"You said a good man died for you."
"All I meant was that if there had been any real investigation I might have been identified aS one-but only one-of the possible suspects. It would have finished me in several ways."
"I didn't come here to accuse you of a murder, Wade. What's eating you is that you're not sure yourself. You have a record of violence to your wife. You black out when you're drunk. It's no argument to say you don't beat a woman's head in just because she's a tramp. That is exactly what somebody did do. And the guy who got credit for the job seemed to me a lot less likely than you."
He walked to the open french windows and stood looking out at 'the shimmer of heat over the lake. He didn't answer me. He hadn't moved or spoken a couple of minutes later when there was a light knock at the door and Candy came in wheeling a tea wagon, with a crisp white cloth, silver-covered dishes, a pot of coffee, and two bottles of beer.
"Open the beer, boss?" he asked Wade's back.
"Bring me a bottle of whiskey." Wade didn't turn around.
"Sorry, boss. No whiskey."
Wade spun around and yelled at him, but Candy didn't budge. He looked down at the check lying on the cocktail table and his head twisted as he read it. Then he looked up at me and hissed something between his teeth. Then he looked at Wade.
"I go now. This my day off."
He turned and went. Wade laughed.
"So I get it myself," he said sharply, and went.
I lifted one of the covers and saw some neatly trimmed three-cornered sandwiches.' I took one and poured some beer and ate the sandwich standing up. Wade came back with a bottle and a glass. He Sat down on the couch and poured a stiff jolt and sucked it down. There was the sound of a car going away from the house, probably Candy leaving by the service driveway. I took another sandwich.
"Sit down and make yourself comfortable," Wade said. "We have all afternoon to kill." He had a glow on already. His voice was vibrant and cheerful. "You don't like me, do you, Marlowe?"
"That question has already been asked and answered."
"Know something? You're a pretty ruthless son of a bitch. You'd do anything to find what you want. You'd even make love to my wife while I was helpless drunk in the next room."
"You believe everything that knife thrower tells you?" He poured some more whiskey into his glass and held it up against the light. "Not everything, no. A pretty color whiskey is, isn't it? To drown in a golden flood-that's not so bad. 'To cease upon the midnight with no pain.' How does that go on? Oh, sorry, you wouldn't know. Too literary. You're some kind of a dick, aren't you? Mind telling me why you're here."
He drank some more whiskey and grinned at me. Then he spotted the check lying on the table. He reached for it and read it over his glass.
"Seems to be made out to somebody named Marlowe. 1 wonder why, what for. Seems I signed it. Foolish of me, I'm a gullible chap."
"Stop acting," I said roughly. "Where's your wife?"
He looked up politely, "My wife will be home in due course. No doubt by that time I shall be passed out and she can entertain you at her leisure. The house will be yours."
"Where's the gun?" I asked suddenly.
He looked blank. I told him I had put it in his desk. "Not there now, I'm sure," he said. "You may search if it pleases you. Just don't steal any rubber bands."
I went to the desk and frisked it. No gun. That was something. Probably Eileen had hidden it.
"Look, Wade, I asked you where your wife was. I think she ought to come home. Not for my benefit, friend, for yours. Somebody has to look out for you, and I'll be goddamned if it's going to be me."
He stared vaguely. He was still holding the check. He put his glass down and, tore the check across, then again and again, and let the pieces fall to the floor.
"Evidently the amount was too small," he said. "Your services come very high. Even a thousand dollars and my wife fail to satisfy you. Too bad, but I can't go any higher. Except on this." He patted the bottle.
"I'm leaving," I said.
'But why? You wanted me to remember. Well-here in the bottle is my memory. Stick around, pal. When I get lit enough I'll tell you about all the women I have murdered."
"All right, Wade. I'll stick around for a while. But not in here. If you need me, just smash a chair against the wall."
I went out and left the door open. I walked across the big living room and out to the patio and pulled one of the chaises into the shadow of the overhang and stretched out on it. Across the lake there was a blue hare against the hills. The ocean breeze had begun to filter through the low mountains to the west. It wiped the air clean and it wiped away just enough of the heat. Idle Valley was having a perfect summer. Somebody had planned it that way. Paradise Incorporated, and also Highly Restricted. Only the nicest people. Absolutely no Central Europeans. Just the cream, the top drawer crowd, the lovely, lovely people. Like the Lorings and the Wades. Pure gold.
35
I lay there for half hour trying to make up my mind what to do. Part of me wanted to let him get good and drunk and see if anything came out. I didn't think any-thing much would happen to him in his own study in his own house. He might fall down again but it would be a long time. The guy had capacity. And somehow a drunk never hurts himself very badly. He might get back his mood of guilt, More likely, this time he would just go to sleep.
The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss's daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked their heads when they got out of line and squabbled with the wife about how much spending money they were to get and what programs they could have on the radio or TV set. I might even have got rich-small-town rich, an eight-roam house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living room table, the wife with a cast iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend., I'll take -the big sordid dirty crooked city.
I got up and went back to the study. He was just sitting there staring at nothing, the Scotch bottle more than half empty, a loose frown on his face and a dull glitter in his eyes. He looked at me like a horse looking over a fence.
"What d'you want?"
"Nothing. You all right?"
"Don't bother me. I have a little man on my shoulder telling me stories."
I got another sandwich off the tea wagon and another glass of beer. I munched the sandwich and drank the beer, leaning against his desk.
"Know something?" he asked suddenly, and his voice suddenly seemed much more dear. "I had a male secretary once. Used to dictate to him. Let him go. He bothered me sitting there waiting for me to create. Mistake. Ought to have kept him. Word would have got around I was a homo. The dever boys that write book reviews because they can't write anything else would have caught on and started giving me the buildup. Have to take care of their own, you know. They're all queen, every damn one of them. The queer is the artistic arbiter of our age, chum. The pervert is the top guy now."
"That so? Always been around, hasn't he?"
He wasn't looking at me. He was just talking. But he heard what I said.
"Sure, thousands of years. And especially in all the great ages of art. Athens, Rome, the Renaissance, the Elizabethan Age, the Romantic Movement in France-loaded with them. Queen all over the place. Ever read The Golden Bough? No, too long for you. Shorter version though. Ought to read it. Proves our sexual habits are pure conventions like-wearing a black tie with a dinner jacket. Me. I'm a sex writer, but with frills and straight."
He looked up at me and sneered. "You know something? Fm a liar. My heroes are eight feet tall and my heroines have callouses on their bottoms from lying in bed with their knees up. Lace and ruffles, swords and coaches, elegance and leisure, duels and gallant death. All lies. They used perfume instead of soap, their teeth rotted because they never deaned them, their fingernails smelled of stale gravy. The nobility of France urinated against the walls in the marble- corridors of Versailles, and when you finally got several sets of underclothes off the lovely marquise the first thing you noticed was that she needed a bath. I ought to write it that way."