Sometimes you can get them mad enough to say something off key. But not Dr. Verringer. He remained dignified. His eyebrows went all the way with him. I looked towards the house. From inside there came a sound of music, dance music. And very faintly the snapping of fingers.
“I bet he’s in there dancing,” I said. “That’s a tango. I bet you he’s dancing all by himself in there. Some kid.”
“Are, you going to leave, Mr. Marlowe? Or shall I have to ask Earl to assist me in putting you off my property?”
“Okay, I’ll leave. No hard feelings, Doctor. There were only three names beginning with V and you seemed the most promising of them. That’s the only real clue we had—Dr. V. He scrawled it on a piece of paper before he left: Dr. V.”
“There must be dozens,” Dr. Verringer said evenly.
“Oh sure. But not dozens in our file of the barredwindow boys. Thanks for the time, Doctor. Earl bothers me a little.”
I turned and went over to my car and got into it. By the time I had the door shut Dr. Verringer was beside me. He leaned in with a pleasant expression.
“We need not quarrel, Mr. Marlowe. I realize that in your occupation you often have to be rather intrusive. Just what bothers you about Earl?”
“He’s so obviously a phony. Where you find one thing phony you’re apt to expect others. The guy’s a manic-depressive, isn’t he? Right now he’s on the upswing.”
He stared at me in silence. He looked grave and polite. “Many interesting and talented people have stayed with me, Mr. Marlowe. Not all of them were as level-headed as you may be. Talented people are often neurotic. But I have no facilities for the care of lunatics or alcoholics, even if I had the taste for that sort of work. I have no staff except Earl, and he is hardly the type to care for the sick.”
“Just what would you say he is the type for, Doctor? Apart from bubble-dancing and stuff?”
He leaned on the door. His voice got low and confidential. “Earl’s parents were dear friends of mine, Mr. Marlowe. Someone has to look alter Earl and they are no longer with us, Earl has to live a juiet life, away from the noise and temptations of the city. He is unstable but fundamentally harmless. I control him with absolute ease, as you saw.”
“You’ve got a lot of courage,” I said.
He sighed. His eyebrows waved gently, like the antennae of some suspicious insect. “It has been a sacrifice,” he said. “A rather heavy one. I thought Earl could help me with my work here. He plays beautiful tennis, swims and dives like a champion, and can dance all night. Almost always he is amiability itself. But from time to time there were— incidents.” He waved a broad hand as if pushing painful memories into the background. “In the end it was either give up Earl or give up my place here.”
He held both hands palms up, spread them apart, turned them over and let them fall to his sides. His eyes looked moist with unshed tears.
“I sold out,” he said. “This peaceful little valley will become a real estate development. There will be sidewalks and lampposts and children with scooters and blatting radios. There will even”—he heaved a forlorn sigh—“be Television.” He waved his hand in a sweeping gesture. “I hope they will spare the trees,” he said, “but I’m afraid they won’t. Along the ridges there will be television aerials instead. But Earl and I will be far away, I trust.”
“Goodbye, Doctor. My heart bleeds for you.”
He put out his hand. It was moist but very firm. “I appreciate your sympathy and understanding, Mr. Marlowe. And I regret I am unable to help you in your quest for Mr. Slade.”
“Wade,” I said.
“Pardon me, Wade, of course. Goodbye and good luck, sir.”
I started up and drove back along the graveled road by the way I had come. I felt sad, but not quite as sad as Dr. Verringer would have liked me to feel.
I came out through the gates and drove far enough around the curve of the highway to park out of sight of the entrance. I got out and walked back along the edge of the paving to where I could just see the gates from the barbed-wire boundary fence. I stood there under a eucalyptus and waited.
Five minutes or. so passed. Then a car came down the private road churning gravel. It stopped out of sight from where I was. I pulled back still farther into the brush. I heard a creaking noise, then the click of a heavy catch and the rattle of a chain. The car motor revved up and the car went back up the road.
When the sound of it had died I went back to my Olds and did a U turn to face back towards town. As I drove past the entrance to Dr. Verringer’s private road I saw that the gate was fastened with a padlocked chain. No more visitors today, thank you.
