I turned to go back up the hill. From the base of a bush a cricket chirped loud enough to make me jump. I went on up around the curve and past the white barricade. Still nothing. The black car stood dimly shining against a grayness which was neither darkness nor light. I went over to it and put a foot on the running board beside the driver’s seat.
“Looks like a tryout,” I said under my breath, but loud enough for Marriott to hear me from the back of the car. “Just to see if you obey orders.”
There was a vague movement behind but he didn’t answer. I went on trying to see something besides bushes.
Whoever it was had a nice easy shot at the back of my head. Afterwards I thought I might have heard the swish of a sap. Maybe you always think that—afterwards.
TEN
“Four minutes,” the voice said. “Five, possibly six. They must have moved quick and quiet. He didn’t even let out a yell.”
I opened my eyes and looked fuzzily at a cold star. I was lying on my back. I felt sick.
The voice said: “It could have been a little longer. Maybe even eight minutes altogether. They must have been in the brush, right where the car stopped. The guy scared easily. They must have thrown a small light in his face and he passed out—just from panic. The pansy.”
There was silence. I got up on one knee. Pains shot from the back of my head clear to my ankles.
“Then one of them got into the car,” the voice said, “and waited for you to come back. The others hid again. They must have figured he would be afraid to come alone. Or something in his voice made them suspicious, when they talked to him on the phone.”
I balanced myself woozily on the flat of my hands, listening.
“Yeah, that was about how it was,” the voice said.
It was my voice. I was talking to myself, coming out of it. I was trying to figure the thing out subconsciously.
“Shut up, you dimwit,” I said, and stopped talking to myself.
Far off the purl of motors, nearer the chirp of crickets, the peculiar long drawn ee-ee-ee of tree frogs. I didn’t think I was going to like those sounds any more.
I lifted a hand off the ground and tried to shake the sticky sage ooze off it, then rubbed it on the side of my coat. Nice work, for a hundred dollars. The hand jumped at the inside pocket of the overcoat. No manila envelope, naturally. The hand jumped inside my own suit coat. My wallet was still there. I wondered if my hundred was still in it. Probably not. Something felt heavy against my left ribs. The gun in the shoulder holster.
That was a nice touch. They left me my gun. A nice touch of something or other—like closing a man’s eyes after you knife him.
I felt the back of my head. My hat was still on. I took it off, not without discomfort and felt the head underneath. Good old head, I’d had it a long time. It was a little soft now, a little pulpy, and more than a little tender. But a pretty light sapping at that. The hat had helped. I could still use the head. I could use it another year anyway.
I put my right hand back on the ground and took the left off and swivelled it around until I could see my watch. The illuminated dial showed 10.56, as nearly as I could focus on it.
The call had come at 10.08. Marriott had talked maybe two minutes. Another four had got us out of the house. Time passes very slowly when you are actually doing something. I mean, you can go through a lot of movements in very few minutes. Is that what I mean? What the hell do I care what I mean? Okey, better men than me have meant less. Okey, what I mean is, that would be 10.15, say. The place was about twelve minutes away. 10.27. I get out, walk down in the hollow, spend at the most eight minutes fooling around and come on back up to get my head treated. 10.35. Give me a minute to fall down and hit the ground with my face. The reason I hit it with my face, I got my chin scraped. It hurts. It feels scraped. That way I know it’s scraped. No, I can’t see it. I don’t have to see it. It’smy chin and I know whether it’s scraped or not. Maybe you want to make something of it. Okey, shut up and let me think. What with? . . .
The watch showed 10.56 p.m. That meant I had been out for twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes’ sleep. Just a nice doze. In that time I had muffed a job and lost eight thousand dollars. Well, why not? In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. You can get a glass of water at a night club—maybe.
Twenty minutes’ sleep. That’s a long time. Especially on a cold night, out in the open. I began to shiver.
I was still on my knees. The smell of the sage was beginning to bother me. The sticky ooze from which wild bees get their honey. Honey was sweet, much too sweet. My stomach took a whirl. I clamped my teeth tight and just managed to keep it down my throat. Cold sweat stood out in lumps on my forehead, but I shivered just the same. I got up on one foot, then on both feet, straightened up, wobbling a little. I felt like an amputated leg.
I turned slowly. The car was gone. The dirt road stretched empty, back up the shallow hill towards the paved street, the end of Camino de la Costa. To the left the barrier of white-painted four-by-fours stood out against the darkness. Beyond the low wall of brush the pale glow in the sky would be the lights of Bay City. And over farther to the right and near by were the lights of the Belvedere Club.
I went over where the car had stood and got a fountain pen flash unclipped from my pocket and poked the little light down at the ground. The soil was red loam, very hard in dry weather, but the weather was not bone dry. There was a little fog in the air, and enough of the moisture had settled on the surface of the ground to show where the car had stood. I could see, very faint, the tread marks of the heavy ten-ply Vogue tires. I put the light on them and bent over and the pain made my head dizzy. I started to follow the tracks. They went straight ahead for a dozen feet, then swung over to the left. They didn’t turn. They went towards the gap at the left-hand end of the white barricade. Then I lost them.
