"Two things, maybe three," I said. "One, you're not the type. You're a con man, a booster, a guy that always has a little grift going; I don't think you've got the iron in your bones that it takes to kill a man."
"You ever kill anybody, tough guy?" Victor said.
"Second," I said, "why would you kill her there in your office and leave her there and not even lock the door? You'd be inviting the coppers to come and get you and say you did it."
"Yeah," he said. "I'm not that stupid."
"We'll see," I said.
"You said maybe three reasons," Victor said. "What's the other one?"
He fished the last cigarette out of my pack and crumpled the pack and threw it out the side window. Then he pushed in the car lighter and waited for it to pop.
"Like I said, I'm a romantic."
Victor turned toward me. "I didn't kill her, Marlowe. You've got to believe that."
"I don't have to," I said. "We'll make it a working hypothesis for the moment. You got a place to coop?"
"How about your place?" Victor said.
"My place is occupied," I said.
"Yeah, but, you know, I wouldn't take up a lot of room."
"Occupied," I said, "by my wife, and myself. You're not invited."
"Christ, Marlowe, I got no place to go the cops wouldn't think of."
"They know about Muriel?" I said.
"No, Jesus, nobody knows about her."
"Go there," I said.
"Muriel's?"
"Why not? She's your wife, she thinks. It's your house."
He shook his head. "It's her house," he said. "Her and her old man's."
"You rather spend the night with your back to the wall in the lock-up?"
Victor was silent. The cigarette was down to a stub between his first two fingers. He took another drag, carefully, not burning his lips.
"How'm I going to get there?" he said.
"I'll drive you."
"All the way to Poodle Springs?"
"I live there," I said. "It's on my way home."
"You live in the Springs?" Victor said.
"Sure," I said. "Look at my jawline, the tilt of my chin."
"Marlowe," he said. "Holy Christ, are you the guy that married Harlan Potter's daughter?"
"She married me," I said.
"For chrissake, you live right down the street from me."
"Small world," I said.
18
We rode a lot of the way in silence. Victor said about every 15 minutes that he wished he had a cigarette. As we passed the Bakersfield cutoff I said, "Tell me about Muriel's father."
"Clayton Blackstone?" I could hear Victor take in air and let it out through his nose.
"Yeah."
The sun was gone now and the road cut through the empty desert like a faint ribbon in the headlights.
"Rich," Victor said.
I waited, as the highway spooled underneath us through the stationary dark.
"Rich and mean," Victor said.
"It's how you get rich," I said.
"He got rich a lot of ways," Victor said, "not all of them legal."
I waited some more.
"Most of them not legal," Victor said. "But he did it a while ago so now he's upper class and his daughter is a princess."
"It's a big rough country," I said. "Happens all the time."
"Yeah, but not to me."
"You asked for it," I said, just to be saying something.
"Blackstone made his money out of gambling, ships off the coast, out past the three-mile limit," Victor said. "Get anything you wanted out there, then. Cards, dice, roulette, a horse parlor, rooms for private games. You could get girls, booze, marijuana, coke and this was in the days when high school kids never heard of it."
"Sure," I said, "picked you up in water taxis at the pier in Bay City."
"Now he owns banks, and hotels, and clubs and restaurants, but that's where his money came from. He's still got people around."
"Tough guys?" I said.
"Guys that'll kick out your teeth and then shoot you for mumbling."
"He connected with the Agony Club?" I said.
"Naw, Lippy runs that."
"Lippy says his boss is a guy named Blackstone, and that Blackstone is a hard number about the books."
"Jesus," Victor said, "I didn't know that." He rubbed both eyes with the heels of his open hands. "Well, old Clayton isn't going to hack me while I'm married to his daughter."