Chandler, Raymond – The Long Goodbye

“That’s easily changed, Mrs. Loring.” I reached for my glass and dropped the contents down the hatch. “I thought perhaps you could tell me something about Terry that I didn’t know. I’m not interested in speculating why Terry Lennox beat his wife’s face to a bloody sponge.”

“That’s a pretty brutal way to put it,” she said angrily.

“You don’t like the words? Neither do I. And I wouldn’t be here drinking a gimlet if I believed he did anything of the sort.”

She stared. After a moment she said slowly: “He killed himself and left a full confession. What more do you want?”

“He had a gun,” I said. “In Mexico that might be enough excuse for some jittery cop to pour lead into him. Plenty of American police have done their killings the same way—some of them through doors that didn’t open fast enough to suit them. As for the confession, I haven’t seen it.”

“No doubt the Mexican police faked it,” she said tartly. “They wouldn’t know how, not in a little place like Otatocl�n. No, the confession is probably real enough, but it doesn’t prove he killed his wife. Not to me anyway. All it proves to me is that he didn’t see any way out. In a spot like that a certain sort of man—you can call him weak or soft or sentimental if it amuses you—might decide to save some other people from a lot of very painful publicity.”

“That’s fantastic,” she said. “A man doesn’t kill himself or deliberately get himself killed to save a little scandal. Sylvia was already dead. As for her sister and her father— they could take care of themselves very efficiently. People with enough money, Mr. Marlowe, can always protect themselves.”

“Okay, I’m wrong about the motive. Maybe I’m wrong all down the line. A minute ago you were mad at me. You want me to leave now—so you can drink your gimlet?”

Suddenly she smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m beginning to think you are sincere. What I thought then was that you were trying to justify yourself, far more than Terry. I don’t think you are, somehow.”

“I’m not. I did something foolish and I got the works for it. Up to a point anyway. I don’t deny that his confession saved me a lot worse. If they had brought him back and tried him, I guess they would have hung one on me too. The least it would have cost me would have been far more money than I could afford.”

“Not to mention your license,” she said dryly.

“Maybe. There was a time when any cop with a hangover could get me busted. It’s a little different now. You get a hearing before a commission of the state licensing authority. Those people are not too crazy about the city police.”

She tasted her drink and said slowly: “All things considered, don’t you think it was best the way it was? No trial, no sensational headlines, no mud-slinging just to sell newspapers without the slightest regard for truth or fairplay or for the feelings of innocent people.”

“Didn’t I just say so? And you said it was fantastic.”

She leaned back and put her head against the upper curve of the padding on the back of the booth. “Fantastic that Terry Lennox should have killed himself just to achieve that. Not fantastic that it was better for all parties that there should be no trial.”

“I need another drink,” I said, and waved at the waiter. “I feel an icy breath on the back of my neck. Could you by any chance be related to the Potter family, Mrs. Loring?”

“Sylvia Lennox was my sister,” she said simply. “I thought you would know.”

The waiter drifted over and I gave him an urgent message. Mrs. Loring shook her head and said she didn’t want anything more, When the waiter took off I said:

“With the hush old man Potter—excuse me, Mr. Harlan Potter—put on this affair, I would be lucky to know for sure that Terry’s wife even had a sister.”

“Surely you exaggerate. My father is hardly that powerful, Mr. Marlowe—and certainly not that ruthless. I’ll admit he does have very old-fashioned ideas about his personal privacy. He never gives interviews even to his own newspapers. He is never photographed, he never makes speeches, he travels mostly by car or in his own plane with his own crew. But he is quite human for all that. He liked Terry. He said Terry was a gentleman twentyfour hours a day instead of for the fifteen minutes between the time the guests arrive and the time they feel their first cocktail.”

“He slipped a little at the end. Terry did.”

The waiter trotted up with my third gimlet. I tried it for flavor and then sat there with a finger on the edge of the round base of the glass.

“Terry’s death was quite a blow to him, Mr. Marlowe. And you’re getting sarcastic again. Please don’t. Father knew it would all look far too neat to some-people. He would much rather Terry had just disappeared. If Terry had asked him for help, I think he would have given it.”

