"Marlowe," he said. "I don't know what to do. If the cops find me it's all going to come out."
"If you took her picture," I said, "how come she doesn't know you're Larry Victor?"
"I was using Valentine, then. You know, like a stage name. Had a studio on Highland, near Melrose. I was trying to do serious photography under my own name. And like when I got the chance to marry her, well, then I opened up a new office, under my real name."
"To keep Angel in the dark," I said.
"Yeah. I didn't want any connection with Les Valentine for Angel. She never knew I was using the name anyway."
"Your mother know who you are?" I said.
"Marlowe, I didn't kill anybody, but if the cops get me the whole thing's going to come out. Angel will know, Muriel will know."
"And her old man will know and he will send a very tough guy named Eddie Garcia around to ask you about how come you have made a big mess out of your marriage to his daughter."
I took one of the hundred-dollar bills that his father-in-law by bigamy had given me and handed it across the desk to Victor.
'There's a flophouse on Wilcox," I said. "Just south of the boulevard. The Starwalk Motel. Check in there, get cleaned up, have something to eat, and stay there. I'll do what I can. If you're not there when I want you, I tell everybody everything and you're on your own."
Victor took the bill and stared at it.
"What's your real name," I said. "Victor or Valentine?"
"Victor… well, originally it was Schlenker, but I had it changed."
"To Victor," I said. "Larry Victor."
He nodded.
"Okay, Larry. Go down there and wait for me."
"How long?" he said. "I mean, I need action. I can't hang out forever in some flop."
"Blackstone finds out and you'll be hanging out in the big flop in the sky," I said. "I'll do what I can."
Victor nodded too often and too rapidly. He got up and put my cigarettes in his shirt pocket and folded the hundred over once in his pants pocket.
"Leave the bottle," I said.
He smiled automatically and rubbed his chin with his open hand.
"I'll hear from you?" he said.
I nodded. He turned toward the door.
"I told Angel about Muriel," I said.
He stopped with his back to me.
"What'd she say?" he said without turning around. "She didn't believe me," I said. Still with his back to me, he said, "You tell Muriel?"
"No."
He nodded and without looking back went to the door, opened it and left.
36
I called Eddie Garcia at the number Blackstone had given me, and he agreed to meet me at the Bay City Pier. He was there when I got there, at the far end leaning on the rail watching the sea birds swoop over the waves looking for fish, and circle over the pier looking for garbage. The clouds had moved out of the basin now and the ocean was grey and sleek looking, the swells moving sluggishly under the overcast. A wind had moved in with the thunderheads and was whipping the tips of the swells and tearing a little spray loose from them. Garcia was wearing a light trench coat against the wind, the collar turned up.
As I approached Garcia he rolled around with his back against the railing and his elbows resting on it and looked at me.
"Nice day you brought me out on, Sailor," he said.
"You picked the pier," I said.
"Good place to talk alone," he said.
I nodded. "Lot of open space so you can't be ambushed," I said.
In the daylight, up close, I could see the crows' feet around Garcia's eyes, the depth of the lines around his mouth. He didn't look tired, just older than I'd realized.
"So what'll it be, Sailor?"
"Tell me about Muriel Blackstone," I said.
Something seemed to move behind Garcia's eyes. His face remained blank.
"Why?" he said.
"I'm in a bind, Eddie," I said. "I can probably find Victor okay, and when I do I can see to it that he goes home to Muriel, but I don't know for sure that it's the best idea for anybody."
"Why not?" Garcia said.
"He's not a hell of a guy," I said.
Garcia barked his short laugh.
"We all know that," he said.
"There's other people involved," I said.
"I work for Blackstone," Garcia said. "So do you."
"Doesn't mean he owns me," I said. It didn't mean anything. I was just making noise, buying time, trying to figure out what I even wanted out of this.
"Doesn't mean he owns me either," Garcia said. "So what?"
"Does Blackstone know she's hinky?" I said.
Eddie straightened a little from his lounge on the railing. His eyes narrowed.
"Hinky," he said.
I had on a trench coat too; every well-dressed toughie had one. I reached inside it and brought out one of my pictures of Muriel. I felt like a man selling French postcards. Garcia took the picture and looked at it without expression. As he handed it back to me a raindrop splattered on it-one raindrop, a fat one, the size of a nickel. Around me on the pier I could hear other drops like that, spattering sporadically. I wiped the picture against my chest and slipped it back inside my coat.
Garcia looked at me with a faint smile. "Mr. Black-stone was here now you'd be dead," he said.
"He'd kill me?"
"He'd have me kill you," Eddie said.
"Yeah," I said. "I can feel my lips quivering."
"Where'd you get that photo?"
"Doesn't matter," I said. The rain was starting to come harder, the nickel-sized drops coming more and more closely together. "Does Blackstone know about her?"
Garcia was silent, thinking. I stood and waited while he thought.
Finally he said, "Yeah. He knows. Kid's been wrong since she was little. Booze, creeps, dope. When she was younger I spent a lot of my time straightening out her life."
"Like what?" I said.
"Like she's shacking up with some Hollywood heartthrob up at Zuma Beach and I go up and have a talk with him and he leaves her alone. Lake there was a magazine, nothing you ever heard of, the kind that puts out two issues and folds and opens up under another name. Anyway, they had a photo spread on her." Garcia grinned savagely. "Blueblood Nymphet it was going to be called. I went around and talked with the publisher. Like that."
"She met Victor when he took this photo," I said.
Garcia nodded. "Yeah. Blackstone took her to doctors, hell, we went over to Switzerland with her. Exhibitionism, they said. And a lot of other crap that don't mean anything to me. Didn't cure her, though, just talked a lot."
"You been with Blackstone a long time?" I said.
"Thirty-one years," Garcia said.
"That's more than just working for a man," I said.
"So where'd you get the picture, Sailor?" Garcia said. The rain was steady now, stippling the slick surface of the Waves.
"Lola Faithful had it and stashed it in Union Station. I found the receipt in her house."
"How come the cops didn't find it?" Garcia said.
"They weren't looking for it," I said. "I saw the argument in the bar. I knew there was a picture."
"Where'd she get it?"
"I don't know," I said. "She was dead when I met her."
"And she tried to blackmail Larry with it," Garcia said.
I nodded. The rain had soaked Garcia's dark hair and water ran down his face. Garcia didn't seem to notice.
"And he capped her," he said.
I shrugged. "Maybe," I said. "Or maybe she went to others."
"Muffy?" Garcia said.
"Or maybe she went all the way, to the source," I said.
"Mr. Blackstone," Garcia said.
"Which probably means you. You use a small-caliber gun, hot-loaded?"