CHAPTER 29

    

    I dreamed all night of a blood-red room and woke up in the morning feeling like I hadn't slept. The morning was barely brighter than the night had been. The heat was still oppressive and thunder made guttural sounds above me as I stared out my open window. In the Hollywood Hills to the north, lightning flickered, and I could feel the hard rain waiting behind the hills, out over the San Fernando Valley. Again the thunder, closer this time, and the shiver of hot lightning came more quickly behind it.

    I went to the kitchen to make coffee and as I measured it into the filter the rain came like a heavy wind rushing down. I went to the open window but the rain was coming straight down in an unwavering cascade and there was no need to close the glass. Below me on Franklin Avenue the rain hitting the hot pavement made steam that hovered low over the street. Puddles were forming and the few people on foot on the street were running for cover, newspapers or purses held over their heads. The foliage was already greening, glistening darkly in the rain which hissed down from clouds that seemed piled just above the rooflines. I couldn't see the hills anymore. The rain was too dense and the sky too low, except when the lightning slashed, close now, nearly simultaneous with the thunder.

    I had breakfast, put on a trench coat, and went to work. The temperature had dropped, probably thirty degrees, and the rain had settled into a steady downpour that promised to last the day and maybe more. At midmorning the headlights glowed on cars, and the lights in houses were on, showing bright through the windows in the general murk. I went west on Franklin, dropped down to Sunset on Highland, and took Laurel Canyon up to Mulholland, squinting as I went, through the rain that threatened to overmatch my wipers. The inside of my car was dense with humidity, but I didn't care. I had a plan. I couldn't get at Simpson, I couldn't prove he'd done anything illegal; though it's hard to get rich in this big wide wonderful country and not do something illegal. I didn't even know where Simpson was, inside which fortress, behind which wall. But I knew where Dr. Claude Bonsentir was, and I knew he was connected to Simpson and maybe if I watched Bonsentir long enough, the connection would show itself. Maybe he'd lead me to Simpson. Maybe Simpson would come to him. Maybe an MGM talent scout would see me sitting there and offer me a contract. It wasn't a hell of a plan, but it was the only one I could think of, and it was better then staying home and playing chess against myself from a book of problems.

    I had to fight the car up Laurel Canyon, the road curved in a series of nearly hairpin turns as it rose up from the lowlands on the Hollywood side, and with the road slipperier than the pathway to damnation, and the traffic in the other direction crowding in to keep from sliding into the canyon, it was no drive for sissies.

    I looped up over Mulholland Drive, carefully, and came back down Coldwater Canyon and parked on the road above Resthaven, partly shielded by a growth of azaleas, where I could look down at the sanitarium and watch. And watch. And take a nip from a pint of bonded rye I had in the glove compartment. And watch. And smoke a cigarette and take another nip of rye, and watch. And get my pipe loaded and burning just right and open my window a crack to let a little of the steam and smoke escape, and watch. That was the first day. The second day I did the same things. It still rained. I watched. They fought the Peloponnesian wars. They built the Acropolis, and the Roman forum, and I had another tap on the pint of rye and watched. In the afternoon things dragged. About midmorning on my third day of watching, the rain dwindled away and by noontime the sun had come out, but it was a gentle sun. The heat was gone, and the dripping landscape was being slowly dried by an easy breeze that moved in from the Pacific. My pint of rye was down to maybe an inch in the bottom of the bottle when Dr. Bonsentir came out of the front door of his sanitarium with the Mexican and the beachboy and went to a big black Cadillac that was parked there and got in the back. The Mexican got in the passenger's side in front and the beachboy got behind the wheel and off they went with me drifting along behind them. Tailing somebody alone is not easy, and if they are looking for a tail it's not really possible for long. But Bonsentir and friends seemed unconcerned and innocent as they headed down Coldwater and swung west on Sunset. I hung back two or three cars when I could and changed lanes frequently to put myself in different places in the rear-view mirror. If they made me they showed no sign of it. We went straight out Sunset past the mansions and the rolling lawns and the high ornamental fences. Past the lawn statuary and the private entrances with private security where movie stars and name directors hid behind the wealth their houses flaunted, and did the things that everyone does when they are alone and have no need for pretense.

    We swung south along the coast highway through Bay City. The Pacific danced in toward us today. Scrubbed clean by the rain, it sparkled in the new sun and unrolled itself luxuriously on the clean white beach. Bay City loomed above us on the left, fresh washed after the recent rains but tawdry still in the way only beach towns can get tawdry, full of false promise with the paint peeling off it in the salt air. Ahead of me the Cadillac headed steadily south, and the beach towns slid by us. Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach. A little south of Redondo Beach, near Palos Verdes, we went off the highway at a slant and curved around some scrub cedar and beach growth toward the water. I dropped back and crept down behind them. As I came around the last curve I saw the Cadillac pull into a space on a concrete apron that fronted on a pier. There was a white painted shack on the pier. The pier itself jutted straight out into the ocean, and a couple of kids sat on the landing with lines in the water. I cruised on by the pier where the Cadillac was parked and drove back up the looping drive that connected with the highway. As soon as I reached the highway I parked on the shoulder and hotfooted it back down toward the pier and stood in a screen of coarse and twisted cedar growth to watch.

