"He's fine, Angel. He's safe. He misses you."
She nodded. "I miss him."
We were the only cars on the road as we drove toward Venice. The cops lounged along three or four car lengths behind us.
"Who are you?" Angel said.
"Marlowe," I said. "I'm a private detective on a case."
"Are you a friend of Larry's?"
"I just met him once before, the night we ran out on the cops."
"So why are you helping him?"
"Beats me," I said.
"That's no answer," she said. The cop headlights behind us lit most of the interior of my car. In the light her eyes were wide and dark and full of sweetness.
"You're right," I said. "I don't think he killed the woman, but he seems to me the kind of guy that might have a little trouble in his background. Not a tough guy, and not connected. The kind of guy the cops will nail. They'll try him at a night session in Bay City and have him sitting in Chino looking at twenty years to life without ever figuring out how he got there."
"Larry wouldn't kill anyone."
"No," I said. "I don't think so either. Are you married to him?"
Angel nodded. There was pride in that nod, and contentment, and something more, something protective, the way a young mother nods when you ask if that's her baby.
"Almost four years," she said.
"Ever hear of a guy named Les Valentine?" I said.
"No."
"Woman named Muriel Blackstone?"
"No."
We were on Wilshire and when it ran out against the Pacific we turned left and drove along the empty beachfront. The moonlight on the waves emphasized how empty the ocean was, and endless, rolling in from Zanzibar.
"Larry's in trouble, isn't he?"
"He's wanted for murder," I said.
"But he didn't do that. He's in some other kind of trouble," she said. "The kind that brought you to him."
In the moonlight the buildings looked stately, like Moorish castles, the peeling paint and crumbled stucco smoothed out.
"He is, isn't he, Mr. Marlowe?"
"There's a gambler named Lipshultz," I said. "Larry owes him money. He hired me to find him."
She nodded, a nod of confirmation.
"He's had trouble before, hasn't he?" I said.
"He's an artist, Mr. Marlowe. He's imaginative. Many people have said he's a genius with a camera."
"And?" I said.
"And he's impulsive, he's not good with rules. He feels something, he does it. He has an artistic temperament."
"So he bets hunches," I said.
"Yes."
"And they sometimes don't pay off."
"No, they don't. But he has to be free to follow his intuition, don't you see. To limit him is to stifle him."
"He ever been in other kinds of trouble?"
She was silent for a bit, looking out at the silver ocean rolling slowly toward us. On the beach below, above the tide line, some bums were sleeping, clutching their scraps of belongings.
"I think he's had some trouble with women."
"Like what?" I said.
"I don't know, he never said. I don't question him."
"Why not?" I said.
"I love him," she said. As if it answered all the questions.
"So what makes you think there was trouble with women?"
"There were phone calls for him from a woman, and when he hung up he was angry."
"Un huh."
"And…" She looked at her lap for a moment, where she had folded her hands. I waited, listening to the wheels murmur over the asphalt.
"And?" I said.
"And there was a picture, I saw."
I waited.
"It was a picture of a woman. She was undressed and posing…" She stared harder at her hands. If the light had been better I think I'd have seen her blushing.
"Suggestively?" I said.
"Yes." She said it so softly I could barely hear.
"And you didn't ask him about it?" I said.
"No. It was from the time in Larry's life before he met me. He had a right to that time. It had nothing to do with me."
"You trust him?"
"In the way you mean, yes. He loves me, too."
"He sure as hell ought to," I said.
We pulled up behind the house where she and Larry lived… when Larry wasn't living with his other wife in Poodle Springs. She got out her side and I got out mine and came around. The cops stopped a little ways behind us.
"I'll walk you to the door," I said.
"No need," she said. There was the lilt of anxiety in her voice.
"Just to see that you get in safe," I said. "I'm in love too, with my wife."
Angel smiled suddenly, like sunrise after a rainy night.
"That's lovely," she said. "Isn't it."
"Yes," I said.
We walked down the alley to her front door and she unlocked it and let herself in.
"Thanks," she said.
Then she closed the door. I heard the bolt slide, and turned and headed back to the Olds. When I got in and pulled away the cops blinked their lights once, and then shut them off and settled in to watch.
25
Linda didn't like me staying away overnight. I didn't like it too much myself, but there wasn't much to be done about it. When we had talked about that for most of the late morning, I got to eat some eggs and go to sleep. It was a little after four when I was up again, showered, shaved, smelling like a desert flower and tougher than two armadillos, on my way to the Agony Club to report to my employer.
In the bright sun the parking lot was as empty as it had been last time. I parked again out front under the portcullis and walked in through the door that seemed always slightly ajar. Maybe it was Lippy's trademark, always an open door for a sucker. This time the two gunmen weren't around. Lippy was getting careless. I walked across the gambling hall and knocked on Lippy's door. No answer. They wouldn't leave the front door open with no one around. I knocked again. Same silence. I turned the knob. The door opened and I went in and found him. Even before I found him I knew what I'd find. The air conditioning had slowed the process, but the smell of death was there when the door opened.
Lippy was in his swivel chair behind his desk, with his back to me. His head hung down, chin on his chest. His hands rested on the arms, stiffened now in death, the fingers beginning to bloat. There was black dried blood mingled with the hair on the back of his head. And mixed with the smell of death was a smell of burnt hair. I looked closely and saw that there was singed hair mingled with the blood. I walked around the desk and squatted in front of Lippy. The exit wound was dark and messy. Lippy's face had begun to bloat.
I stood slowly and looked around the room. No sign of struggle, no sign of robbery. A bottle of good Scotch stood on the sideboard, an ice bucket with water in the bottom, one glass. The file drawers were closed and locked. No sign of any attempt to jimmy them. I went back out into the casino and walked around lightly, feeling the emptiness of the place long before I'd proved it to myself by looking. The two bodyguards were nowhere. Probably in the unemployment office.
I sighed out loud in the empty casino. Maybe I was in the wrong business. Maybe I should be an advance man for a funeral parlor. I walked heavily back into Lippy's office. He must have been sitting comfortably, staring out the window, admiring the desert, and someone had leaned over the desk with a small-caliber handgun and shot him in the back of the head. And I came along and found him. I reached over and picked up Lippy's phone and dialed the cops. Pretty soon, at least, I wouldn't be alone.
A couple of highway patrol guys came roaring in about thirty seconds ahead of a couple of Riverside Sheriff's Deputies, and about two minutes ahead of a cruiser from Poodle Springs which was outside its jurisdiction but showed up anyway. The uniforms milled around and told me not to touch anything and examined the scene of the crime for clues and generally marked time till a couple of Riverside investigators showed up in plain clothes with some lab people and a moonfaced guy from the coroner's office.