Chapter 7 Pretty Necklace Around a Pretty Neck

For a week, the Wades left me alone. I did what I do for a living. Then I got a call on a Thursday night from Wade. His voice was bad. He was breathing hard. 'I'm in terrible shape, Marlowe. I'm losing control. Can you come over quickly?'

I said I would, and then the telephone went dead. I shouted into it but there was no reply. I was in my car a minute later, and drove like a bullet through the streets and up into the hills where they lived. I imagined Wade throwing his wife down the stairs. I imagined him beating on her locked door. I drove even faster. When I got there, Eileen Wade was standing in the open front door in a pretty dress, nice and cool, smoking a cigarette. If there was any excitement around her, I'd brought it with me.

'Where is he?'

'He had a fall,' she said calmly. 'He cut his head on something. There was only a little blood.'

'That's nice,' I said. 'Where is he now?'

She looked at me quietly and then she pointed out at the darkness towards the lake. 'Out there somewhere. You find him. I've had enough.' And she went into the house.

He was right where she had pointed, lying on his stomach. The back of his head was sticky. I talked to him but he didn't answer. I tried to lift him, dropped him, tried again and got him across my back. He was as heavy as stone. I made it into the house and dropped him on the sofa. My back screamed as I straightened up.

Mrs Wade came in and said she'd called her doctor. He hadn't wanted to come, she said. This confused me until she explained that Loring was her doctor.

He showed up fifteen minutes later, took a glance at Wade's cut, and said there was no danger. He put his hat back on and started to leave.

'I can't get him upstairs alone, Doctor,' I said.

'Then leave him where he is,' Loring said coldly. 'You might wash his head, too. He's not my patient.'

'I'm not asking you to treat him, Doctor. I'm asking for some help in getting him to his bedroom,' I said, beginning to get angry.

'And just who are you?' he asked sharply.

'My name's Marlowe. We were introduced last week. All I want is...'

He interrupted me. 'I'm not interested in what you want.' He started for the door but I stepped in front of it.

'Just a minute. You're a doctor and this man needs help. I can't get him upstairs alone. What do you say?'

'Get out of my way,' he said through his teeth, 'or I shall call the police. I'm a professional man, and as a professional...'

This time I interrupted him. 'As a professional man, you're a sack of dirt.' I stepped out of his way. He went out like a storm. Perhaps he hadn't brought his glove this time. Instead, his eyes smacked me as he went through the door.

In the end, Candy came home, and we carried Wade up the stairs together. The Mexican wanted to know what I was doing there. I didn't like his curiosity and told him so. He showed me his knife. Candy didn't like me. I couldn't understand why; I'm very easy to like. He asked me if I had hit Wade. I told him his boss had fallen and that he wasn't hurt badly. The knife disap­peared. We undressed Wade and put him to bed. Candy went to change. I washed the cut and Wade opened his eyes.

'What happened?'

'I'd say the usual. Except you also fell and cut your head this time. It's not serious. Why don't you get some sleep?'

'Sleep,' he said, 'what's that?'

'Maybe a pill would help. Got any?'

He said there were some in the drawer. They were Mrs Wade's pills, and they were strong. Loring's name was on the plastic bottle. I gave Wade one and he swallowed it dry. He was quiet for a while and then he said slowly, 'I remember something. Do something for me. I wrote some crazy stuff. I don't want Eileen to see it. It's on the typewriter. Tear it up for me.'

I said I would. Then I thought he had fallen asleep until he opened his eyes again and asked 'Ever kill a man, Marlowe?'

'Yes.'

'Nasty feeling, isn't it?'

'Some people like it,' I said.

'How could they?' he asked, and then he was asleep for real. I waited a minute and then I turned out the light and left him.

I went downstairs. Eileen wasn't there, so she must have been up in her room. I wondered about that. Didn't she want to know how her husband was? Or was she just too tired of the trouble he caused? Maybe she didn't love him as much as she said she did. About that I didn't know. No one can see into someone else's heart, not even a good detective.

I went to his study and found the papers. I began reading them. He was right, it was crazy stuff.

He wrote about the moon watching him and wanting to scream and Verringer. He wrote bad things about Verringer, but in a kind way. Then he said he was a rose and talked about a woman who was sleeping in complete silence and that was wrong, he wrote, because you always make one sound or another when you sleep. Then he said he had given Candy too much money, he ought to have killed him instead. 'A good man died for me once, why not that insect in his stupid white jacket?'

Then he began to come out of whatever bad dream he was having and he wrote that he had to call someone, he was in a bad way. And that was the end. That's where he stopped writing.

