She ran the window down and looked out at me, half smiling.
"Goodnight, Mr. Marlowe. It's been nice-or has it?"
"We had quite a fight."
"You mean you had-and mostly with yourself."
"It usually is. Goodnight, Mrs. Loring. You don't live around here, do you?"
"Not exactly. I live in Idle Valley. At the far end of the lake. My husband is a doctor."
"Would you happen to know any people named Wade?"
She frowned. "Yes, I know the Wades. Why?"
"Why do I ask? They're the only people in Idle Valley that I know."
"I see. Well, goodnight again, Mr. Marlowe."
She leaned back in the seat and the Cadillac purred politely and slid away into the traffic along the Strip.
Turning I almost bumped into Chick Agostino.
"Who's the doll?" he sneered. "And next time you crack wise, be missing."
"Nobody that would want to know you," I said.
"Okay, bright boy. I got the license number. Mendy likes to know little things like that."
The door of a car banged open and a man about seven feet high and four feet wide jumped out of it, took one look at Agostino, then one long stride, and grabbed him by the throat with one hand.
"How many times I gotta tell you cheap hoods not to hang around where I eat?" he roared.
He shook Agostino and hurled him across the sidewalk against the wall. Chick crumpled up coughing.
"Next time," the enormous man yelled, "I sure as hell put the blast on you, and believe me, boy, you'll be holding a gun when they pick you up."
Chick shook his head and said nothing. The big man gave me a raking glance and grinned. "Nice night," he said, and strolled into Victor's.
I watched Chick straighten himself out and regain some of his composure. "Who's your buddy?" I asked him.
"Big Willie Magoon," he said thickly. "A vice squad bimbo: He thinks he's tough."
"You mean he isn't sure?" I asked him politely.
He looked at me emptily and walked away. I got my car out of the lot and drove home. In Hollywood anything can happen, anything at all.
23
A low-swung Jaguar swept around the hill in front of me and slowed down so as not to bathe me in the granite dust from the half mile of neglected paving at the entrance to Idle Valley, It seemed they wanted it left that way to discourage the Sunday drivers spoiled by drifting along on superhighways. I caught a glimpse of a bright scarf and a pair of sun goggles. A hand waved at me casually, neighbor to neighbor. Then the dust slid across the road and added itself to the white film already well spread over the scrub and the sunbaked grass. Then I was around the outcrop and the paving started up in proper shape and everything was smooth and cared for. Live oaks clustered towards the road, as if they were curious to see who went by, and sparrows with rosy heads hopped about pecking at things only a sparrow would think worth pecking at.
Then there were a few cottonwoods but no eucalyptus. Then a thick growth of Carolina poplars screening a white house. Then a girl walking a horse along the shoulder of the road. She had levis on and a loud shirt and she was chewing on a twig. The horse looked hot but not lathered and the girl was crooning to him gently. Beyond a fieldstone wall a gardener was guiding a power lawnmower over a huge undulating lawn that ended far back in the portico of a Williamsburg Colonial mansion, the large de luxe size. Somewhere someone was playing left-handed exercises on a grand piano.
Then all this wheeled away and the glisten of the lake showed hot and bright and I began to watch numbers on gateposts. I had seen the Wades' house only once and in the dark. It wasn't as big as it had looked by night. The driveway was full of cars, so I parked on the side of the road and walked in. A Mexican butler in a white coat opened the door for me. He was a slender neat goodlooking Mexican and his coat fitted him elegantly and he looked like a Mexican who was getting fifty a week and not killing himself with hard work.
He said: 'Buenas tardes, señor," and grinned as if he had put one over. "Sn nombre de Usted, por favor?"
"Marlowe," I said, "and who are you trying to upstage, Candy? We talked on the phone, remember?"
He grinned and I went in. It was the same old cocktail party, everybody talking too loud, nobody listening, everybody hanging on for dear life to a mug of the juice, eyes very bright, cheeks flushed or pale and sweaty according to the amount of alcohol consumed and the capacity of the individual to handle it. Then Eileen Wade materialized beside me in a pale blue something which did her no harm. She had a glass in her hand but it didn't lool as if it was more than a prop.
"I'm so glad you could come," she said gravely. "Roger wants to see you in his study. -He hates cocktail parties. He's working."
"With this racket going on?"
"It never seems to bother him, Candy will get you a drink-or if you'd rather go to the bar-"
"I'll do that," I said. "Sorry about the other night."
She smiled. "I think you apologized already. It was nothing."
"The hell it was nothing."
She kept the smile long enough to nod and turn and walk away. I spotted the bar over in the corner by some very large french windows. It was one of those things you push around. I was halfway across the room, trying not to bump anybody, when a voice said: "Oh, Mr. Marlowe."
I turned and saw Mrs. Loring on a couch beside a prissy-looking man in rimless cheaters with a smear on his chin that might have been a goatee. She had a drink in her hand and looked bored. He sat still with his arms folded and scowled.
I went over there. She smiled at me and gave me her hand. "This is my husband, Dr. Loring. Mr. Philip Marlowe, Edward."
The guy with the goatee gave me a brief look and a still briefer nod. He didn't move otherwise. He seemed to be saving his energy for better things.
"Edward is very tired," Linda Loring said. "Edward is always very tired."
"Doctors often are," I said. "Can I get you a drink, Mrs. Loring? Or you, Doctor?"
"She's had enough," the man said without looking at either of us. "I don't drink. The more I see of people who do, the more glad I am that I don't."
"Come back, little Sheba," Mrs. Loring said dreamily.
ETc swung around and did a take. I got away from there and made it to the bar. In the company of her husband Linda Loring seemed like a different person. There was an edge to her voice and a'sneer in her expression which she hadn't used on me even when she was angry.
Candy was behind the bar. He asked me what I would drink.
"Nothing right now, thanks. Mr. Wade wants to see me,"
"Es muy occupado, señor. Very busy."
I didn't think I was going to like Candy. When I just looked at him he added: "But I go see. De pronto, señor."
He threaded his way delicately through the mob and was back in no time at all. "Okay, chum, let's go," he said cheerfully.
I followed him across the room the long way of the house. He opened a door, I went through, he shut it behind me, and a lot of the noise was dimmed. It was a corner room, big and cool and quiet, with french windows and roses outside and an airconditioner set in a window to one side. I could see the lake, and I could see Wade lying flat out on a long blond leather couch. A big bleached wood desk had a typewriter on it and there was a pile of yellow paper beside the typewriter.
"Good of you to come, Marlowe," he said lazily. "Park yourself. Did you have a drink or two?"
"Not yet." I sat down and looked at him. He still looked a bit pale and pinched. "How's the work going?"
"Fine, except that I get tired too quick. Pity a four-day drunk is so painful to get over. I often do my best work after one. In my racket it's so easy to tighten up and get all stiff and wooden. Then the stuff is no good. When it's good it comes easy. Anything you have read or heard to the contrary is a lot of mishmash?'