“A portrait of Madison? I’m afraid I don’t—.”
“A five-thousand-dollar bill,” I said. “Always carry it. My lucky piece.”
“Good God,” he said in a hushed voice. “Isn’t that terribly dangerous?”
“Who was it said that beyond a certain point all dangers are equal?”
“I think it was Walter Bagehot. He was talking about a steeplejack.” Then he grinned. “Sorry, but I am a publisher. You’re all right, Marlowe. I’ll take a chance on you. If I didn’t you would tell me to go to hell. Right?”
I grinned back at him. He called the waiter and ordered another pair of drinks.
“Here it is,” he said carefully. “We are in bad trouble over Roger Wade. He can’t finish a book. He’s losing his grip and there’s something behind it. The man seems to be going to pieces. Wild fits of drinking and temper. Every once in a while he disappears for days on end. Not very long ago he threw his wife downstairs and put her in the hospital with five broken ribs. There’s no trouble between them in the usual sense, none at all. The man just goes nuts when he drinks.” Spencer leaned back and looked at me gloomily. “We have to have that book finished. We need it badly. To a certain extent my job depends on it. But we need more than that. We want to save a very able writer who is capable of much better things than he has ever done. Something is very wrong. This trip he won’t even see me. I realize this sounds like a job for a psychiatrist. Mrs. Wade disagrees. She is convinced that he is perfectly sane but that something is worrying him to death. A blackmailer, for instance. The Wades have been married five years. Something from his past may have caught up with him. It might even be—just as a wild guess—a fatal hit-and-run accident and someone has the goods on him. We don’t know what it is. We want to know. And we are willing to pay well to correct the trouble. If it turns out to be a medical matter, well—that’s that. If not, there has to be an answer. And in the meantime Mrs. Wade has to be protected. He might kill her the next time. You never know.”
The second round of drinks came. I left mine untouched and watched him gobble half of his in one swallow. I lit a cigarette and just stared at him.
“You don’t want a detective,” I said. “You want a magician. What the hell could I do? If I happened to be there at exactly the right time, and if he isn’t too tough for me to handle, I might knock him out and put him to bed. But I’d have to be there. It’s a hundred to one against. You know that.”
“He’s about your size,” Spencer said, “but he’s not in your condition. And you could be there all the time.”
“Hardly. And drunks are cunning. He’d be certain to pick a time when I wasn’t around to throw his wingding. I’m not in the market for a job as a male nurse.”
“A male nurse wouldn’t be any use. Roger Wade is not the kind of man to accept one. He is a very talented guy’who has been jarred loose from his self-control. He has made too much money writing junk for halfwits. But the only salvation for a writer is to write. If there is anything good in him, it will come out.”
“Okay, I’m sold on him,” I said wearily. “He’s terrific. Also he’s damn dangerous. He has a guilty secret and he tries to drown it in alcohol. It’s not my kind of problem, Mr. Spencer.”
“I see.” He looked at his wrist watch with a worried frown that knotted his face and made it look older and smaller. “Well, you can’t blame me for trying.”
He reached for his fat briefcase. I looked across at the golden girl. She was getting ready to leave. The whitehaired waiter was hovering over her with the check. She gave him some money and a lovely smile and he looked as if he had shaken hands with God. She touched up her lips and put her white gauntlets on and the waiter pulled the table halfway across the room for her to stroll out.
I glanced at Spencer. He was frowning down at the empty glass on the table edge. He had the briefcase on his knees.
“Look,” I said. “I’ll go see the man and try to size him up, if you want me to. I’ll talk to his wife. But my guess is he’ll throw me Out of the house.”
A voice that was not Spencer’s said: “No, Mr. Marlowe, I don’t think he would do that. On the contrary I think he might like you.”
I looked up into the pair of violet eyes. She was standing at the end of the table. I got up and canted myself against the back of the booth in that awkward way you have to stand when you can’t slide out.
“Please don’t get up,” she said in a voice like the stuff they use to line summer clouds with. “I know I owe you an apology, but it seemed important for me to have a chance to observe you before I introduced myself. I am Eileen Wade.”
Spencer said grumpily: “He’s not interested, Eileen.”
She smiled gently. “I disagree.”
I pulled myself together. I had been standing there off balance with my mouth open and me breathing through it like a sweet girl graduate. This was really a dish. Seen close up she was almost paralyzing.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested, Mrs. Wade. What I said or meant to say was that I didn’t think I could do any good, and it might be a hell of a mistake for me to try. It might do a lot of harm.”
She was very serious now. The smile had gone. “You are deciding too soon. You can’t judge people by what they do. If you judge them at all, it must be by what they are.”
I nodded vaguely. Because that was exactly the way I had thought about Terry Lennox. On the facts he was no bargain, except for that one brief flash of glory in the foxhole—if Menendez told the truth about that—but the facts didn’t tell the whole story by any means. He had been a man it was impossible to dislike. How many do you meet in a lifetime that you can say that about?