I went over to the barricade and shone the little light on the brush. Fresh-broken twigs. I went through the gap, on down the curving road. The ground was still softer here. More marks of the heavy tires. I went on down, rounded the curve and was at the edge of the hollow closed in by brush.
It was there all right, the chromium and glossy paint shining a little even in the dark, and the red reflector glass of the tail-lights shining back at the pencil flash. It was there, silent, lightless, all the doors shut. I went towards it slowly, gritting my teeth at every step. I opened one of the rear doors and put the beam of the flash inside. Empty. The front was empty too. The ignition was off. The key hung in the lock on a thin chain. No torn upholstery, no scarred glass, no blood, no bodies. Everything neat and orderly. I shut the doors and circled the car slowly, looking for a sign and not finding any.
A sound froze me.
A motor throbbed above the rim of the brush. I didn’t jump more than a foot. The flash in my hand went out. A gun slid into my hand all by itself. Then headlight beams tilted up towards the sky, then tilted down again. The motor sounded like a small car. It had that contented sound that comes with moisture in the air.
The lights tilted down still more and got brighter. A car was coming down the curve of the dirt road. It came two-thirds of the way and then stopped. A spotlight clicked on and swung out to the side, held there for a long moment, went out again. The car came down the hill. I slipped the gun out of my pocket and crouched behind the motor of Marriott’s car.
A small coupe of no particular shape or color slid into the hollow and turned so that its headlights raked the sedan from one end to the other. I got my head down in a hurry. The lights swept above me like a sword. The coupe stopped. The motor died. The headlights died. Silence. Then a door opened and a light foot touched the ground. More silence. Even the crickets were silent. Then a beam of light cut the darkness low down, parallel to the ground and only a few
inches above it. The beam swept, and there was no way I could get my ankles out of it quickly enough. The beam stopped on my feet. Silence. The beam came up and raked the top of the hood again.
Then a laugh. It was a girl’s laugh. Strained, taut as a mandolin wire. A strange sound in that place. The white beam shot under the car again and settled on my feet.
The voice said, not quite shrilly: “All right, you. Come out of there with your hands up and very damned empty. You’re covered.”
I didn’t move.
The light wavered a little, as though the hand that held it wavered. It swept slowly along the hood once more. The voice stabbed at me again.
“Listen, stranger. I’m holding a ten shot automatic. I can shoot straight. Both your feet are vulnerable. What do you bid?”
“Put it up—or I’ll blow it out of your hand!” I snarled. My voice sounded like somebody tearing slats off a chicken coop.
“Oh—a hard-boiled gentleman.” There was a quaver in the voice, a nice little quaver. Then it hardened again. “Coming out? I’ll count three. Look at the odds I’m giving you—twelve fat cylinders, maybe sixteen. But your feet will hurt. And ankle bones take years and years to get well and sometimes they never do really—”
I straightened up slowly and looked into the beam of the flashlight.
“I talk too much when I’m scared too,” I said.
“Don’t—don’t move another inch! Who are you?”
I moved around the front of the car towards her. When I was six feet from the slim dark figure behind the flash I stopped. The flash glared at me steadily.
“You stay right there,” the girl snapped angrily, after I had stopped. “Who are you?”
“Let’s see your gun.”
She held it forward into the light. It was pointed at my stomach. It was a little gun, it looked like a small Colt vest pocket automatic.
“Oh, that,” I said. “That toy. It doesn’t either hold ten shots. It holds six. It’s just a little bitty gun, a butterfly gun. They shoot butterflies with them. Shame on you for telling a deliberate lie like that.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Me? I’ve been sapped by a holdup man. I might be a little goofy.”
“Is that—is that your car?”
“No.”
“Who are you?”
“What were you looking at back there with your spotlight?”
“I get it. You ask the answers. He-man stuff. I was looking at a man.”
“Does he have blond hair in waves?”
“Not now,” she said quietly. “He might have had—once.”
That jarred me. Somehow I hadn’t expected it. “I didn’t see him,” I said lamely. “I was following the tire marks with a flashlight down the hill. Is he badly hurt?” I went another step towards her. The little gun jumped at me and the flash held steady.
“Take it easy,” she said quietly. “Very easy. Your friend is dead.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. Then I said: “All right, let’s go look at him.”
“Let’s stand right here and not move and you tell me who you are and what happened.” The voice was crisp. It was not afraid. It meant what it said.
“Marlowe. Philip Marlowe. An investigator. Private.”
“That’s who you are—if it’s true. Prove it.”
“I’m going to take my wallet out.”
“I don’t think so. Just leave your hands where they happen to be. We’ll skip the proof for the time being. What’s your story?”
“This man may not be dead.”
“He’s dead all right. With his brains on his face. The story, mister. Make it fast.”
“As I said—he may not be dead. We’ll go look at him.” I moved one foot forward.
“Move and I’ll drill you!” she snapped.
I moved the other foot forward. The flash jumped about a little. I think she took a step back.