17
I drove the twenty-odd miles back to town and ate lunch. While I ate I felt more and more silly over the whole deal. You just don’t find people the way I was going about it. You meet interesting characters like Earl and Dr. Verringer, but you don’t meet the man you are looking for. You waste tires, gasoline, words, and nervous energy in a game with no pay-off. You’re not even betting table limit four ways on Black 28. With three names that started with V. I had as much chance of paging my man as I had of breaking Nick the Greek in a crap game.
Anyway the first one is always wrong, a, dead end, a promising lead that blows up in your face with no music. But he shouldn’t have said Slade instead of Wade. He was an intelligent man. He wouldn’t forget that easy, and if he did he would just forget.
Maybe, and maybe not. It had not been a long acquaintance. Over my coffee I thought about Drs. Vukanich and Varley. Yes or no? They would kill most of the afternoon. By then I could call the Wade mansionin Idle Valley and be told the head of the household had returned to his domicile and all was gleaming bright for the time being.
Dr. Vukanich was easy. He was only half a dozen blocks down the line. But Dr. Varley was away to hell and gone in the Altadena hills, a long, hot, boring drive. Yes or no?
The final answer was yes. For three good reasons. One was that you can never know too much about the shadow line and the people who walk it. The second was that anything I could add to the file Peters had got out for me was just that much thanks and goodwill. The third reason was that I didn’t have anything else to do.
I paid my check, left my car where it was, and walked the north side of the street to the Stockwell Building. It was an antique with a cigar counter in the entrance and a manually operated elevator that lurched and hated to level off. The corridor of the sixth floor was narrow and the doors had frosted glass panels. It was older and much dirtier than my own building. It was loaded with doctors, dentists, Christian Science practitioners not doing too good, the kind of lawyers you hope the other fellow has, the kind of doctors and dentists who just scrape along. Not too skillful, not too dean, not too much on the ball, three dollars and please pay the nurse; tired, discouraged men who know just exactly where they stand, what kind of patients they can get and how much money they can be squeezed into paying. Please Do Not Ask For Credit. Doctor is In, Doctor is Out. That’s a pretty shaky molar you have there, Mrs. Kazinski. Now if you want this new acrylic filling, every bit as good as a gold inlay, I can do it for you for $14. Novocain will be two dollars extra, if you wish it. Doctor is In, Doctor is Out. That will be Three Dollars. Please Pay the Nurse.
In a building like that there will always be a few guys making real money, but they don’t look it. They fit into the shabby background, which is protective coloring for them. Shyster lawyers who are partners in a bail-bond racket on the side (only about two per cent of all forfeited bail bonds are ever collected). Abortionists posing as any. thing you like that explains their furnishings. Dope pushers posing as urologists, dermatologists, or any branch of medicine in which the treatment can be frequent, and the regular use of local anesthetics is normal.
Dr. Lester Vukanich had a small and ill-furnished waiting room in which there were a dozen people, all uncomfortable. They looked like anybody else. They had no signs on them. Anyway you can’t tell a doper well under control from a vegetarian bookkeeper. I had to wait three quarters of an hour. The patients went in through two doors. An active ear, nose, and throat man can handle four sufferers at once, if he has enough room.
Finally I got in. I got to sit in a brown leather chair beside a table covered with a white towel on which was a set of tools. A sterilizing cabinet bubbled against the wall. Dr. Vukanich came in briskly with his white smock and his round mirror strapped to his forehead. He sat down in front of me on a stool.
“A sinus headache, is it? Very severe?” He looked at a folder the nurse had given him.
I said it was awful. Blinding. Especially when I first got up in the morning. He nodded sagely.
“Characteristic,” he said, and fitted a glass cap over a thing that looked like a fountain pen.
He pushed it into my mouth. “Close the lips but not the teeth, please.” While he said it he reached out and switched off the light. There was no window. A ventilating fan purred somewhere.
Dr. Vukanich withdrew his glass tube and put the lights back up. He looked at me carefully.
“No’ congestion at all, Mr. Marlowe. If you have a headache, it is not from a sinus condition. I’d hazard a guess that you never had sinus trouble in your life. You had a septum operation sometime in the past, I see.”
