23
Eventually I landed back at the cop house. Captain Alessandro had gone. I had to sign a statement for Sergeant Holzminder.
“A tire iron, huh?” he said musingly. “Mister, you took an awful chance. He could have shot you four times while you were swinging on him.”
“I don’t think so, Sergeant. I bumped him pretty hard with the door. And I didn’t take a full swing. Also, maybe he wasn’t supposed to shoot me. I don’t figure he was in business for himself.”
A little more of that, and they let me go. It was too late to do anything but go to bed, too late to talk to anyone. Just the same I went to the telephone company office and shut myself in one of the two neat outdoor booths and dialed the Casa del Poniente.
“Miss Maylield, please. Miss Betty Mayfield. Room 1224.”
“I can’t ring a guest at this hour.”
“Why? You got a broken wrist?” I was a real tough boy tonight. “Do you think I’d call if it wasn’t an emergency?”
He rang and she answered in a sleepy voice.
“This is Marlowe. Bad trouble. Do I come there or do you come to my place?”
“What? What kind of trouble?”
“Just take it from me for just this once. Should I pick you up in the parking lot?”
“I’ll get dressed. Give me a little time.”
I went out to my car and drove to the Casa. I was smoking my third cigarette and wishing I had a drink when she came quickly and noiselessly up to the car and got in.
“I don’t know what this is all about,” she began, but I interrupted her.
“You’re the only one that does. And tonight you’re going to tell me. And don’t bother getting indignant. It won’t work again.”
I jerked the car into motion and drove fast through silent streets and then down the hill and into the Rancho Descansado and parked under the trees. She got out without a word and I unlocked my door and put the lights on.
“Drink?”
“All right.”
“Are you doped?”
“Not tonight, if you mean sleeping pills. I was out with Clark and drank quite a lot of champagne. That always makes me sleepy.”
I made a couple of drinks and gave her one. I sat down and leaned my head back.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m a little tired. Once in every two or three days I have to sit down. It’s a weakness I’ve tried to get over, but I’m not as young as I was. Mitchell’s dead.”
Her breath caught in her throat and her hand shook. She may have turned pale. I couldn’t tell.
“Dead?” she whispered. “Dead?”
“Oh, come off it. As Lincoln said, you can fool all of the detectives some of the time, and some of the detectives all the time, but you can’t—”
“Shut up! Shut up right now! Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Just a guy who has tried very hard to get where he could do you some good. A guy with enough experience and enough understanding to know that you were in some kind of jam. And wanted to help you out of it, with no help from you.”
“Mitchell’s dead,” she said in a low breathless voice. “I didn’t mean to be nasty. Where?”
“His car has been found abandoned in a place you wouldn’t know. It’s about twenty miles inland, on a road that’s hardly used. A place called Los Penasquitos Canyon. A place of dead land. Nothing in his car, no suitcases. Just an empty car parked at the side of a road hardly anybody ever uses.”
She looked down at her drink and took a big gulp. “You said he was dead.”
“It seems like weeks, but it’s only hours ago that you came over here and offered me the top half of Rio to get rid of his body.”
“But there wasn’t—I mean, I must just have dreamed—”
“Lady, you came over here at three o’clock in the morning in a state of near-shock. You described just where he was and how he was lying on the chaise on your little porch. So I went back with you and climbed the fire stairs, using the infinite caution for which my profession is famous. And no Mitchell, and then you asleep in your little bed with your little sleeping pill cuddled up to you.”
“Get on with your act,” she snapped at me. “I know how you love it. Why didn’t you cuddle up to me? I wouldn’t have needed a sleeping pill—perhaps?”
“One thing at a time, if you don’t mind. And the first thing is that you were telling the truth when you came here. Mitchell was dead on your porch. But someone got his body out of there while you were over here making a sucker out of me. And somebody got him down to his car and then packed his suitcases and got them down. All this took time. It took more than time. It took a great big reason. Now who would do a thing like that—just to save you the mild embarrassment of reporting a dead man on your porch?”
“Oh, shut up!” She finished her drink and put the glass aside. “I’m tired. Do you mind if I lie down on your bed?”
“Not if you take your clothes off.”
“All right—I’ll take my clothes off. That’s what you’ve been working up to, isn’t it?”
“You might not like that bed. Goble was beaten up on it tonight—by a hired gun named Richard Harvest. He was really brutalized. You remember Goble, don’t you? The fat sort of man in the little dark car that followed us up the hill the other night.”
“I don’t know anybody named Goble. And I don’t know anybody named Richard Harvest. How do you know all this? Why were they here—in your room?”
“The hired gun was waiting for me. After I heard about Mitchell’s car I had a hunch. Even generals and other important people have hunches. Why not me? The trick is to know when to act on one. I was lucky tonight—or last night. I acted on a hunch. He had a gun, but I had a tire iron.”
“What a big strong unbeatable man you are,” she said bitterly. “I don’t mind the bed. Do I take my clothes off now?”
I went over and jerked her to her feet and shook her. “Stop your nonsense, Betty. When I want your beautiful white body, it won’t be while you’re my client. I want to know what you are afraid of. How the hell can I do anything about it if I don’t know? Only you can tell me.”
She began to sob in my arms.
Women have so few defenses, but they certainly perform wonders with those they have.
I held her tight against me. “You can cry and cry and sob and sob, Betty. Go ahead, I’m patient. If I wasn’t that—well, hell, if I wasn’t that—”
That was as far as I got. She was pressed tight to me trembling. She lifted her face and dragged my head down until I was kissing her.
“Is there some other woman?” she asked softly, between my teeth.
“There have been.”
“But someone very special?”
“There was once, for a brief moment. But that’s a long time ago now.”
