CHAPTER 23

    

    I woke up with an idea. I also woke up with one arm throbbing like a toothache, and some soreness left in my jaw, and a dull tenderness behind my ear. But mostly it was the idea. I remembered something Vivian had said about Simpson having a place in the desert. I rolled out of bed and called her while the coffee dripped.

    "Oh, I don't know," she said sleepily. "Somewhere out past Pasadena."

    "It got a name?"

    "Springs, some kind of springs," she said. "I've never been there. I just know Daddy used to go out there when he was well."

    "Rancho Springs?"

    "That sounds right. Will I see you soon, Phil?"

    "I hope so," I said, and hung up the phone. Phil?

    I called Pauline Snow.

    "Marlowe," I said. "Do you know if a guy named Randolph Simpson lives anywhere around Rancho Springs?"

    "A guy named Randolph Simpson? Marlowe, where the hell have you been living the last thirty years? Randolph Simpson is not a 'guy.' That's like saying 'a guy named John D. Rockefeller,' for God's sake."

    "Does he live there?"

    "Sure. Everybody knows that."

    "Do you have any access to him?"

    "Of course not. No one has access to Randolph Simpson. Why?"

    "I think he's hooked into the business with the water rights and the land development."

    "Simpson?"

    "Dr. Bonsentir is his doctor."

    "That doesn't mean he is involved in some scheme."

    "Few nights ago," I said, "a couple of hard numbers leaned on me pretty good on a rainy street in Hollywood. They told me to stay away from Randolph Simpson and Dr. Bonsentir."

    "Because you were poking around in the water rights thing?"

    "Because I have been looking for a young woman who went from Bonsentir's clinic to Simpson. The hard boys that poured it to me were driving a Buick sedan registered to the Neville Valley Realty Trust."

    "The people buying water rights up north."

    "Un huh."

    "Doesn't prove Simpson's involved in it. Could be just about the girl."

    "Why are they driving a car registered to the Neville Valley Trust? And how much of a coincidence is it that Neville Valley seems to be connected to Rancho Springs, and Simpson has a place in Rancho Springs, and his doctor is on the board of the development company buying land in Rancho Springs?"

    "Okay," Pauline Snow said. "You got a point. It's not something you can take to court, or even something I can print-yet. But it's something."

    "How about Chuck and Vinnie," I said. "You have anything on them?"

    "Just addresses," she said. "You want them?"

    I did. She rummaged off the phone for a couple of minutes while I put some cream and sugar in my coffee and sipped it. Then she came back and gave me an address in Los Angeles.

    "Business address, I assume," she said. "I don't know L. A. that well, but that sounds like downtown."

    "It is," I said. "I'll go call on them. Anything you can find out about Randolph Simpson is welcome."

    "What are we trying to do, Marlowe? Exactly?"

    "How the hell do I know?" I said. "I was hired to find the girl. I guess we're trying to do that."

    

***

    

    I had some toast and drank the rest of my coffee, and in an hour, with my arm still throbbing, but my head feeling better, I was headed downtown.

    Gardenia-Tartabull Insurance and Real Estate was in a building on Bunker Hill near Fourth Street that had impressed everyone when they built it. It was less impressive now, but under the grime you could still see the glamour of its youth. The lobby was an open shaft to the roof through which the iron cage elevators went up and down, and around which a tier of filigreed iron balconies marked the floor levels. Gardenia-Tartabull was on the sixth floor behind a pebbled glass door that had notary public in small black letters under the name of the firm.

    Inside, at a desk with nearly nothing on it, was a redhead with a lot of hair, wearing a tight green dress. She was tilted back in her chair with her legs crossed, working very carefully on getting her nails painted in a shade of flame to match her hair. I waited for a minute until there seemed a break in the process. She didn't look up.

    I said, "Do you have another job here, or is that it?"

    "Wait a sec," she said. Her forehead was wrinkled with concentration and the tip of her tongue showed between her bright lips. I hooked a straight chair from against the wall beside the door and turned it around and sat on it with my forearms resting on the back. I put my chin on my arms and watched her paint.

    "How long does this usually take you?" I said.

    She didn't answer, just shook her head and frowned a little harder as she put a smooth swipe of lacquer on the nail of her second finger. She had eight to go.

    "You don't have to look up," I said. "And you don't have to speak. Just nod or shake your head. Is Gardenia or Tartabull in?"