“Yes, Doctor. Got a kick playing football.”
He nodded. “There is a slight shelf of bone which should have been cut away. Hardly enough to interfere with breathing, however.”
He leaned back on the stool and held his knee. “Just what did you expect me to do for you?” he asked. He was a thin-faced man with an uninteresting pallor. He looked like a tubercular white rat.
“I wanted to talk to you about a friend of mine. He’s in bad shape. He’s a writer. Plenty of dough, but bad nerves. Needs help. He lives on the sauce for days on end. He needs that little extra something. His own doctor won’t co-operate any more.”
“Exactly what do you mean by co-operate?” Dr Vukanich asked.
“All the guy needs is an occasional shot to calm him down. I thought maybe we could work something out. The money would be solid.”
“Sorry, Mr. Marlowe, It is not my sort of problem.” He stood up. “Rather a crude approach, if I may say so. Your friend may consult me, if he chooses. But he’d better have something wrong with him that requires treatment. That will be ten dollars, Mr. Marlowe.”
“Come off it, Doc. You’re on the list.”
Dr. Vukanich leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. He was giving me time. He blew smoke and looked at it. I gave him one of my cards to look at instead. He looked at it.
“What list would that be?” he inquired.
“The barredwindow boys. I figure you might know my friend already. His name’s Wade. I figure you might have him stashed away somewhere in little white room. The guy is missing from home.”
“You are an ass,” Dr. Vukanich told me. “I don’t go in for penny ante stuff like four-day liquor cures. They cure nothing in any case. I have no little white rooms and I am not acquainted with the friend you mention—even if he exists. That will be ten dollars—cash—right now. Or would you rather I called the police and make a complaint that you solicited me for narcotics?”
“That would be dandy,” I said. “Let’s.”
“Get out of here, you cheap grifter.”
I stood up off the chair. “I guess I made a mistake, Doctor. The last time the guy broke parole he holed up with.a doctor whose name began with V. It was strictly an undercover operation. They fetched him late at night and brought him back the same way when he was over the jumps. Didn’t even wait long enough to see him go in the house. So when he hops the coop again and don’t come back for quite a piece, naturally we check over our files for a lead. We come up with three doctors whose names begin with V.”
“Interesting,” he said with a bleak smile. He was still giving me time. “What is the basis of your selection?”
I stared at him. His right hand was moving softly up and down the upper part of his left arm on the inside of it. His face was covered with a light sweat.
“Sorry, Doctor. We operate very confidential.”
“Excuse me a moment. I have another patient that—”
He left the rest of it hanging in the air and went out. While he was gone a nurse poked her head through the doorway, looked at me briefly and withdrew.
Then Dr. Vukanich came back in strolling happily. He was smiling and relaxed. His eyes were bright.
“What? Are you still here?” He looked very surprised or pretended to. “I thought our little visit had been brought to an end.”
“I’m leaving. I thought you wanted me to wait.”
He chudded. “You know something, Mr. Marlowe? We live in extraordinary times. For a mere five hundred dollars I could have you put in the hospital with several broken bones. Comical, isn’t it?”
“Hilarious,” I said, “Shoot yourself in the vein, don’t you, Doc? Boy, do you brighten up!”
I started out. “Hasta luego, amigo,” he chirped. “Don’t forget my ten bucks. Pay the nurse.”
He moved to an intercom and was speaking into it as I left. In the waiting room the same twelve people or twelve just like them were being uncomfortable. The nurse was right on the job.
“That will be ten dollars, please, Mr. Marlowe. This office requires immediate cash payment.”
I stepped among the crowded feet to the door. She bounded out of her chair and ran around the desk. I pulled the door open.
“What happens when you don’t get it?” I asked her. “You’ll find out what happens,” she said angrily. “Sure. You’re just doing your job. So am I. Take a gander at the card I left and you’ll see what my job is.”
I went on out. The waiting patients looked at me with disapproving eyes. That was no way to treat Doctor.
