chapter 6
It's a long drag back from Tijuana and one of the dullest drives in the state. Tijuana is nothing; all they want there is the buck. The kid who sidles over to your car and looks at you with big wistful eyes and says, "One dime, please, mister," will try to sell you his sister in the next sentence. Tijuana is not Mexico. No border town is anything but a border town, just as no waterfront is anything but a waterfront. San Diego? One of the most beautiful harbors in the world and nothing in it but navy and a few fishing boats. At night it is fairyland. The swell is as gentle as an old lady singing hymns. But Marlowe has to get home and count the spoons. The road north is as monotonous as a sailor's chantey. You go through a town, down a hill, along a stretch of beach, through a town, down a hill, along a stretch of beach. It was two o'clock when I got back and they were waiting for me in a dark sedan with no police tags, no red light, only the double antenna, and not only police cars have those. I was halfway up the steps before they came out of it and yelled at me, the usual couple in the usual suits, with the usual stony leisure of movement, as if the world was waiting hushed and silent for them to tell it what to do. "Your name Marlowe? We want to talk to you." He let me see the glint of a badge. For all I caught of it he might have been Pest Control. He was gray blond and looked sticky. His partner was tall, good-looking, neat, and had a precise nastiness about him, a goon with an education. They had watching and waiting eyes, patient and careful eyes, cool disdainful eyes, cops' eyes. They get them at the passing-out parade at the police school. "Sergeant Green, Central Homicide. This is Detective Dayton." I went on up and unlocked the door. You don't shake hands with big city cops. That close is too close. They sat in the living room. I opened the windows and the breeze whispered. Green did the talking. "Man named Terry Lennox. Know him, huh?" "We have a drink together once in a while. He lives in Encino, married money. I've never been where he lives." "Once in a while," Green said. "How often would that be?" "It's a vague expression. I meant it that way. It could be once a week or once in two months." "Met his wife?" "Once, very briefly, before they were married." "You saw him last when and where?" I took a pipe off the end table and filled it. Green leaned forward close to me. The tall lad sat farther back holding a ballpoint poised over a red-edged pad. "This is where I say, 'What's this all about?' and you say, 'We ask the questions.'" "So you just answer them, huh?" I lit the pipe. The tobacco was a little too moist. It took me some time to light it properly and three matches. "I got time," Green said, "but I already used up a lot of it waiting around. So snap it up, mister. We know who you are, And you know we ain't here to work up an appetite." "I was just thinking," I said. "We used to go to Victor's fairly often, and not so often to The Green Lantern and The Bull and Bear—that's the place down at the end of the Strip that tries to look like an English inn—" "Quit stalling." "Who's dead?" I asked. Detective Dayton spoke up. He had a hard, mature, don't-try-to-fool-with-me voice. "Just answer the questions, Marlowe. We are conducting a routine investigation. That's all you need to know." Maybe I was tired and irritable. Maybe I felt a little guilty. I could learn to hate this guy without even knowing him. I could just look at him across the width of a cafeteria and want to kick his teeth in. "Shove it, Jack," I said. "Keep that guff for the juvenile bureau. It's a horse laugh even to them." Green chuckled. Nothing changed in Dayton's face that you could put a finger on-but he suddenly looked ten years older and twenty years nastier. The breath going through his nose whistled faintly. "He passed the bar examination," Green said. "You can't fool around with Dayton." I got up slowly and went over to the bookshelves. I took down the bound copy of the California Penal Code. I held it out to Dayton. "Would you kindly find me the section that says I have to answer the questions?" He was holding himself very still. He was going to slug me and we both knew it. But he was going to wait for the break. Which meant that he didn't trust Green to back him up if he got out of line. He said: "Every citizen has to co-operate with the police. In all ways, even by physical action, and especially by answering any questions of a non-incriminating nature the police think it necessary to ask." His voice saying this was hard and bright and