“Oh no, Mrs. Loring. His own datighter had been murdered.”

She made an irritable motion and eyed me coldly.

“This is going to sound pretty blunt, I’m afraid. Father had written my sister off long ago. When they met he barely spoke to her. If he expressed himself, which he hasn’t and won’t, I feel sure he would be just as doubtful about Terry as you are. But once Terry was dead, what did it matter? They could have been killed in a plane crash or a fire or a highway accident. If she had to die, it was the best possible time for her to die. In another ten years she would have been a sex-ridden hag like some of these frightful women you see at Hollywood parties, or used to a few years back. The dregs of the international set.”

All of a sudden I got mad, for no good reason. I stood up and looked over the booth. The next one was still empty. In the one beyond a guy was reading a paper all by himself, quietly. I sat down with a bump, pushed my glass out of the way, and leaned across the table. I had sense enough to keep my voice down.

“For hell’s sake, Mrs. Loring, what are you trying to sell me? That Harlan Potter is such a sweet lovely character he wouldn’t dream of using his influence on a political D.A. to drop the blanket on a murder investigation so that the murder was never really investigated at all? That he had doubts about Terry’s guilt but didn’t let anyone lift a finger to find out who was really the killer? That he didn’t use the political power of his newspapers and his bank account and the nine hundred guys who would trip over their chins trying to guess what he wanted done before he knew himself? That he didn’t arrange it so that a tame lawyer and nobody else, nobody from the D.A.‘s office or the city cops, went down to Mexico to make sure Terry actually had put a slug in his head instead of being knocked off by some Indian with a hot gun just for kicks? Your old man is worth a hundred million bucks, Mrs. Loring. I wouldn’t know just -how he got it, but I know damn well he didn’t get it without building himself a pretty far-reaching organization. He’s no softie. He’s a bard tough man, You’ve got to be in these days to make that kind of money. And you do business with some funny people. You may not meet them or shake hands with them, but they are there on the fringe doing business with you.”

“You’re a fool,” she said angrily. “I’ve had enough of you.”

“Oh sure. I don’t make the kind of music you like to hear. Let me tell you something. Terry talked to your old man the night Sylvia died. What about? What did your old man say to him? ‘Just run on down to Mexico and shoot yourself, old boy. Let’s keep this in the family. I know my daughter is a tramp and that any one of a dozen drunken bastards might have blown his top and pushed her pretty face down her throat for her, But that’s incidental, old boy. The guy will be sorry when he sobers up. You’ve had it soft and now is the time you pay back. What we want is to keep the fair Potter name as sweet as mountain lilac. She married you because she needed a front, She needs it worse than ever now she’s dead. And you’re it. If you can get lost and stay lost, fine. But if you get found, you check out. See you in the morgue.’”

“Do you really think,” the woman in black asked with dry ice in her voice, “that my father talks like that?”

I leaned back and laughed unpleasantly. “We could polish up the dialogue a little if that helps.”

She gathered her stuff together and slid along the seat. “I’d like to give you a word of warning,” she said slowly and very carefully, “a very simple word of warning. If you think my father is that kind of man and if you go around broadcasting the kind of thoughts you have just expressed to me, your career in this city in your business or In any business is apt to be extremely short and terminated very suddenly.”

“Perfect, Mrs. Loring, Perfect. I get it from the law, I get it from the hoodlum element, I get it from the carriage trade. The words change, but the meaning is the same. Lay off. I came in here to drink a gimlet because a man asked me to. Now look at me. I’m practically in the boneyard.”

She stood up and nodded briefly. “Three gimlets. Doubles. Perhaps you’re drunk.”

I dropped too much money on the table and stood up beside her. “You had one and a half, Mrs. Loring. Why even that much? Did a man ask you too, or was it all your own idea? Your own tongue got a little loose.”

“Who knows, Mr. Marlowe? Who knows? Who really knows anything? There’s a man over there at the bar watching us. Would it be anyone you know?”

