“For Chrissake, haven’t you got anything In this place that isn’t gray?”
“The school colors, my lad. The spirit of the organization. Yeah, I have something that isn’t gray.”
He pulled a desk drawer open and took out a cigar about eight inches long.
“An Upman Thirty,” he said. “Presented to me by an elderly gent from England who has been forty years in California and still says ‘wireless.’ Sober he is just an old swish with a good deal of superficial charm, which is all right with me, because most people don’t have any, superficial or otherwise, induding Carne. He has as much charm as a steel puddler’s underpants. Not sober, the client has a strange habit of writing checks on banks which never heard of him, He always makes good and with my fond help he has so far stayed out of the icebox. He gave me this. Should we smoke it together, like a couple of Indian chiefs planning a massacre?”
“I can’t smoke cigars.”
Peters looked at the huge cigar sadly. “Same here,” he said. “I thought of giving it to Carne. But it’s not really a one-man cigar, even when the one man is Came.” He frowned. “You know something? I’m talking too much about Carne. I must be edgy.” He dropped the cigar back in the drawer and looked at the open file. “Just what do we want from this?”
“I’m looking for a well-heeled alcoholic with expensive tastes and money to gratify them. So far he hasn’t gone in for check-bouncing; I haven’t heard so anyway. He has a streak of violence and his wife is worried about him. She thinks he’s hid out in some sobering-up -joint but she -can’t be sure. The only clue we have is a jingle mentioning a Dr. V. Just the initial. My man is gone three days now.”
Peters stared at me thoughtfully. “That’s not too long,” he said. “What’s to worry about?”
“If I find him first, I get paid.”
He looked at me some more and shook his head. “I don’t get it, but that’s okay. We’ll see.” He began to turn the pages of the file. “It’s not too easy,” he said. “These people come and go. A single letter ain’t much of a lead.” He pulled a page out of the folder, turned some more pages, pulled another, and finally a third. “Three of them here,” he said. “Dr. Amos Varley, an osteopath. Big place in Altadena. Makes or used to make night calls for fifty bucks. Two registered nurses. Was in a hassle with the State Narcotics people a couple of years back, and turned in his prescription book. This information is not really up to date.”
I wrote down the name and address in Altadena.
“Then we have Dr. Lester Vukanich. Ear, Nose, and Throat, Stockwell Building, on Hollywood Boulevard. This one’s a dilly. Office practice mostly, and seems to sort of specialize in chronic sinus infections. Rather a neat routine. You go in and complain of a sinus headache and he washes out your antrums for you. First of course he has to anesthetize with Novocain. But if he likes your looks it don’t have to be Novocain. Catch?”
“Sure.” I wrote that one down.
“This is good,” Peters went on, reading some more. “Obviously his trouble would be supplies. So our Dr. Vukanich does a lot of fishing Ensenada and flies down in his own plane.”
“I wouldn’t think he’d last long if he brings the dope in himself,” I said.
Peters thought about that and shook his head. “I don’t think I agree. He could last forever if he’s not too greedy. His only real danger is a discontented customer—pardon me, I mean patient—but he probably knows how to handle that. He’s had fifteen years in the same office.”
“Where the hell do you get this stuff?” I asked him.
“We’re an organization, my boy. Not a lone wolf like you. Some we get from the clients themselves, some we get from the inside. Came’s not afraid to spend money. He’s a good mixer when he wants to be.”
“He’d love this conversation.”
“Screw him. Our last offering today is a man named Verringer. The operative who filed on him is long gone, Seems a lady poet suicided at Verringer’s ranch in Sepulveda Canyon one time. He runs a sort of art colony for writers and such who want sedusion and a congenial atmosphere. Rates moderate. He sounds legit. He calls himself doctor, but doesn’t practice medicine. Could be a Ph.D. Frankly, I don’t know why he’s in here. Unless there was something about this suicide.” He picked up a newspaper clipping pasted to a blank sheet. “Yeah, overdose of morphine, No suggestion Verringer knew anything about it.”
“I like Verringer,” I said. “I like him very much.”
Peters dosed the file and slapped it. “You haven’t seen this,” he said. He got up and left the room. When he came back I was standing up to leave. I started to thank him, but he shook it off.
“Look,” he said, “there must be hundreds of places where your man could be.”
I said I knew that.
“And by the way, I heard something about your friend Lennox that might interest you. One of our boys ran across a fellow in New York five or six years ago that answers the description exactly. But the guy’s name was not Lennox, he says. It was Marston. Of course he could be wrong. The guy was drunk all the time, so you couldn’t really be sure.
I said: “I doubt if it was the same man. Why would he change his name? He had a war record that could be checked.”
“I didn’t know that. Our man’s in Seattle right now. You can talk to him when he gets back, if it means anything to you. His name is Ashterfelt.”
“Thanks for everything, George. It was a pretty-long ten minutes.”
“I might need your help some day.”
“The Came Organization,” I said, “never needs anything from anybody.”