I didn't tear the papers up. I folded them and put them in my pocket. I stood there looking out of the window at the calm dark lake. Then I heard a shot.

Her room was empty so I kept running. She was in his room, and they were struggling. Before I could help her, she had pulled the gun from his hands. She fell against me as she pulled the gun free, and I held her. She was crying.

'Roger, how could you?'

'I saw someone. He had a knife. I grabbed the gun from the drawer here,' he pointed to the little table where I'd found the pills, 'and I shot. But it must have been a dream, because no one was there.'

It was a miserable story from start to finish. The gun hadn't been in the drawer. I had seen the pills, some papers, a set of keys. But no gun. And she just wasn't strong enough to have taken the gun from him unless he wasn't really fighting. It had all been a performance. He wanted sympathy, I guessed. Poor Roger is trying to kill himself, he wanted her to think.

'Go back to bed,' I told her. 'He won't do it again.' I took the gun. She gave me a hard look and then walked out.

'You were just playing,' I told him when she had left. 'You don't want to die.'

'I guess I don't,' he said.

'What good man died for you?' I asked him.

At first, he didn't understand, and then he remembered.

'I told you, it was crazy stuff. I was drunk.'

'And isn't Candy taking your money because he knows something he shouldn't?'

He closed his eyes and repeated 'It was just crazy stuff.'

I closed the door and came back and sat on the bed and said 'You can't keep running. Candy does know something. What is it, a woman?'

His eyes were still closed. 'Maybe you believe that fool doctor.'

I took a wild guess. 'No, he's wrong. It wasn't his wife, it was her sister Sylvia.'

Wade opened his eyes wide.

'Is that why you're here?' he whispered, and I knew I had guessed right. 'You leave me alone,' he said. 'I'm not the first husband to do what I did.'

I didn't ask him just what he had done.

'It's been hell,' he said.

'That's obvious. The interesting point is why.'

I gave him another one of his wife's pills and watched him fall asleep again. When he was finally in dreamland, he looked half-dead. He wasn't going to hurt anyone tonight. Maybe he had never hurt anyone at all.

I went down the hall but at the top of the stairs I stopped because Eileen was standing in the doorway of her room.

'He's gone back to sleep,' I said.

'I knew you would return,' she said softly. Her voice was changed. 'Even after ten years, I haven't stopped waiting.'

Wonderful, I thought. Now she's crazy, too.

'Come in and shut the door,' she whispered, and went into her room. I followed her in because it seemed like a good idea. She threw herself into my arms. 'It's always been you,' she said, and I knew she wasn't talking to me.

I might have done the wrong thing but Candy saved me. I heard his footsteps stop at the door and I jumped and opened it and he ran down the stairs. When I came back to the room, all I saw was a crazy woman talking to herself. I closed the door and went down to the study and found Wade's bottle and poured myself a big drink. Then I poured another. I lay down on the sofa there and soon the bottle was empty and I fell asleep, too.

I woke up with a head like a dead tree, and the first thing I saw was Candy. He wasn't smiling. He asked me if I wanted coffee.

'Sure. Thanks.'

'Slept down here? She threw you out?'

'Whatever you say, pal.'

He laughed at me. 'You don't look so tough this morning.'

He brought me my coffee. I drank it, I had more, smoked a cigarette and then I was OK. I mean I was still alive. When Candy came to take the empty cup, I asked him 'How much are you getting for your silence? I bet less than two hundred.'

He smiled a bad smile. He still didn't like me. 'Maybe you give me two hundred so I don't say what I saw last night.'

'You didn't see anything. There was nothing to see. Now get out of here, Candy, because I'm waking up.'

I went to the living room. She was there and she was surprised to see me. 'I didn't know you were here, Mr Marlowe.'

She was hard to believe. I walked over closer to her. She was wearing something strange on a chain around her neck. It was some kind of army badge. I asked her about it.

'I had a peculiar dream last night,' she said. 'Someone I used to know came to see me. That's why I'm wearing this.' She touched the badge gently. 'He gave it to me.'

'I had a peculiar dream, too,' I said, looking right at her, 'but now I'm awake and I don't dream when I'm awake. What I'm saying is I don't think I'll come here again. There's something wrong here. Very wrong.'

'Oh, Roger will be fine in a day or two. You'll see.'

'No, he won't,' I said. 'If you want to help him, you'll get him the right kind of doctor - and quick. But,' I added, not caring that it was nasty, 'I don't think you really want to help him.'

I left her there in her living room, her husband upstairs sleeping a drugged sleep, her pretty necklace around her pretty neck, and her pretty violet eyes full of anger at what I had said. I drove home down a beautiful road and saw nothing beautiful.

