CHAPTER 32

    

    I woke up sitting on the floor in a bright little room with no furniture. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again. There was a strong light shining in my face. My neck hurt, my head throbbed, I was aware that the reassuring weight of my gun was gone from under my left arm. I squinted past the light and could make out forms, not very clearly. One of them was surely the Mexican with his huge upper body and long arms. Others I couldn't make out. My mouth felt as if I'd eaten a blotter.

    "He appears to have regained consciousness." It was the voice of Dr. Bonsentir, descending from the clouds. "How convenient of you, Mr. Marlowe, to have come to us, just when we had decided we must find you."

    I braced my feet and edged my back up the wall and got myself standing. The Mexican moved out from behind the light and stepped closer to me. I could see my gun stuck in his belt. At least he hadn't tied a knot in the barrel.

    "Why don't we just kill him right now." Simpson's voice came deep and thick from the darkness. "Then we won't have to think about it anymore."

    I heard Carmen's suppurating giggle.

    "I think it would be better," Bonsentir said, "to wait until we put out to sea again. It will make disposal of the body safer and less troublesome."

    "I don't like to sail at night," Simpson said. His voice was back up again. It had the petulant ring of a kid who didn't want to go to bed early.

    "I know, Randolph. It's all right. We'll keep him here until we get under way in the morning."

    "It's too late," I said. "Too many people know."

    "Who knows?" Simpson said. "I told you, Claude, he told people. Who knows? What do they know?" His voice went up and down like a piccolo solo.

    "He would say that, Randolph. He's in profound jeopardy and he knows it. He would say that and hope it would save him, but it won't."

    "The DA's chief investigator, Bernie Ohls, knows it," I said. "And the DA, Taggert Wilde, and the San Bernardino DA's office, and a Missing Persons' cop named Gregory, and a hard case named Eddie Mars who right now is maybe a hundred yards away with a boatload of tough boys who are ready to come over here and shoot your ears off."

    "I know Eddie Mars," Carmen said excitedly. Oh boy! A familiar name.

    Simpson came around into the lamplight. His soft face was red.

    "Stop it," he said, his voice fluting down the scale as he spoke. It was eerie to hear, and at another time it would have been an interesting phenomenon. "You're trying to frighten me. Nobody knows. They can't. I'm too powerful. No one can know about me. So just shut your mouth, because you're going to be killed." The last sentence bottomed off into darkness.

    My head felt like it was ready to rupture and my neck hurt and my throat was sore and I was a little dizzy, and sick of the light in my eyes and sick of being yammered at by an oversized brat. I hit him. It was a pretty good punch given the shape I was in. I felt his nose flatten and saw blood come. He screamed with a sound like glass shattering and stumbled back with his hands to his face and the blood running between his fingers, and kept screaming in high sharp bursts, like a European fire engine: whoop, whoop, whoop! I turned toward the Mex and something hit the side of my head and I went back once again to a place I'd been spending too much time in.