    She nodded. Her little nailbrush was poised over the second nail. It was clear that she could nod or she could paint her nails, but she couldn't do both.

    "Tartabull?"

    She shook her head.

    "Gardenia?"

    She nodded. I glanced around the room. There were four or five green metal file cabinets along the walls, and in the wall behind her desk were two doors, each with a pebbled glass window. One said charles gardenia and the other said vincent tartabull. I stood up.

    "Thank you for your help," I said, and went past her desk toward Gardenia's office. She almost spoke then, but I had opened the door to Gardenia's office before she could and then it was too late. As I closed the door behind me I saw her lower her head again and stare at her nails.

    Behind his desk with a copy of the Los Angeles Times spread out in front of him, munching a cruller, was the fat guy in the seersucker suit I'd seen getting out of the black Buick in the Neville Valley Trust parking lot up north. He had on the same suit. There was a cup of coffee on the desk beside the paper. A little spiral of steam drifted up from it. On the hand that held the cruller was a diamond pinkie ring. Gardenia gazed at me without expression while he finished chewing the bite he'd taken from his cruller. Then he took a sip of his coffee.

    When he had swallowed the coffee he said, "Whaddya want?"

    "My name's Marlowe," I said. It didn't seem to impress him. "I'm a private detective working on a case and I keep bumping into a couple of businesses, yours being one of them."

    "And what do you think my business is?" Gardenia said.

    "I know you do business as Rancho Springs Development Corporation."

    "That right?" Gardenia said. He seemed a lot more interested in his cruller than in anything I had to say.

    "And I know you are connected with the Neville Valley Realty Trust."

    "Yeah?"

    "Yeah."

    I felt like I was in a second-feature movie. Gardenia finished his cruller, drank some more coffee.

    "So what's this case you're working on?" he said.

    "I'm looking for a girl."

    "Is that all?" Gardenia said. "Hell, you can have the one out front, you want. She doesn't do me any damn good."

    "Paints a nice nail though."

    "Yeah." Gardenia rummaged in a paper sack and came out with another cruller. He took a bite and chewed it happily.

    "So who's this girl you're looking for?" "Carmen Sternwood, her father was General Guy Sternwood. Maybe you Ve heard of him. He was in the oil business."

    Gardenia shook his head. "Nope. Can't say I have. How come you're looking around me? I don't know any broads that are missing."

    "I think she's with Randolph Simpson."

    "So?" Gardenia shrugged. "I don't know Randolph Simpson."

    "He connected to Rancho Springs? He lives out there."

    "What I hear, he lives a lot of places," Gardenia said. The conversation didn't interest him. He examined his hand where he'd held the cruller and licked a crumb off the index finger.

    "A couple of hard boys in a car registered to Neville Valley Realty Trust stopped me on the street one night and told me to stay away from Randolph Simpson."

    Gardenia shrugged.

    "They told me to stay away from Dr. Bonsentir too. And not to look for Carmen Sternwood."

    Gardenia dusted his hands off to get rid of any crumbs his tongue had missed. Then he leaned a little forward over his desk, and got a cigar out of a leather humidor and stuck it in his mouth and got a desk-top lighter going and lit the cigar.

    "Look, what did you say your name was?"

    "Marlowe."

    "Well, Marlowe, I appreciate you got a problem. But to tell you the truth, it's not my problem, if you see what I mean, and I figure that I give it about all the time I owe it."

    "You wouldn't just happen to know where Carmen Sternwood is?"

    "Marlowe, I give you an A for trying hard, but I don't know where she is, or who she is, or, for that matter, how she is. You think she's with this guy Randolph Simpson, then whyn't you chase over to his house and ask him about it."

    I took a business card out of my pocket and laid it on his desk.

    "I think you overplayed it a little with the this guy Simpson line," I said.

    Gardenia shrugged and spread his hands. The palms were clean and pink and soft. The nails had been manicured and buffed.

    "You think of anything, you might call me," I said.

    "Sure thing," Gardenia said. He stood up heavily, his white shirt stretched very tight over his belly. He put out his hand.

    "Thanks for stopping by."

    I shook my head at his outstretched hand.

    "I'm too old for horse crap," I said.

    He didn't care. He smiled, sat back down, picked up his coffee cup and began to read the Times again, tracing a forefinger along the printed line while the cigar he held in the same hand sent its pleasant ribbon of smoke up toward the ceiling.

    I left and didn't shut the door on my way out. Teach him a lesson.