chapter 31

I went home and showered and shaved and changed clothes and began to feel clean again. I cooked some breakfast, ate it, washed up, swept the kitchen and the service porch, filled a pipe and called the phone answering service. I shot a blank. Why go to the office? There would be nothing there but another dead moth and another layer of dust. In the safe would be my portrait of Madison. I could go down and play with that, and with the five crisp hundred dollar bills that still smelled of coffee. I could do that, but I didn't want to. Something inside me had gone sour. None of it really belonged to me. What was it supposed to buy? How much loyalty can a dead man use? Phooey: I was looking at life through the mists of a hangover. It was the kind of morning that seems to go on forever. I was flat and tired and dull and the passing minutes seemed to fall into a void, with a soft whirring sound, like spent rockets. Birds chirped in the shrubbery outside and the cars went up and down Laurel Canyon Boulevard endlessly. Usually I wouldn't even hear them. But I was brooding and irritable and mean and oversensitive. I decided to kill the hangover. Ordinarily I was not a morning drinker. The Southern California climate is too soft for it. You don't metabolize fast enough. But I mixed a tall cold one this time and sat in an easy chair with my shirt open and pecked at a magazine, reading a crazy story about a guy that had two lives and two psychiatrists, one was human and one was some kind of insect in a hive. The guy kept going from one to the other and the whole thing was as crazy as a crumpet, but funny in an off-beat sort of way. I was handling the drink carefully, a sip at a time, watching myself. It was about noon when the telephone rang and the voice said: "This is Linda Loring. I called your office and your phone service told me to try your home. I'd like to see you.' "Why?" "I'd rather explain that in person. You go to your office from time to time, I suppose." "Yeah. From time to time. Is there any money in it?" "I hadn't thought of it that way. But I have no objection, if you want to be paid. I could be at your office in about an hour." "Goody." "What's the matter with you?" she asked sharply. "Hangover. But I'm not paralyzed. I'll be there. Unless you'd rather come here." "Your office would suit me better." "I've got a nice quiet place here. Dead-end street, no near neighbors." "The implication does not attract me—if I understand you." "Nobody understands me, Mrs. Loring. I'm enigmatic. Okay, I'll struggle down to the coop." "Thank you so much." She hung up. I was slow getting down there because I stopped on the way for a sandwich. I aired out the office and switched on the buzzer and poked my head through the communicating door and she was there already, sitting in the same chair where Mendy Menendez had sat and looking through what could have been the same magazine. She had a tan gabardine suit on today and she looked pretty elegant. She put the magazine aside, gave me a serious look and said: "Your Boston fern needs watering. I think it needs repotting too. Too many air roots." I held the door open for her. The hell with the Boston fern. When she was inside and I had let the door swing shut I held the customer's chair for her and she gave the office the usual once-over. I got around to my side of the desk. "You're establishment isn't exactly palatial," she said. "Don't you even have a secretary?" "It's a sordid life, but I'm used to it." "Mid I shouldn't think very lucrative," she said. "Oh I don't know. Depends. Want to see a portrait of Madison?" "A what?" "A five-thousand-dollar bill. Retainer. I've got it in the safe." I got up and started over there. I spun the knob and opened it and unlocked a drawer inside, opened an envelope, and dropped it in front of her. She stared at it in something like amazement. "Don't let the office fool you," I said. "I worked for an old boy one time that would cash in at about twenty millions. Even your old man would say hello to him. His office was no better than mine, except he was a bit deaf and had that soundproofing stuff on the ceiling. On the floor brown linoleum, no carpet." She picked the portrait of Madison up and pulled it between her fingers and turned it over. She put it down again. "You got this from Terry, didn't you?" "Gosh, you know everything, don't you Mrs. Loring?" She pushed the bill away from her, frowning. "He had one. He carried it on him ever since he and Sylvia were married the second time. He called it his mad money. It was not found on his body." "There could be other reasons for that." "I know. But how many people carry a five-thousand-dollar bill around with them? How many who could afford to give you that much money would give it to you in this form?" It wasn't worth answering. I just nodded. She went on brusquely. "And what were you supposed to do for it, Mr. Marlowe?' Or would you tell me? On that last ride down to Tijuana he had plenty of time to talk. You made it very clear the other evening that you