“Take me. I’m yours—all of me is yours. Take me.”
24
A banging on the door woke me. I opened my eyes stupidly. She was clinging to me so tightly that I could hardly move. I moved her arms gently until I was free. She was still sound asleep.
I got out of bed and pulled a bathrobe on and went to the door; I didn’t open it.
“What’s the matter? I was asleep.”
“Captain Alessandro wants you at the office right away. Open the door.”
“Sorry, can’t be done. I have to shave and shower and so on.”
“Open the door. This is Sergeant Green.”
“I’m sorry, Sergeant. I just can’t. But I’ll be along just as soon as I can make it.”
“You got a dame in there?”
“Sergeant, questions like that are out of line. I’ll be there.”
I heard his steps go down off the porch. I heard someone laugh. I heard a voice say, “This guy is really rich. I wonder what he does on his day off.”
I heard the police car going away. I went into the bathroom and showered and shaved and dressed. Betty was still glued to the pillow. I scribbled a note and put in on my pillow. “The cops want me. I have to go. You know where my car is. Here are the keys.”
I went out softly and locked the door and found the Hertz car. I knew the keys would be in it. Operators like Richard Harvest don’t bother about keys. They carry sets of them for all sorts of cars.
Captain Alessandro looked exactly as he had the day before. He would always look like that. There was a man with him, an elderly stony-faced man with nasty eyes.
Captain Alessandro nodded me to the usual chair. A cop in uniform came in and put a cup of coffee in front of me. He gave me a sly grin as he went out.
“This is Mr. Henry Cumberland of Westfield, Carolina, Marlowe. North Carolina. I don’t know how he found his way out here, but he did. He says Betty Mayfield murdered his son.”
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing for me to say. I sipped the coffee which was too hot, but good otherwise.
“Like to fill us in a little, Mr. Cumberland?”
“Who’s this?” He had a voice as sharp as his face.
“A private detective named Philip Marlowe. He operates out of Los Angeles. He is here because Betty Mayfield is his client. It seems that you have rather more drastic ideas about Miss Mayfield than he has.”
“I don’t have any ideas about her, Captain,” I said. “I just like to squeeze her once in a while. It soothes me.”
“You like being soothed by a murderess?” Cumberland barked at me.
“Well, I didn’t know she was a murderess, Mr. Cumberland. It’s all news to me. Would you care to explain?”
“The girl who calls herself Betty Mayfield—and that was her maiden name—was the wife of my son, Lee Cumberland. I never approved of the marriage. It was one of those wartime idiocies. My son received a broken neck in the war and had to wear a brace to protect his spinal column. One night she got it away from him and taunted him until he rushed at her. Unfortunately, he had been drinking rather heavily since he came home, and there had been quarrels. He tripped and fell across the bed. I came into the room and found her trying to put the brace back on his neck. He was already dead.”
I looked at Captain Alessandro. “Is this being recorded, Captain?”
He nodded. “Every word.”
“All right, Mr. Cumberland. There’s more, I take it.”
“Naturally. I have a great deal of influence in Westfield. I own the bank, the leading newspaper, most of the industry. The people of Westfield are my friends. My daughter-in-law was arrested and tried for murder and the jury brought in a verdict of guilty.”
“The jury were all Westfield people, Mr. Cumberland?”
“They were. Why shouldn’t they be?”
“I don’t know, sir. But it sounds like a one-man town.”
“Don’t get impudent with me, young man.”
“Sorry, sir. Would you finish?”
“We have a peculiar law in our state, and I believe in a few other jurisdictions. Ordinarily the defense attorney makes an automatic motion for a directed verdict of not guilty and it is just as automatically denied. In my state the judge may reserve his ruling until after the verdict. The judge was senile. He reserved his ruling. When the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, he declared in a long speech that the jury had failed to consider the possibility that my son had in a drunken rage removed the brace from his neck in order to terrify his wife. He said that where there was so much bitterness anything was possible, and that the jury had failed to consider the possibility that my daughter-in-law might have been doing exactly what she said she was doing—trying to put the brace back on my son’s neck. He voided the verdict and discharged the defendant.
“I told her that she had murdered my son and that I would see to it that she had no place of refuge anywhere on this earth. That is why I am here.”
I looked at the captain. He looked at nothing. I said: “Mr. Cumberland, whatever your private convictions, Mrs. Lee Cumberland, whom I know as Betty Mayfield, has been tried and acquitted. You have called her a murderess. That’s a slander. We’ll settle for a million dollars.”
He laughed almost grotesquely. “You small-town nobody,” he almost screamed. “Where I come from you would be thrown into jail as a vagrant.”
“Make it a million and a quarter,” I said. “I’m not so valuable as your ex-daughter-in-law.”
Cumberland turned on Captain Alessandro. “What goes on here?” he barked. “Are you all a bunch of crooks?”
“You’re talking to a police officer, Mr. Cumberland.”
“I don’t give a good goddam what you are,” Cumberland said furiously. “There are plenty of crooked police.”
“It’s a good idea to be sure—before you call them crooked,” Alessandro said, almost with amusement. Then he lit a cigarette and blew smoke and smiled through it.
“Take it easy, Mr. Cumberland. You’re a cardiac case. Prognosis unfavorable. Excitement is very bad for you. I studied medicine once. But somehow I became a cop. The war cut me off, I guess.”
Cumberland stood up. Spittle showed on his chin. He made a strangled sound in his throat. “You haven’t heard the last of this,” he snarled.
Alessandro nodded. “One of the interesting things about police work is that you never hear the last of anything. There are always too many loose ends. Just what would you like me to do? Arrest someone who has been tried and acquitted, just because you are a big shot in Westfield, Carolina?”