smooth. "It works out that way," I said. "Mostly by a process of direct or indirect intimidation. In law no such obligation exists. Nobody has to tell the police anything, any time, anywhere." "Aw shut up," Green said impatiently. "You're crawfishing and you know it. Sit down. Lennox's wife has been murdered. In a guest house at their place in Encino. Lennox has skipped out. Anyway he can't be found. So we're looking for a suspect in a murder case. That satisfy you?" I threw the book in a chair and went back to the couch across the table from Green. "So why come to me?" I asked. "I've never been near the house. I told you that." Green patted his thighs, up and down, up and down. He grinned at me quietly. Dayton was motionless in the chair. His eyes ate me. "On account of your phone number was written on a pad in his room during the past twenty-four hours," Green said. "It's a date pad and yesterday was torn off but you could see the impression on today's page. We don't know when he called you up. We don't know where he went or why or when. But we got to ask, natch." "Why in the guest house?" I asked, not expecting him to answer, but he did. He blushed a little. "Seems she went there pretty often. At night. Had visitors. The help can see down through the trees where the lights show. Cars come and go, sometimes late, sometimes very late. Too much is enough, huh? Don't kid yourself. Lennox is our boy. He went down that way about one in the A.M. The butler happened to see. He come back alone, maybe twenty minutes later. After that nothing. The lights stayed on. This morning no Lennox. The butler goes down by the guest house. The dame is as naked as a mermaid on the bed and let me tell you he don't recognize her by her face. She practically ain't got one. Beat to pieces with a bronze statuette of a monkey." "Terry Lennox wouldn't do anything like that," I said. "Sure she cheated on him. Old stuff. She always had. They'd been divorced and remarried. I don't suppose it made him happy but why should he go crazy over it now?" "Nobody knows that answer," Green said patiently. "It happens all the time. Men and women both. A guy takes it and takes it and takes it. Then he don't. He probably don't know why himself, why at that particular instant he goes berserk. Only he does, and somebody's dead. So we got business to do. So we ask you one simple question. So quit horsing around or we take you in." "He's not going to tell you, Sergeant," Dayton said acidly. "He read that law book. Like a lot of people that read a law book he thinks the law is in it." "You make the notes," Green said, "and leave your brains alone. If you're real good we'll let you sing 'Mother Machree' at the police smoker." "The hell with you, Sarge, if I may say so with proper respect for your rank." "Let's you and him fight," I said to Green. "I'll catch him when he drops." Dayton laid his note pad and ball-point aside very carefully. He stood up with a bright gleam in his eyes. He walked over and stood in front of me. "On your feet, bright boy. Just because I went to college don't make me take any guff from a nit like you." I started to get up. I was still off balance when he hit me. He hooked me with a neat left and crossed it. Bellsrang, but not for dinner. I sat down hard and shook my head. Dayton was still there. He was smiling now. "Let's try again," he said. "You weren't set that time. It wasn't really kosher." I looked at Green. He was looking at his thumb as if studying a hangnail. I didn't move or speak, waiting for him to look up. If I stood up again, Dayton would slug me again. He might slug me again anyhow. But if I stood up and he slugged me, I would take him to pieces, because the blows proved he was strictly a boxer. He put them in the right place but it would take a lot of them to wear me down. Green said almost absently: "Smart work, Billy boy. You gave the man exactly what he wanted. Clam juice." Then he looked up and said mildly: "Once more, for the record, Marlowe. Last time you saw Terry Lennox, where and how and what was talked about, and where did you come from just now. Yes—or no?" Dayton was standing loosely, nicely balanced. There was a soft sweet sheen in his eyes. "How about the other guy?" I asked, ignoring him. "What other guy was that?" "In the hay, in the guest house. No clothes on. You're not saying she had to go down there to play solitaire," "That comes later—when we get the husband." "Fine. If it's not too much trouble when you already have a patsy." "You don't talk, we take you in, Marlowe." "As a material witness?" "As a material my foot. As a