    I felt out of place and a little clumsy in my city suit and shoes. The sand shifted under my feet as I moved, and the wind off the water tossed the cedar limbs where I stood. The Cadillac sat where it had parked, its motor idling, the windows rolled up. No one got out. No one did anything that I could see. I shifted occasionally from one foot to the other, got out a cigarette, and lit it in the wind on the third try, cupping the match in my hands and shielding it by turning my back into the breeze.

    The two boys sitting on the dock didn't catch anything. A single sea gull circled hopefully over them, waiting. A couple of hundred yards out to sea, several smaller seabirds, gray with white chests, skimmed the surface of the waves, dipping occasionally to capture a small something and then, back in formation, continued on, staying close to the foam crests.

    At about two-thirty in the afternoon, a boat edged up over the horizon. By three o'clock it was directly offshore, maybe 500 yards. It was, loosely speaking, a yacht. And the Empire State Building is, loosely speaking, a skyscraper. It was probably 400 feet long and had at least three decks. There were two smokestacks raked, and the whole thing was painted a bright, brand-new vanilla color. At the stern in blue letters was the name, Randolph's ranger. As I watched they lowered a speedboat from two derricks on the stern and some guy in a sailor suit the color of the yacht clambered down a ladder and got in. There was a moment while he tinkered with the controls and then there was the faint hint of a roar and the boat swooped away from the yacht in a wide curve, leaving a broad rolling wake behind it as it headed for the pier. As it got closer I could hear the throb of its big engine.

    Dr. Bonsentir got out of the backseat of the Cadillac. The Mexican got out of the front seat and the two of them began to walk toward the pier. The speedboat pulled in against the landing and the boy in the sailor suit held it there. It bobbed gently while Bonsentir and the Mex walked down the ramp and onto the landing. The Mexican handed Bonsentir in and hopped in himself as lightly as if his knuckles didn't drag on the ground, and the boy in the sailor suit spun the wheel expertly and the speedboat headed back toward Randolph's Ranger. The beachboy backed the Caddy up and turned it around and drove on up past me toward the highway. He had on big sunglasses and was too busy checking how he looked in the rearview mirror to notice me in the bushes.

    The speedboat pulled up to the side of the yacht where a boarding ladder had been lowered and Bonsentir and the Mex went aboard. The speedboat eased around to the stern.

    When the Caddy was out of sight I headed down toward the shack on the pier. From behind the bushes I had seen the telephone line running down to it. The guy that ran the shack had straggly white hair and a big belly pushing at his undershirt. His skinny arms were badly sunburned as were his shoulders where the undershirt exposed them. One of his front teeth was missing and he smoked a thin brown cigarette, hanging from the corner of his mouth. Half an inch of ash had accumulated on the cigarette.

    I said, "Use your phone?"

    He said, "It ain't a pay phone. It's a private phone."

    "Doesn't mean you can't get paid for its use."

    "Where you want to call?" he said.

    "Local," I said. "Las Olindas."

    "That ain't a local call," he said.

    I took a ten-dollar bill from my wallet. "This cover it, you think?"

    I could see the grayish tip of his tongue as he touched his lips with it near where the cigarette smoldered. The movement dislodged the ash and it fell onto his undershirt. He brushed it absently while he looked at the ten.

    "Yeah," he said. "I guess that'll be okay if you don't talk long."

    "Okay if I pause to take a breath?"

    He took the ten and stuffed it unfolded into the side pocket of his khaki pants and walked to the door of the shack and leaned on the doorjamb with his back to me. That was supposed to give me privacy. I dialed the Cypress Club and got Eddie Mars.

    "Marlowe," I said. "I'm down around Palos Verdes on a pier maybe ten miles south of Redondo, and I think I've found Simpson."

    "He going to stay put?"

    "I don't know, he's on a yacht about a quarter mile offshore. Right now it's anchored."

    "Stay there, soldier," Mars said. "I'll come down."

    "You got a boat?" I said.

    "I can get one," Mars said.

    "Good." I said. "Hold on."

    I got off the phone. "What's the name of this place?" I said.

    The geezer at the door turned, trying to look startled, like I'd interrupted his thoughts.

    "This place?"

    "Yeah. I'm giving my friend directions."

    "Fair Harbor," he said.

    I repeated it to Mars.

    "Sit tight, soldier, I'm on my way."

