He reached into his clothes and pushed a leather keyholder across the table.
"How does it sound?" he asked.
"Depends who's listening. I haven't finished. You took nothing but the clothes you stood up in and some money you had from your father-in-law, You left everything she had given you, including that beautiful piece of machinery you parked at La Brea and Fountain. You wanted to go away as clean as it was possible for you to go and still go. All right. I'll buy it. Now I shave and get dressed."
"Why are you doing it, Marlowe?"
"Buy yourself a drink while I shave."
I walked out and left him sitting there hunched in the corner of the nook. He still had his hat and light topcoat on. But he looked a lot more alive.
I went into the bathroom and shaved. I was back in the bedroom knotting my tie when he came and stood in the doorway. "I washed the cups just in case," he said. "But I got thinking. Maybe it would be better if you called the police."
"Call them yourself. I haven't anything to tell them."
"You want me to?"
I turned around sharply and gave him a hard stare. "God damn it!" I almost yelled at him. "Can't you for Chrissake just leave it lay?"
"I'm sorry."
"Sure you're sorry. Guys like you are always sorry, and always too late."
He turned and walked back along the hall to the living room.
I finished dressing and locked up the back part of the house. When I got to the living room he had fallen asleep in a chair, his head on one side, his face drained of color, his whole body slack with exhaustion. He looked pitiful. When I touched his shoulder he came awake slowly as if it was a long way from where he was to where I was.
When I had his attention I said, "What about a suitcase? I still got that white pigskin job on the top shelf in my closet."
"It's empty," he said without interest. "Also it's too conspicuous."
"You'd be more conspicuous without any baggage."
I walked back to the bedroom and stood up on the steps in the dothes closet and pulled the white pigskin job down off the high shelf. The square ceiling trap was right over my head, so I pushed that up and reached in as far as I could and dropped his leather keyholder behind one of the dusty tie beams or whatever they were.
I climbed down with the suitcase, dusted it off, and shoved some things into it, a pair of pajamas never worn, toothpaste, an extra toothbrush, a couple of cheap towels and washcloths, a package of cotton handkerchiefs, a fifteen-cent tube of shaving cream, and one of the razors they give away with a package of blades. Nothing used, nothing marked, nothing conspicuous, except that his own stuff would be better. I added a pint of bourbon still in its wrapping paper. I locked the suitcase and left the key in one of the locks and carried it up front. He had gone to sleep again. I opened the door without waking him and carried the suitcase down to the garage and put it in the convertible behind the front seat. I got the car out and locked the garage and went back up the steps to wake him. I finished locking up and we left.
I drove fast but not fast enough to get tagged. We hardly spoke on the way down. We didn't stop to eat either, There wasn't that much time.
The border people had nothing to say to us. Up on the windy mesa where the Tijuana Airport is I parked dose to the office and just sat while Terry got his ticket. The propellers of the DC-3 were already turning over slowly, just enough to keep warm. A tall dreamboat of a pilot in a gray uniform was chatting with a group of four people. One was about six feet four and carried a gun case. There was a girl in slacks beside him, and a smallish middle-aged man and a gray-haired woman so tall that she made him look puny. Three or four obvious Mexicans were standing around as well. That seemed to be the load. The steps were at the door but nobody seemed anxious to get in. Then a Mexican flight steward came down the steps and stood waiting. There didn't seem to be any loudspeaker equipment. The Mexicans climbed into the plane but the pilot was still chatting with the Americans.
There was a big Packard parked next to me. I got out and took a gander at the license on the post. Maybe someday I'll learn to mind my own business. As I pulled my head out I saw the tall woman staring in my direction.
Then Terry came across the dusty gravel.
"I'm all set," he said. "This is where I say goodbye."
He put his hand out. I shook it. He looked pretty good now, just tired, just tired as all hell.
I lifted the pigskin suitcase out of the Olds and put it down on the gravel. He stared at it angrily.
"I told you I didn't want it," he said snappishly.
"There's a nice pint of hooch in it, Terry. Also some pajamas and stuff. And it's all anonymous. If you don't want it, check it. Or throw it away,"
"I have reasons," he said stiffly.
"So have I."
He smiled suddenly. He picked up the suitcase and squeezed my arm with his free hand. "Okay, pal. You're the boss. And remember, if things get tough, you have a blank check. You don't owe me a thing. We had a few drinks together and got to be friendly and I talked too much about me. I left five C notes in your coffee can. Don't be sore at me."
"I'd rather you hadn't?"
"I'll never spend half of what I have."
"Good luck, Terry."
The two Americans were going up the steps into the plane. A squatty guy with a wide dark face came out of the door of the office building and waved and pointed.
"Climb aboard," I said. "I know you didn't kill her. That's why I'm here."
He braced himself. His whole body got stiff. He turned slowly, then looked back.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "But you're wrong about that. Fm going to walk quite slowly to the plane. You have plenty of time to stop me."
He walked. I watched him, The guy in the doorway of the office was waiting, but not too impatient. Mexicans seldom are. He reached down and patted the pigskin suitcase and grinned at Terry. Then he stood aside and Terry went through the door. In a little while Terry came out through the door on the other side,- where the customs people are when you're coming in. He walked, still slowly, across the gravel to the steps. He stopped there and looked towards me. He didn't signal or wave. Neither did I. Then he went up into the plane, and the steps were pulled back.
I got into the Olds and started it and backed and turned and moved halfway across the parking space. The tall woman and the short man were still out on the field. The woman had a handkerchief out to wive. The plane began to taxi down to the end of the field raising plenty of dust. It turned at 'the far end and the motors revved up in a thundering roar. It began to move forward picking up speed slowly.
The dust rose in douds behind it. Then it was airborne. I watched it lift slowly into the gusty air and fade off into the naked blue sky to the southeast.
Then I left. Nobody at the border gate looked at me as if my face meant as much as the hands on a dock.
6
It's a long drag back from Tijuana and one of the dullest drives in the state. Tijuana is nothing; all they want there is the buck. The kid who sidles over to your car and looks at you with big wistful eyes and says, "One dime, please, mister," will try to sell you his sister in the next sentence. Tijuana is not Mexico. No border town is anything but a border town, just as no waterfront is anything but a waterfront. San Diego? One of the most beautiful harbors in the world and nothing in it but navy and a few fishing boats. At night it is fairyland. The swell is as gentle as an old lady singing hymns. But Marlowe has to get home and count the spoons.