suspect. Suspicion of accessory after the fact of murder. Helping a suspect escape. My guess is you took the guy somewhere. And rightnow a guess is all I need. The skipper is tough these days. He knows the rule book but he gets absent-minded. This could be a misery for you. One way or another we get a statement from you. The harder it is to get, the surer we are we need it." "That's a lot of crap to him," Dayton said. "He knows the book." "It's a lot of crap to everybody," Green said calmly. "But it still works. Come on, Marlowe. I'm blowing the whistle on you." "Okay," I said. "Blow it. Terry Lennox was my friend. I've got a reasonable amount of sentiment invested in him. Enough not to spoil it just because a cop says come through, You've got a case against him, maybe far more than I hear from you. Motive, opportunity, and the fact that he skipped out. The motive is old stuff, long neutralized, almost part of the deal. I don't admire that kind of deal, but that's the kind of guy he is—a little weak and very gentle. The rest of it means nothing except that if he knew she was dead he knew he was a sitting duck for you. At the inquest if they have one and if they call me, I'll have to answer questions. I don't have to answer yours. I can see you're a nice guy, Green. Just as I can see your partner is just another goddam badge flasher with a power complex. If you want to get me in a real jam, let him hit me again. I'll break his goddam pencil for him." Green stood up and looked at me sadly. Dayton hadn't moved. He was a one-shot tough guy. He had to have time out to pat his back. "I'll use the phone," Green said. "But I know what answer I'll get. You're a sick chicken, Marlowe. A very sick chicken. Get the hell outa my way." This last to Dayton. Dayton turned and went back and picked up his pad. Green crossed to the phone and lifted it slowly, his plain face creased with the long slow thankless grind. That's the trouble with cops. You're all set to hate their guts and then you meet one that goes human on you. The Captain said to bring me in, and rough. They put handcuffs on me. They didn't search the house, which seemed careless of them. Possibly they figured I would be too experienced to have anything there that could be dangerous to me. In which they were wrong. Because if they had made any kind of job of it they would have found Terry Lennox's car keys. And when the car was found, as it would be sooner or later, they would fit the keys to it and know he had been in my company. Actually, as it turned out, that meant nothing. The car was never found by any police. It was stolen sometime in the night, driven most probably to El Paso, fitted with new keys and forged papers, and put on the market eventually in Mexico City. The procedure is routine. Mostly the money comes back in the form of heroin. Part of the good-neighbor policy, as the hoodlums see it.
chapter 7
The homicide skipper that year was a Captain Gregorius, a type of copper that is getting rarer but by no means extinct, the kind that solves crimes with the bright light, the soft sap, the kick to the kidneys, the knee to the groin, the fist to the solar plexus, the night stick to the base of the spine. Six months later he was indicted for perjury before a grand jury, booted without trial, and later stamped to death by a big stallion on his ranch in Wyoming. Right now I was his raw meat. He sat behind his desk with his coat off and his sleeves rolled almost to his shoulders. He was as bald as a brick and getting heavy around the waist like all hard-muscled men in middle age. His eyes were fish gray. His big nose was a network of burst capillaries. He was drinking coffee and not quietly. His blunt strong hands had hairs thick on their backs. Grizzled tufts stuck out of his ears. He pawed something on his desk and looked at Green. Green said: "All we got on him is he Won't tell us nothing, skipper. The phone number makes us look him up. He's out riding and don't say where. He knows Lennox pretty well and don't say when he saw him last." "Thinks he's tough," Gregorius said indifferently. "We could change that." He said it as if he didn't care one way or another. He probably didn't. Nobody was tough to him. "Point is the D.A. smells a lot of headlines on this one. Can't blame him, seeing who the girl's old man is. I guess we better pick this fellow's nose for him." He looked at me as if I was a cigarette stub, or an empty chair. Just something in his line of vision, without interest for him. Dayton said respectfully: "It's pretty obvious that his whole attitude was designed to create a situation