I looked around, surprised that she had noticed. A lean dark character sat on the end stool nearest the door,

“His name is Chick Agostino,” I said. “He’s a gun toter for a gambling boy named Menendez. Let’s knock him down and jump on him.”

“You certainly are drunk,” she said quickly and started to walk. I went after her. The man on the stool swung around and looked to his front. When I came abreast I stepped up behind him and reached in under both his arms quickly. Maybe I was a little drunk.

He swung around angrily and slid off the stool. “Watch it, kiddo,” he snarled. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that she had stopped just inside the door to glance back

“No guns, Mr. Agostino? How reckless of you. It’s almost dark. What if you should run into a tough midget?”

“Scram!” he said savagely.

“Aw, you stole that line from the New Yorker.”

His mouth worked but he didn’t move. I left him and followed Mrs. Loring out through the door into the space under the awning. A gray-haired colored chauffeur stood there talking to the kid from the parking lot. He touched his cap and went off and came back with a flossy Cadillac limousine. He opened the door and Mrs. Loring got in. He shut the door as though he was putting down the lid of a jewel box. He went around the car to the driver’s seat.

She ran the window down and looked out at me, half smiling.

“Goodnight, Mr. Marlowe. It’s been nice—or has it?”

“We had quite a fight.”

“You mean you had—and mostly with yourself.”

“It usually is. Goodnight, Mrs. Loring. You don’t live around here, do you?”

“Not exactly. I live in Idle Valley. At the far end of the lake. My husband is a doctor.”

“Would you happen to know any people named Wade?”

She frowned. “Yes, I know the Wades. Why?”

“Why do I ask? They’re the only people in Idle Valley that I know.”

“I see. Well, goodnight again, Mr. Marlowe.”

She leaned back in the seat and the Cadillac purred politely and slid away into the traffic along the Strip.

Turning I almost bumped into Chick Agostino.

“Who’s the doll?” he sneered. “And next time you crack wise, be missing.”

“Nobody that would want to know you,” I said.

“Okay, bright boy. I got the license number. Mendy likes to know little things like that.”

The door of a car banged open and a man about seven feet high and four feet wide jumped out of it, took one look at Agostino, then one long stride, and grabbed him by the throat with one hand.

“How many times I gotta tell you cheap hoods not to hang around where I eat?” he roared.

He shook Agostino and hurled him across the sidewalk against the wall. Chick crumpled up coughing.

“Next time,” the enormous man yelled, “I sure as hell put the blast on you, and believe me, boy, you’ll be holding a gun when they pick you up.”

Chick shook his head and said nothing. The big man gave me a raking glance and grinned. “Nice night,” he said, and strolled into Victor’s.

I watched Chick straighten himself out and regain some of his composure. “Who’s your buddy?” I asked him.

“Big Willie Magoon,” he said thickly. “A vice squad bimbo: He thinks he’s tough.”

“You mean he isn’t sure?” I asked him politely.

He looked at me emptily and walked away. I got my car out of the lot and drove home. In Hollywood anything can happen, anything at all.

23

A low-swung Jaguar swept around the hill in front of me and slowed down so as not to bathe me in the granite dust from the half mile of neglected paving at the entrance to Idle Valley, It seemed they wanted it left that way to discourage the Sunday drivers spoiled by drifting along on superhighways. I caught a glimpse of a bright scarf and a pair of sun goggles. A hand waved at me casually, neighbor to neighbor. Then the dust slid across the road and added itself to the white film already well spread over the scrub and the sunbaked grass. Then I was around the outcrop and the paving started up in proper shape and everything was smooth and cared for. Live oaks clustered towards the road, as if they were curious to see who went by, and sparrows with rosy heads hopped about pecking at things only a sparrow would think worth pecking at.

Then there were a few cottonwoods but no eucalyptus. Then a thick growth of Carolina poplars screening a white house. Then a girl walking a horse along the shoulder of the road. She had levis on and a loud shirt and she was chewing on a twig. The horse looked hot but not lathered and the girl was crooning to him gently. Beyond a fieldstone wall a gardener was guiding a power lawnmower over a huge undulating lawn that ended far back in the portico of a Williamsburg Colonial mansion, the large de luxe size. Somewhere someone was playing left-handed exercises on a grand piano.