“And you have to know them for that,” she added gently. “Goodbye, Mr. Marlowe. If you should change your mind—” She opened her bag quickly and gave me a card—“and thank you for being here.”
She nodded to Spencer and walked away. I watched her out of the bar, down the glassed-in annex to the dining room. She carried herself beautifully. I watched her turn under the archway that led to the lobby. I saw the last flicker of her white linen skirt as she turned the corner. Then I eased myself down into the booth and grabbed the gin and orange.
Spencer was watching me. There was something hard in his eyes.
“Nice work,” I said, “but you ought to have looked at her once in a while. A dream like that doesn’t sit across the room from you for twenty minutes without your even noticing.”
“Stupid of me, wasn’t it?” He was trying to smile, but he didn’t really want to. He didn’t like the way I had looked at her. “People have such-queer ideas about private detectives. When you think of having one in your home—”
“Don’t think of having this one in your home,” I said. “Anyhow, think up another story first. You can do better than trying to make me believe anybody, drunk or sober, would throw that gorgeous downstairs and break five ribs for her.”
He reddened. His hands tightened on the briefcase. “‘You think I’m a liar?”
“What’s the difference? You’ve made your play. You’re a little hot for the lady yourself, maybe.”
He stood up suddenly. “I don’t like your tones” he said. “I’m not sure I like you. Do me a favor and forget the whole idea. I think this ought to pay you for your time.”
He threw a twenty on the table, and then added some ones for the waiter. He stood a moment staring down at me. His eyes were bright and his face was still red. “I’m married and have four children,” he said abruptly.
“Congratulations.”
He made a swift noise in his throat and turned and went. He went pretty fast. I watched him for a while and then I didn’t. I drank the rest of my drink and got out my cigarettes and shook one loose and stuck it in my mouth and lit it. The old waiter came up and looked at the money.
“Can I get you anything else, sir?”
“Nope. The dough is all yours.”
He picked it up slowly. “This is a twenty-dollar bill, sir. The gentleman made a mistake.”
“He can read. The dough is all yours, I said.”
“I’m sure I’m very grateful; If you are quite sure, sir—”
“Quite sure.”
He bobbed his head and went away, still looking worried. The bar was filling up. A couple of streamlined deini-virgins went by caroling and waving. They knew the two hotshots in the booth farther on. The air began to be spattered with darlings and crimson fingernails.
I smoked half of my cigarette, scowling at nothing, and then got up to leave. I turned to reach back for my cigarettes and something bumped into me hard from behind. It was just what I needed. I swung around and I was looking at the profile of a broad-beamed crowd-pleaser in an overdraped oxford flannel. He had the outstretched arm of the popular character and the two-by-six grin of the guy who never loses a sale.
I took hold of the outstretched arm and spun him around. “What’s the matter, Jack? Don’t they make the aisles wide enough for your personality?”
He shook his arm loose and got tough, “Don’t get fancy, buster. I might loosen your jaw for you.”
“Ha, ha,” I said, “You might play center field for the Yankees and hit a home run with a breadstick,”
He doubled a meaty fist.
“Darling, think of your manicure,” I told him.
He controlled his emotions. “Nuts to you, wise guy,” he sneered. “Some other time, when I have less on my mind.”
“Could there be less?”
“G’wan, beat it,” he snarled. “One more crack and you’ll need new bridgework.”
I grinned at him. “Call me up, Jack. But with better dialogue.”
His expression changed. He laughed. “You in pictures, chum?”
“Only the kind they pin up in the post office.”
“See you in the mug book,” he said, and walked away, still grinning.
It was all very silly, but it got rid of the feeling. I went along the annex and across the lobby of the hotel to the main entrance. I paused inside to put on my sunglasses. It wasn’t until I got into my car that I remembered to look at the card Eileen Wade had given me. It was an engraved card, but not a formal calling card, because it had an address and a telephone number on it. Mrs. Roger Stearns Wade, 1247 Idle Valley Road. Tel. Idle Valley 5-6524.
I knew a good deal about Idle Valley, and I knew it had changed a great deal from the days when they had the gatehouse at the entrance and the private police force, and the gambling casino on the lake, and the fifty-dollar joy girls. Quiet money had taken over the tract after the casino was closed out. Quiet money had made it a subdivider’s dream. A club owned the lake and the lake frontage and if they didn’t want you in the club, you didn’t get to play in the water. It was exclusive in the only remaining sense of the word that doesn’t mean merely expensive.
I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.
Howard Spencer called me up late in the afternoon. He had got over his mad and wanted to say he was sorry and he hadn’t handled the situation very well, and had I perhaps any second thoughts.
“I’ll go see him if he asks me to. Not otherwise.”
“I see. There would be a substantial bonus—”
“Look, Mr. Spencer,” I said impatiently, “you can’t hire destiny. If Mrs. Wade is afraid of the guy, she can move out. That’s her problem. Nobody could protect her twentyfour hours a day from her own husband. There isn’t that much protection in the world. But that’s not all you want. You want to know why and how and when the guy jumped the rails, and then fix it so that he doesn’t do it again—at least until he finishes the book. And that’s up to him. If he wants to write the damn book bad enough, he’ll lay off the hooch until he does it. You want too damn much.”