“You take some awful chances, mister,” she said quietly. “All right, go on ahead and I’ll follow. You look like a sick man. If it hadn’t been for that—”
“You’d have shot me. I’ve been sapped. It always makes me a little dark under the eyes.”
“A nice sense of humor—like a morgue attendant,” she almost wailed.
I turned away from the light and immediately it shone on the ground in front of me. I walked past the little coupe, an ordinary little car, clean and shiny under the misty starlight. I went on, up the dirt road, around the curve. The steps were close behind me and the flashlight guided me. There was no sound anywhere now except our steps and the girl’s breathing. I didn’t hear mine.
ELEVEN
Halfway up the slope I looked off to the right and saw his foot. She swung the light. Then I saw all of him. I ought to have seen him as I came down, but I had been bent over, peering at the ground with the fountain pen flash, trying to read tire marks by a light the size of a quarter.
“Give me the flash,” I said and reached back.
She put it into my hand, without a word. I went down on a knee. The ground felt cold and damp through the cloth.
He lay smeared to the ground, on his back, at the base of a bush, in that bag-of-clothes position that always means the same thing. His face was a face I had never seen before. His hair was dark with blood, the beautiful blond ledges were tangled with blood and some thick grayish ooze, like primeval slime.
The girl behind me breathed hard, but she didn’t speak. I held the light on his face. He had been beaten to a pulp, One of his hands was flung out in a frozen gesture, the fingers curled. His overcoat was half twisted under him, as though he had rolled as he fell. His legs were crossed. There was a trickle as black as dirty oil at the corner of his mouth.
“Hold the flash on him,” I said, passing it back to her. “If it doesn’t make you sick.”
She took it and held it without a word, as steady as an old homicide veteran. I got my fountain pen flash out again and started to go through his pockets, trying not to move him.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she said tensely. “You shouldn’t touch him until the police come.”
“That’s right,” I said. “And the prowl car boys are not supposed to touch him until the K-car men come and they’re not supposed to touch him until the coroner’s examiner sees him and the photographers have photographed him and the fingerprint man has taken his prints. And do you know how long all that is liable to take out here? A couple of hours.”
“All right,” she said. “I suppose you’re always right. I guess you must be that kind of person. Somebody must have hated him to smash his head in like that.”
“I don’t suppose it was personal,” I growled. “Some people just like to smash heads.”
“Seeing that I don’t know what it’s all about, I couldn’t guess,” she said tartly.
I went through his clothes. He had loose silver and bills in one trouser pocket, a tooled leather keycase in the other, also a small knife. His left hip pocket yielded a small billfold with more currency, insurance cards, a driver’s license, a couple of receipts. In his coat loose match folders, a gold pencil clipped to a pocket, two thin cambric handkerchiefs as fine and white as dry powdered snow. Then the enamel cigarette case from which I had seen him take his brown gold-tipped cigarettes. They were South American, from Montevideo. And in the other inside pocket a second cigarette case I hadn’t seen before. It was made of embroidered silk, a dragon on each side, a frame of imitation tortoise-shell so thin it was hardly there at all. I tickled the catch open and looked in at three oversized Russian cigarettes under the band of elastic. I pinched one. They felt old and dry and loose. They had hollow mouthpieces.
“He smoked the others,” I said over my shoulder. “These must have been for a lady friend. He would be a lad who would have a lot of lady friends.”
The girl was bent over, breathing on my neck now. “Didn’t you know him?”
“I only met him tonight. He hired me for a bodyguard.”
“Some bodyguard.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“I’m sorry,” she almost whispered. “Of course I don’t know the circumstances. Do you suppose those could be jujus? Can I look?”
I passed the embroidered case back to her.
“I knew a guy once who smoked jujus,” she said. “Three highballs and three sticks of tea and it took a pipe wrench to get him off the chandelier.”
“Hold the light steady.”
There was a rustling pause. Then she spoke again.
“I’m sorry.” She handed the case down again and I slipped it back in his pocket. That seemed to be all. All it proved was that he hadn’t been cleaned out.
I stood up and took my wallet out. The five twenties were still in it.
“High-class boys,” I said. “They only took the large money. ”
The flash was drooping to the ground. I put my wallet away again, clipped my own small flash to my pocket and reached suddenly for the little gun she was still holding in the same hand with the flashlight. She dropped the flashlight, but I got the gun. She stepped back quickly and I reached down for the light. I put it on her face for a moment, then snapped it off.
“You didn’t have to be rough,” she said, putting her hands down into the pockets of a long rough coat with flaring shoulders. “I didn’t think you killed him.”
I liked the cool quiet of her voice. I liked her nerve. We stood in the darkness, face to face, not saying anything for a moment. I could see the brush and light in the sky.
I put the light on her face and she blinked. It was a small neat vibrant face with large eyes. A face with bone under the skin, fine drawn like a Cremona violin. A very nice face.
“Your hair’s red,” I said. “You look Irish.”
“And my name’s Riordan. So what? Put that light out. It’s not red, it’s auburn.”
I put it out. “What’s your first name?”