didn't believe his confession. Did he give you a list of his wife's lovers so that you might find a murderer among them?" I didn't answer that either, but for different reasons. "And would the name of Roger Wade appear on that list by any chance?" she asked harshly. "If Terry didn't kill his wife, the murderer would have to be some violent and irresponsible man, a lunatic or a savage drunk. Only that sort of man could, to use your own repulsive phrase, beat her face into a bloody sponge. Is that why you are making yourself so very useful to the Wades—a regular-mother's helper who comes on call to nurse him when he is drunk, to find him when he is lost, to bring him home when he is helpless?" "Let me set you right on a couple of points, Mrs. Loring, Terry may or may not have given me that beautiful piece of engraving. But he gave me no list and mentioned no names. There was nothing he asked me to do except what you seem to feel sure I did do, drive him to Tijuana. My getting involved with the Wades was the work of a New York publisher who is desperate to have Roger Wade finish his book, which involves keeping him fairly sober, which'in turn involves finding out if there is any special trouble that makes him get drunk. If there is and it an be found out, then the next step would be an effort to remove it. I say effort, because the chances are you couldn't do it. But you could try." "I could tell you in one simple sentence why he gets drunk," she said contemptuously. "That anemic blond show piece he's married to." "Oh I don't know," I said. "I wouldn't call her anemic." "Really? How interesting." Her eyes glittered. I picked up my portrait of Madison. "Don't chew too long on that one, Mrs. Loring. I am not sleeping with the lady. Sorry to disappoint you." I went over to the safe and put my money away in the locked compartment. I shut the safe and spun the dial. "On second thought," she said to my back, "I doubt very much that anyone is sleeping with her." I went back and sat on the corner of the desk. "You're getting bitchy, Mrs. Loring. Why? Are you carrying a torch for our alcoholic friend?" "I hate remarks like that," she said bitingly. "I hate them. I suppose that idiotic scene my husband made makes you think you have the right to insult me. No, I am not carrying a torch for Roger Wade. I never did—even when he was a sober man who behaved himself. Still less now that he is what he is." I flopped into my chair, reached for a matchbox, and stared at her. She looked at her watch. "You people with a lot of money are really something," I said. "You think anything you choose to say, however nasty, is perfectly all right. You can make sneering remarks about Wade and his wife to a man you hardly know, but if I hand you back a little change, that's an insult. Okay, let's play it low down. Any drunk will eventually turn up with a loose woman. Wade is a drunk, but you're not a loose woman. That's just a casual suggestion your high-bred husband drops to brighten up a cocktail party. He doesn't mean it, he's just saying it for laughs. So we rule you out, and look for a loose woman elsewhere. How far do we have to look, Mrs. Loring—to find one that would involve you enough to bring you down here trading sneers with me? It has to be somebody rather special, doesn't it—otherwise why should you care?" She sat perfectly silent, just looking. A long half minute went by. The corners of her mouth were white and her hands were rigid on her gabardine bag that matched her suit. "You haven't exactly wasted your time, have you?" she said at last. "How convenient that this publisher should have thought of employing you! So Terry named no names to you! Not a name. But it really didn't matter, did it, Mr. Marlowe? Your instinct was unerring. May I ask what you propose to do next?" "Nothing." "Why, what a waste of talent! How can you reconcile it with your obligation to your portrait of Madison? Surely there must be something you can do." "Just between the two of us," I said, "you're getting pretty corny. So Wade knew your sister. Thanks for telling me, however indirectly. I already guessed it. So what? He's just one of what was most likely a fairly rich collection. Let's leave it there. And let's get around to why you wanted to see me. That kind of got lost in the shuffle didn't it?" She stood up. She glanced at her watch once more. "I have a car downstairs. Could I prevail upon you to drive home with me and drink a cup of tea?" "Go on," I said. "Let's have it." "Do I sound so suspicious? I have a guest who would like to make your acquaintance." "The old man?" "I don't call him that," she said evenly. I stood up and leaned across the desk. "Honey, you're awful cute sometimes. You really are. Is it all right if I carry a gun?" "Surely you're not afraid of an old man." She wrinkled her lip at me. "Why not? I'll bet you are—plenty." She sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid I am. I always have been. He can be rather terrifying." "Maybe I'd better take two guns," I said, then wished I hadn't.