where he could refuse to talk. He quoted law at us and needles me into socking him. I was out of line there, Captain." Gregorius eyed him bleakly. "You must needle easy if this punk can do it. Who took the cuffs off?" Green said he did. "Put them back on," Gregorius said. "Tight. Give him something to brace him up." Green put the cuffs back on or started to. "Behind the back," Gregorius barked. Green cuffed my hands behind my back. I was sitting in a hard chair. "Tighter," Gregorius said. "Make them bite." Green made them tighter. My hands started to feel numb. Gregorius looked at me finally. "You can talk now. Make it snappy." I didn't answer him. He leaned back and grinned. His hand went out slowly for his coffee cup and went around it. He leaned forward a little. The cup jerked but I beat it by going sideways out of the chair. I landed hard on my shoulder, rolled over and got up slowly. My hands were quite numb now. They didn't feel anything. The arms above the cuffs were beginning to ache. Green helped me back into the chair. The wet smear of the coffee was over the back and some of the seat, but most of it was on the floor. "He don't like coffee," Gregorius said. "He's a swifty. He moves fast. Good reflexes." Nobody said anything. Gregorius looked me over with fish eyes. "In here, mister, a dick license don't mean any more than a calling card. Now let's have your statement, verbal at first. We'll take it down later. Make it complete. Let's have, say, a full account of your movements since ten P.M. last night. I mean full. This office is investigating a murder and the prime suspect is missing. You connect with him. Guy catches his wife cheating and beats her head to raw flesh and bone and bloodsoaked hair. Our old friend the bronze statuette. Not original but it works. You think any goddam private eye is going to quote law at me over this, mister, you got a hell of a tough time coming your way. There ain't a police force in the country could do its job with a law book. You got information and I want it. You could of said no and I could of not believed you. But you didn't even say no. You're not dummying up on me, my friend. Not six cents worth. Let's go." "Would you take the cuffs off, Captain?" I asked. "I mean if I made a statement?" "I might. Make it short." "If I told you I hadn't seen Lennox within the last twenty-four hours, hadn't talked to him and had no idea where he might be — would that satisfy you, Captain?" "It might—if I believed it." "If I told you I had seen him and where and when, but had no idea he had murdered anyone or that any crime had been committed, and further had no idea where he might be at this moment, that wouldn't satisfy you at all, would it?" "With more detail I might listen. Things like where, when, what he looked like, what was talked about, where he was headed. It might grow into something." "With your treatment," I said. "it would probably grow into making me an accessory." His jaw muscles bulged. His eyes were dirty ice. "So?" "I don't know," I said. "I need legal advice. I'd like to co-operate. How would it be if we had somebody from the D.A.'s office here?" He let out a short raucous laugh. It was over very soon. He got up slowly and walked around the desk. He leaned down close to me, one big hand on the wood, and smiled. Then without change of expression he hit me on the side of the neck with a fist like a piece of iron The blow traveled eight or ten inches, no more. It nearly took my head off. Bile seeped into my mouth. I tasted blood mixed with It I heard nothing but a roaring in my head. He leaned over me still smiling, his left hand still on the desk. His voice seemed to come from a long way off. "I used to be tough but I'm getting old. You take a good punch, mister, and that's all you get from me. We got boys at the City Jail that ought to be working in the stockyards. Maybe we hadn't ought to have them because they ain't nice clean powderpuff punchers like Dayton bere. They don't have four kids and a rose garden like Green. They live for different amusements. It takes all kinds and labor's scarce. You got any more funny little ideas about what you might say, if you bothered to say it?" "Not with the cuffs on, Captain." It hurt even to say that much. He leaned farther towards me and I smelled his sweat and the gas of corruption. Then he straightened and went back around the desk and planted his solid buttocks in his chair. He picked up a three-cornered ruler and ran his thumb along one edge as if it was a knife. He looked at Green. "What are you waiting for, Sergeant?" "Orders." Green ground