    "I'll be here, Eddie, inflating my water wings."

    Mars hung up and so did I. Through the window of the shack I could see the speedboat pull away from the yacht again and head in toward the pier. I turned back and leaned on the counter, letting my jacket fall open so the geezer could see my gun.

    "Listen," I said. "Name's Armstrong, undercover, U. S. Government. I can't give you details, but we're onto something big involving that yacht out there and I don't want you to mention anything about that phone call."

    The geezer's eyes fastened on the gun butt under my coat. And he thought about the tenspot in his pocket.

    "Sure thing." He nodded his head hard up and down. "Sure thing, Captain. Hell, I was regular Navy for ten years. You can count on me."

    "Good," I said. Then I added, "Mum's the word," because I'd always wanted to say it and I was never going to get a better chance. The geezer nodded vigorously again, and I went and leaned against the doorjamb and tried for that bored efficient tough-guy look that G-men affect.

    

***

    

    The speedboat curved in to the pier and the sailor boy cut the throttle and let it drift expertly in against the landing. When he had it moored he hopped out and came up the pier toward the shack. He was a big one, and tough looking with big hands and a coiling blue sea serpent tattooed on his right forearm. He looked at me hard. I stepped aside to let him pass and he went on into the shack.

    "Need some ice," he said to the geezer.

    "Yes, sir," the geezer said. "Got it right outside in the freezer. Ten-pound block? Twenty?"

    "Two twenties," the sailor boy said. "Load 'em into the speedboat."

    "This is, ah, usually cash and carry," the geezer said.

    "Fine. I give you cash and you carry the ice down to the boat," the sailor boy said. There was a pause and then the geezer said, "Sure thing" and came out of the shack and went around to the big icebox on the ocean side. Sailor boy ambled out after him and stood near me leaning his back against the shack while the geezer got out tongs and a rubberized shawl and carried the ice down to the speedboat.

    "Nice breeze," the sailor boy said.

    "Aye," I said.

    "Do any sailing?" he said.

    "No."

    "From around here?"

    "You with the census bureau?"

    "Hey, pally, I asked you a civil question."

    "I love being called pally," I said. "Almost as much as I like being asked civil questions."

    "It wouldn't be a good idea to get too wise with me, pally."

    "The hell it wouldn't," I said.

    Sailor boy thought about it for a while and decided it wasn't worth the time. He shrugged and sauntered off down the pier to his boat. He sat in it while the geezer struggled down with the second block of ice, then he cranked it up and left the dock at full throttle, heading back toward the yacht.

    The geezer came back up from the landing. His face was red and he was puffing.

    I gave him a nod and a conspiratorial wink. He went on inside the shack. I waited. I'd been doing a lot of that lately. I hadn't done much of anything else lately, except occasionally to get whacked with a sap or threatened with a gun. Counting the ten I'd given the geezer to use his phone, I was at least nine dollars in the hole on this job. It wasn't the way to get rich.

    Five hundred yards away, Randolph's Ranger rode quietly at anchor, moving very slightly with the slow swells out beyond the surf line. The answers to a lot of questions rode out there on the swells. Maybe Carmen Sternwood, five hundred yards away, cute as a ladybug but far dumber, with the moral sense of an hyena. And here's Marlowe to the rescue. And Randolph Simpson, whom I'd never met but who appeared to be a mutilation murderer and a thief on a monumental scale, not to mention Bonsentir, and his Mexican and probably six pit vipers. A fine group, can't wait to join you. Perfect company. Marlowe the all-purpose guest, fits in easily with murderers and psychopaths, friend to all, close associate of Eddie Mars, gambler, gunman, all-around crook. The sky and sea were taking turns being bluer and the sun skipping off the whitecapped onshore waves made the air seem effervescent. A small yacht, a ketch, came around the point to the south and pulled in close to the shore and dropped anchor. A slender girl with a smooth tan and very blonde hair got into the dinghy they were towing and rowed toward shore. She had on white shorts and sneakers and a blue and white striped top and her sunglasses were so big they covered half her face. On the deck of the ketch I could see a blond young man dressed about the same, coiling the excess anchor rope and furling the mainsail. The girl bought some ice and a loaf of bread and other sundries and came back out carrying the purchases in a brown paper bag. The geezer nearly fell over himself carrying the ten-pound block of ice down to the dinghy for her. Her legs were perfectly smooth and the color of good sherry. She flashed a smile at the geezer that would have melted the ice if he'd still been carrying it. He made a ridiculous snaggle-toothed smile back, and she cast off from the landing and rowed back to her boat with short effortless strokes. The geezer and I both watched her until she was back aboard and the mainsail went up. The ketch moved slowly on, up the cove and around the point north of us and out of sight. We were alone again. Me, the geezer, and Randolph's Ranger.