He made a rude gesture with his thumb. I left him in his metallic gray cell and departed through the waiting room. It looked fine now. The loud colors made sense after the cell block.
16
Back from the highway at the bottom of Sepulveda Canyon were two square yellow gateposts. A five-barred gate hung open from one of them. Over the entrance was a sign hung on wire: PRIVATE ROAD. No ADMITTANCE. The air was warm and quiet and full of the tomcat smell of eucalyptus trees.
I turned in and followed a graveled road around the shoulder of a hill, up a gentle slope, over a ridge and down the other side into a shallow valley. It was hot in the valley, ten or fifteen degrees hotter than on the highway. I could see now that the graveled road ended in a loop around some grass edged with stones that had been limewashed. Off to my left there was an empty swimming pool, and nothing ever looks emptier than an empty swimming pooL Around three sides of it there was what remained of a lawn dotted with redwood lounging chairs with badly faded pads on them. The pads had been of many colors, blue, green, yellow, orange, rust red. Their edge bindings had come loose in spots, the buttons had popped, and the pads were bloated where this had happened. On the fourth side there was the high wire fence of a tennis court. The diving board over the empty pool looked knee-sprung and tired. Its matting covering hung in shreds and its metal fittings were flaked with rust.
I came to the turning loop and stopped in front of a redwood building with a shake roof and a wide front porch. The entrance had double screen doors. Large black flies dozed on the screens. Paths led off among the ever green and always dusty California oaks and among the oaks there were rustic cabins scattered loosely over the side of the hill, some almost completely hidden. Those I could see had that desolate out-of-season look. Their doors were shut, their windows were blanked by drawn curtains of monk’s cloth or something on that order. You could almost feel the thick dust on their sills.
I switched off the ignition and sat there with my hands on the wheel listening. There was no sound. The place seemed to be as dead as Pharaoh, except that the doors behind the double screens were open and something moved in the dimness of the room beyond. -Then I heard a light accurate whistling and a man’s figure showed against the screen, pushed it open and strolled down the steps. He was something to see.
He wore a flat black gaucho hat with the woven strap under his thin. He wore a white silk shirt, spotlessly dean, open at the throat, with tight wristlets and loose puffed sleeves above. Around his neck a black fringed scarf was knotted unevenly so that one end was short and the other dropped almost to his waist. He wore a wide black sash and black pants, skin-tight at the hips, coal black, and stitched with gold thread down the side to where they were slashed and belied out loosely with gold buttons along both sides of the slash. On his feet he wore patent-leather dancing pumps,
He stopped at the foot of the steps and looked at me, still whistling, He was as lithe as a whip. He had the largest and emptiest smoke-colored eyes I had ever seen, under long silky lashes. His features were delicate and perfect without being weak. His nose was straight and almost but not quite thin, his mouth was a handsome pout, there was a dimple in his chin, and his small ears nestled gracefully against his head. His skin had that heavy pallor which the sun never touches.
He struck an attitude with his left hand on a hip and his right made a graceful curve in the air.
“Greetings,” he said. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“Pretty hot in here for me.”
“I like it hot.” The statement was flat and final and closed the discussion, What I liked was beneath his notice. He sat down on a step, produced a long file from somewhere, and began to file his fingernails. “You from the bank?” he asked without looking up.
“I’m looking for Dr. Verringer.”
He stopped working with the file and looked off into the warm distance. “Who’s he?” he asked with no possible interest.
“He owns the place. Laconic as hell, aren’t you? As if you didn’t know.”
He went back to his file and fingernails. “You got told wrong, sweetie The bank owns the place. They done foredosed it or it’s in escrow or something. I forget the details,”
He looked up at me with the expression of a man to whom details mean nothing. I got out of the Olds and leaned against the hot door, then I moved away from that to where there was some air.
“Which bank would that be?”
“You don’t know, you don’t come from there. You don’t come from there, you don’t have any business here. Hit the trail, sweetie. Buzz off but fast,”
“I have to find Dr. Verringer.”
“The joint’s not operating, sweetie. Like it says on the sign, this is a private road. Some gopher forgot to lock the gate.”
“You the caretaker?”
“Sort of. Don’t ask any more questions, sweetie. My temper’s not reliable.”
“What do you do when you get mad—dance a tango with a ground squirrel?”
He stood up suddenly and gracefully. He smiled a minute, an empty smile. “Looks like I got to toss you back in your little old convertible,” he said.
“Later. Where would I find Dr. Verringer about now?”
He pocketed his file in his shirt and something else took its place in his right hand. A brief motion and he had a fist with shining brass knuckles on it. The skin over his cheekbones was tighter and there was a flame deep in his large smoky eyes.
He strolled towards me. I stepped back to get more room. He went on whistling but the whistle was high and shrill.
“We don’t have to fight,” I told him. “We don’t have anything to fight about. And you might split those lovely britches.”