out the word as if he hated the sound of his own voice. "You got to be told? You're an experienced man, it says in the records. I want a detailed statement of this man's movements for the past twenty-four hours. Maybe longer, but that much at first. I want to know what he did every minute of the time. I want it signed and witnessed and checked. I want it in two hours. Then I want him back here clean, tidy, and unmarked. And one thing more, Sergeant." He paused and gave Green a stare that would have frozen a fresh-baked potato. "—next time I ask a suspect a few civil questions I don't want you standing there looking as if I had torn his ear off." "Yes, sir." Green turned to me. "Let's go," he said gruffly. Gregorius bared his teeth at me. They needed cleaning—badly. "Let's have the exit line, chum." "Yes, sir," I said politely. "You probably didn't intend it, but you've done me a favor. With an assist from Detective Dayton. You've solved a problem for me. No man likes to betray a friend but I wouldn't betray an enemy into your hands. You're not only a gorilla, you're an incompetent. You don't know how to operate a simple investigation. I was balanced on a knife edge and you could have swung me either way. But you had to abuse me, throw coffee in my face, and use your fists on me when I was in a spot where all I could do was take it. From now on I wouldn't tell you the time by the clock on your own wall." For some strange reason he sat there perfectly still and let me say it. Then he grinned. "You're just a little old cop-hater, friend. That's all you are, shamus, just a little old cop-hater." "There are places where cops are not hated, Captain. But in those places you wouldn't be a cop." He took that too. I guess he could afford it. He'd probably taken worse many times. Then the phone rang on his desk. He looked at it and gestured. Dayton stepped smartly around the desk and lifted the receiver. "Captain Gregorius' office. Detective Dayton speaking." He listened. A tiny frown drew his handsome eyebrows together. He said softly: "One moment, please, sir." He held the phone out to Gregorius. "Commissioner Allbright, sir." Gregorius scowled. "Yeah? What's that snotty bastard want?" He took the phone, held it a moment and smoothed his face out. "Gregorius, Commissioner." He listened. "Yeah, he's here in my office, Commissioner. I been asking him a few questions. Not co-operative. Not co-operative at all ... How's that again?" A sudden ferocious scowl twisted his face into dark knots. The blood darkened his forehead. But his voice didn't change in tone by a fraction. "If that's a direct order, it ought to come through the Chief of Detectives, Commissioner.. . Sure, I'll act on it until it's confirmed. Sure ... Hell, no. Nobody laid a glove on him . . . Yes, sir. Right away." He put the phone back in its cradle. I thought his hand shook a little. His eyes moved up and across my face and then to Green. "Take the cuffs off," he said tonelessly. Green unlocked the cuffs. I rubbed my hands together, waiting for the pins and needles of circulation. "Book him in the county jail," Gregorius said slowly, "Suspicion of murder. The D.A. has glommed the case right out of our hands. Lovely system we got around here." Nobody moved. Green was close to me, breathing hard. Gregorius looked up at Dayton." "Whatcha waiting for, cream puff? An ice-cream cone maybe?" Dayton almost choked. "You didn't give me any orders, skipper." "Say sir to me, damn you! I'm skipper to sergeants and better. Not to you, kiddo. Not to you. Out." "Yes, sir." Dayton walked quickly to the door and went but Gregorius heaved himself to his feet and moved to the window and stood with his back to the room. "Come on, let's drift," Green muttered in my ear. "Get him out of here before I kick his face in," Gregorius said to the window. Green went to the door and opened it. I started through. Gregorius barked suddenly: "Hold it! Shut that door!" Green shut it and leaned his back to it. "Come here, you!" Gregorius barked at me. I didn't move. I stood and looked at him. Green didn't move either. There was a grim pause. Then very slowly Gregorius walked across the room and stood facing me toe to toe. He put his big hard hands in his pockets. He rocked on his heels. "Never laid a glove on him," he said under his breath, as if talking to himself. His eyes were remote and expressionless. His mouth worked convulsively. Then he spat in my face. He stepped back. "That will be all, thank you." He turned and went back to the window. Green opened the door again. I went through it reaching for my handkerchief.