“They all go together,” he said. “It’s all one problem. But I guess I understand. It’s a little oversubtle for your kind of operation. Well, goodbye. I’m flying back to New York tonight.”
“Have a smooth trip.”
He thanked me and hung up. I forgot to tell him I had given his twenty to the waiter. I thought of calling back to tell him, then I thought he was miserable enough already.
I dosed the office and started off in the. direction of Victor’s to drink a gimlet, as Terry had asked me to in his letter. I changed my mind. I wasn’t feeling sentimental enough. I went to Lowry’s and had a martini and some prime ribs and Yorkshire pudding instead.
When I got home I turned on the TV set and looked at the fights. They were no good, just a bunch of dancing masters who ought to have been working for Arthur Murray. All they did was jab and bob up and down and feint one another off balance. Not one of them could hit hard enough to wake his grandmother out of a light doze. The crowd was booing and the referee kept clapping his hands for action, but they went right on swaying and jittering and jabbing long lefts. I turned to another channel and looked at a crime show. The action took place in a clothes closet and the faces were tired and over familiar and not beautiful. The dialogue was stuff even Monogram wouldn’t have used. The dick had a colored houseboy for comic relief. He didn’t need it, he was plenty comical all by himself. And the commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.
I cut it off and smoked a long cool tightly packed cigarette. It was kind to my throat. It was made of fine tobacco, I forgot to notice what brand it was. I was about ready to hit the hay when Detective-Sergeant Green of homicide called me up.
“Thought you might like to know they buried your friend Lennox a couple of days ago right in that Mexican town where he died. A lawyer representing the family went down there and attended to it. You were pretty lucky this time, Marlowe. Next time you think of helping a pal skip the country, don’t.”
“How many bullet holes did he have in him?”
“What’s that?” he barked. Then he was silent for a space. Then he said rather too carefully: “One, I should say. It’s usually enough when it blows a guy’s head off. The lawyer is bringing back a set of prints and whatever was in his pockets. Anything more you’d like to know?”
“Yeah, but you can’t tell me. I’d like to know who killed Lennox’s wife.”
“Cripes, didn’t Grenz tell you he left a full confession? It was in the papers, anyway. Don’t you read the papers any more?”
“Thanks for calling me, Sergeant. It was real kind of you.”
“Look, Marlowe,” he said raspingly. “You got any funny ideas about this case, you could buy yourself a lot of grief talking about them. The case is dosed, finalized, and laid away in mothballs. Damn lucky for you it is. Accessory after the fact is good for five years in this state. And let me tell you something else. I’ve been a cop a long time and one thing I’ve learned for sure is it ain’t always what you do that gets you sent up. It’s what it can be made to look like when it comes in to court. Goodnight.”
He hung up in my ear. I replaced the phone thinking that an honest cop with a bad consdence always acts tough. So does a dishonest cop. So does almost anyone, including me.
14
Next morning the bell rang as I was wiping the talcum off an earlobe. When I got to the door and opened up I looked into a pair of violet-blue eyes. She was in brown linen this time, with a pimento-colored scarf, and no earrings or hat. She looked a little pale, but not as though anyone had been throwing her downstairs. She gave me a hesitant little smile.
“I know I shouldn’t have come here to bother you, Mr. Marlowe. You probably haven’t even had breakfast. But I had a reluctance to go to your office and I hate telephon. ing about personal matters.”
“Sure. Come in, Mrs. Wade. Would you go for a cup of coffee?”
She came into the living room and sat on the davenport without looking at anything. She balanced her bag on her lap and sat with her feet dose together. She looked rather prim. I opened windows and pulled up venetian blinds and lifted a dirty ash tray off the cocktail table in front of her.
“Thank you. Black coffee, please. No sugar.”
I went out to the kitchen and spread a paper napkin on a green metal tray. It looked as cheesy as a celluloid collar. I crumpled it up and got out one of those fringed things that come in sets with little triangular napkins. They came with the house, like most of the furniture. I set out two Desert Rose coffee cups and filled them and carried the tray in.
She sipped. “This is very nice,” she said. “You make good coffee.”
“Last time anyone drank coffee with me was just before I went to jail,” I said. “I guess you knew I’d been in the cooler, Mrs. Wade.”
She nodded. “Of course. You were suspected of having helped him escape, wasn’t it?”
“They didn’t say. They found my telephone number on a pad in his room. They asked me questions I didn’t answer—mostly because of the way they were asked. But I don’t suppose you are interested in that.”
She put her cup down carefully and leaned back and smiled at me. I offered her a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke, thank you. Of course I’m interested. A neighbor of ours knew the Lennoxes. He must have been insane. He doesn’t sound at all like that kind of man.”
I filled a bulldog pipe and lit it. “I guess so,” I said. “He must have been. He was badly wounded in the war. But he’s dead and it’s all done with. And I don’t think you came here to talk about that.”