18
Dr. Amos Varley was a very different proposition. He had a big old house in a big old garden with big old oak trees shading it. It was a massive frame structure with elaborate scrollwork along the overhang of the porches and the white porch railings had turned and fluted uprights like the legs of an old-fashioned grand piano. A few frail elderly people sat in long chairs on the porches with rugs tucked around them.
The entrance doors were double and had stained-glass panels. The hall inside was wide and cool and the par. quetry floor was polished and without a single rug. Altadena is a hot place in summer. It is pushed back against the hills and the breeze jumps clear over it. Eighty years ago people knew how to build houses for this dimate.
A nurse in crisp white took my card and after a wait Dr. Amos Varley condescended to see me. He was a big baldheaded guy with a cheery smile. His long white coat was spotless, he walked noiselessly on crepe rubber soles.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Marlowe?” He had a rich soft voice to soothe the pain and comfort the anxious heart. Doctor is here, there is nothing to worry about, everything will be fine. He had that bedside manner, thick, honeyed layers of it. He was wonderful—and he was as tough as armor plate.
“Doctor, I am looking for a man named Wade, a well-todo alcoholic who has disappeared from his home. His past history suggests that he is holed up in some discreet joint that can handle him with skill. My only lead is a reference to a Dr. V. You’re my third Dr. V. and I’m getting discouraged.”
He smiled benignly, “Only your third, Mr. Marlowe? Surely there must be a hundred doctors in and around the Los Angeles area whose names begin with V.”
“Sure, but not many of them would have rooms with barred windows. I noticed a few upstairs here, on the side of the house.”
“Old people,” Dr. Varley said sadly, but it was a rich full sadness. “Lonely old people, depressed and unhappy old people, Mr. Marlowe. Sometimes—” He made an expressive gesture with his hand, a curving motion outwards, a pause, then a gentle falling, like a dead leaf fluttering to the ground. “I don’t treat alcoholics here,” he added precisely. “Now if you will excuse me—”
“Sorry, Doctor. You just happened to be on our list. Probably a mistake. Something about a run-in with the narcotics people a couple of years ago.”
“Is that so?” He looked puzzled, then the light broke. “Ah, yes, an assistant I was unwise enough to employ. For a very short time. He abused my confidence badly. Yes, indeed.”
“Not the way I heard it,” I said. “I guess I heard it wrong.”
“And how did you hear it, Mr. Marlowe?” He was still giving me the full treatment with his smile and his mellow tones.
“That you had to turn in your narcotic prescription book.”
That got to him a little. He didn’t quite scowl but he peeled off a few layers of the charm. His blue eyes had a chilly glint. “And the source of this fantastic information?”
“A large detective agency that has facilities for building files on that sort of thing.”
“A collection of cheap blackmailers, no doubt.”
“Not cheap, Doctor. Their base rate is a hundred dollars a day. It’s run by a former colonel of military police. No nickel grabber, Doctor. He rates way up.”
“I shall give him a piece of my mind,” Dr. Varley said with cool distaste. “His name?” The sun had set in Dr. Varley’s manner. It was getting to be a chilly evening.
“Confidential, Doctor. But don’t give it a thought. All in the day’s work. Name of Wade doesn’t ring a bell at all, huh?”
“I believe you know your way out, Mr. Marlowe.”
The door of a small elevator opened behind him. A nurse pushed a wheel chair out. The chair contained what was left of a broken old man. His eyes were dosed, his skin had a bluish tinge. He was well wrapped up. The nurse wheeled him sirently across the polished floor and out of a side door. Dr. Varley said softly:
“Old people. Sick old people. Lonely old people. Do not come back, Mr. Marlowe. You might annoy me. When annoyed I can be rather unpleasant. I might even say very unpleasant.”
“Okay by me, Doctor. Thanks for the time. Nice little dying-in home you got here.”
“What was that?” He took a step towards me and peeled off the remaining layers of honey. The soft lines of his face set themselves into hard ridges.
“‘What’s the matter?” I asked him. “I can see my man wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t look for anybody here that wasn’t too frail to fight back. Sick old people. Lonely old people. You said it yourself, Doctor. Unwanted old people, but with money and hungry heirs. Most of them probably judged incompetent by the court.”