 

Chapter 8 The Smell of Gunsmoke

At home, I had a long shower, shaved, changed into fresh clothes and began to feel clean again. I read a story in a magazine that was good but not great. At midday my telephone rang.

It was the Doctor's wife. She said she had to see me. I told her I'd meet her at my office. I stopped for a sandwich on the way so she was already there when I came in. I never remember to lock up.

'You don't even have a secretary,' she said.

'No, I don't. Why, are you looking for a job?'

'You couldn't pay me enough,' she said.

'You're wrong. I've got money. I've got a five-thousand-dollar bill.' I took it out of my safe and she looked at it carefully.

'You got this from Terry Lennox. He used to carry it around. A good luck piece or something. You drove him to Tijuana. You also don't think he killed my sister. Did he give you a list of her special friends, is that it? Is that why you've been at the Wade's, holding Roger's hand? Because you think maybe Roger killed Sylvia when he was, I don't know, drunk and crazy?'

'I met the Wades because a New York publisher wants a book finished, Mrs Loring. Terry gave me no list, no names. And yes, I was supposed to help Wade but I can't.' That was all the explanation she deserved.

But there was a question I wanted answered, too.

'I saw you at Victor's the other night. You were having a rather unusual drink, I noticed. Could it be that you don't think Terry killed your sister?'

'What I think doesn't matter,' she said. She meant it, too. 'I didn't come here to talk about Terry Lennox in any case. I came to invite you to my house.'

'Why?'

'Someone would like to talk with you.'

I had a strong feeling who that someone would be. 'The old man?'

She frowned. It was a pretty frown. 'I don't call him that, Mr Marlowe. Will you come?'

I said yes. Even a cat can look at a king.

We went in her car. The driver was a black man in his middle fifties who even opened our doors when we stopped in front of her house, which was just about the ugliest piece of architecture I had ever seen. It looked like a sandcastle that a little boy builds when he's mad at his parents. Mrs Loring saw my expression and smiled. 'Horrible, isn't it? My father gave it to me as a wedding present. My husband loves it.'

We went in. Someone opened the door for us and then vanished. From the hall we entered a room that was at least seventy feet long. At the far end, a man was sitting, waiting. He gave us both the same cold stare.

Mrs Loring made the introductions and apologized just in case we were late.

'Tell them to bring the tea,' he said. 'Sit down, Mr Marlowe.'

I sat down and we looked at each other without talking at all until the tea came.

'Two cups,' Harlan Potter commanded as his daughter poured. 'You can have your tea in another room, Linda.'

She smiled weakly and left. I took out a cigarette.

'Don't smoke, please. It bothers my health.'

I had to believe him, although he certainly didn't look sick. He was a long way over six feet and nearly as wide as he was tall. His hair was not yet grey. His voice seemed to come from the next room. So this is what a hundred million dollars looks like, I thought.

He didn't even touch his tea. He just talked. He said he knew who I was, what I was, and what I had done for Terry. He went on to say that my investigation was interfering in his private life. I told him I wasn't investigating anything at the moment. He disagreed.

'Perhaps you think Roger Wade is involved in my daughter's death. Forget that idea. Forget you even know Roger Wade. I don't read his books myself,' he said, 'but I have been told that they are quite childish. As childish as whatever strange ideas you may have.'

I explained again how I had come to meet Wade. I told him about Menendez, too, but he said the name meant nothing to him. I asked him what I could do to make him happier.

'All I want is peace and quiet, Mr Marlowe. I pay good money for it, and I expect it. We live in a dirty world where everyone wants to hear terrible stories about the rich and the powerful. I repeat; I pay money to keep my life private. How much do you want, Marlowe?'

'Nothing, I don't want your money. If I get rich, I might become like you.'

He laughed. Then he stood up and I saw just how much over six feet he was. He was very big. When he shook my hand, my fingers cried.

'Just don't be a hero, young man. It's not a very clever role for a clever man.'

Mrs boring's driver took me home but wouldn't accept the dollar I tried to give him. So I tried to give him a book of poetry, but he said he already had that book.

Life left me alone again for another week and then I got two telephone calls in one morning, and I was back into what Harlan Potter had clearly told me to stay away from.

The first caller was Roger Wade. He wasn't crying for help this time; he was inviting me to lunch. I accepted.

The second call was from that friend of George Peters. He was back in town. He said he didn't know if it would help now, but he was sure he had seen Terry Lennox in New York a few years back, and that his name then had been Paul Marston. He added that Marston had been wearing a British Army badge.