Then all this wheeled away and the glisten of the lake showed hot and bright and I began to watch numbers on gateposts. I had seen the Wades’ house only once and in the dark. It wasn’t as big as it had looked by night. The driveway was full of cars, so I parked on the side of the road and walked in. A Mexican butler in a white coat opened the door for me. He was a slender neat goodlooking Mexican and his coat fitted him elegantly and he looked like a Mexican who was getting fifty a week and not killing himself with hard work.

He said: ‘Buenas tardes, se�or,” and grinned as if he had put one over. “Sn nombre de Usted, por favor?”

“Marlowe,” I said, “and who are you trying to upstage, Candy? We talked on the phone, remember?”

He grinned and I went in. It was the same old cocktail party, everybody talking too loud, nobody listening, everybody hanging on for dear life to a mug of the juice, eyes very bright, cheeks flushed or pale and sweaty according to the amount of alcohol consumed and the capacity of the individual to handle it. Then Eileen Wade materialized beside me in a pale blue something which did her no harm. She had a glass in her hand but it didn’t lool as if it was more than a prop.

“I’m so glad you could come,” she said gravely. “Roger wants to see you in his study. -He hates cocktail parties. He’s working.”

“With this racket going on?”

“It never seems to bother him, Candy will get you a drink—or if you’d rather go to the bar—”

“I’ll do that,” I said. “Sorry about the other night.”

She smiled. “I think you apologized already. It was nothing.”

“The hell it was nothing.”

She kept the smile long enough to nod and turn and walk away. I spotted the bar over in the corner by some very large french windows. It was one of those things you push around. I was halfway across the room, trying not to bump anybody, when a voice said: “Oh, Mr. Marlowe.”

I turned and saw Mrs. Loring on a couch beside a prissy-looking man in rimless cheaters with a smear on his chin that might have been a goatee. She had a drink in her hand and looked bored. He sat still with his arms folded and scowled.

I went over there. She smiled at me and gave me her hand. “This is my husband, Dr. Loring. Mr. Philip Marlowe, Edward.”

The guy with the goatee gave me a brief look and a still briefer nod. He didn’t move otherwise. He seemed to be saving his energy for better things.

“Edward is very tired,” Linda Loring said. “Edward is always very tired.”

“Doctors often are,” I said. “Can I get you a drink, Mrs. Loring? Or you, Doctor?”

“She’s had enough,” the man said without looking at either of us. “I don’t drink. The more I see of people who do, the more glad I am that I don’t.”

“Come back, little Sheba,” Mrs. Loring said dreamily.

ETc swung around and did a take. I got away from there and made it to the bar. In the company of her husband Linda Loring seemed like a different person. There was an edge to her voice and a’sneer in her expression which she hadn’t used on me even when she was angry.

Candy was behind the bar. He asked me what I would drink.

“Nothing right now, thanks. Mr. Wade wants to see me,”

“Es muy occupado, sedor. Very busy.”

I didn’t think I was going to like Candy. When I just looked at him he added: “But I go see. De pronto, se�or.”

He threaded his way delicately through the mob and was back in no time at all. “Okay, chum, let’s go,” he said cheerfully.

I followed him across the room the long way of the house. He opened a door, I went through, he shut it behind me, and a lot of the noise was dimmed. It was a corner room, big and cool and quiet, with french windows and roses outside and an airconditioner set in a window to one side. I could see the lake, and I could see Wade lying flat out on a long blond leather couch. A big bleached wood desk had a typewriter on it and there was a pile of yellow paper beside the typewriter.

“Good of you to come, Marlowe,” he said lazily. “Park yourself. Did you have a drink or two?”

“Not yet.” I sat down and looked at him. He still looked a bit pale and pinched. “How’s the work going?”

“Fine, except that I get tired too quick. Pity a four-day drunk is so painful to get over. I often do my best work after one. In my racket it’s so easy to tighten up and get all stiff and wooden. Then the stuff is no good. When it’s good it comes easy. Anything you have read or heard to the contrary is a lot of mishmash?’

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