He was as quick as a flash. He came at me with a smooth leap and his left hand snaked out very fast. I expected a jab and moved my head well enough but what he wanted was my right wrist and he got it. He had a grip too. He jerked me off balance and the hand with the brass knucks came, around in a looping bolo punch. A crack on the back of the head with those and I would be a sick man. If I pulled he would catch me on the side of the face or on the upper arm below the point of the shoulder, It would have been a dead arm or a dead face; whichever it happened to be. In a spot like that there is only one thing to do.
I went with the pull. In passing I blocked his left foot from behind, grabbed his -shirt and heard it tear. Some thing hit me on the back of the neck, but it wasn’t the metal. I spun to the left and he Went over sideways and landed catlike and was on his feet again before I had any kind of balance. He was grinning now. He was delighted with everything. He loved his work. He came for me fast.
A strong beefy voice yelled from somewhere: “Earl! Stop that at once! At once, do you hear me?”
The gaucho boy stopped, There was a sort of sick grin on his face. He made a quick motion and the brass knucks disappeared into the wide sash around the top of his pants.
I turned and looked at a solid chunk of man in a Hawaiian shirt hurrying towards us down one of the paths waving his arms. He came up breathing a little fast
“Are you crazy, Earl?”
“Don’t ever say that, Doc,” Earl said softly. Then he smiled, turned away, and went to sit on the steps of the house. He took off the flat-crowned hat, produced a comb, and began to comb his thick dark hair with an absent expression. In, a second or two he started to whistle softly.
The heavy man in the loud shirt stood and looked at me. I stood and looked at hini.
“What’s going on here?” he growled. “Who are you, sir?”
“Name’s Marlowe. I was asking for Dr. Verringer. The lad you call Earl wanted to play games. I figure it’s too hot.”
“I am Dr. Verringer,” he said with dignity. He turned his head. “Go in the house, Earl.”
Earl stood up slowly. He gave Dr. Verringer a thoughtful studying look, his large smoky eyes blank of expression. Then he went up the steps and pulled the screen door open. A cloud of flies buzzed angrily and then settled on the screen again as the door closed.
“Marlowe?” Dr. Verringer gave me his attention again, “And what can I do for you, Mr. Marlowe?”
“Earl says you are out of business here.”
“That is correct. I am just waiting for certain legal formalities before moving out. Earl and I are alone here.”
“I’m disappointed,” I said, looking disappointed. “I thought you had a man named Wade staying with you.”
He hoisted a couple of eyebrows that would have interested a Fuller Brush man. “Wade? I might possibly know somebody of that name—it’s a common enough name—but why should he be staying with me?”
“Taking the cure.”
He frowned. When a guy has eyebrows like that he can really do you a frown, “I am a medical man, sir, but no longer in practice. What sort of cure did you have in mind?”
“The guy’s a wino. He goes off his rocker from time to time and disappears. Sometimes he comes home under his own power, sometimes he gets brought home, and sometimes he takes a bit of finding.” I got a business card out and handed it to him.
He read it with no pleasure.
“What goes with Earl?” I asked him. “He think he’s Valentino or something?”
He made with the eyebrows again, They fascinated me. Parts of them curled off all by themselves as much as an inch and a ball. He shrugged his meaty shoulders.
“Earl is quite harmless, Mr. Marlowe. He is—at times—a little dreamy. Lives in a play world, shall we say?”
“You say it, Doc. From where I stand he plays rough.”
“Tut, tut, Mr. Marlowe. You exaggerate surely. Earl likes to dress himself up. He is childlike in that respect,”
“You mean he’s a nut,” I said. “This place some kind of sanitarium, isn’t it? Or was?”
“Certainly not, When it was in operation it was an artists’ colony. I provided meals, lodging, facilities for exercise and entertainment, and above all seclusion. And for moderate fees, Artists, as you probably know, are seldom wealthy people. In the term artists I of course include writers, musicians, and so on. It was a rewarding occupation for me—while it lasted.”
He looked sad when he said this. The eyebrows drooped at the outer corners to match his mouth. Give them a little more growth and they would be in his mouth.
“I know that,” I said. “It’s in the file. Also the suicide you had here a while back. A dope case, wasn’t it?”
He stopped drooping and bristled. “What file?” he asked sharply.
“We’ve got a file on what we call the barredwindow boys, Doctor. Places where you can’t jump out of when the French fits take over. Small private sanitariums or what have you that treat alcoholics and dopers and mild cases of mania.”
“Such places must be licensed by law,’! Dr. Verringer said harshly.
“Yeah. In theory anyway. Sometimes they kind of forget about that.”
He drew himself up stiffly. The guy had a kind of dignity, at that. “The suggestion is insulting, Mr. Marlowe. I have no knowledge of why my name should be on any such list as you mention. I must ask you to leave.”
“Let’s get back to Wade. Could he be here under another name, maybe?”
“There is no one here but Earl and myself. We are quite alone. Now if you will excuse md—”
“I’d like to look around.”