With this new information I decided to talk to someone who was supposed to know what was going on. I telephoned Green at Homicide. He wasn't pleased to hear from me.

'War record? You don't listen, do you, Marlowe? The investi­gation is over. But if you can't sleep nights worrying about it, I'll tell you. Lennox had no war record.'

I told him Mendy's story.

'Mendy is a gangster. He is also a liar. And you're a fool to believe him.'

He didn't give me a chance to tell him what I thought he was. He just hung up.

I drove to Wade's house at noon. It was too hot to be a nice day. Even the wind was hot.

The house was cool, though. Wade took me into his study. A pile of papers next to the typewriter impressed me.

'The book?' I asked.

'Yes, and it's rotten. I'm not a writer anymore. I'm someone who used to write. Want a drink?'

'A soda, please.'

'Very clever. I think I'll have one, too.' He rang a bell and Candy came.

'Two sodas, and we'll have lunch in an hour,' he told the Mexican.

'It's Thursday, boss. My day off, remember?'

'Then just make us some sandwiches.'

'I'm not the cook, boss.'

Wade gave him a narrow look. 'I'm having lunch with my friend. The cook is off today.'

'You think he's your friend,' Candy said, glancing at me, 'maybe you should ask your wife.'

'Watch your mouth, little man,' Wade warned, suddenly angry. 'Remember who pays you.'

Candy smiled. 'OK, boss, I'll get lunch.' He left for the kitchen.

'But what are you paying him for?' I asked Wade.

'You're going to start that again?'

'And the good man that died for you? Let me tell you. Terry Lennox. Candy knows you were seeing Sylvia, so you pay him.'

Wade asked me, 'You think I killed her?'

'I'm not looking for her killer. What's driving you insane is that you don't know. You were drunk and you don't remember. That's how it was.'

He was going to say something but Candy came in carrying the sandwiches and two bottles of beer. Wade looked at the beer and shook his head. 'Get me a real drink, Candy.'

The Mexican said there was only beer and that he was leaving now; he reminded Wade again that it was his day off.

'So go. I'll get the stuff myself.'

They left the room together and then Wade returned a minute later with a bottle of whisky and a glass. He filled it, drank, then filled it again.

'Where's your wife?' I asked him as he put the bottle and the glass down on his desk.

'Why? Are you in love?' The whisky was already at work.

'I ask because I don't want to leave you alone, now that you're going to fall to pieces again. I wouldn't want you to shoot the ceiling again.'

He looked at me with deep worry in his eyes. 'I really did that, didn't I? You know, I can't remember.'

'That's your whole trouble,' I told him. 'Is the gun still in the desk?' I had put it there that night. Today, I didn't want him in the same room with it.

'I don't know where it is, but it's not in the desk,' he said. 'Look for yourself.'

I did, and it wasn't there. Eileen must have hidden it from him.

'Now that you've had your look around,' he said, the whisky in charge once more, 'why don't you leave me alone? I'm tired of your face.

I took my sandwich to a table and some chairs outside. It was a little hotter here, but it was nicer than being with Wade. I watched a boat zip up and down the lake. The people in the boat were laughing. They were talking to each other but I couldn't hear anything except the loud roar of the boat's engine. After I finished my sandwich, I went back and put my head in at the door of the study.

'Go away,' Wade said, and shook the half-empty whisky bottle at me.

I went back outside to wait for someone to come home and keep an eye on the fool. The boat continued to roar along the shore of the lake. I walked down to get a closer look. The man behind the wheel waved at me. Maybe he didn't know he was wrecking a nice quiet afternoon and maybe he knew and didn't care. I walked back to the house. The boat moved down the lake and took its awful noise with it. At the top of the garden steps, I heard the doorbell ringing. I went in and opened the door for Eileen Wade.

'Oh, Mr Marlowe. I thought it was Candy or Roger. I forgot my key.'

'It's Candy's day off.'

There must have been something in my voice.

'Is anything wrong?' she asked.

'Well, a little drinking is being done. He's in his study. Probably asleep by now. And I must get going.'

'Oh, don't go. Stay and have some tea.'

I don't know why I said yes. I didn't want any tea.

She took off her jacket. 'I'll just look in and see if Roger is all right.'

I watched her cross to the study door and open it. She looked in for a moment and closed the door and came back.

'Yes, he's asleep. I have to go upstairs, but I'll be right back down.'

She went up and I heard her door close. I went to the study. If he was sleeping, he wouldn't need whatever was left in the bottle. I opened the door.

There was perfect silence and a strong smell of gunsmoke in the room. Before I was half-way to where he lay on the sofa, I knew he was dead.